My office: the room outside time. Step out of the bathroom (or the back hallway) and into eternity. So this clock would have you think.
Outside, the leaves are starting to fill with morning sun.
Anyway, an easy outfit for a Monday, like wearing a nightgown to lean into a new week. Despite not having worn this dress for over a month, I love it --- it's a great layering dress for the whole year, giving me what amounts to a whole extra dark-neutral skirt in the winter months, especially. I love the sturdy wool-tencel blend, too. It's heavier than my other wool-jersey dresses and seems to stand up very well to daily life, as well as feeling warmer in the winter, without being too hot for summer. I have to confess that I don't feel this dark gray very much in the heat, and would love to have another color in this same style and fabric --- the sold-out Pacific-Heather Audrey is a dream dress.
I don't know how many more Wool& dresses I will buy in the foreseeable future, as they don't tend to come up very often on secondhand sites (and I haven't been active in the BST group on Facebook, where things sell so anxious-makingly fast I can't keep up), and I'm interested in adding more linen, when I'm ready to add anything at all, especially new. BUT I'd certainly consider another Audrey, should the time be right and the stock be available.
In the meantime, I do like that this dark neutral pairs so well with so many different things in my closet: basically everything. I've worn it with a whole range of cardigans, with all my button shirts, with my periwinkle Flax tunic (it's the only thing I reliably like with that tunic, which might not be enough to make me hang onto said tunic forever, but then again, it might totally be enough). I've worn it with my graphite-gray Birk Melrose boots, which just goes to show you that as good a guideline as "contrast with your lowest hemline" is, you don't always have to do that, because you make the rules in your closet. I've worn it with my brown Xero Tari boots, because yes, "contrast with your lowest hemline" is a good guideline and gives you much latitude for wearing things together. I've worn it with Birkenstocks, with various other sandals, and with these clogs. I'll wear it, I'm sure, with all three new-to-me pairs of Mary Janes.
It's just great to have a basic piece like this. As you have surmised, if you've been reading here for any amount of time, I'm not a capsule-wardrobe person. I'd get bored way too fast if my whole wardrobe revolved around one dress (yes, I did the 100-day challenge in 2021, and it was fun while it lasted, but that's not really how I want to live). I'd really get bored if it revolved around one color. But if it did, this dress would be an excellent candidate.
One of the things I like is that it reads as black from a distance, or at least as a very dark neutral, but it's not really black. It doesn't drain the color from my face in the same way that actual black does.
It does help that I'm wearing an overshirt in a color that is kind to me, but still. This is a softer contrast and a less-stark dark neutral, and those things matter. Yes, I own a black dress, but you notice that I don't choose to wear it day to day --- which is fine. I'm glad I have that dress. It's there when I need it. I have a choir event coming up at the end of the month, and that's the dress I'll wear. That's also a dress I'd love to have in another color, because except for the fact that it's black, I really like it. And I might wear it as a layering dress in the winter, who knows? But I'm glad I have the option of the dress I'm wearing today, which for all kinds of reasons I'm far more inclined to reach for.
And now that I am wearing it --- am in fact dressed and reasonably --- presentable --- I guess I should get on with the day.
LATER:
I'll admit it, I'm really bored. Not sure why. The boredom is manifesting as boredom with things like my clothes and my house, but I don't really think anything is objectively wrong with those elements of my life. I think it's the end of summer. It feels like a long time since Norway, and even with the little jaunt to Seagrove this weekend, and the trip to Memphis two weeks ago . . . eh. I dunno. It's not like I haven't been anywhere or done anything. Quite the opposite, in fact. And yet.
Summer is always hard on my mental health, for reasons I can't quite put my finger on. But the relative lack of structure doesn't help. The heat doesn't help. And the expectations --- that summer is going to be FUN --- don't help. Not that summer hasn't been fun. We have had a lot of fun, actually. How much fun can any one household reasonably have in one limited span of time? I really think we've had fun. And yet my brain would like to inform me that I have not, in fact, had enough fun, and I should feel bad about this.
Meanwhile, nothing in my closet or about my appearance is really sparking joy at the moment, but I am resisting the impulse to take that to mean something. I really don't think it means I need to cut my hair (actually, that one's not hard). I really don't think it means I need more new clothes. In fact, what might be helpful is to frame this current feeling as a challenge: power through the boredom, wear the clothes, find the little bit of joy, because it is there. I think our contemporary culture, especially in its online aspects, conditions us to equate joy with change, and I would like to resist the temptation to believe that. Changing something won't make me happier --- unless what I change is myself, inwardly. I could change something about my clothes, but it's probably better and healthier, not to mention more economical and sustainable and low-impact, to change my expectations instead.
But it's also legit to look forward, with longing, to changing my current summer mode for some cozy autumnal looks. I don't have to buy anything (else) to accomplish that. What I do have to do is wait for the season to change, and change myself inwardly in the area of cultivating patience (which is, as obnoxious as it sounds, actually, in real life, a virtue).
