I mean, to be honest, it's just a lot of rain. No Mass today, because Father is out of town --- I checked when I got up because of the weather, but turns out that everything's canceled this week anyway. So I've been drinking coffee, playing my New York Times games, and noodling at an essay I need to write and a longish poem I've drafted.
Going to wash my hair and get dressed, since I do need to take the dog out eventually. Today's agenda:
*Dog walk in the rain
*Essays: two left for next week
*Vacuuming, maybe
*Pub night, hooray
Since I was away Sunday to Tuesday, this has felt like a total non-week. How is it Thursday already? I dunno. It just . . . seems to be, all of a sudden.
I didn't really make an outfit plan for the week and have just been putting on whatever I feel like. Yesterday's new NPL dress was a hit. I love it so much that I can hardly wait to wear it again. BUT I have other clothes that I also love to wear, so I am making myself dip back into the closet, instead of just shrugging the new-to-me Mama dress on again, which would be the path of least resistance for sure.
Wearing:
*Wool& Fiona dress (M) in Marine Blue, bought September 2024, last worn September 15. Second wear so far.
*Secondhand Brooks Brothers pink merino cardigan, bought November 2023, last worn August 29.
*Thrifted Crocs sandals, acquired from Texasgirl in April 2024, last worn September 1.
Wet hair, because why bother? It's raining, and I'm going out in it. Also, waterproof shoes. It's still too warm for leggings or tights and boots, so Crocs sandals it is.
Including various angles today, for full disclosure. It's easy to pick the cutest, most flattering shots of yourself, and I certainly do, most of the time. But reality checks can be useful. I may be cute, but I'm not that cute, not from absolutely every possible angle. But again, more and more I feel that defined waists do me more favors than swing dresses do, even when the waist of a given dress is fairly loose.
In any event, I have zero regrets about selling my Marine Blue Maggie dress --- a too-large swing dress --- and buying this Marine Blue Fiona, with its defined elastic waist, instead. This is such a great, versatile style that dresses up or down with ease. I plan to include this dress in my capsule for my end-of-October travels, because it's so comfortable, yet will be so easy to wear in situations when I want to look and feel put-together. This glowing navy is a perfect dark neutral for me and works with my whole wardrobe. I don't know how many more Wool& dresses I will buy --- I feel that I have plenty to be going on with --- but I am glad I bought this one.
Culled two items from the closet today:
*a very old thrifted cardigan that I have loved --- pale-gray silk and cashmere with beading --- but that has become hopelessly stretched out, so that it just doesn't look good on me anymore. It's too boxy and shapeless to work with anything.
*a J.Jill cotton tunic that my mother bought me maybe as many as ten years ago, maybe not quite that long ago, that I wear once or twice a year, when I make myself. I have liked this top, but I just wear separates so seldom that it's not worth my keeping.
Neither of these items seems really worth selling. The tunic is in okay condition, but it's not pristine, and I don't think it's either current or vintage enough for anybody to bite, even if I offer it at a lose-money price. At some point you just need to get things out of your house, and I've started to learn what moves and what doesn't on a resale platform like Poshmark. Meanwhile, I don't trust that either of these items would make it onto the rack in a thrift store. The cardigan, especially, seems pretty far past it --- which I hate, because I have loved that cardigan, but really, I think it's done.
I think what I'm going to do is buy one of those Trashie Take-Back bags at the end of the year, and send my un-resaleable textiles off that way, rather than trusting to the thrift store. Anything I think is worth selling I'm selling; a few items that I think the Texas folk might like will go that way (though I could just bundle those things into the Take-Back bag if the girls don't want them), but otherwise, if I can't sell it, I want to see if I can get it recycled instead of sending it to the landfill. Of course, you don't know, really, what's going to happen to things, and eventually they will end up in the landfill, which I guess is why you curtail your consumption to begin with. Note to self, as always. But you do the best you can, and this seems like a reasonable option.
Anyway, yeah, note to self to curtail my consumption --- especially of new items, but really, anything that comes into my house is a thing that somebody, probably me but maybe my children one day, is going to have to make decisions about. I'd like, increasingly, for my clothing to be compostable, which is one reason why I'm not sure how many more Wool& dresses I'm going to buy. Wool will break down, but not nylon. Going forward, that's probably going to be more of a consideration when I buy clothes. Tencel, for example, is compostable and biodegradable. So, for that matter, is 100% cotton, although as a fiber to wear, cotton has its downsides (not moisture-wicking, holds odors, requires more frequent washing, etc.). Linen biodegrades. So, I assume, do any animal fibers like wool, cashmere, alpaca, and yak --- but it all depends on what else might be blended with them. I think rayon might actually be biodegradable as well, but I'd have to double-check. If Tencel is, then it seems to me that rayon might also break down naturally (though it's not organic, and might release harmful chemicals into the soil, so again, I have to research that).
When I think about ethical clothing purchases, usually my first consideration is the human impact of my purchase. Am I supporting human-rights abuses with my buying patterns? That's always, really, the primary question. But I can't not think about the environment, too. That consideration falls under the umbrella of Catholic social-justice and stewardship concerns as well.
So another way to think about purchasing in the new year --- and clearly I'm already thinking about it and have been for some time --- is to embrace a natural limit on what I buy, in the form of parameters related to both the social and the environmental impact of my purchases. "Nothing new" is a pretty easy goal for me (even given that I did buy this one new dress recently), and I think I will stick to that, maybe even a little more stringently, in the coming year. But rather than giving myself number limits or strict no-buys, I could quite easily commit myself to paying even closer attention to fiber content than I have been doing already, and buying only what I could one day compost.
The rain is slacking off a little for the moment, so while I am thinking these ethical thoughts, maybe I should also go ahead and walk the dog.
BONUS: An interesting read about rayons and other plant-derived fibers.
LATER:
We got in a good mile and a bit before the heavens opened up for real --- fortunately not till after we were back inside. I really like walking in the rain, because hardly anyone else is out, but I don't like being a drowned rat, and am glad our timing worked out the way it did. My hair was wet enough anyway, thanks.
Dora's back in her crate, and I'm finishing my late breakfast: about a cup of plain yogurt with blueberries, plus two pieces of Dave's Killer Bread toasted, with butter and fig preserves. Really, late as it is, this suffices for breakfast and lunch, with some water as a change from coffee, so I don't dehydrate. After a period of late-summer lassitude, I'm back on my health and fitness game. Jumped on my trampoline yesterday as well as lifting some little weights, and I plan to do the same today.
LATER STILL:
I have
*walked the dog again in the rain
*talked to my mother on the phone, mostly while walking in the rain
*written most of a fairly complicated essay about a knotty Emily Dickinson poem
*done some more reps with my weights, because I'm feeling MOTIVATED
*drunk water
*eaten a hard-boiled egg
*scrolled on my phone for a few minutes
*considered pulling out all my clothes to see what I own that would actually be compostable, but thought better of it.
My hair has dried, gotten wet, then dried again. I'm glad I didn't put any real effort into styling attempts today, although I really quite like it in its current wild rained-on state:
Also, yeah, I really love Marine Blue. It's such a good dark neutral. So simple and basic, but it makes me feel all lit up.