Figs from the basilica parking-lot tree, picked after Mass yesterday. It's an enormous old tree, loaded with figs in various phases of ripening, including many new green ones, so we should, I hope, be picking for some weeks to come.
Last night I pureed some of these figs with a log of goat cheese and a drizzle of honey and made goat-cheese-and-fig grilled-cheese sandwiches for supper:
On Saturday night I had made a dish of baked Mediterranean vegetables: thinly sliced onion, whole garlic cloves, grape tomatoes, slivers of green pepper, and artichoke hearts, tossed with crumbled feta and drizzled with olive oil, and baked in the oven for about an hour, or until the onion was translucent, the garlic cloves were soft, and the tomatoes were liquified. I'd made it as an accompaniment for the steaks my husband cooked on the outdoor grill, and we had leftovers, so those accompanied last night's grilled-cheese sandwiches as well.
Dora and I spent some considerable time on the front porch yesterday afternoon. I worked, and she lounged:
I finished all three Substack essays for this week over the weekend, so that I can turn my mind to some other, related projects, and also get ahead by finishing next week's essays. I'd already knocked out an essay on Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken," which unless my colleague decides to monkey with the schedule will run next Friday. I should be up as well with Keats's "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" on Monday week --- not written yet, so that's to do as well.
A week on, the husband's back is much better. He's hoping the chiropractor will clear him today to go back to the gym, but we shall see.
My last two pairs of new-to-me Mary Janes are set to arrive today! Dopamine! Dopamine! After this I'll have to go back to what is becoming my more regular setting of just dealing with not getting dopamine hits this way. But I am pretty excited. Not gonna lie. I generally know that I want something for real when, by the time I hit Submit Order, I've already planned five outfits around it in my head and don't know how I ever lived without it.
That's been true of each pair of shoes I've bought secondhand in the last couple of weeks. After some misses in the shoe-ordering department, I think I'm getting better at gauging what is going to work for me. I've been looking up brands, reading reviews, noting when things run small or large, paying close attention to materials. Where I missed with the Keens Mary Janes I bought last winter --- too narrow in the toe box --- I struck gold with the black Alegria Mary Janes that arrived this weekend. I could see, looking at the photos, how truly much wider the toe box was. But I also read reviews of this exact shoe, to get a sense of how it wears (again, hearing that this brand and style are popular with nurses was a big sell).
I'm really looking forward to my second pair, mostly because I went out on a limb and bought a floral print. That's the kind of risk I would never have taken with a pair of shoes before. I've always bought safe neutral colors, because I needed a single pair of shoes to work in almost every circumstance, with every outfit (which in fact is a nearly impossible thing to ask of a single pair of shoes). But now I have a pretty good complement of neutral shoes (black filled the last gap there), and to have a really fun pair of shoes that will go with, actually, almost as many items in my closet as a neutral would have done, is exciting to contemplate.
I think the kinds of looks I wanted to accomplish with my Birkenstock Madeiras, that never quite came together because the shoes were not quite right, are now within my reach, and that dressing in the fall and spring will be a lot more fun than it has been previously. This Mary Jane style is still pretty hobbity. We are not talking about a sleek, sophisticated, Parisian shoe concept here. We're still talking about . . . me.
But I think what worked against me with the Madeiras was their heaviness and their unisex appearance, and what works for me with this new shoe style is its unambiguous femininity. I don't think of myself as a really girly girl, but my appearance, as I've come gradually to realize, is not remotely tomboyish. I look better in curved lines and shapes. I do still like fisherman's sandals a lot and wouldn't say no to a pair --- I've had several pairs that I loved over the course of my life --- but they'd need to be lighter and slimmer and more obviously women's shoes, I think, to feel right.
