Porch view yesterday afternoon. I continue in my quest to photograph rain as it falls. If you look really closely, I think you can see drops --- they weren't clinging to the porch screen, just falling from the sky.
My last pair of new-to-me Mary Janes was scheduled to arrive yesterday but didn't --- which is fine. One thrill at a time, amirite? Maybe they'll come today. And then that'll be it for that dopamine source for a good while, because there's truly nothing else that I can plausibly convince myself that I need.
Today's agenda:
*hair wash
*dog walks
*noon Mass
*various work projects
*dinner
Last night, walking with Dora, we managed to run head-on into our neighbor with his two dogs. We go out of our way to avoid these meetings, not because our neighbor isn't nice (he is), but because Dora morphs into an absolute raving Cujo in the presence of his dogs. Really it's any dogs, not just his. She's not particular. She is an equal-opportunity hater of other dogs. But no matter who the other dogs are, it's always an occasion of trauma for all involved.
We had, in fact, gone all the way around the neighborhood to avoid these dogs when we were setting out, and then had taken another major detour to avoid Billie the Doodle, around the way, who was out in her yard off-leash when we ventured down that block. We had, actually, a very nice walk in a dark, secluded corner of the neighborhood where I don't go if I'm walking alone, because it is so dark and secluded, and we had looped back around and were coming up the hill to the house, when there they were.
In the moment, I had to choose what to do, and I chose the wrong thing, which was to keep going and just power past them. Let me repeat: this was the WRONG THING to do. Hindsight says, Well, obviously you should have turned right around and taken the Park Loop and come back when the dogs were gone.
Hindsight, I truly can't tell you why I didn't follow this excellent counsel. It is excellent counsel, and it is what I should have done. But my husband was kind of tired of walking, and we were mere yards from our own driveway, and I guess I just thought we could shoot the rapids and get in without incident. WRONG.
I mean, really, nothing happened. There was no dogfight. There was no actual aggression. What there was was a lot of barking that sounded aggressive, the kind of snarling bark where the dog is realizing she can't bark and breathe at the same time, the way some children's bad coughs sound. And of course it's because the dog in question feels threatened by the other dogs, who if they're less than half a block away, at least, are way too close.
But boy, she lets them know it, and she doesn't want to let go of it, and it looks and sounds really bad. Now I'm convinced that the reason these neighbors are moving is us and our vicious dog, though I know for a fact that this isn't the case. You know what your brain does, though. It makes everything about you and your shortcomings. At least, mine does. Anyway, I dragged my screaming, frothing dog bodily up the driveway and into the house, where she promptly hopped up on the study daybed, found the bone she had left there, and chewed assiduously while we said the rosary. Then I put her to bed, where she remains at this moment, snugly tucked up in her crate, the very model of goodness.
***NB: I generally write these posts over the course of hours in the morning, off and on, so if you're reading this at, say, one in the afternoon, trust me: I have let the dog out of her crate. But she does sleep in a lot, usually until at least 10 a.m. I don't disturb her until she's ready to be disturbed --- though I try to get there before she disturbs herself. Odds are, by the time you read this, we have been out and walked, played a game and/or done some training, had a kibble-in-the-Kong challenge, and gone back into the crate for lunch and nap, because although the dog is not a child, her daily life is a lot like preschool.***
I had many analogous experiences with my children, but mercifully, like the graphic experiences of childbirth, they've been consigned to amnesia. I just know that in . . . instances, I won't even try to guess how many . . . over the years, I was the person with the child (pick a child, any child) who turned people's heads, and not because that child was being cute. I mean, also, sometimes they were so cute people exclaimed over them. They were very cute children, and they are very good adults. But you know. Into every life falls this moment when you have one chance to make an impression, say to the flight crew on the transatlantic plane, and the impression you make is one that makes them, when at last you've landed, really eager to get you off that plane and out of their lives.
Okay, clearly, in some instances amnesia hasn't entirely covered our tracks. But yeah, you have those moments. Fortunately they don't define you or your children, not really. But it stings to know that in some people's minds, that's exactly how you've been defined, and even if you're never going to see them again, even years later you cringe a little inside when you happen to remember.
