Miriah's house is not actually being swallowed up by a jungle, but you'd be forgiven for thinking it was.
Rain rain rain. It's not literally raining at this precise moment, but you'd be forgiven for thinking it was. Rain has become kind of a default mode here, although yay, we're also getting some heat to go with it. If Friday's forecast is to be believed, we will be the lucky recipients of both thunderstorms and a high of 98F. Can't wait.
When I went out to the garden yesterday evening to see what might be for dinner, the mosquitoes devoured me. But they left enough of me to concoct a nice dinner: Mediterranean stuffed bell peppers (ground beef, red cayenne peppers, garlic, onion, salt + pepper, oregano, cumin, cinnamon, goat cheese) and cucumber salad (thinly sliced cucumbers, garlic, salt + pepper, snips of red cayenne pepper --- do you sense a theme here? --- olive oil, lemon juice, more goat cheese). It was spicy and very good, and also not too hot or heavy. I had a leftover stuffed pepper for breakfast this morning, too.
The Artgirl has taken herself off back to the potters' colony, and it's quiet around here. The husband has gone for his sauna, which I hope will also relieve his back, which he threw out somehow over the weekend while I was gone. It's been a long time since he's done this, long enough for both of us to forget how painful and difficult it is. While I was gone, he said, Dora comforted him. He told me that, having gotten tired of sitting at his desk upstairs, he had lain down on the bed in that room (because every room in this house that's not a kitchen or dining room doubles as a room where somebody could sleep) and made some noise of pain. Dora, hearing him, came galloping upstairs, hopped onto the bed (where she is not customarily allowed; it's a sign of how bad he felt that he didn't at once order her off), lay down beside him, and snuggled her chin into his neck.
"She cuddled with me," he told me, in a doting tone I've never heard him use in reference to this dog. So I guess, after two and a half years, she's not going to the pound after all. She had better use her favored position wisely.
Wearing today:
*Wool& Willow dress (M) in Wisteria, bought February 2023, last worn July 13
*Secondhand Stegmann leather clogs, bought July 2024, last worn yesterday
Okay, so this is a deviation from the plan I laid out for myself yesterday --- but what are plans, except things to deviate from?
I realized, late last evening when the person in question emailed me, that I have a Zoom call scheduled for today at 1. I thought it was tomorrow, because somehow I had in my mind that July 30 was Wednesday, not Tuesday. That knocked out my Mass plan for the day --- I've had this on the calendar for several weeks, and the other person has a tight schedule, so I wasn't going to change it up at the eleventh hour.
I don't really know this person at all --- it's someone who read Christian Poetry in America Since 1940 and was once a student of a friend of ours from Cambridge. He seems like a really smart, interesting guy, and he wants to talk about devotional poetry, so that's what we're doing to do.
Anyway, getting dressed today, I realized that I had two things in mind:
1. Talking on Zoom to someone I've never met. First impressions. Not that it matters that much, but I like to look good on Zoom calls. And this color always looks good on me. I wear it a lot for Zoom for that exact reason. Might as well appear my feeble best.
2. Relatedly, the person I'm talking to is a man, so necklines. I'd thought I might wear my Audrey dress today, and not that I'm really uncomfortable in that dress, with its slightly lower neckline, in public situations with people face to face, but especially in a Zoom encounter with a person I've never met . . . I don't want to be thinking about the neckline of my dress. That, sadly, rules out both Audrey and Brooklyn. I love them, and I'm not uncomfortable with them generally, but for this situation, I wanted something a little more reliably cleavage-covering.
