An oil-pastel goldfinch by my dad.
Long, nice visit with my mother-in-law yesterday afternoon, and dinner out with my mother last night. I fell asleep around 9 p.m., but woke up at midnight and had trouble going to sleep again, so . . . that's great, but anyway. I got up at six to do some social-media promo for today's Substack post and some work on my own poems (for once!), and have just now gotten dressed. My mother has gone out to run some errands, so I think I'm going to work out (always nice to do when nobody is around to ask you what on earth you're doing), then settle to some more writing, I hope. We might go out to lunch. So I anticipate the passing of the day, in hope that it will end in my getting a decent night's sleep before driving to Dallas tomorrow.
Wearing today:
*Wool& Willow dress (M) in Wisteria, bought February 2023, repeated from Monday, when I wore it under my Not Perfect Linen Smock dress.
*Secondhand Peruvian Connection alpaca cardigan, bought September 2022
*Secondhand Allbirds tencel-merino leggings, bought January 2024
*Darn Tough Socks --- I've just bought a couple of pairs of these ankle socks, to wear with, for example, today's shoes
*Xero Colorado sandals, bought winter 2021-22 (not exactly sure when I bought them, but this is the second full winter of wearing them, I think). These were a clearance buy I haven't regretted.
My purchase of Xero light hikers on Poshmark has fallen through --- they were marked shipped, but then never got into the tracking system. After an inquiry and conversation with customer service, I reluctantly decided to cancel my order. I feel bad about that, because the seller could very well have been snowed in and unable to get to the mail, but still . . . I've never had that experience on Poshmark before, and I'd kind of hoped to have those shoes days before I finally decided to cancel. I might pick up another pair later, but having that extra time made me realize that really, it could wait, and in the meantime I might realize that I have shoes I can take for hikes on an overseas trip.
Like, for example, these sandals, which I have hiked in at home in the summer. I really love them, though I've never completely loved the way they felt on my feet: kind of plastic, not very breathable. I'm trying them today, when the weather's pretty chilly, with these new Darn Tough Socks, to see how much difference the wool sock makes to the feel of the sandal on my foot. Obviously this would not work in wet weather, unless it was really warm wet weather, like getting caught in a summer shower, but my feet feel warm and dry today. I'd also though that my Oswego shoes would benefit from socks, and that they too might be the hikers I think I need, especially with a layer inside to help with sweat absorption, breathability, and warmth.
I'll need to layer up to go out, if we go to lunch. My coat's in the car, and I can add a scarf as well. In the house, my good old alpaca cardigan gives me just enough warmth without too much weight.
And now to find a wall for my wall-pilates routine.
AFTERNOON UPDATE:
Kind of experiencing social-media/self-promotion poisoning at the moment, but I think we're getting the word out.
Meanwhile, I did my pilates routine, then went out to lunch with my mother at a bookstore/cafe where in addition to a very delicious salad, I bought two books:
*Claire Keegan's novel, Small Things Like These, which I've been wanting to read
*the Polish poet Adam Zagajewski's True Life. My friend A.M. Juster always maintained that Zagajewski should have been a Nobel laureate, and it's been on my mind to read more of his poems.
Now we're home, and I'm tired, having slept so badly. One advantage of sleeping badly, however, is that I was more or less awake to hear a long, loud, vehement owl conversation in the small hours of the morning. I'm not sure I've ever heard owls in Memphis before, and I would not have expected to hear them from this retirement community, which is not exactly a wildlife habitat, but there are some woods on the property backing up to my mother's little backyard, and I guess the owls were in the trees back there. At any rate, they talked on and on, with great feeling, until I must have fallen asleep, because when I knew anything again, their conversation had dissolved into a lone mockingbird's early-morning monologue.
Anyway, that was cool, but I am tired. I hope very devoutly that tonight I will fall asleep and stay that way. Going to read my books and curtail my online time and tell my brain very sternly to stop thinking about stuff.