Dora, wow. She's a good dog. Except when she isn't. BUT the dog sitter loves her and is coming to take her to get a pup cup on Friday, so yay for that. This is what happens when your children grow up and move out. You swear you're not going to make a child of your dog. You refuse to use words like "furbaby." You strenuously deny that your children's canine companions are your "granddogs." You say, I have had children. This is an animal. And yet the world is arrayed against you, and the dogsitter is not only going to feed and walk your dog, but also take her for a little ride in the car to get a treat. Pray for humility, man, and the answer is sometimes not painful, but extremely weird.
Because I didn't already have enough to read, I've started reading the Carmina Gadelica of Alexander Carmichael, which is a collection of old Celtic, mostly Scots, folk prayers, charms, and practices. I've been reading the first chapter, on births and deaths, and have learned so far about the "birth-baptism" or the "bathing-woman's baptism" (or possibly the "knee-woman's baptism?"), which is basically a charm invoking the Trinity, said over the baby when the midwife, or "womb-woman" hands him or her over to the nurse to be washed for the first time. Sometimes the nurse would put pieces of gold or silver coins into the water as a charm for health and wealth, but she would basically do what we'd call a lay baptism. This would not be the baby's one baptism. On the eighth day, a "clerical baptism" would occur, and people of the community would come to give the baby good wishes, like the fairies in Sleeping Beauty. These would be spoken aloud for the company to hear, and ideally they would rhyme, because, as Carmichael writes, "Verse lives when prose has perished."
If a baby died unbaptized, or was stillborn, it would be buried outside the churchyard, "in a sunless place." Sometimes the grave would be hidden among the rocks. The father was not allowed to participate in the burial of his child, for fear that then he would not beget more children. Instead, he had to go about his work as if nothing had happened, while his neighbors performed this duty. The unbaptized child was believed not to have a soul, but a spirit, the word for which was taran, which would enter into a rock and become a "son of the rock." I wonder now about Lloyd Alexander's hero, Taran Pig-Keeper, in the Prydain Chronicles, only a couple of which I actually read as a child. His name can't possibly be an accident? I don't know enough of the story to know how that fits . . .
That's about as far as I've read, but it's fascinating stuff. I'm not entirely clear on the timeline of such practices, which died out, as one woman testifies, because city people came out to the countryside where the crofters lived and made fun of them for their superstitions, and the crofters, not wanting to be thought backwards, let them go --- which the woman laments because, as she says, they were beautiful. Many of these practices were rooted, I'm sure, in the pagan past, but were baptized themselves, at least partially, as Christianity filtered up into the remote reaches of Scotland and, I'm sure, survived through the Reformation into (I'm guessing) the nineteenth century, the lifetime at least of the parents of the people interviewed in the book.
I would also guess that some of these things were imported to the Appalachians, as people from the Scottish Highlands immigrated here in the 17th and 18th centuries. What this book reminds me of, so far, is the series of Foxfire books, about Appalachian folkways, a few of which I read when I was in high school, and I'm interested in the connections. Partly this is research for a fiction project, but mostly I'm just fascinated by such things and like to find out about them.
Wearing today:
*Wool& Willow dress (M/Long) in Ocean Teal, bought October 2023, last worn July 28. Wears this year to date: 16. I'm wearing this dress at a fairly consistent rate of twice a month, which seems good.
*Secondhand Peruvian Connection alpaca cardigan, bought September 2022, last worn in a photo in Norway, apparently, but I pulled it out yesterday afternoon and wore it in the house, and all through the evening, and I feel as though I might have done the same thing on more than one occasion since our return.
(It does occur to me that I might switch this cardigan out for my Trades of Hope Kimono, which I haven't worn in a while)
*Secondhand Kalso Earth Shoes Mary Janes in "Merlot," bought August 2024, last worn (briefly) yesterday. I put a bandaid on my heel blister, and we'll see how we get on. So far they really feel pretty good, and I need to wear them to soften them up. I do think they're pretty cute this with this dress.
