Old bottles in the sunroom window, with abelia blooming outside.
Up early this Sunday morning, to pray, drink my coffee, play my New York Times games, read, and write this blog a little. I'm still reading Laurus in fits and starts, and I guess I'll take it with me to Norway, because I doubt I'll finish it this week.
The husband is still sleeping, so I can't get dressed yet. I'd had my NPL Smock dress on the list for today, and I think that's what I'll wear, with my new pink linen top under, to make it a pinafore, and Crocs.
I thought I'd go ahead and rough out my outfit list for the coming week. My plan is chiefly to write this Emily Dickinson essay, though on Wednesday I'm going to Blowing Rock to meet my friend Zina for the day.
To wear this week (lots of things I won't be taking to Norway):
NPL Leila dress in Chocolate Brown, with either Birks or Crocs. Or maybe my red Cassie Mary Janes, which don't get enough love.
Floral pinafore dress with pink merino tank and Birks
Wisteria Willow dress with Birks (if going to Blowing Rock, take hikers as well)
NPL Leila dress in Cinnamon Rose, with Crocs
Christopher&Banks blue/green floral skirt with teal cashmere-silk-merino tank and Birks
Pink linen trousers with sleeveless navy Flax tunic and Birks
Sunday Mass: Blue floral rayon maxi skirt with periwinkle-blue Flax tunic and Crocs (OR, if that doesn't work, pink linen top with natural linen tuck-hem pencil skirt and Crocs)
Some of these combinations I'll have to try out, to make sure they're going to work in practice as well as in theory. But this makes for a good way to wear a lot of my closet while I wash dresses I plan to take to Norway and let them dry, and also just let them rest before they get worn a lot.
As always, I am free to change my mind and wear things that are not on this list. But the list is there to save me decision fatigue during a busy week. These are all clothing items that are clean and hanging in my closet right now, ready to go.
Temps here this week: mostly in the 80s Farenheit: from high (87F today) to low (81F on Tuesday), with a high of 91F on Saturday.
Temps in Bergen, Norway, this week: 50s and 60s Farenheit, from 52F today to 68F next Tuesday, when we step off the plane there. Lows at night in the 40s Farenheit early this week, rising into the low 50s as the week progresses. Keeping an eye on things. By the end of this week, I'll have a good idea of all next week there. Of course, we'll quickly be moving north from Bergen --- we'll spend several days there at the end of the trip, but not so long at the beginning. But Bergen is a fairly good baseline indicator, telling us how warm the weather will be at its warmest. Again, layers are my friend. I have basic things that I can strip down to if it's hot, but I want to be sure I can layer up enough for colder weather.
Ah, now the husband is up, so I think I'll go get dressed, and shortly I'll walk the dog.
Wearing:
*Secondhand Not Perfect Linen Smock dress (S/M) in --- I think --- Dark Gray Blue, bought December 2023, last worn May 27
*Secondhand Cynthia Rowley linen top (M), bought June 2024, first real wear
*Thrifted Crocs sandals, a hand-me-down from the Texasgirl in April
I'm considering what a lucky person I am, to wear clothes I love every day. I do love every item I have on today. This linen dress is endlessly versatile, wearable as a dress on its own as well as a pinafore (unlike my other pinafore dresses). The soft slaty gray goes with everything else I own. I wore it happily through the winter, but it comes into its own as a floaty, light summer dress with sandals.
And I love how the neckline of this top --- which I'd been a little dubious about, as you might recall --- fits inside the neckline of my dress. I'd been afraid that the neck of the top would be too wide to wear neatly with a pinafore, but it works just fine. The colors are also delicious together:
Hair in a claw-clip updo, because it was the easiest reliable thing to do:
These updos, where I braid my hair and fold it up into itself and clip it, are becoming a default --- but a good one, I think. It's an easy do, and it almost always looks graceful. It also looks a little as though I had tried, even though I really didn't try very hard at all. When my hair's a little on the straight side, a do like this lets it shine --- as in literally, it can be shiny and soft, and nobody knows that maybe it's a little limp and wonky today. This is a standard deviation more polished than a basic ponytail, but it's no harder or more time-consuming to do.
This rose-gold-toned clip came in a set with the rose-pink triangular one I wear a lot. I like this one, which holds a lot of hair, and am resolving to wear it more often. Metal clips always look a little more elevated than plastic ones, even though the plastic ones I have come in nice colors and don't look too cheap, even though they were cheap. But metal looks dressier and nicer. I'd wear this hairdo to a wedding, with this clip. I'd love at some point to have some silver clips, really nice ones, maybe off Etsy, but that's not an actual priority at the moment. If I had somewhere really dressy to be, then yes, I would splurge and buy the prettiest handmade silver ones I could find. Today? Nah. This is fine.
Linen-on-linen: a great summer feeling. And now it's time to let the dog out.
EVENING UPDATE:
Nice Mass this morning, nice time sitting in the sun while my husband ran some stuff off on the copier in his office, nice egg sandwich for brunch, nice walk with Dora, nice time lounging and reading the introduction and notes to the Emily Dickinson letters, to gin myself up to WRITE SOME MORE tomorrow.
Remembering that in addition to going up to see Zina on Wednesday, I also have choir practices tomorrow night and Friday night, and ordinations (for which I am singing in the choir) on Saturday. Better getta lotta writing done Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Better just tear Emily Dickinson on UP.
Actually, you know, the really affecting letters of hers are very late ones, in the last six years of her life, to Judge Otis Lord. Lord had been her father's best friend (as well as a justice on the Massachusetts Supreme Court) and frequent guest of the Dickinsons for many years. After his wife's death, he continued to visit them, and from about 1880 until his death in 1884, he was in love with Emily and she with him. The only survivals of their correspondence are her drafts of letters to him. These are --- for all the ardor of her youthful letters to Susan Gilbert (who married ED's brother Austin), which strike me as just friendship tuned up into a higher register (all her letters to her friends are fairly ardent) --- something completely different, like real mature love and adoration of another person. She seems to have wanted very much to marry him, but he was away much of the time trying cases, then unwell himself, finally dying of a stroke in 1884. She outlived him for two years, most of which were spent in delicate health which finally broke down.
The other most affecting letters are the ones she wrote after the death of Susan and Austin's youngest son Gilbert, aged 8, of typhoid, in 1883. Gilbert was ten years younger than his closest sibling, and clearly adored by all the family, including his aunt. In an age when death happened relentlessly and nearly every letter had a passing to report, this child's death seems to have broken everyone. ED was seriously ill for weeks after, never fully recovering her health. Her brother Austin began an affair with an old friend, Mabel Loomis Todd, who became a curator of ED's letters in the 1890s and did a lot of erasing, especially of Susan's name whenever it appeared. The last edition of ED's letters, in 1958, relied heavily on Todd's edited transcriptions. The editors of this new Letters have done a mighty work in both assembling heretofore uncollected letters and reconstructing what the previously published letters actually say.
Dumping all this here, because I might want to write something along these lines at some point in this big review.
Now it's pouring rain, so we might not be doing a whole lot of walking tonight . . .