I really run short of inspiration for these header photos. Insofar as I have been inspired at all, I think they sew together the rounds of the year, whose progress you can mark by the changes in the trees which form the continual background for this view --- when they are not the view itself. Here again you see the brilliance of an early winter morning: sun well up, everything spikily cold, still just below freezing. This is about as intense as it gets here. No snow, mostly. And temperatures reaching above freezing --- often well above freezing. It's going to be almost 50F at the height of the day today. But the nights and mornings are frigid enough for me, let me tell you. Just enough to make layers comfortable, but with some relief --- next week we have a projected high of 67F --- so that I could conceivably wear no heavier layer than a big linen shirt and be plenty warm.
Today I plan to finish and upload my two remaining essays for next week and, I hope, give some thought to a book chapter I said I'd contribute, to a book on craft for Christian writers. My hope is to be able to spin my remarks from the Catholic Imagination Conference last month into an essay (less specifically Catholic) on the writer's vocation as a particular kind of bearer of the Imago Dei, and on the duty, implicit in that vocation, to bear witness to a reality that is both fallen and charged with the immanent, transcendent presence of its Creator.
Anyway, I said I'd get back to the editor with a chapter title and prospectus fairly soon, and I need at least to be dwelling on it a little in my mind, if not actually sitting down to crank out the chapter right now. So if I can be tidying away these Substack essays, that will give me a little room for this other project.
Otherwise . . .
*dog walking
*housekeeping
*recycling various leftovers for supper
Wearing today:
*Wool& Fiona dress (M) in Teal, bought November 2022, last worn November 17. Total wears this year to date: 22
*Handmade wool-blend shawl, crocheted for me my by my friend AK this year. First wear (other than wearing it home from church last Sunday, when she gave it to me).
*Snag merino tights, originally Sand Dollar, redyed by me last year in Jacquard Sapphire. Bought spring 2022, now in their third winter season of continuous wear.
*Devold wool socks, bought in Norway, summer 2023
*Secondhand Birkenstock Melrose boots in Graphite, bought summer 2023, in a second winter season of very regular wear.
Shawls can be fiddly things to wear. But if, like this one, your shawl is fairly light and lacy, and if it has fairly long pointed ends, you can convert it to a more stable garment simply by wrapping the ends around your waist and tying them in back. So I have done today. I'm grateful to AK for this very versatile piece --- I can easily wear it as a scarf around my neck, as a loose shawl over my shoulders, or in any number of tied configurations that hold it in place, even under a coat, so that it becomes an actual top layer. This intense violet purple --- very much the color of the Advent vestments at the Abbey --- pairs well with teal, as you see.
And of course, speaking of versatile and wearable, one good Fiona dress always deserves another. I just love this style and am glad I own two --- it's the perfect dress for so many occasions, dressing up or down with ease. This particular dress has been my favorite travel dress, two summers in a row, and even though I have had to mend a hole in the skirt, it's still going strong. I would actually wear it for a dressy occasion such as a wedding, though I've also worn it on airplanes, on beaches . . . again, it's just the perfect dress.
Once again I have put off washing my hair. I've been brushing it thoroughly at night to loosen any hair that needs to fall out, so it doesn't all come out when I do wash it --- and because it's not curling anyway, so I have nothing to lose by brushing it out. At this stage it's very soft and pliable --- and still quite shiny --- and I figure I might as well take advantage of the ease of putting it up with a claw clip. My scalp still isn't itching, which is a good sign, although after today it might change its mind about that. I will absolutely have to wash my hair tomorrow for pub night, but it's been so cold this week that otherwise I haven't wanted to deal with wet hair (yes, I do dry it with a diffuser, but that takes a good while, and I haven't felt like bothering).
My skin has also been very, very dry in this cold weather, so it's probably just as well that I'm not submerging it in hot water too often. I have been sponge-bathing and spot-cleaning myself with some rubbing alcohol, anywhere that bacteria might congregate and cause odors. Rubbing alcohol doesn't smell nice in itself, but it does kill germs, which is what you want --- you don't want to mask unpleasant odors, but kill them dead on contact. And the alcohol smell quickly evaporates and dissipates, so you don't go around smelling like the shot nurse at the pediatric clinic all day long. I could add some perfume if I wanted to, but the main thing is to clean, as in actually clean, any surface or crevice of my body that might begin to gather unpleasantness to itself.
So, all things considered, I really feel pretty fresh and okay. And I suppose I should get on with the day.
Oh, I wish I had taken a photo of the husband last night, on his way out to a parish speaking engagement in South Carolina. He had had his hair cut well (his regular barber, who is a personal friend, had not been cutting it well at all) and was wearing the navy wool Joseph A. Banks blazer I had bought for him, plus the Brooks Brothers gray wool trousers and the striking silk tie I had also bought for him. He looked very handsome and sharp, and I was sorry not to be stepping out with him (I wasn't invited; otherwise I would absolutely have been stepping out with him).
