Our Lady of the Garden, with her moss-dappled mantle.
So here it is Thursday, and as always, there's a lot to do. I've finished my Sun essays for next week, but still have three more powerpoints to do for these class recordings. My husband is out tonight, tomorrow, and Saturday, so I suspect I'll have time I wouldn't otherwise have had to work on these things . . . which is sort of a drag, frankly, but I do need to get the things done, so maybe it's also a gift. I might have been out having fun, but instead find myself with time to do the needful. This is the way grace works sometimes, and if I'm not properly grateful, I imagine that that's a me problem.
In the meantime, the weather continues as it has been, bright but kind of sultry. Tomorrow appears to usher in a change, with rain and a twenty-degree temperature drop, about which I have to say I'm not that sorry to hear. This November-but-it's-sandal-weather business is familiar enough, but we all know what familiarity breeds, don't we. Today my clothing decisions will be minimal and basic. Tomorrow: I have a galaxy of sweaters at my disposal, and any number of tights.
I will be very happy to have next week, with this course recording, done and dusted. It's been hanging over my head, and although I might still have to add elements to the course before it's ready to go live, the big deadline will have been met, and the performances . . . performed. Online teaching is exhausting, especially when it's a matter of just recording lectures to what amounts to an empty auditorium. I can do it, and it's actually fun once I get going, but it sucks all the energy. Once I've done that, I keep telling myself, I'll have nothing to do but peck out these essays for apparently perpetuity, but I can do that. I did two yesterday, no problem. I can't quite knock out five in an afternoon, but I can certainly knock out more than a week's worth, handily, in a couple of days --- if I don't also have twelve other things to do.
It's also Day 28 of this 30-day dress challenge that only took me 20 days to admit that I was doing. As anybody who's been reading here for any amount of time will know, I had been fairly adamant in my non-interest in any more dress challenges. I'd done a hundred days in 2021, and that was enough, thank you. Once in a lifetime, and all that. In general, yes, I enjoy having multiple dresses and wearing them all in rotation. Largely I try not to repeat a dress day after day, at least in part because I want to spare any given dress the wear and tear, but mostly because that's always been my downfall: to get into a clothing rut.
What exactly the causal relationship is between default modes and depression --- if there's any causal relationship at all --- I don't know, but for me those things accompany each other. I can't be bothered, so I sink into depression. I'm sunk in depression, so I can't be bothered. Either of those could be true, or both. Either way, one key to better mental health for me is to make the effort --- but the effort can't be so effortful that I wind up not making it. Making the effort has to be, basically, no more difficult than not making the effort, if you see what I mean.
This is why dresses are great. This is why I've kept only a handful of separates, which I mostly use as accessories to dresses. I know I've banged on about this before: my preference for one big outfit decision, as opposed to the overwhelm of a bunch of choices. I'm also just a lot less bothered by my body when I can put a dress on and instantly have a pleasing shape, as opposed --- again --- to having to make a lot of decisions about proportions. For me if not for everyone, this is the way.
Of course, by now I'm becoming the tiniest bit tired of my one teal dress, but I'm not nearly as tired of it as I'd feared. Teal, as it turns out, is a great neutral. Honestly, any color you look good in can become a great neutral, working together with other colors you look good in. I haven't found bright-ish teal at all difficult to wear, day after day, and even people I've been with at fairly close quarters in my various jaunts and circumstances haven't seemed to notice that I'm wearing the same dress all the time.
But I'm looking forward to a reunion with my other clothes, and I'm pondering a reward dress. Yes, it's only $30 off this time instead of $100, but that does make some difference. I have told myself that this time, teal and blue are off the table --- not that you can have too many clothes in a color you love and look good in, but there are other colors I love and look good in, and this seems like a good time to branch out.
I'm also pondering my year-round needs. I have, now, three dresses with 3/4-length sleeves, which in my book count as long. As it's turned out, these are dresses I can wear, and have worn, even in the summer heat, but they're especially useful in what cold weather we have here. This time around, I could buy another dress with longer sleeves. I'd have eight dresses, again, in active rotation, given that my old Camellia and Sierra are mostly serving as nightgowns and housedresses at this stage. So if I bought another dress with long sleeves, that would give me half-and-half:
Longer sleeves:
Ocean Teal Willow
Wisteria Willow
Teal Fiona
?????
Short sleeves/sleeveless:
Marine Blue Maggie
Aegean Teal Maggie
Pacific Brooklyn
Audrey
BUT, given that in any year we have more days with warm temperatures than days without, might it make sense to buy another short-sleeved dress, to layer in the colder weather? This isn't Minnesota. It's North Carolina. Today, the ninth of November, the projected high is 83F. The coldest weather we have for any sustained period of time is in the 40sF, though it might routinely freeze at night. Yes, the stretch from New Year's through the end of Eastertide is pretty variable, and can feel long and chilly and dreary. But that's also when I most want to feel like springtime, even when it's cold. And then the summer arrives, and that's that --- you can't even imagine what it feels like to be cold, at least outside, for the next six months. There is that to reckon with, always. Our climate is, overall, a pleasing one, but it's pleasing mostly on the side of warmth. Easter is bound to be chilly. Christmas more often than not is mild and springlike.
So I'm really not sure. I think I know how I'm going to answer this question of what to choose next, but I haven't made up my mind. I am fairly sure I'm going to repeat a style I already have, but digress fairly dramatically from my current prevailing color scheme. Stay tuned, friends, stay tuned.
Today, meanwhile, is today, a day when I don't have to make (as far as I can anticipate) any large decision at all. I simply have to do what is set before me: fiat, fiat, fiat. And get dressed.
Not really going for much of anything today, except vaguely to wear some things I haven't been wearing. It's hot enough for open-toed sandals, but come on --- in November? So I thought I'd break out the Xero Colorados, which if not exactly beautiful are nice for walking and knocking around in. Plus they don't look too summery. Cardigan weather is coming, and cardigan weather or not, I've been wearing cardigans this week anyway. So here's my redyed linen big shirt for a change, as a very lightweight top layer. And of course, Ocean Teal Willow for a 28th straight day.
Day 4 hair, sort of refreshed by running my wet hands through it. I might have washed it today, but if we're not going out, I figure I can do other things with that time.
You can see the splatters on the mirror from Dora's bath yesterday. I enticed her into the bathtub with a treat and gave her a good wash, which she direly needed. Then she jumped out and shook herself all over the bathroom.
Anyway. This is one of those days when, in a former life only a few years ago, I might not have gotten dressed at all. But here I am: feeling that I'm still wearing pajamas, but reasonably presentable for dog-walking and work.
All of which, now, I should maybe begin to do.