Meanwhile, the Mary Jane just is a sweet, kind of retro, feminine style (although little boys in the 1910s and 1920s certainly wore them, as we know from Ernest Shepherd's drawings of Christopher Robin). I love having a funky take on them, especially when the funky take is also comfortable to wear all day. One of my favorite pairs of shoes, which I'm still kicking myself for getting rid of, was a pair of black leather Ecco Mary Janes, with square toes and big square silver buckles, that I bought at John Lewis in Cambridge not long after we arrived there, for my husband's college matriculation dinner. It was October, I had to dress up, and I had, really nothing dressy to wear. I managed to crib together what became more or less my dressing-up uniform for a long time: a navy knit pencil skirt and a thrifted aqua silk v-neck tunic, which I also wish I still owned. I think I must have donated that when we were leaving Cambridge, when I was six months pregnant for the second time in two years, and I couldn't imagine ever again fitting into anything I had worn before.
Anyway, what I didn't really have was a nice pair of shoes to complete this ensemble, in which I was going for a kind of understated artistic vibe, the same vibe I have been going for for pretty much my entire sentient life, whether I've achieved said vibe in actuality or not. So I took myself to John Lewis to splurge on a pair of shoes, because these were going to be my dressy shoes for years to come.
I tried on pair after pair. I had an idea in mind, but nothing was quite doing it. Even when I liked the look of things, I had the presence of mind to realize that I couldn't walk in them. I was going to have to walk across town, from our flat to Peterhouse, for this dinner. Presumably, since I was spending money on these shoes, I was committing myself to walking across town to church in them, out to dinner in them, to parties in them --- basically, anywhere I intended to go dressed presentably was somewhere I was going to be walking in these shoes.
Enter the Ecco Mary Janes. They were beautiful leather, inside and out. They had wide toes (even then, pre-bunion, I was getting it right --- I only wish I'd gotten it right with every pair of shoes ever). They were funky and artistic looking. So black and navy weren't, maybe, an exact match --- even then I didn't care. What I did care about was that these shoes were both comfortable and cool. I bought them, and I did indeed wear them to that dinner, and to everywhere else I went dressed up for the next four years.
Eventually I did kind of tire of them. I wish I hadn't, but to give myself some credit, there were always things about them that I didn't quite love. They felt a little more like the Wicked Witch of the West than I entirely loved. I didn't adore the square shape, especially if I wore a shorter skirt. It didn't really flatter my leg all that much, and I always wanted a little larger opening over the instep. I loved them and wore the heck out of them for years and years, but as they started to age, and my aesthetic started to shift, and/or come a little more into focus, they didn't work as well for me as they had before.
So I hope somebody else has gotten lots of wear out of them, and in the meantime, I'm really happy with what I'm thinking of as their replacement: also leather inside and out, also very comfortable and meant for walking, but a rounder, curvier profile that suits my whole silhouette and wardrobe better. As you know, I don't wear much black, but I can anticipate a real role for black shoes in my closet (more than a black dress, though of course I have one for Occasions). These might not be my most-worn shoes, but they'll be there when I need black shoes.
In the meantime, the brown Earth Shoes Mary Janes I ordered at the same time are out for delivery. The last time I had a pair of Earth Shoes was 1976, when I was 11, but these look very promising, for the same reasons that the Alegrias looked promising. They're real leather, for which I am a stickler --- the problem with "vegan" alternatives is that they're essentially plastic, just rebranded to sound ethical to a particular audience. You have no recourse for maintaining them when they start to scuff and wear. You can't polish fake leather, and there's no point in taking it to a shoe shop for repairs. What sounds moral, maybe, in the short term, winds up being landfill fodder that much faster.
Those materials also don't give and mold to your feet, and they don't breathe. I've bought enough cheap fake-leather shoes in my life that wound up not being the great deal their sticker price suggested --- now, wherever possible, I prefer to choose shoes made out of real materials, either leather or plant-based, not plastic, though of course in the area of soles and fittings there's only so much you can do realistically.
