A day of bland sunshine, mackerel skies, and chill, but not deep cold, now that the daylight is here --- and not the winter solstice, as it was when John Donne wrote his famous lines on "the year's midnight, and the day's."
I'm gearing up to walk the dog shortly, then to attend to Christmas preparations --- chiefly making sure that I have a gift for every person who will be present in my house on Christmas morning. We don't do large or elaborate Christmas gifts any more (except to each other). When the children were growing up, I fell into the habit of giving three small gifts for the three Wise Men: something to play with, something to read, something to wear, generally. That, and a Santa gift, especially for little children (though on at least one occasion the Santa gift was an aquarium for everybody), and a stocking full of little treats mostly acquired at the dollar store, the thrift store, and Aldi.
Now it's all adults, and this Christmas there will be twelve of us, like the apostles, so I'm not going overboard on gift-giving --- my main gift to everybody is food and hospitality. They will all be giving each other things, but everybody needs something from us under the tree just the same. Today is the day I'm going to address that --- and maybe also make up the upstairs beds, now that the sheets are clean and dry and fresh.
Last night we went out to the pub and had a good old time. A friend told us the following little joke. . . really just a funny remark: "I live so far in the country the Presbyterians handle snakes." If you know, you know.
I modified yesterday's outfit just a little for our night out:
Same dress, same cardigan (unbuttoned), slimmer scarf, graphite-gray taller boots.
Pulled the front of my hair back in a do I wore and liked a lot circa the Covid era:
For interested parties following along at home, this is not hard to do at all, though you might want to practice when you have a good window of time and are not under the gun to get out the door. All you do is pull back the front of your hair as you normally would for a half-updo, and secure that sort of mini-ponytail with a hair elastic (less desirable because they break hair) or a soft scrunchie (better, more gentle option).
Gently slide the elastic or scrunchie down the half/mini-ponytail you have made, so that you have a little more "play" above it.
Carefully divide the hair above the elastic or scrunchie --- it helps if you've parted your hair and brought the sides around, rather than scraping it straight back, but in any case, this will give you a part in your hair, so maybe think about whether you'd like that to be at the center or a side part, and divide accordingly (here is really where you want to have time to experiment and mess around to see what works for you).
Bring the "tail" of the mini-ponytail up (like you're literally just raising it above your head) and then down through the divide you've made, pulling it all the way through. Then gently adjust for the amount of looseness or tightness you like in the soft rolls that this move will have produced on either side of the scrunchie.
Et voila, easy holiday hair. You can of course do the same thing with a full ponytail --- make a really low ponytail, right at the base of your head, slide the elastic or scrunchie down gently, divide and pull the tail of the ponytail up and through in the manner described above. You can then wear the tail loose, or braid it, or pin it up to make a full updo, or whatever you like --- there are lots of YouTube tutorials that demonstrate hairstyles beginning with this basic move.
If like me you tend to be a bit clumsy with your hands (I can't French braid to save my life), again it's good to practice when you're not going anywhere. If you're just staying home, and the social stakes attached to your appearance are basically zero: that's when to try hairstyles and develop a little repertoire of things you reliably like and can reliably do. Then when you're going out, and the stakes are a little higher, you have something nice that you can perform even under a little extra pressure.
My own repertoire is very tiny. It includes: the half-updo in claw clip, the half-updo with ponytail flip (as shown here), the braided updo with claw clip, the braided-bun updo with spiral pins. All that and the default ponytail, too. It gets me through any week, I tell you what. And it gives me options when my hair doesn't look good down --- a thing I truly missed when it was shorter. I'm very glad to have grown it out to a point where I do have these options.
Anyway, I'll quit boring you with my hair.
Wearing today:
*Secondhand Not Perfect Linen Smock dress (S/M) in --- I think --- Dark Gray-Blue. So often when you buy secondhand they don't give the color name and you have to guess, but I think that's what this is. Bought December 2023, last worn November 27. Total wears this year to date: 27. This may be my second-most-worn dress, after yesterday's Wool& Black-Heather Audrey.
