The rain is raining all around.
It falls on field and tree.
It rains on the umbrellas here,
And on the ships at sea.
---Robert Louis Stevenson
For me the ships at sea are farther away, and far more unseen, than they were for the English child speaker of this little Stevenson poem, from A Child's Garden of Verses. But I did just see an umbrella go by.
Anyway, yes, it's raining, and not cold but dreary. Temperatures from here on out this week will remain mostly above freezing, and I think tomorrow and Friday are supposed to be actually warm. But today the high is in the mid-50s, Farenheit, and the wet will make everything feel colder than it is.
Working this morning on re-memorizing and writing out W.H. Auden's "If I Could Tell You."
In just a little bit I'm going to wash my hair and get dressed.
I'll have to take the dog out in the wet.
Then I need to continue reading over my fiction manuscript revisions, work on some more essays, and begin some planning for this poetry course I'm recording the second full week in March.
WEARING TODAY:
Sparing you my wet hair. Also, I like this outfit considerably more than I had expected to.
*Secondhand Not Perfect Linen Leila dress (M/L, altered) in Chocolate Brown, bought December 2023
*Secondhand Brooks Brothers pink merino cardigan (more about this below), bought fall 2023
*Snag merino tights in Red Velvet, bought fall 2023
*Xero Tari boots, bought summer 2022
*Bamboo slip as base layer, bought summer 2023
I realized I hadn't worn my brown Leila dress all January, and today seemed as good a day as any. As delicious as my Cinnamon Rose Leila is, this one stands in danger of fading into the background a little, but honestly, when I put her on, I remember why I love her. I thought I didn't wear brown, but I feel good in this brown. It's nice and soft and earthy, without being a noticeably muddy color (if it's possible to say that at all about brown). It's muted and un-orange enough to look good with colors I look good in: blue and pink. In turn, it's muted and un-orange enough to look good with my pink-toned skin. I had thought I might look kind of wan in this color, but actually, and much to my surprise, it makes me bloom. So maybe it's a dull choice for a dull-weather day, but on the other hand, it seems to me to strike just the right note.
This cardigan: I had bought it on Poshmark last fall, one detour in my ongoing quest for a rose-pink cardigan. This one, as you can probably see, is not rose-pink. It's sort of baby pink. Pink, as I have learned, is a real gamble when you're buying online. Something can look on the screen like just the color I want, and then when it turns up it's coral, or salmon, or peach, or some other color that another person would love and look good in, but I don't. Anyway, I can live with baby pink a lot more readily than I can live with more orange-y pinks, but the real problem with this cardigan is that although it was listed as a medium, it fits like a small. Like a really small small. The arms especially are tight. I tried it on, thought surely I can do better than this, and relisted it for sale.
The listing has garnered some likes --- it is objectively a very nice sweater --- but no sales. Last night I was thinking about what I wanted to wear today, scanning my closet shelf, and thinking, I really do wish I had a pink sweater. Then it came to me that I did have a pink sweater. What if I tried it on again? I went fishing in the for-sale box and pulled it out. Yes, it's still kind of small. But it could stretch. I could actually wash it and stretch it out some, but I think it might give enough with wear that I don't have to. It will button across my front, though not terribly comfortably. I can think about how I feel about that, but in the meantime, today I didn't care about being able to button my cardigan. I just wanted a woollen layer to wear over my linen dress, in a color that would make the brown essentially a backdrop for something fresh and springlike. So for now I've taken the listing down. I might decide to re-list it, but I don't have to decide right now.
I don't love Chelsea boots with this outfit, but it's just too wet to wear suede. These Taris have already seen one winter's worth of outdoor abuse, which has only added to their lovely worn patina, so that's what I'm wearing today. And I like how my wool tights pick up the pink theme in a darker register.
I'd really love this as a spring outfit with sandals, but as it is, it'll do for today. The twirly vibe of this dress style always cheers me up.
Before I sign out and go to work, here's me with my half-dry hair. You might wonder, sometimes, why I go on about curly-hair routines when my hair so often looks stick-straight, especially in the winter. Am I trying to make it wavy by scrunching gel in? You might well wonder that. I sometimes wonder it myself. But as an answer, here's my hair half-dry, shampooed and with nothing on it but a little leave-in conditioner on the very ends, and no diffuser, just air-drying:
That's just what it does. Those waves are surprisingly fragile, given that my hair is not that fine and silky --- though it's gotten silkier with gentler handling. But they are how my hair naturally dries, with zero intervention. I will probably add a little gel before it's all the way dry, to help the ends retain some definition.
Anyway, I'd far rather spend time writing about things like this than doing them. I'm just not going to invest a lot of hours and energy in how my hair looks, beyond the time it takes me to wash it and get it dry. And honestly, choosing the right products does more for me than anything else has done: shampoo that's the right balance of cleansing and gentle, hydrating but not too heavily moisturizing; light conditioner or bond repair; gel that offers soft hold and some additional moisturizing. I do diffuse my hair when I need to dry it quickly, but I'm not investing massive time in styling techniques. Props to people who do, but that's not me. I get that natural hair requires a little something beyond nature in order to look good, and that's precisely what I do: a little something.
OK, to work.
AFTERNOON UPDATE:
I've written an essay (on Sexy Christopher Marlowe), read what was left of the poetry-submissions list for the day, eaten an omelette for lunch, drunk some water, and unloaded and reloaded the dishwasher. Up next: making the bed, I guess. And a workout, though my stomach is feeling a little unsettled at the moment, maybe because of the zinc I took earlier. The husband has a cold, and I very much do not want to come down with it. WAY too much to do here to be getting sick. Nope nope nope.