Let a smile be your . . . striped serving dish . . . on a cloudy, cloudy day . . .
It's Sunday, we're going to Mass in a little while, and I got up early to wash my hair and read poetry submissions for the magazine, since I'm terminally behind on that job.
Yesterday was quite lovely: seven men ordained for our Catholic diocese, with a good homily on the priesthood from our brand-new bishop. The music went well, though our numbers were smaller than for the bishop's ordination and installation Masses last month, and I think we felt maybe a little ragged at certain point. But mad props to the pregnant alto soloist two seats down from me who was timing her contractions between bouts of singing. She's a professional, and this is not her first childbirth rodeo, but her level of calm was impressive. At the end she just shrugged and said, "I should probably stay off my feet for the rest of the day."
We also received news yesterday that our parish pastor, who has been out sick since the beginning of Lent, is going on more permanent sick leave, and that the parish will receive a new priest. Our feelings about this move are mixed: we haven't been active in our parish for the last four years largely because we had begun to find our pastor's particular brand of spirituality unhelpful for ourselves and our family . . . for various reasons, which don't bear going into here.
We never imagined ourselves as the kind of people who would walk away from our local parish, but that just goes to show you that the imagination has its limits, and sometimes you have to do what you have to do. It also goes to show you that there's really no such thing as the "kind of people" who do x, y, or z. There are just people, period, who find themselves sometimes doing things that they would not have wanted or expected to do. We have continued to tithe to the parish, and our personal affection for the pastor has not changed, so that on the one hand, our response to this turn of affairs is sadness. This outcome is not what he had hoped and prayed for, and we feel for what it must have cost him to admit that he couldn't continue.
On the other hand, it must come as a massive relief to the parish, which has been without a pastoral presence since the start of Lent. There has been coverage for Saturdays and Sundays, so that those Masses happen and confessions are offered, but this is a parish that had confessions three or four days a week, always with a line, and a good congregation for daily Masses. You just can't sustain an active congregational life on that kind of diet.
And it comes as a relief to me, because I have fallen out of the habit of daily Mass since our move away from the parish. Yes, there are other parishes, but they're all a minimum of half an hour's drive away, whereas my local parish is seven minutes (I wish I could walk, but in this part of the country, Catholic churches tend --- especially in small towns --- not to be downtown or neighborhood churches. Our parish is out in the country). Yes, I could drive, but that's almost two hours out of any work day, which is a lot --- which maybe says something about my level of commitment, but also maybe says something about life being more sustainable when the things you need are within easy reach. Yeah, sometimes we have to be heroic, but I don't know . . . maybe I'm just not heroic, full stop. At any rate, I haven't been able to bring myself to go to daily Mass in the parish, and dragging myself to confession on any kind of regular basis has been hard, too, even though in fact this same pastor is a good confessor. It's hard to explain --- and I'm not going to try --- what it is that my husband and I both have found so off-putting, but it's been profound enough that we really have had great difficulty in making ourselves walk into that church at all. For whatever reason, I have felt this in more extreme ways than my husband, who does go over more often than I do.
So the change of command --- and our new pastor, currently a parochial vicar, looks like a pretty good thing --- does mean some motivation for me to get myself to daily Masses (and still go to the Abbey on Sunday, because I don't want to give that up), which in turn would mean being more plugged in, again, to confessions, adoration, etc. Of course I too often have good intentions and don't follow through on them, but when we come back from Norway it won't be long till the new pastor arrives, and I want to try.
But now it's just a random Sunday, and I've read and responded to poetry submissions and have clean hair for today's Mass and tomorrow's travel.
Wearing:
*Secondhand Flax navy linen tunic, bought April 2024, last worn day before yesterday.
*Secondhand April Cornell rayon floral maxi skirt (vintage 90s), bought fall 2021, I think. Last worn April 21, so definitely due for an outing.
*Secondhand J.Jill linen-blend cardigan, bought last summer, last worn day before yesterday to choir practice.
*Thrifted Crocs handed down by the Texasgirl in April. Last worn yesterday for choir.
This look is pretty long and flowy, and the two top hemlines so close together might create kind of a boxy look.
I tried belting my tunic but was unhappy with the added bulk.
I was okaaaaaay with the swingy, flowy untucked look, but decided to try it tucked in.
