Brother Tobiah Abbot, OSB, is the monastic brewer at Belmont Abbey. The Belmont brew pub, Primal Brewery, sells his doppelbock on tap, but at home in the monastery, he makes all kinds of beers. AND he makes mead, a bottle of which he sent home with the husband two or three weeks ago. Last night we opened it, and here it is, in all its golden beauty, in one of my pretty little antique glasses.
I bought those glasses in Salt Lake, twenty-five-ish years ago, and it's remarkable to me that they've survived all our moves. I think, strictly speaking, they're sherry glasses, but they've done duty for port, aquavit, chartreuse, and my own dandelion wine --- which tastes remarkably like mead, as I was reflecting last night. Or rather, Brother Tobiah's mead tastes a lot like my dandelion wine.
Anyway, this was a nice finish to an evening of Thanksgiving leftovers. I'd made a casserole of the last of the meat, then put the carcass, with a rotisserie chicken the Artgirl had brought home, into a big pot for soup. Today one of my tasks will be to strain and finish said soup, and to freeze some of it, because it's way more than we can readily eat, the two of us. But that's what's for dinner, in case anybody was wondering.
Otherwise . . .
I got up this morning and finished my second Sun essay for next week, and the day really needs to be given to this MFA thesis. I've got to make myself speed-read --- she turned it in a little late, and I've got to turn it back around in time for her to make revisions before her thesis defense. That's really the order of the day, that and various housework tasks. And maybe some desultory online Christmas shopping. One of my gifts to my husband arrived yesterday, to my delight --- I can't say anything about it, because he might decide to read this blog, but it's a thing I had made, and I'm happy with how it turned out.
Having shopped pretty thoroughly for myself this fall, I think I can safely say that I've --- decided, because I'm not making resolutions --- to fast from shopping for myself during Advent. This seems eminently reasonable. More than that I cannot promise, but I think I can commit to that course of action: to shop for my family and to plan my Christmas and to prepare in every way I can for the great mystery of the Incarnation, which comes around every year like clockwork, yet is always as fresh and new as the Child Himself.
Meanwhile, things are coming my way this week: two of three pinafores I've bought, plus the skirt I'm planning to dye. A third jumper hasn't shipped yet, and I'm starting to wonder about that . . . sellers have three to five business days to ship, but with last week's holiday, things are a little chaotic. Still, two other sellers have gotten things in the post, and again, I'm kind of starting to wonder about this person. This dress is the one I'd be most inclined to let go, if the sale fell through, though I do want it. It's the one non-neutral thing I've bought, and I look forward to wearing it, but I'm honestly a lot more invested in the other items. If I wound up not spending this $20, it wouldn't be the end of the world.
It's fairly cold today, by our standards --- 37F currently, with a high of 49 and an overnight low of 18. I guess that'll be it for my garden arugula, and we'll just see how the brussels sprouts fare. A good night for hot soup, at any rate. And, although this is hardly North Dakota, it's good weather for layering to be outside. I'm trying to be outside as much as possible, year-round, because it's just good for the soul to spend time outdoors. Summers are harder in this respect, because outdoors is where the mosquitoes and biting ants are, but even that is a relatively small sliver of the year, and I have managed to spend at least two hours outdoors on pretty much a daily basis. I'm not counting hours outside, but that is a sort of vague goal of mine, simply not to be driven indoors by the weather.
So I am glad to be acquiring some extra layers to wear, in weights that will work well for my climate. It'll be fun to wear linen pinafores over my wool dresses --- it'll also be warmer, but not too hot or heavy, I don't think, good for dog-walking. And then these will be lovely in the summer as well, with something light under them (like maybe a wool dress . . .).
Here are my dresses, all of them, folded neatly in the hanging closet shelf:
The colors are a little washed out in this photo, but you can see the palette, from black-heather Audrey on the bottom to the surprise note of beetroot Brooklyn on top. Actually, I think the teal Willow I wore yesterday is on the very top and just didn't make it into the frame --- the order here is order of wear, not any other organizing principle. Technically, I guess, I should wear Audrey today, since she's on the bottom, and is also my least-worn dress in November. But I think I'm going to save her for another day and go for something else instead.
The whole closet, meanwhile:
I love that the color scheme is fairly cohesive, yet has some surprises. I love my hits of red, for example, not to mention the bright magenta of my new Brooklyn. There are a few things I don't reach for that often, yet I'm glad I have them to reach for when I want variety. My ADHD brain craves dopamine (which, let's face it, is what has driven my shopping habits this fall, and which I'm trying to manage a little better), and dopamine is a response to novelty, not sameness. I've had a good bit of novelty this fall, but I want to turn my dodgy attention to the novelties in my own closet, too. That's why, although I like cohesiveness --- because it cuts down on decision fatigue --- I don't like too much cohesiveness. That is, I'm not going to exclude things that aren't obviously part of a curated capsule, because to me, curated capsules get boring fast.