Meanwhile, the day so far:
*Wrote part of a scene in fiction (roughly 500 words)
*Wiped down woodwork in the bathroom --- it's amazing how much grime the lovely woodwork in this house collects, and how much of a constant chore it is to wipe things down. But it makes an incredible difference. Instant brightness.
*Walked the dog --- leisurely walk with lots of sniffing --- and made up a puzzle toy for her: small Kong with three Flea Away pills (which she loves) + several pieces of kibble, each individually wrapped like a piece of candy and stuck tightly into the Kong, to make each one more of a challenge to remove.
Husband is home today and working in the yard, which I greatly appreciate. I went out yesterday and cut back overgrown blue sage and four-o'-clocks, which had been occluding the back walk, but he is doing a general de-weeding/de-vining/cleanup job. Again, I appreciate it so much. The overgrown yard becomes a source of stress at precisely the season when I can't physically cope with it for long, and I am grateful that he's willing to be out in the heat and bugs to knock back the jungle. I have plans for a big kitchen-garden cleanup and reorganization once the weather cools down some, but for now I'm not doing much in that direction, other than harvesting things and weeding here and there.
Here's Dora's general daily schedule, by the way, since it is the schedule I live by these days:
1. She sleeps in pretty late, usually until sometime between 10 and 11 in the morning. I am very happy to let sleeping dogs lie and get some of my own work done. So there's a big block in the morning that's just SLEEP.
2. Sleep block ends around 10:30-11. We go out for a walk, usually 20-25 minutes, with as much sniffing as she wants to do, for mental stimulation. One good reason for a later walk is that most of the neighbors have finished walking their dogs and gone inside, so our circuit of the neighborhood tends to be uneventful, within the safe no-trigger bubble.
Today we saw a big Maine Coon Cat, and Dora perked up her ears, but she didn't lunge for it. I said, "You can leave it," and she did. Lots of sniffing along the perimeter of the forested ravine in the middle of the Park Loop.
The second part of this roughly-an-hour block of time is indoor activity. I might do a training game with her. OR, as I've done today, I might give her a puzzle toy to work on. Either of these things helps her to calm down from the walk and regulate herself indoors, so she's not zooming around being a chaos agent. Dogs really need TEACHING to self-soothe and calm down and regulate, and either quiet mental games (we love games where she has to stay in place until I release her, which really teach self-regulation) or a puzzle OR chewing are good for this.
3. Crate + lunch + nap. After an hour-90 minutes of activity and interaction, she's ready to eat a real meal and sleep for a while. I have her go to her crate ("Go to bed" command), sit and "stay there" while I fill her bowl on the back porch.
When I come back in, I have either a treat or a couple of extra pieces of kibble in my right hand, the bowl in my left. The idea is that she lets me set the bowl down in the corner of the crate and waits, sitting, until I release her to eat. The incentive to wait is that she knows by now that I have something for her in my right hand, and watches my hand even as I'm setting the bowl down. She might glance at the bowl, but she's really interested in the treat. At first I gave her several treats, right away and in rapid succession, to teach the "wait" action. Now she will wait a few more seconds for the first treat, and does not rush for the bowl the minute the treats are gone, but waits for me to close the crate door, which I guess signals to her that really, the treats are totally gone. I say, "Eat your dinner," as I close the crate door, and already she's starting to associate that command with the end of the wait/treat period and the release to go to her bowl.
Again, this teaches some self-control. I've been very pleased with how fast she's learned it.
4. Nap lasts for a couple of hours, sometimes a little longer. I generally let her out again around 2:30, but sometimes it's as late as 3. At this point, we go out again for a quick walk/potty break, so she has a chance to stretch her legs, do her business, and sniff some more.
Then the rest of this next block of time is a little tricky, because I'm usually still working, but she's ready to play. I think today I'll plan another puzzle toy, with kibble wrapped up in twists of paper --- the one I've given her just now (11:50 a.m.) is presenting a real challenge. She knows there's stuff in there, but she doesn't know yet how to get it out. So if I need more time to work without being pestered, I think I'll do that again. Anything to keep her busy and engaged . . . otherwise she is a total pest, pawing me, barking at me, trying to get me to pay attention to her. Not that her need for attention isn't valid, but she really needs to self-settle and be a little more sufficient unto herself than she currently is. That's one of my big goals going into the fall: to improve her house manners by improving her self-settling/self-entertaining/getting-past-velcro-dog skills.
5. Crate, dinner, down time. Sometime between 5 and 6, whenever I'm getting into making dinner, I give Dora hers, repeating the "wait" exercise described above. She has her dinner in her crate, then stays there for about 90 minutes to 2 hours, while we eat our dinner and clean up. I don't let her out of the crate until all our dishes are done and the kitchen is clean, so there's no huge food incentive for her to be impatient to come out, or maniacal when she does come out.
6. I generally let her out around 7, take her for another quick break outside, then she's pretty much hanging out with us until walk time around 9 p.m. We walk for a fairly solid half-hour, then drink tea and say the rosary. Dora generally goes and gets a bone, hops up on the daybed, and chews with purpose while we do this (it is very funny that she associates serious chewing with the rosary). Chewing is a great end-of-day pursuit, as it satisfies the dog's need to mouth things and helps expend energy in a way that winds them down, not up.
