The top of my one remaining homeschool bookshelf, in the cool morning light. It's full of mementos: wooden toys my children played with, a copy of Renoir's Prodigal Son that friends gave us on our entry into the Catholic Church in 2007, deer bones the Viking, aged nine or ten, brought home from an afternoon with friends who had woods behind their house and had found and staked out these bones for him to collect, birds' nests we shouldn't have brought in but did (the world outside seems adequately supplied with birds' nests, but apparently you're supposed to leave even fallen ones where they lie, which we did not know all those years ago).
This whole room, my office, used to be our homeschool library, spread out over all the shelves. When I began to turn the room into my office, I culled the books hard, sending any good classic children's stories to the shelves upstairs and shelving all the books I really wanted to hang onto on this one shelf, which used to be our history shelf.
It's Sunday morning, the year cranking on through its weeks. In just a while I'll dry my hair and dress for Mass, but right now I'm looking at the red berries on the dogwood outside my window.
Chickadees have been coming and going in great numbers from this tree, and a clutch of fledgling cardinals, looking very scruffy and adolescent. I really should have gotten the husband to prune out the tree yesterday while he had the chainsaw rented --- there's a lot of dead wood, and I think we should take out all the top branches to encourage some lower new growth. But he spent all day cutting out a stand of privet that was choking the back corner of the backyard and cutting off sun to my Mary garden (where there's a mulberry tree that also really needs to come out, because it's obviously a male tree, not fruiting after several years). All that's a task for another day.
Our apple tree is also looking distinctly unwell, and although I've held off thinking it needs to go, it didn't produce at all this year, and it's blocking sun to the fig tree behind it. Granted, the redbud trees I planted are also doing their bit to block sun to the back corner, but we needed some shade somewhere after the big pecan tree came down several Augusts ago, and I love redbuds so much. Part of me wishes that I had held out and planted an orchard on that side of the yard, but I don't know. Redbuds are native, and so beautiful in the spring and fall, and their shade is so delicate in the summer.
I need to go out and clean up my kitchen garden, which is awash in weeds. I need to cut back the basil, which has flowered and won't be good for anything now, because it's bitter. There are some younger, newer basil seedlings, though, so I can still make a little pesto while the season lasts.
It's cool out today, relatively: high of 76F. That's not really sweater weather, but it's still refreshing.
I feel as though I've done nothing lately but obsess about clothes --- more than my usual default setting, I mean. Not sure why, and not sure what to do about it. Just think about something else is, admittedly, a piece of advice, and it is a piece of advice I give myself, but do I follow my advice? Reader, I think you know the answer.
I suppose part of it --- I'm sure part of it --- is to do with my upcoming birthday. A new decade is always a big deal. You take stock of things. You take stock of yourself. You squint at the future and try to prognosticate about what you'll be like in that future. The reality is that you'll still be yourself, but older, which sounds so simple, but then you ask yourself, Who am I? What's that going to look like?
You engage in a little quiet identity crisis. And maybe you go out and buy a sports car, or you have an affair, or --- if you're not quite that big an idiot --- you merely obsess over your appearance. You might do this even if in principle you have no problem with the idea of aging. It's not so much that you're going to continue to look, and be, older --- but how?
Marly and I have agreed that we both want to be cute little old ladies, but what does that actually look like? What looks and feels right on my cute-little-old-lady body, with my cute-little-old-lady face and hair and everything else? I'm fine with the old part. It's the cute part that gives me fits. I guess I could just not care. I could say to myself, Just stop caring. Would I follow that advice? Reader, again, you know the answer.
There's probably never a good time for me to cross paths with big movements, like Secondhand September and the whole underconsumption thing. That is to say: I like the message of those movements. I largely agree with it. Have I not been wearing secondhand clothing all these years? Have I not been at least kind of careful about what I buy, and how much? Lately, however, I feel as though that set of principles and convictions is running head-on into this quiet little identity crisis I've been having, and have been wanting to throw clothes at, because clothes are cheaper than sports cars and less . . . everything . . . than affairs.
But the thing that gets problematic (for me personally --- maybe not for you), even at the best of times, is the whole imposition of rules. If you've been reading here for any length of time, you know how it goes. I get on some wagon, and then I fall off. I say I'm not going to beat myself up about falling off the wagon (buying things when I've declared a no-buy, for the most obvious and recurrent example), but really, secretly, I do beat myself up a lot. Why can I not keep these simple rules? What is wrong with me? &c.
And then my husband looks at me and says, "What are you doing to yourself exactly? I really don't think you have a problem here, except maybe the one you've created for yourself." Reader, as should be obvious by now, I married him, and although I didn't think about it at the time, this is why. He is the voice of sanity in my life, and he is the voice of sanity on my side. He's not going to tell me what to do or not do. He's not interested in being married to somebody who can't be a grownup. He just thinks I should do or have whatever will make me happy, because my happiness is his happiness. Also, he trusts me not to be stupid.
All of this makes me reflect on my own propensity for imposing rules on myself. Often they're other people's idea of rules. I didn't invent the idea of the no-buy, for example. Granted, I think it's not a bad idea. I just have a hard time coming up with a rhythm that works for me, without setting me up to fail or feel guilty about wanting something when according to my rule I should not be wanting something --- even though, objectively, there's no hard reason for me not to want it.