On the other hand, one of the things I do in Advent is wear a curated capsule of a sort. Anybody who's been reading here for any length of time knows what I'm about to say: the theme of my Advent (and Lent) capsule is purple. I don't wear purple from head to toe --- I don't have head-to-toe purple. But I wear something purple every day, to remind me of the season. I try not to do this in too overt or attention-calling a way, because that would be a little defeating, spiritually. I'm not ever going to hashtag this or make it a style challenge. It's just a little thing I do (and if you want to, too, and find it edifying, that's great). One advantage of this little rule is that it automatically makes you fast from some items in your closet. You don't even consciously have to choose which ones --- things just naturally self-select. Either an item goes with purple, or it doesn't. Most of what I have does go with purple, so the fasting is never that arduous. It's truly just a tiny little thing. But it does mark the season for me.
Wearing today:
*Wool& Maggie in Marine Blue (medium long)
*Very old thrifted Limited Express silk-cashmere-merino beaded cardigan
*Snag merino tights in Red Velvet
*Thrifted Birkenstock Madeira shoes
*That ex-infinity scarf I was talking about last night. I guess now it's a finity scarf. Anyway, I like it a lot better this way.
I could make this outfit dressier/warmer by changing out my shoes for boots, but I do like to rotate footwear, now that I have more of it than I used to. I might regret not wearing some kind of base-layer shirt. Even in the house I feel a little chilly. But on the whole, I like this outfit. It has light-dark-color-pattern going on, besides which it's comfortable. I could be wearing pajamas, but I look as though I tried harder than that.
Wonky half-wet hair --- I really think I'm going to have to wash it every day, as long as it's this short. That's the trade-off, of course. I cut it short so that I could wash it more easily, more often. But then there's really no margin for bad hair days (yesterday felt like one of those). In this colder, dryer weather, it just goes straight and flat and blah, and I really can't do anything with it but wear it that way. At least it does dry faster. It's still not all the way dry, but ten minutes of diffusing got a lot of the water out. It's not cold and wet on my head, a sensation I've really come to hate, after a lifetime of never drying my hair. I still remember my mother being mad at me for going out with wet hair to shop for wedding dresses. (ETA: we were going shopping for A wedding dress, as in ONE, not multiple wedding dresses. I could wear only ONE dress for my wedding, which was just as well, because there was only one dress I liked). I was 24 --- what did I care? Also, I just hated how blow dryers made my hair look (because it was wavy, and regular blow dryers blast all the curl pattern out, but I didn't know that then). But now, in the winter, a headful of wet hair makes my whole body cold, and as much as I just want to be natural and no-fuss about things . . . I have to fuss, a little. I keep telling myself I'm not going to put gel in my hair, but honestly, once it's dry and I've scrunched the crispiness out, it's nice to have my hair be shiny and not frizzy. That's the main advantage of gel for me, as far as I can see. And it doesn't seem to matter whether it's a light-hold gel like Treluxe Reflex Serum (which I have come to like a lot better than I thought I did) or a harder hold gel like LUS Irish Sea-Moss gel (which I also really like). I am going to fluff and scrunch the cast out, if not actually comb it, which would seem to undo a lot of what the gel is supposed to do. BUT again, it leaves my hair shinier and less frizzy and at least a little more defined than if I didn't use it, so I do use it.
At any rate, my hair is dry enough now that I can bundle up to take the dog out and not freeze. I have fond memories of waiting for the bus to campus in the winter in Salt Lake City, and of having ice form in my wet hair while I waited --- well, fond is probably not the word. I have memories of being young and kind of dumb, not to mention quixotically devoted to some vague ambition to be radically not-fake. The fondness is all for my young, dumb, radically not-fake self, not for the actual not-fake sensation of having ice in my hair. Older, smarter me is not doing that kind of thing anymore. She might not look any better than she did in those days. Almost certainly she does not. But she's not giving herself walking pneumonia, either.
LATE AFTERNOON WORK BREAK:
I'm about a hundred pages into the MFA thesis, and have written roughly 5 pages of notes so far, which feels like good progress.
I've also put away a lot of clothes that were hanging out on the drying rack in the bedroom window, so that feels good. Things are sorted and neater. I've also rediscovered, in my bras-and-crop-tops bag in the under-bed bin, my two bamboo slips, which I need to remember as base layers this winter. They're not as warm as merino, maybe, but I have them, and against the skin they perform pretty well. Maybe another year I'll buy one of Wool&'s new slips, which look lovely, but this year is not that year.
I kept warmer on my morning walk by buttoning my cardigan over my dress --- I've unbuttoned a few buttons since then, but have left the top two done, to create more of an inverted V line. I think I like that.