7. Around 10-10:30, she gets a final meal of the day in the crate, with a repetition of the "wait" exercise. She eats, and it's lights out. Ordinarily that's the last we hear of her until fairly late in the morning. Once she's asleep, she sleeps very soundly, and our getting up early doesn't wake her. If she does wake, I'll take her out, but if she's sound asleep, I'm not going to disturb her.
Sometimes she has trouble settling and cries in her crate. Mostly we ignore her, and she settles down, but occasionally --- like especially if we've come back from being away, or if there's a storm or fireworks --- she will cry and bang and try to dig her way out of the crate, in which circumstance I come and sit by her until she finally calms down and goes to sleep.
She is kind of a high-maintenance dog, in a way that our last dog was not. You . . . literally . . . do not know until you have had the dog in your house for a while what they're going to be like, and my advice to anyone considering getting a dog is DON'T, unless you are absolutely prepared for your life to look something like this. It's actually not bad, and the crate is a lifesaver in many ways --- I would not be able to cope with this dog if she couldn't cope with the crate. That was one of the things that prompted me to take a risk on her: that she was already crate-trained and used to containment. The guy I got her from worked 9 to 5, and she was crated all day long, so her life with me is full of fun and freedom compared to that, but holy cow, if I couldn't contain her when I needed to, I would lose it.
Now, it is incumbent on me at all times to work on her house manners, so that I don't just default to the crate when she's being annoying. She doesn't learn anything from "time outs," which can make her behavior worse, because usually her acting out is an attempt to get some need met. It's my responsibility to anticipate her needs and meet them on my schedule, and then use the crate judiciously (again, a schedule really helps) to enforce rest that she also needs.
Anyway, uh . . . if you're not willing to do this kind of thing, don't get a dog. That's my advice. They're all different, from breed to breed and from individual to individual, but their needs for exercise, rest, stimulation, and attention are kind of a common denominator, and if you can't meet those needs, consistently, pretty much every day, you will not enjoy life with your dog. If you have little kids, for example, you don't need a puppy. MAYBE a very settled adult dog (and of course having kids after you've had your dog for a while is not a bad thing), but even a settled adult dog will be very unsettled while transitioning into your home, and will make a lot of demands on you whether you have the bandwidth for dealing with them or not.
If your life is in a phase of chaos of any kind, in fact, I would really strongly suggest not getting a dog. Dogs are chaos agents, especially in their own periods of transition. It is HARD for them to move into a new home. They are upset by this. They are disoriented. Like little kids, they can really regress in all their training for a while. In that stage, they will make your already chaotic, overwhelming life that much more chaotic and overwhelming. Eventually things will settle down some, but --- not that you are asking for my advice, but in case you need it anyway --- I would recommend FIRST getting your own life in order, at least somewhat, and THEN considering getting a dog.
This message brought to you by My Life With Dora --- who is a good dog, and we love her a lot, but speaking of chaos agents . . . the other night when we came home, she met us at the door, having let herself out of her crate because --- apparently --- the dog sitter didn't fasten the clip at the bottom of the door securely enough. She can bend the metal door out and slip through it if it's not secured. So she had been out and had clearly gone racketing through the house in a panic looking for us.
Fortunately this time we hadn't left a window open, so she couldn't jump out, run around to one of the doors, and try to scratch her way back inside. She had just obviously jumped all over our bed, then stood up to look at my husband's bureau top, upsetting a big ceramic ashtray that had belonged to his grandfather, in which he kept all manner of flotsam and jetsam. So the ashtray was in pieces on the floor, and the flotsam and jetsam were strewn everywhere, and he was Not Happy. We've come back, on at least one occasion in the past, to some variation on this theme, with the added wrinkle of a lot of what I guess you might call emotional defecation in the upstairs hall. Mercifully that wasn't the situation this time, but it has been, and it was gross.
When she's in the crate and knows she can't get out, she just sleeps. It's not ideal for a longish stretch, but it's never all day (we had the dog sitter come three times a day, for an hour each time, while we were in Norway), but the containment helps contain her emotions. My daily system with her really works pretty well, and it means that she's generally acclimated to a certain rhythm of freedom and limits in the course of a day. Even so, sometimes the system fails, and there are consequences for us, in damage and upheaval and stuff to clean up. If you don't want to deal with that, and you're not in a good place to manage another life form that really needs managing, do not --- I repeat, DO NOT --- get a dog.
(I'll add that although our last dog was a lot easier, it's probably true that he had a lot of unmet needs, because with all the kids home, his needs were pretty low on the priority list. Fortunately he was relatively laid-back. But the first few weeks he lived with us were rough --- chiefly, he didn't settle at night and cried and ran around all night long, which was wearing on everyone. This was what made me swear that the next dog was going to be crate-trained. And he did weird things, like sneak into the Artgirl's room --- nobody else's --- and pick out her favorite stuffed animals --- he knew! --- and rip their eyes out. On a relative scale he was an easy dog, but he wasn't not a chaos agent.)
Again, just a PSA. Now I think I'm going to vacuum.