Example: The Substack did really well in August, thanks in large part to our running a yearly-membership sale. So the husband said to me last night, "You should really buy yourself a dress right now." He meant, You should really buy a dress because you made a lot of money this month, and you might not next month, so you had better jump on it. This is true. Also, a big chunk of what I made is going toward having the house pressure-washed, a thing I have been saying we needed to do. The pressure-washing won't suck it all up, but --- so the husband was implying --- if I don't move fast, something else will.
So he's not urging me to spend money I don't have, or be frivolous. He's just telling me to make hay while the sun shines, which is not bad advice. I generally do well to listen to my husband. Maddeningly, he is often right even when I don't want him to be, but sometimes he's right in ways that are more generous to me than I would be to myself if he weren't around.
Ultimately I think: What if I just didn't make any rules? What if I just lived? What if I could just be sensible and have some principles and not get all tied up in knots about proving it to the world? Because I think that's the issue. If can prove to the world, in some public way, that I'm sensible and principled, then maybe I'll believe it myself.
But you know . . . it's possible that I could just live my life and not feel that I have to rationalize the decisions I make, even to myself. It's possible that the boundaries I already have for my life, given to me by my faith, are enough to run with. That's really what I think my house theologian is trying to say. I hereby give myself permission --- not that I was feeling all that bound anyway --- not to observe rules that I have borrowed from the internet or imposed on myself, to create problems for myself that maybe . . . MAYBE . . . I didn't have to begin with.
That's today's major epiphany. In the meantime, though, I'm going to rewear my hot outfits, featuring as many thrifted/secondhand items as possible, because it's Secondhand September, and that's kind of fun.
For example, wearing today:
*Secondhand Flax navy linen tunic, bought April 2024, last worn August 15, in more or less this same outfit. Total wears this year so far: 8. Honestly not bad for a top that I wear in limited circumstances. Given what I paid for it, just under one wear a month is not bad innings for a piece like this. And the longer I own it, the more I'll drive down the cost-per-wear. This is a piece I envision owning and wearing for a LONG time, albeit at longish intervals.
*Secondhand April Cornell floral rayon maxi skirt, bought sometime in the autumn of 2021, I think, and last worn Ausugst 15. Total wears this year to date: 5? That seems kind of low. But then I have been actively prompting myself to wear this skirt for the last few weeks. It is a piece I'm glad I have, but it's hard to wear on an everyday basis because it's just so long. I step on it. BUT it does come in handy as a skirt to step into if I'm going to Mass --- it works well over many of my wool dresses, and if I need a little extra length for a particular setting, there it is. And I objectively like it, even if I don't wear it constantly.
*Secondhand J.Jill linen-rayon-blend navy cardigan, bought summer 2023, last worn August 22. Total wears this year so far: 9. Again, not bad innings. I have a lot of cardigans. But this one and its champagne-colored twin are indispensable in my wardrobe. They add coverage, especially in transitional weather such as we're having right now, plus a little polish and shimmer that instantly elevates anything I'm wearing.
*Secondhand Kalso Earth Shoes Mary Janes, bought August 2024, worn a lot so far.
I've worn this outfit, or variations thereon (sometimes with the champagne cardigan instead of the navy one), multiple times this year. I thought it bore repeating before the weather gets cold --- although when the weather does get cold, I can just switch to boots and keep going.
We went to Mass, which was lovely, and then out to lunch at the brewery in Belmont, also lovely. Now I'm home and have been out for a longer walk with the dog, who is passed out beside me after her exertions.
Wearing for the afternoon:
Sometimes I just feel like leggings. And this tunic is good to wear with them.
*Secondhand Devala organic bamboo-cotton-blend leggings, bought fall 2021 and redyed green by me in the summer of 2023. I really like this gray-green with navy, and I love the subtle marbled pattern. These are such soft, comfortable leggings, at least as pleasing to wear as my three pairs of tencel-merino ones are.
*Secondhand Birk Mayaris, bought in April and worn as a default shoe all summer, not even counting how many times I've worn them.
So Dora and I are lolling on the daybed, and that's the plan going forward. JUST LOLL.
Things I want to wear this week:
*Vintage floral linen-cotton pinafore dress, maybe over my Beetroot Brooklyn dress, with Birks or Mary Janes
*Green Garnet Hill lantern maxi skirt with . . . probably the pink Eileen Fisher merino tank and the pink merino cardigan again. I like that outfit a lot.
*Pink linen trousers, maybe with my cotton J.Jill aqua tunic --- I hardly ever wear that top, but the weather is right for it, and I like it with those trousers, which I also need to wear
*Audrey dress with a button shirt
*Off-white linen straight skirt with J.Jill ramie sweater
*NPL Smock dress with pink linen top
*Purple silk dress for date night, with double-wrap belt and either a cardigan or jean jacket
*Dinner with friends next Saturday: NPL Chocolate Brown Leila with pink cardigan and Earth Shoe Mary Janes
*Sunday Mass: teal Fiona dress, navy linen long cardigan, Earth Shoe Mary Janes
And that's a wrap. Time to doze before dinner.