Some garden bounty. We've reached that point in the year where what we have are peppers. I need to string those cayenne peppers to dry, so that I can make a new batch of red-pepper flakes for the winter.
A lovely night out last night --- we went to the wine bar and had blackened salmon and scallops for dinner on the patio, in the perfect September weather. Then home to walk the dog in the dark.
I wore my Cinnamon Rose Leila with my old blue rayon cardigan to go out:
I also tried this dress with my green blazer, not that I was going to wear that last night, but I wanted to see what kind of contender that outfit would be for autumn engagements.
I really liked this, though I also liked what you see in the date-night photo: This dress comes with a fully removable sash, and I removed it. I love the sash, but sometimes it can feel like a bit much. The sash for my brown Leila isn't removable, so I just live with that (happily, really). But it's nice to have the option of a simpler appearance, especially when I'm going to wear layers.
And I liked the colors together, with my own coloring, a lot more than I had thought I might:
I'll look forward to wearing this combination a good bit in the coming weeks and months.
I eventually pulled back the front of my clean hair, but I liked the curls.
On today:
*Dog walk
*Funeral at 11 this morning, followed by reception
*Work in the afternoon
High today of 80-ish Farenheit, not bad. The whole next week looks like high 70s/low 80s, and I'm not complaining. Yes, yes, it could be cooler and more fallish, but I have been one acquainted with reality, and this is fine.
The leaves across the street are filling up with light.
I did some reps yesterday with my 10-lb. kettlebell, the first lifting-ish thing I've done in some time. All the travel, coupled with end-of-summer heat, really threw me off my stride, but I've got to get back into my gentle strength workouts. Really feeling the "midsize style" "soft-belly" accounts on Instagram this week, even if I'm not an Amazon clothing addict and actively don't want the clothing items they're continually unboxing. I don't want the continual unboxing. I don't want that level of consumption to address my insecurities. But, well. It's just been a very bloaty week, after all last weekend's holly-golly. And what do we do about that? We stand up straight and proud in our floaty clothing, and we try to see ourselves with a gentle and charitable eye, and we keep going.
(But maybe we also bought a secondhand linen dress, despite our rules, as well as two cardigans, one of which is taking an extended USPS-sponsored tour of the American south and west, even as we speak . . .)
Meanwhile, here's more about Secondhand September. The long-term goal here is to displace new clothing with secondhand --- not to buy "new with tags" items, or fast-fashion items generally, via secondhand marketplaces. The goal is to reduce the volume of new clothing, so that worldwide patterns trend toward wearing things longer. It's largely an environmental goal, of reducing waste. And while zero-waste initiatives largely give me panic attacks, this I can do.
And I believe in the humanitarian goal as well, of drying up the demand for slave labor. Of course, THEN you have to address the corollary issue, which is how to help all those people find better livelihoods, once you've choked off the market for their unremunerated labor. It's not enough just to choke off that market --- you have to do it, somehow, without choking the people, who are real and have dignity, though you never see their faces.
That is the whole point of Trades of Hope, for example. But they're one business. We need more of what they do, in addition to our drive to correct our overconsumption course.
What's within our reach, at any rate, is our own behavior. I know perfectly well that I can't change the world. I am one person. If I start to feel that the whole weight rests on me --- and I do very easily start to feel that way --- then I implode. I can't, and won't, sacrifice my own mental health on the altar of some nebulous Greater Good. But I can address habits in myself that aren't helpful, either to me or to the rest of the world. That's reasonable, and it's reasonable to accept that it IS what I can do.
The problem, after all, is not that maybe platforms like Poshmark encourage overconsumption. That's like saying that the supermarket encourages people to eat too much. I mean, yes, the very availability of food does mean that some people will overeat, but the answer is not to impose limits on the supermarket. The answer is to learn to regulate ourselves, to make good choices, to address the root causes of our quest for dopamine or whatever it is that makes us click "Submit Order" more often than we need to.
And part of that, of course, is to learn not to beat ourselves up when we're not perfect. Shame is a terrible tool for substantive change.
OK, time to get going. Wearing today for this parish funeral:
*Secondhand Eileen Fisher linen dress, bought April 2024, last worn (to a funeral) August 23
*Secondhand J.Jill linen-blend cardigan, bought February 2023, last worn August 15
*Secondhand Alegria Mary Janes, bought August 2024, last worn August 23
I do not love this outfit, but it's for days like this that I bought this linen dress. I thought about adding a scarf, which would make the outfit better, but our parish is a modest one, and it's all too easy to look overdressed. So I'm going to err on the side of simplicity here, because truly, this isn't an occasion where I need to look interesting. I just need to be there.
Oh, also, color check:
I look a little tired, which I'm not, really. Fortunately sometimes it's really not about me and how I look.
LATER:
Back from the funeral, which was very beautiful (and sad --- the deceased was a much-loved man). Saw friends, ate lunch. Came home to packages: the dress and shrug cardigan I had ordered.