Working on my schedule for the spring, too --- it looks as though I might be going to New Hampshire for a few days in February, as well as Central Texas later in the month. Ash Wednesday isn't until March 5 --- an insanely late Lent, which under other circumstances I would hate, but the late date does mean that I can spend the whole of February mardigrazing my way around the country, with no injunction to wear purple.
But today I'm happy to wear purple, and to make up my Advent capsule wardrobe as I go. Really, my "capsule" is my whole closet with a couple of exclusions, those few items that really don't go with any shade of purple at all. So it's easy.
And now, really, I need to let the dog out.
AFTER-LUNCH UPDATE:
So far today I have:
*given the dog a good walk in the cold sunshine
*thrown back the covers of my bed to let my (fresh last night) sheets air
*heated up the turkey/dressing/cranberry hash I had for dinner last night (obviously there were leftovers) for lunch, and consumed it
*Finished an uploaded an essay and amended another, because my esteemed colleague has changed the schedule, and I needed to tweak details in the essay I thought I was finished with yesterday, not that I am exactly complaining about that (I mean: it's all done, so I have nothing left to complain about)
*Sent back a working title and prospectus for this book chapter I have committed myself to writing
*Tweaked the last line of a poem
*Put dishes in the dishwasher
*Repurposed Monday night's red beans and quinoa (because I don't have any rice) as a Cajun-flavored cream soup. Easy peasy: just add the rest of a carton of chicken bone broth, some more spices, and a dollop of heavy cream. It's just sitting in the fridge to let the flavors marry, and I'll heat it up at suppertime. You could of course do this whole thing as a vegetarian meal, omitting the shreds of leftover turkey that I included because I had turkey to dispose of, and substituting vegetable broth for the chicken broth. In that case you'd probably want to use a full two cans of beans, to try to up the protein (yeah, yeah, beans have some protein, and so does quinoa, but you still fall far short of your ideal protein consumption, which is my big quibble with vegetarianism). I'm not sure of the bean content of this soup --- I had frozen two batches of these red beans in quart bags, but they weren't really full. And I didn't really measure the quinoa, either, just eyeballed it. Basically you use one part quinoa to two parts liquid, and however much raw quinoa you have, you will have twice as much cooked quinoa.
*Drank some water with electrolyte drops in it.
I should probably think of some cleaning task to do this afternoon, because my goodness, if I don't, all the potential, accumulated funk will come home to roost just as people are turning up for Christmas. I must do something every day, I must, I must.
OH ALSO:
I read this article over lunch. Not only do I feel vindicated in my love for tights in colors other than black, but I feel that there must be many women out there who need to hear that they can wear tights in colors other than black (which yes, can be lovely, but can also be kind of boring, especially as a default). So if that's you, there you go. Your permission to branch out into other colors. I do VERY MUCH love the sapphire-blue tights I'm wearing today, and I don't care who doesn't love them. My legs, my color, my way.
And I bought the husband two more merino undershirts, because he seems to have misplaced three of the four he currently owns. Actually, one thing I might do today is FIND THEM. I know they're here somewhere.
SOME HOURS LATER:
I have cleaned the closet in my office --- a thing that really has not been done since we moved into this house sixteen years ago, and the husband filled up the shelves with all his notes from college and graduate school, and various other things. Over the years this closet had become a total landfill, and since I took over the room to which it is attached, I have been frustrated by the dearth of storage it offered, since it was already stuffed to the gills.
I actually didn't move that much out of it, other than trash. The college and grad school notes are still there. My grad-school papers, heaven help us, are still there in their crate. All our financial records dating back to 2004 are still there. Many things have been moved to the 4-drawer filing cabinet, two drawers of which were already in proper use, and two drawers of which were full of . . . cords? from computers we owned in the previous century? and modems? for dial-up internet? WHY? Anyway, those things have been filed elsewhere, and much random, loose paperwork that I came across has now been filed in the filing cabinet.
We had newspapers from 9/11, and newspapers from the death of the Queen Mother, and those I also dutifully filed in the filing cabinet. I managed to clear one shelf completely --- that shelf now holds all our boxes of photos, which used to be buried in the upstairs closet. The floor is clear. The vacuum cleaner has a proper place, so that it doesn't impeded the opening of the closet door. The American and Norwegian flags, on their poles, have a secure corner where they can stand furled, waiting to be flown again.
There's still a good bit that should go: various jackets that no longer fit the husband, various items of progeny clothing that got stored on hangers in there and forgotten about. I am seeing an enormous Goodwill dump in our near future.
Still haven't found those missing undershirts, but at least the closet is tidy.
I stepped onto the front porch for a breath of fresh air after all the dust and took some photos, mostly to prove to myself that I was still standing.
I had gotten a bit hot in my wrap-around shawl arrangement, so I just tied it loosely, which works as well. Here I am, living proof that you can do heavy housework in a nice outfit and still look fairly decent at the end. I also just thought the sunlight was fun to play around with, as it fell across the porch.