By nightfall last night, the snow had turned to ice, clicking as it came down --- not so lovely. But temperatures are rising now, at least for the daylight hours, so it'll mostly turn to slush, and maybe a good bit will evaporate before it refreezes after dark. I don't want to go out in it yet, though. Intrepid though I mostly am about weather, I have a real fear of falling on ice and breaking something. Fortunately for me, I seem to be fairly sturdy and am grateful for that. I have friends with osteoporosis, but so far my own bones haven't shown any signs of being that fragile. Still --- your life can change in a heartbeat, with one misplaced step, and I'd rather not court that kind of change, if I can possibly help it.
The three of us had a cozy night in last night. I had bought one piece of salmon, big enough for two, in my grocery order last week, and then had frozen it. It wasn't enough for three, so I opted to make salmon chowder, influenced by Norwegian fiskesuppe. I diced the potatoes very small, rather than cutting them into slivers, and added frozen diced sweet potato, because I didn't have any carrots on hand. Sauteed all of that in butter in the bottom of my Dutch oven, then added the last can of fish stock from Christmas with a little extra water, then the salmon and a generous splash of white-wine vinegar and an equally generous squidge of honey. Let it all simmer until the potatoes and sweet potatoes were done through, added a fairly generous splash of heavy cream and some dill, in addition to salt and pepper. It was VERY good, and I'll eat the leftovers for lunch today.
As you can see, I'm still using some Christmas things. I can't quite bring myself to keep pulling out the Christmas-tree plates, to rehash Christmas Day, but holly motifs, red and green, anything cheerful in a wintry way: yes. It's a new phase of the season, but the season is still with us.
Today I'm going to wash and dry my hair shortly, then hope that it's thawed enough to go out with the dog without breaking my neck. I'll probably just take her into the yard, not try to walk, because again, I don't want to fall. I want to jump on the trampoline a little, too, and heft some weights. Been lazy about that lately.
Going to hair-wash now . . .
. . .
. . .
Hair is washed and diffused partially dry. I'll have to hit it again with the diffuser before I go outside, but I got bored standing there.
Wearing:
Outfit repeating: In for 2025, amirite?
*Wool& Sierra dress (XS) in Iris Blue, bought January 2025, last worn January 9. Wears to date in 2025: 4/11 (number of wears over the number of days in the year --- I might start doing that, at least for dresses, which are the only things I'm tracking that closely anyway, so that I can see proportions of wear)
*Thrifted cashmere pullover, bought September 2023, cropped by me with a pair of scissors last summer, worn yesterday as an under-layer.
*Snag black cashmere footless tights, bought summer 2024, first season of wear. These have developed some pulls and pills --- I'm not sure I'm as impressed with them as I am with my merino tights, but they certainly are warm, and I'm glad I have them. Last worn January 9 as well.
*Darn Tough Socks, second full season of wear
*Secondhand Keens Baby Bern boots, bought December 2024, first season of wear.
I had initially put on my default Tari boots ---
--- and this was actually fine, but somehow I just wasn't feeling them, so I changed.
Warm, comfortable . . . what's not to love? And I don't think this looks really schlumpy. It looks sharper than it feels, mostly because of the sleek boots.
I will probably pull my hair back in front once it's all the way dry.
As I mentioned yesterday, I have bought myself a pair of jeans. They are honest-to-goodness jeans, 1990s-vintage Levis 550s, all cotton, no stretch. I hope they fit. They're a good mom-jean cut, tapered, with a high waist, the kind of jeans I always loved to wear when I wore jeans as a default*.
Actually, I'm a little anxious about them, because it feels as though I'm giving in to an old default. I've started to think of myself as a person who wears exclusively dresses --- though NOT as a religious or moral score. I just like dresses and feel good in them. But there have been times when I've just wanted a pair of jeans. I think they'll be fun to wear with my Tari boots, as well as my Birkenstocks. I have all these shirts, and I think a big button shirt, jeans, and a pair of Birks or Chelsea boots or leather clogs (since I also have those) will be a good mode to have available.
So I think I can have a little cognitive flexibility here. I can think outside the box I have clearly constructed for myself over the last several years. Also, what I think is that jeans will be good to have in the spring, when it's still too chilly for bare legs but I don't want to layer on tights all the time. Yes, yes, that is what leggings are for, but sometimes I simply do not want to wear leggings.
Anyway, they were $17 on Poshmark, not a lot. I want to be careful, because those purchases can add up, but given that I saw another pair of the same jeans for $75 on Poshmark, I feel that I have made a little coup. I have set myself a limit of ten secondhand purchases this year, and now I'm down one. Better pace myself.
Anyway, time to let the dog out.
*Actually, my favorite pair of jeans ever, the pair of jeans I wish I had back and could still wear (I was about 20 lbs. lighter when I had them) was a pair of button-fly Levis 501s. Now, THOSE I could get seriously nostalgic and sentimental about. I loved them so much. If I could fit into them and look as good in them as I did when I was 35 (which, YES, is young), I would have them again. But I think these 550s will be a better cut for my current body . . .