Here is the Trades of Hope kimono, the credit for which I won in a name-drawing at an online pop-up party back in the spring:
It's really a beautiful top layer, and I need to be more assiduous about wearing it, because I love it. It dresses things up a lot --- I often add it for a date night or for Sunday Mass. Even though today isn't an especially dressy day, for any particular reason, I think I'll stick with this, just to get myself out of the cardigan rut. Also, given that my dress has 3/4-length sleeves, and it's not cold outside, this is probably a better top-layer choice. I have worn that alpaca cardigan in quite hot weather, mind you --- I wore it every day of the Catholic Imagination Conference in Dallas in early October 2022, even outside, out of the air conditioning. Things are not always as hot as you're conditioned to think they're going to be.
Doing a color check, although I know these colors are good for me:
My hair is about 3/4 dry, after some diffusing, and looking pretty curly. Here's a shot of it about 20 minutes ago, when it was damper than it is right now:
I don't usually get this much curl up near my roots. I attribute it to the fact that I took a minute to "brush-style," by which I mean that after I had washed my hair, used a little LUS 3-in-1 leave-in, and then soaked my hair again before raking and brushing through a ping-pong-ball-sized amount of Not Your Mother's Curl Talk foam, I took a minute first to brush the foam all the way through my soaking hair with a wet brush, then not very schematically to brush sections, taking a top section and brushing it up from the roots, then shaking it in my hand to help a curl clumps form, then moving on to the next little top section (maybe 2-3 inches wide?) behind the first one, and so on around my head. Then I brushed underneath and shook my head, to help the under-layers clump. Again, at this point my hair was soaking wet and dripping. I was standing in the bathtub to do this part, all of which took maybe 90 seconds. I scrunched my hair with my hands to encourage waves and remove excess water. Next, after toweling my body off and wrapping the towel around me, so that I could get out of the tub, I scrunched my hair again with a microfiber towel. I got dressed, piddled around a little, then diffused it for a while to get it mostly dry, because I get tired of having wet hair. I don't do anything fancy with the diffuser, just hover it over my hair in various positions, flipped over upside-down and standing up straight.
Anyway, it doesn't usually turn over in big fat curls like this, from the top down, but today that seems to be what it wants to do. We'll see how it looks when it dries the rest of the way. For now I'm just not touching it. AND AGAIN, this is not a time-consuming, complicated routine. It takes far longer to describe in writing than it does to do.
I have liked mousse/foam lately, all by itself without gel. The hold isn't as strong, but I like the softness. Using foam on dripping wet hair, with the wet brush, and sectioning it as I described above, has been a game-changer. I'm noticing a good many new-growth silver flyaways, but I don't think there's any damage or breakage going on. Just my hair changing color, fascinatingly, in slow motion.
Welp, really, I guess had better move on to other things. If those floral Mary Janes show up, you can be sure I'll keep you posted. It'll be big news.
11:30 UPDATE:
Leaving for Mass in a second, for the Feast of the Transfiguration. Here's my dry hair, combed out very gently with a wide-toothed comb, because the curl clumps felt a little too clumpy, and I wanted it to flow together more and have volume. Personal choice --- some people like really really defined curl clumps --- but I will always sacrifice definition for fuller hair and soft waves:
I'll leave you with this poem for the Transfiguration (a response to a homily I heard on this feast last year).
BEDTIME UPDATE:
Nice Mass for the Transfiguration. Lovely to talk with friends, whom I have missed in the years we've been away from this parish.
Walked in the wet grass with my Mary Janes, soaking them pretty thoroughly, and they feel a lot better already. Leather for the win. We're going to be okay.
My floral Mary Janes still haven't shown up. As near as I can make out, they're in some kind of postal Bermuda Triangle between Gastonia and Charlotte. Maybe tomorrow?
Read fiction submissions for the magazine this afternoon and evening. Did not discover the Great American Short Story, but then I wasn't expecting to. Mostly I was wondering where all the fiction editors were. The only person who has been reading fiction submissions in the two weeks since I last went in to help out is another poetry editor. If this magazine actually gets out this calendar year, it will be because of this person. She should get a medal, at the very least. I guess I'll try harder, if for no other reason than that I don't want her to have to produce the entire magazine singlehandedly, because it's not really her job, and I'm sure there are other things she might like to be doing.
Walked the dog (no incidents this time), said the rosary, ate a goat-cheese-and-fig-puree sandwich, and am calling it a night.