AND . . . both are strikeouts. The cardigan is too small. And the dress is voluminous, way too big, I think, for me to expect to get any wear out of it.
This is a look, and some people love it. I just don't think it's my look. It's not the looseness so much as the fact that even for a loose-fitting dress, it's just enormous on me. Too wide across the shoulders and in the neckline. I kind of feel I'm wearing a hospital gown. I was hoping that this was a dress that would work for conference and event wear, as well as being good for every day, but it really won't work, I don't think. Not without a lot of effort that I'm not willing to expend to make it work.
So . . . I shall resell these items. They don't need to take up room in my closet. Fortunately
1. They were both secondhand to begin with.
2. They weren't expensive. I can drop the prices a little more and hopefully move them along quickly. If not . . . eh, they can go in the pass-along bag to go to Texas.
I figured these items were worth a gamble, but that is the key word, isn't it --- gamble. You can consider carefully and think about fit and how something is going to work for you, but until you have it, you really don't know whether or not what you're envisioning is reality.
So, there it is. Among other things, this kind of experience is an object lesson in why not to tie your dopamine cravings to shopping. Sometimes it doesn't work out. But you don't want that to ruin your day. My day, mercifully, isn't ruined by the little letdown of clothes not fitting the way I had thought. I can just think, Eh, this is a cute dress for someone else. I don't feel wonderful in it, but someone else will. And then I can get on with the rest of my life.
EVENING UPDATE:
We had a nice dinner: creamy high-protein tomato soup with a base of pureed cannelini beans (1 can) and cottage cheese (about 1/2 cup) and several small garlic cloves. The tomato part was 2 cans fire-roasted tomatoes + 1 can tomato paste + a little water to thin things. Then some salt and pepper and shredded fresh basil, with a dash of cayenne for bite. We had that and roasted corn on the cob with butter, salt, and pepper.
Then we watched the first episode of Season 8 of Foyle's War and drank a little aquavit, and it was all good.
I did fold up those strikeout items that came in the mail and will put them up for sale again this weekend. Still observing my September no-buy, though I am Having Thoughts about what to do next.
Meanwhile, I've been wearing my teal Fiona, which I'd had on the list for the week anyway.
My goodness, I love this dress. I forget how much I love her, but then I put her on again, and I remember.
One thing I'm remembering is that I like her with my green blazer:
I've made winter outfits with this dress, this blazer, tights and boots before, and now I'm thinking that Fiona will go with my on my October travels, rather than
Willow. I really like dresses with waists, as I'm discovering all the time. I'm really thinking my wardrobe might gradually tilt away from swing dresses and toward dresses like my two Leilas, my two Brookylns, and this Fiona.
In fact, I'm reconsidering things in light of the fact that Wool& seems to be phasing out the Fiona. There are only three colors available, and the dress is marked down. I'm not going to do anything drastic or sudden or impulsive, but I am thinking that if I like this dress (and I do), I maybe should get another one (or two) before they go away forever. I was originally, way back when, many ideas ago, thinking I'd buy a new Not Perfect Linen dress for my birthday, but instead . . .
Well, as I say, not doing anything impulsive, but this is a thought that came to me tonight. I'm sad that they aren't offering this dress in more colors, and sad that they seem to be discontinuing it. This one has been a consistent favorite of mine for almost two years now, worn regularly and taken on my travels, and I'd really like to have at least one more if they're going away forever.
By the way, counting up how many times I have worn this dress this year. So far the total is 16. Not bad, really. Audrey seems to be the clear winner, with about 21 wears, but Fiona doesn't lag too far behind.
And again, I really like the silhouette with the blazer. It's a lot better than a swing dress. I'm eyeing the Marine Blue, and considering whether I might sell my Maggie in the same color, about which I've always, for the 2+ years I've had the dress, been somewhat ambivalent . . .
I really think the time might be coming when I do resell one or two of my Wool& dresses, but again, I'm not going to do anything impulsive. I just think that maybe the time is coming to move a few things along, because I don't necessarily need them all, and might like to gravitate toward another silhouette. Like NPL dresses, these hold their value quite well, and they aren't a fast-fashion brand. Also, compared with NPL dresses, outside the very fast-moving B/S/T group on Facebook they're hard to find. There's definitely not a huge cycle happening where they're flooding the resale platforms. So I think this is kind of a separate situation from the buy-resell pattern I was talking about earlier.
I hadn't really thought about reselling any of my wool dresses, because I bought carefully and like them. But I might think about it, especially if I'm thinking about buying a dress in a duplicate color. I really don't need two Marine Blue dresses, and it is worth considering whether I'd like, essentially, to trade out a swing dress for this silhouette that I really love.
Also, if I could find the dress I want secondhand, I'd do it. But again, the market isn't exactly flooded with them. It's a lot easier to find NPL dresses than it is to find Wool&. So this would be something I'd acquire by way of a birthday gift to myself, as I had originally thought I might do.
So all of that is something to consider, but not until the end of September.
Going to drink some tea and call it a night.
