Sun! Down to freezing tonight, but a high of nearly 60F during the day, so a pleasant (if quiet) Mardi Gras.
Lots to do: copy editing, reading, research, essay-writing. I also want to wash our bedroom curtains, which are looking a bit grimy around the edges. Making the bedroom fair for the arrival of our new bed is one of my large goals for the week, so I'm dealing with clutter --- moved the drying rack to the bathtub, for example, just to get it out of our room. I can move it across the bathroom when I need the tub, but having it in the tub makes sense from the standpoint of hanging wet things that I don't want to drip on the wood floor (or on the broken tiles in the bathroom, where the floor is rotting underneath, but we try not to think about that).
Wearing today:
*Secondhand Erika&Co. floral linen-cotton pinafore dress
*Very old secondhand Talbots cotton cardigan, originally dark brown, redyed cranberry red by me
*Secondhand WoolX men's blue merino base-layer tee, cut to custom fit by me
*Secondhand Allbirds navy tencel-merino leggings
*Secondhand Xero Oswego shoes
So, an all-secondhand outfit today, repeating this pinafore because I won't be wearing it during Lent. The cardigan, either, though it might very well make a Good Friday appearance.
The husband says he's coming home around 8 tonight to take me out for a late bite to eat at the wine bar, for our combined Valentine's/Mardi Gras celebration, and I will probably change into something a little more date-night-ish for that. I washed yesterday's magenta Brooklyn dress last night, and if it dries in time it's a likely contender. Otherwise it'll probably be my Cinnamon Rose Leila dress again.
Now the dog is unhappy in her crate, so I had better let her out and get on with it all.
LATE-AFTERNOON UPDATE:
I have
*done a tiny bit of copy-editing
*made more revisions on a larger essay
*drafted most of an essay on Dorothy Parker
*written two stanzas of a poem in ballad meter
*washed my curtains --- and discovered, on getting them out, that the lining had shredded in the wash
*washed the curtains that I've been using to close off Dora's crate (which now does not have curtains) and hung them in our windows instead.
*done an intensive cleaning of our bedroom, vacuuming baseboards behind and under furniture, dusting the ceiling fan, wiping down any woodwork that dusting or vacuuming didn't make spotless.
*turned the trunk beside the bed to see how much room that would create for a wider bed (I think the new bed will fit just fine, without my husband's having to climb over the trunk)
Here's how the room looks:
A sunny day helps, of course. There's nothing lovelier than sun streaming in through fresh curtains.
You can maybe see why we need a new mattress. This one is so far beyond done there just aren't even words for it. The new bedding I ordered came today, too: a set of bamboo sheets and a mattress pad. I hope it's all going to be comfortable. I figure I can thrift more sheets --- mostly we'd just need one or two more fitted sheets, because I think we have some big-enough flat sheets. But I wanted to have one nice new set to start out with. I'd really like to have some mulberry silk ones, but the cost is just prohibitive, unless (according to reviews) you want to risk getting sent cheap polyester satin ones calling themselves silk. I love my silk pillowcases, but silk sheets will have to wait. I'm hoping the organic bamboo ones will be reasonably temperature-regulating and comfortable. We are both looking forward to some seriously good sleep, let me tell you. Sleep is everything. All this onslaught of luxury is about sleep (I'm not even kidding). Meanwhile, I'm hoping that the new headboard won't be so high that I have to move that little reading lamp. I guess I could actually measure . . .
OK, just did measure, and it should be fine. Not that moving the lamp up would be the end of the world, but it's been screwed into the wall right there since we bought the house, and for all we know it's the one thing holding the house up.
The plan is to move this wooden bed frame upstairs and reassemble it around the double bed in my husband's office. It's really just bolted together around a Hollywood frame. My mother bought it in a junk shop twenty years ago --- it's not a fine family heirloom --- but it is a nice bed frame, and I don't want to consign it to the curb. Anyway, maybe then I'll be motivated to go up and remake that bed, which has been stripped since Christmas. It would be nice to have all the bedrooms in guest-reception order again.
EVENING UPDATE:
Awaiting the husband's return, so that we can go have a nice little atmospheric candlelit dinner somewhere besides our own kitchen --- where, to be sure, we do have nice little atmospheric candlelit dinners just about every night.
My Beetroot Brooklyn dress is dry, so I put her on again to go out.
Being all bright and Valentine-y, because tomorrow . . . other stuff is happening.