And then there are Crocs . . . no idea what they're actually made of, and obviously I wear them, though these thrifted sandals I have provide you with the classic example of something that will eventually break and not be reparable at all. I've thought about reselling my Xero Jessie sandals, which fill a similar niche in my closet, but what I've decided is that one day the Crocs will break, and I will want that kind of sandal to take their place. So I think I'll stick with what I already own, against the time I know is coming, even if I know not the day or the hour. I also don't know what the loops and straps of those sandals are made of. Xero uses a lot of hemp, so it could be that, but it might not be --- I forget now. And of course the soles are plastic, but I don't know what I can really do about that. One day maybe I'll buy some Earth Runner sandals, which I think have leather soles, but that day is not one I foresee anytime soon.
So I won't claim to be a purist here, or even consistent. My Alegria soles seem to be actually rubber, though I'm not sure about that. I hope they hold up --- ever since the soles of a pair of secondhand Dansko clogs disintegrated utterly on me, almost as soon as I'd bought them, I've been a little leery. Again, the testimony of nurses, on their feet in these shoes, is reassuring. But the fact that in all my new shoes the uppers are leather (and the Alegria soles are sewn on and could be replaced) means that I can hope to maintain those shoes a long time, slowing their progress toward their final resting place. And over the long haul they'll be more enjoyable to wear.
So I'm looking forward, too, to these brown snakeskin-patterned (some people call this a "bark" pattern, too, I notice) Mary Janes. I think I've decided that I'll still hang onto my Birk Papillios for occasional wear. My husband loves those shoes, and they are cute with so many outfits. They don't have to be my everyday shoes --- but it'll be good to have some brown Mary Janes that can be. And then these floral ones, which are also supposed to arrive today, though they're not yet marked "out for delivery." My feet are feeling pretty happy, and so is the rest of me.
Wearing today:
*Wool& Brooklyn dress (S/Long) in Pacific, bought May 2023, last worn July 15. Current total wears for this year: 14 (a rate of, so far, just under twice a month)
*Secondhand Birkenstock Mayaris, bought April 2024, last worn August 3. Current total wears for this year: 77 (this is what a default looks like)
Being very basic today, per my outfit plan. The high is 88F, which is nice, and a lot better than 95F. If I get chilly in the house, I can put on a cardigan, possibly my long navy linen-blend J.Jill cardigan, the twin of the one I wore to Mass yesterday.
I included a variety of poses here, including one where I was just trying to get a right-profile view of my updo, since I often don't include that angle. It's not my good side. This is just to show you that no dress looks that great from every angle at every moment, every way you stand. Fortunately, in real life, your body is always in motion, and however poorly you might come off in a single photo, the odds are very high that nobody else ever sees you that way. This, again, is why taking daily photos of yourself, and multiple ones at that, can be helpful to your self-image. Yeah, yeah, in some instances you don't look like your most glamorous mental self-portrait. So what? In some instances --- maybe in many instances; maybe even in most instances --- you look a lot better than your most self-punishing mental image.
I have pulled out my old metal spiral pins for updos. I'd stopped using them, thinking they must be bad for my hair, but on reflection, I don't see that they really are, if I'm careful. Anything can pull too much on your scalp. Anything can break your hair if you're not mindful of how you're using it. Putting my hair up today --- this is just a braid folded back on itself against the back of my head, the same basic method I use for claw-clip updos --- I paid attention to whether or not my hair felt pulled, and was careful, as I screwed the pins into my hair, not to catch and tear it. I don't do these updos every day, which I also think is important. The same pressure exerted on your hair and scalp day after day can cause damage and hair fallout, so it's important to vary things up, if you do wear your hair up or back at all. Don't do the same thing every day. But I think every third day or so, done carefully, this updo with these pins is no more likely to break my hair or make it fall out than anything else I do.
And I like the way it looks. I also continue to love claw clips of various sizes. But as my hair gets longer again, it is nice to have options for dealing with it. I still wear the default ponytail, but this kind of updo feels more in line with my overall aesthetic, and also more age-appropriate. Not that I should care, I guess, about "age-appropriate," but I feel more integrated somehow with this kind of hairstyle, if I am wearing it up and back.