So, Willow it is. I wouldn't wear this dress to church by itself because of the length, but for Zooming, it's perfect. The high today is 89F, not that cool (and likely to be insanely humid), but the sleeves truly don't bother me. In the house, I could even wear it with a button shirt over:
This green tencel one is a little rumpled after spending the night on the laundry hamper, but if I need an extra layer, it's nice, and I love the green with the periwinkle tone of my dress. Purple and green are complements, and this is my absolute favorite combination of purples and greens: both fresh, springlike, soft, muted shades, balancing each other perfectly. I'd totally keep wearing this outfit into the fall, with tights or leggings and boots. Or leggings and these clogs, which I also love. (What color leggings? Since I wouldn't want to match the green shirt, probably navy or blue-gray leggings)
Have I mentioned that I'm in the mood for fall . . . which, again, happens here in November and not much before? July and August here are months to get through --- although, having said that, I have to add that some of the loveliest days I've ever spent have been in August in the mountains, just an hour up the road. Up above Blowing Rock, along the Blue Ridge Parkway, you can have warm, sunny afternoons with just a touch of autumn, the mellow gold of the summer's waning, a shift in the quality of the light . . . It can be wonderful, and I want to get myself up there in another couple of weeks to enjoy it. Maybe the Artgirl, once she concludes her summer residency, will have a day to hike with me before she takes off again for school. I do lean on her with my expectations like this, because she happens to be the only one within easy reach at the moment.
Well, I supposed I had better Get On With It. Better sleep last night, but I still feel tired and wrung out from the weekend. Making sure I eat enough protein today and move my body joyfully, by which I mean move but be reasonable about limits. The husband is convinced that viral aftereffects from the shingles shot, which he got last week, are the reason he threw his back out, and that's not implausible. Viruses loosen your joints, and if you do something strenuous while you have one, you can hurt yourself. In high school, he tore his ACL playing football while sick. Now, in retrospect, one might observe that going to the gym to lift while you still feel a little crummy after a vaccination is not . . . maybe . . . a thing . . . but then one does see so clearly with hindsight, especially when the hindsight applies to someone else's experience and not one's own. Funny that.
Anyway. On With It.
LATER:
I have
*walked the dog
*finished a poem draft in slant-rhymed heroic couplets
*responded to comments on the Substack (fun conversations this week)
*finished my Zoom call with this nice, bright young man doing an MA in theology, having already finished an MFA in poetry, and trying to feel his way forward
*changed my shoes and dried my hair.
I changed my shoes because it was raining. I dried my hair because I'm an idiot. That is: it was raining, and I was about to go out in the rain, but I somehow felt this urge to dry my hair.
Changed my glasses, too, because when I sit at my desk in the window, my transitions lenses turn dark, and that's kind of weird when you're on a Zoom call.
I really do like these glasses. My eyes seem to show up when I wear them.
Now to let the dog out of naptime and take her for a quick potty break outside, for such is the rhythm of our days.
OH ALSO:
I said I was on the lookout for Mary Janes.
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| Image source: Ebay |
Just bought these rather cute ones. They're Kalso Earth Shoes, leather, printed with this interesting snakeskin design. I thought a subtle pattern might be fun. They're brown, but less orange than my Papillio wedges, so I think I can wear them easily with just about anything in my closet. They look like shoes that would work year-round. Nice wide toe box. I hope --- and think --- they'll be fun.
Again, shoes are kind of outside my no-buy zone, especially shoes for the coming season. I hadn't really thought about Earth Shoes --- like since 1976, when I had some --- but an ad crossing my Instagram feed sent me down that rabbit hole. They're expensive new, almost as expensive as Birks, but secondhand deals are to be found. These were quite a deal for leather shoes in good used condition.
So, yeah, the focus right now is shoes. I have enough other clothes to be going on with, but as the season anticipates shifting, at least on paper (in reality it's going to be summer for a long time yet), I think that filling in gaps here is a good thing. I'm selling a number of pairs of shoes that for one reason or other aren't working for me, and I certainly don't intend to replace them all on a 1-out/1-in basis. I have my new-to-me Stegmann clogs, which I'm already enjoying a lot and look forward to wearing through the year, but it's exciting to have a pair of Mary Janes, my favorite shoe style, on the way.
Not that I don't have an eye out for boots, but I'm already feeling that I might not need another pair. I have the Tari boots and the taller Melrose boots, and if I have some fun winter shoes that can dress up a little as well, I think I'll be in good shape. I would kind of like to find some black Mary Janes as well. I have a pair of black Mary Jane heels, but they're more than ten years old, were not that nice to begin with, and are about worn out. I would prefer something flat and comfortable, but funky enough to do for dressing up. If you can't be glam, be funky, right? That's my idea.