This really feels better to me. It works better in terms of the Rule of Thirds (having a 1/3:2/3 proportion in your outfit), even though the untucked version also would work, technically, with that rule. And not that anybody wants to be bound by rules, but sometimes they are concretely helpful. In the case of the first iteration of this outfit, even though there was a 2/3:1/3 top:bottom ratio going on, the bottom part didn't really balance out the top part by being narrower and less swingy. This tunic works, untucked, over a straight skirt. Over a flowing maxi skirt, there's just not enough differentiation between the levels --- I guess that's one way to put it.
Here I've got a relatively high waistline, because that's where I set it (elastic waist with drawstring, so I can tighten or loosen it depending on where I want it to sit), with a long line in the skirt and also the vertical drape of the cardigan. This proportion makes me feel less weighed down by the lines of my clothes. And it lets the graceful, but not deep, scoop neck of my tunic shine as a feature on its own, without making the tunic's hem also an overt line. I'm not sure I'm explaining this all that well, and I'm not sure that another person would say, "Yes, great outfit, A+," but I like it.
I like having a line at the waist, even if it's a little higher than my natural waist currently (thank you, slight loss of visceral fat). I like having a nice, neat, scoop-neck linen shell, with a lightweight long cardigan over to add some sleekness. I like that none of the lines in my outfit hit in the same place, or even close: neckline, waistline, cardigan hem, skirt hem make a descending sequence that strikes me as orderly, even when everything about my outfit is soft and fluid.
And now it's time to finish drying my hair and walk the dog before Mass. In the afternoon, the task is to finish packing and making travel preparations. Feeling anxious about it all, as I always do, and already dreading another night of not sleeping before we make our dash for the airport. Once on the plane I'll be okay, but this pre-trip angst is for the birds.
ALSO:
It's Father's Day! Happy happy to the father of my children, who has also been a fatherly presence to many students over the years. After Mass I gave him his gifts --- some Trades of Hope coffee and a mug --- in an Aldi thermal bag that says something like No Other Bag Is This Chill. I crossed out bag and wrote Dad in paint pen, very on-brand for our whole gift-giving vibe. He loved the very nice mug (not that we needed more coffee mugs, but you know, there it was . . .), and coffee is always the right gift. The Fire Son called early this morning from central Utah, where it was even earlier, but I guess they hadn't started in on the day's fire yet. I imagine we'll hear from other people throughout the day.
Mass was nice, but it's even nicer to be back home, pecking away at things that need to be done. I'm going to change the sheets on our bed, so that they're basically clean when we get back, and run a load of house laundry, in addition to packing, printing out my list of instructions for the dog sitter, etc.
I am already mostly packed. My underwear cube is still open, since things are drying, but the main clothes are accounted for. I'm going to take off my Crocs and pack them and just wear my Birks for the rest of the day, but otherwise not change what I'm wearing. Now that I've bathed, I'm also going to pack most of the rest of my toiletries, just leaving out what I'll need when I get dressed in the morning.
Back to it.
EVENING UPDATE:
Well, my bags are packed. I'm ready to go.
Dinner: Used up the last of the groceries, which meant a pack of chicken thighs, basically. I had leftover Thai peanut sauce from whatever I had made with that last week, and in the garden there was a zucchini ready to be spiralized into noodles, not to mention a lot of peppers ready to pick. So we had spicy Thai peanut chicken over zucchini noodles with hot peppers and fresh basil, and it was very good.
Talked to my mother on the phone. Notified the Artgirl that, being the only progeny currently resident in North Carolina, she was our emergency contact for the dogsitter. The paterfamilias told the Texasgirl, who had called to wish him a happy Father's Day, that in the unlikely event of our demise, SHE was the emergency contact and should know our financial guy's name and where to find all the paperwork. Our wills are sort of out of date, so I hope we come back in one piece, because otherwise life will be full of hassles for our survivors, but not as as full of hassles as it would be if we did not have a financial guy and paperwork all filed in a particular place.
So we leave for the airport around 7 a.m. It'll be interesting to see how much sleep anybody gets. Got my travel clothes all set out, and everything else is clean and packed.
(Also, I have added some last-minute clothing items, because the weather report is looking chillier and wetter than last year: my Tari boots in my husband's checked suitcase, and two pairs of Snag merino tights in addition to the footless ones I'd already packed, in my own backpack. Might be overkill, and I hope I don't need all that, but I do not want to spend two weeks being cold!)