AND it's time to walk the dog, but more to come, especially as I have written my essays, and these new-to-me shoes are set to arrive. I shall certainly be documenting these arrivals. Try to pass the time profitably until I do.
LATER:
The mail came! And with it, one new-to-me pair of Mary Janes:
These, as you can see, are the brown snake-patterned leather Earth Shoes I had bought. And I think they're super cute. I like having one pair with a thinner instep strap (velcro-fastened and readily adjustable, as my Alegrias also are), and I like how open they are. The brown will be very versatile for me all year round, but the pattern will add some additional interest, especially if I mix it with other patterns in my clothing. It's subtle enough that I think that should be quite easy to do, but it's also present enough that even if the rest of my outfit is solid, I can always have pattern going on as an element.
It's hard, in a simple summer outfit, to have all four outfit elements --- light-dark-color-pattern --- going on. Here I have both color and dark in my dress, and another color and also dark in my shoes. I guess ideally I'd wear lighter shoes with this dress. I have worn my Birk Papillios with it a good bit, and also my Xero Jessies, which are an almost-white light gray. I haven't worn my Stegmann clogs with it, but I imagine I will as time goes on.
But --- eh. Outfit formulas are helpful and useful, but they're not mandates. Sometimes the best you can do is just not match your shoes to the rest of your outfit (and I really do think that's a good rule, with the possible exception of black), and however you achieve that is honestly good enough. That is the thing. Good enough is good enough.
But back to these shoes. I like them very much. They passed the dog-walk test: no knee pain, no ankle pain, no hip pain, no foot pain, no back pain. I have had shoes produce these effects in my body even after a short walk, so you had better believe I pay attention when I'm trying out new shoes. These do need some additional breaking in --- I experienced rubbing both at my right heel and at my right little toe --- but they are leather and will soften and mold to my feet with gentle regular wear. In the short term, if I'm going to wear them all day, I need bandaids or moleskin, at least for my heels. But that should change over time.
For now I'm back in my Birkenstocks, since it is summer and they are so nice and easy, but I will be wearing these Earth Shoes regularly to soften them up. The toe box is nice and wide, and the anti-pronation support is good. I like to change things up and wear barefoot shoes in rotation with shoes like this, so that my feet develop some strength on their own and don't just depend on the structure of my shoes to support them. BUT I'm not a purist about that and do often appreciate the extra support. Again, as I say, I walked for about 25 minutes without any of the pain that I typically experience when my shoes don't fit right, so that, to me, is a win.
LATER:
I have read, in small Charlotte-Masonish doses:
*Epictetus
*Augustine (still the Confessions)
*Milton (1 poem: "On His Twenty-Third Year")
*Conrad Aiken ("Senlin: A Biography")
*Plutarch (a little of Theseus)
*Wendell Berry (A Place on Earth)
I have revised a poem to a point where I think I might like it, but will have to wait and see.
I've walked the dog again and also lined up our favorite dog/house sitter for this weekend, when we will go to visit the Artgirl at her pottery enclave.
I'm wearing my new Mary Janes again to break them in. I would not wear this out in public, I don't think, but it helps with the breaking-in at home:
Am I six? Yeah, like just about SIX DECADES, bud. Anyway, wearing these shoes in short bursts to soften them up. I love them, they're so fun, but yeah. They need the break-in. So I'm walking around the house like this, but will put my Birks back on again in a while to give my heels a rest.
Tonight's dinner:
*More roasted vegetables with feta (this time it's two bell peppers, a cayenne pepper, the rest of the grape tomatoes, some whole garlic cloves and onion, and basil leaves, all tossed in olive oil, salt, and pepper, then with feta crumbles, in a small pyrex pie plate. Roasting in the oven now.
*Aldi "Never Any" (no nitrites, antibiotics, etc.) tomato-basil chicken sausages
*Sparkling water to drink
Simple, but wow, the roasting veggies smell good.