I did remember my phone/camera yesterday morning when I walked the dog around the park loop.
Glory, glory, glory.
Also, I made cranberry sauce to accompany the chicken we had for dinner last night, and it was very good:
The college kids will be home on Saturday night, calloo callay. I have not done the first thing about Thanksgiving dinner, but I have some days yet, right? I guess I'll order groceries on Friday and get a turkey, and everything else will just sort itself out somehow. I have the Artgirl as an accomplice, anyway --- she actively likes to go to the grocery store, even when it's crowded, and she'll do any cooking I direct her to do.
Classes went well yesterday, I think, and it's good to have two done already. Today I've got one; tomorrow I've got one plus a podcast interview in the morning, then Thursday and Friday should be an easy homestretch (though those are always dangerous last words).
Weather today, like yesterday's weather, is beginning chilly but ascending to the level of pleasantly warm, with a high of 67F. On the one hand, it's a little hard to dress for these 30-degree extremes in a day (it's 37F right now), but on the other hand, what else are layers for? I guess the main thing is that I want to leave the layers on, since I've chosen them, but it gets too hot --- but this is hardly a major struggle. I was comfortable in leggings yesterday even at the warmest, and I'm sure that whatever I put on today will also be just fine.
After a month in one dress, it's fun to play around in my wardrobe again, contemplating things I could wear. I think I timed that challenge just right, too --- to emerge from it at just the moment when I really can wear layers and enjoy putting multiple pieces together, from things I already own. I'm not yet bored with having to, just enjoying rediscovering my own clothes and challenging myself to wear a variety of items around the basic core pieces. I don't want to spend all day thinking about it, and I don't, but letting my mind roam a little in my closet, at night before I go to bed and again in the morning, is an exercise that seems to heighten my anticipation of the coming day. As one who has experienced depression and actively dreaded plenty of coming days, for no reason in objective reality, I'm aware of how pleasurable it is to look forward to a day and not want to hide from it. Clothes are a relatively trivial part of this better phenomenon, but they're a part of it for sure.
Here again, before time to walk the dog and prep for class, is what I've settled on. Again I've tried to wear something that's been hanging in the closet waiting for the right moment --- and why should that moment not be today?
I tried several combinations before settling on this blue-on-blue tonal business. Here's dear Maggie B, my old friend, back from her exile on the closet shelf, worn with navy merino Snag tights, Tari boots, and this silk-velour shirt which I picked up at Goodwill I have no idea how many years ago. Ten, maybe? A lot of years. Like the prom dress I was talking about yesterday, this shirt spent quite some time in the dress-ups box, which is the window seat in the upstairs hall, in case you were wondering (a place I really need to clean out and maybe use for storage of some other kind), before I rescued it. I'm not sure I'd entirely realized what a nice shirt it is --- silk, not polyester, so that it feels nice on your skin in cold weather, instead of feeling like chilly plastic wrap. It's got a lovely green leaf print overlaid on the very midnight-y blue background, so that I think I could wear it over my Pacific Brooklyn, for example, quite nicely.
Anyway, it's been hanging around in the closet waiting for me to get around to wearing it. And today is the day. Here we are.
I tried belting it over my dress, feeling that maybe it looked too boxy as is, but the belt felt like one thing too many. I also originally had on Snag Red Velvet tights, for contrast, but that felt too busy, too. The color looks nice with the marine blue of the dress, but not with the whole ensemble, especially once I'd added the boots.
This outfit could be one standard deviation more polished if I switched out the Taris for my graphite-gray Birk Melrose boots, which would give a taller, sleeker look. But for today, when I'm knocking around and teaching on Zoom, this is fine.