*Thrifted Banana Republic lavender merino sweater/base-layer tee. Bought November 2024, last worn December 10. At this point I'm not tracking sweater wears, because there are only so many minutes in the day, but given what I paid for this at Texas Thrift, I can safely say that I'm down to less than $1/wear (which I think I probably said the last time I wore it, too).
*Snag black cashmere footless tights, bought this past summer for a first season of wear --- which they're definitely getting. I did not expect to like black footless tights as much as I do, but these are warm and cozy, in addition to looking sharp with lots of things.
*Boody bamboo socks, bought . . . 2022? I can't remember. Soft and cushy. I have these in both a kind of peachy pink and this gray-blue, and I do love how they feel on my feet.
*Xero Oswego shoes, bought fall 2021 on clearance. I don't wear these as much as I wish I did. I really prefer the secondhand pair of the same shoe, but in charcoal gray, that I bought last spring. But in Advent and Lent, they do suggest themselves, and in any event, they're worn enough (as in, wear on the soles, mostly) that I'm not sure they're worth the trouble of reselling. Looking into my closet today, I asked myself what I could choose to put on my feet that, for a change, would not be either Tari or Melrose boots, and here these shoes were.
So I'm kind of channeling this woman's Smock-dress outfit idea. I could also have chosen my gray Xero Mesa trail runners as a shoe --- the concept seems to be comfortable linen dress-tee underneath-leggings/footless tights-walking shoe. Since it's Lent, and the purple I'm wearing up top is a lot paler, I figured I might as well wear the dark-purple walking shoes, which in any case have not been worn in quite some time.
Claw-clip half-updo today. Not getting carried away with the whole hair thing.
I need to pick a cardigan or jacket, especially so since the dog is expressing her readiness to go for a walk.
Baksun.
POST-WALK:
Here I am, trending heavily toward Bog Witch, though I'm not really wearing Bog Shoes. I'd need wellies for that, and I don't have any, nor do I like to walk in them, so this is more like a Town Bog Aesthetic or something:
*Secondhand Aran zip hoodie cardigan, bought late fall 2023, worn daily around the house. I generally just schlump around in this cardigan and my nightgown until I get dressed, at which time I choose a nicer top layer. But this is a good warm cardigan, and I should wear it more as an actual item of clothing, not just as a kind of dressing gown to disguise my morning bralessness.
Here's the total outdoor look, with annoyed accent dog and plastic bag, as photographed in the gym doors:
I did add my Gore-Tex L.L. Bean jacket, a daily winter staple, and a wool scarf I crocheted some years ago for a recipient who never really wore it. It's not a great scarf, I grant you, but it is warm.
I might well look back on this whole outfit interlude and say to myself, What WAS I thinking that day? But in the day itself, I'm fairly happy with it all. Oblivion, or something, is bliss.
AFTERNOON UPDATE:
I have located the gifts I'd bought and I think fairly accurately remembered whom they were for --- which highlighted the necessity to locate gifts for the people I had not bought for on my various pottery junkets, to Merigold, Mississippi and Seagrove, North Carolina, back in August. Fortunately that wasn't a lot of people (though it was the people I was with at the time), who are not . . . you know . . . incidental, but rather central in my life. But I have bought for two people and cleaned up and wrapped some vintage jewelry for the other: quite pretty, not chintzy items I have owned but don't wear, and figure I might as well pass along now, rather than waiting until I'm dead to let people haggle over it all. There is just no point in hoarding jewelry. I have been given some lovely things over the years, but what I actively wear is a tiny subset of that collection --- somebody else could be enjoying it.
I did also find some small pottery things I'd bought with stockings in mind, but instead decided to give to the sisters who are coming. These things are quite tiny, but at least they'll be something to open under the tree. Their family has not done big gifty Christmases, as I've learned, so nobody's expectations are high, but you know . . . you should get to be a child in the land of Christmas, even if you are a grownup.
So I've done that. I might now do a little housework, make up beds and that sort of thing. But I do feel a lot more relieved that I have something to put under the tree for every person who will be here on Christmas morning.
The afternoon has warmed up considerably, so I have shed at least one woolly layer --- only to shrug it back on again at sundown, but then that is why you wear layers.