AFTERNOON UPDATE:
So far I have
*been out with the dog
*eaten up the little remaining salmon chowder for breakfast/lunch (didn't really eat breakfast, had soup around 11:30 a.m. instead)
*changed the sheets on our bed
*emptied the dryer, folded and put away towels and sheets
*washed the sheets I just took off our bed, plus kitchen laundry and bathmats from the downstairs bathroom --- I'll go out in a minute to hang them while we have sun
*Read several poems from the late Kim Bridgford's first collection, Undone, and Act I Scene 3 of Shakspeare's Richard III
OK, going to hang laundry. Then I think I might make myself an outfit plan for the next week, because I am in a bit of a rut here. Yes, yes, outfit repeating in, but there's such a thing as too much of a good thing.
SLIGHTLY LATER:
Wet laundry hung in the sunshine, dry laundry on the drying rack folded and put away. One thing I like about this loose method of mine (hand wash OR use the washing machine, but air dry when possible) is that generally the amount that I have to deal with isn't that much.
I run regular-sized washer loads, but only occasionally, because I hand-wash most of our clothes a few pieces at a time. So most of the time a washer load is just "house" laundry --- sheets, towels, kitchen linens and towels. Those things are very easy to hang on a line. If you don't have clothespins or clips (bulldog clips work great as clothespins, by the way), you can just hang a towel or sheet over the line, but they also hang nicely from one end with clips. They air dry about as fast as they machine dry, in my experience, though this may be because I have a fairly wimpy dryer.
One thing that motivates me to hang out my laundry is that the result is visually pleasing. I love all my favorite colors together in the sunshine. And then it feels good to take them down when they're dry, all sun-starched and easy to fold.
As you can see, the snow and ice are vanishing fast.
I wash about as much as will fit on my line, with the possibility of small things' being hung on the drying rack. Today I hung two king-sized sheets (fitted + flat) outside, plus three pillowcases, a couple of towels, and a bath mat (I have plain terry/towel-type bath mats, four for each bathroom, so they're easy to swap out, wash, and dry). I also had a bunch of dish towels, which I brought back inside. They've been spun in the washing machine, so they aren't dripping, and will dry pretty fast on the rack. I had hung a similar load of napkins and kitchen towels inside the other day, so I took those down and folded them, then hung the wet ones, and put the dry ones away in the appropriate drawers. All of this took me maybe 20 minutes, from opening the washing machine to replacing the kitchen-laundry basket at the foot of the kitchen island, where it lives all the time.
I recently cut up another ratty old towel for more kitchen towels, so I have a consistently good supply of very absorbent cotton terry ones, much better than purpose-bought kitchen towels, generally. Every time I pass through the kitchen and see a kitchen towel on the counter, I toss it in the basket. When the basket is about half full, and the drawer is starting to look empty, I wash the contents of the basket and hang to dry, as above. This means that I don't really run out of cloth towels and always have a supply ready at hand, which means we don't need to buy paper towels very often. The husband likes to have paper towels, but I have more or less acclimated him to not using them, especially as our supply of cloth towels has increased (read: our bath towels wear out and get recycled this way).
All of this is kind of satisfying on a Saturday. But I was going to plan my outfits for the next week . . .
We have fairly typical winter temps in the forecast: highs in the 40s and 50s Farenheit, lows in the teens and twenties. Cold, but not so very cold.
It's tempting just to wear these two Sierra dresses and nothing else, but I don't want to fall down that hole. So . . . thinking through things I haven't worn in the last week or ten days . . .
*Sunday Mass tomorrow: Teal Wool& Fiona, magenta cashmere-blend blazer cardigan, Sapphire merino tights, indigo wool scarf, Keens boots.
*Chocolate Brown NPL Leila dress, lavender merino base-layer sweater, Eileen Fisher coat cardigan for extra warmth, Hot Chocolate tights, either Mary Janes or Keens boots
*Marine Blue Wool& Fiona, Connemara cardigan, Crocodile or Royal Navy tights, Keens boots
*Aegean Teal Wool& Maggie dress under floral cotton-linen pinafore, red cotton cardigan, navy merino tights, Tari boots
*Ocean Teal Wool& Willow dress under Garnet Hill maxi skirt, Crocodile wool tights, Tari boots
*Pacific Wool& Brooklyn dress, Connemara cardigan, black cashmere footless tights, Tari boots
*Grape Wine NPL Smock dress, teal Devold merino tee, teal cashmere cardigan, black cashmere footless tights, Tari boots
*Sunday Mass next week: Cinnamon Rose NPL Leila dress with crystal-trimmed cashmere shrug cardigan, Sand Dollar merino tights, Keens boots
These seem like pretty good ideas, all warm enough for the weather (just add coat), all intended to make me push a little farther into the closet for more variety.
If my jeans come --- given the winter weather, who knows when they'll turn up? --- I'll probably wear them with something, but I do want to tour my dress collection a little more comprehensively than I have been doing for the last week or so.
And of course none of this is binding. If I start to go into withdrawal, I can wear a Sierra dress, and the world will not end. Funny how attached I am all of a sudden, after not wearing one of these dresses for so long and thinking I was kind of over them. But they are very satisfying in the winter.
Now it's probably time to take the dog out again.
POST-DOG-WALK:
We had a nice time out in the sunshine. Streets are still slushy and slick in the shade, so tomorrow morning, when it will have been 15 degrees Farenheit overnight, conditions will be parlous. But it's not that cold out now, just bright and pleasantly brisk.
Thinking of jeans outfits, a thing I have not done in a long long time. One pair of jeans would give me an outlet for wearing the following a lot more than I currently do:
Button shirts:
*purple linen
*duck-egg-blue linen
*green tencel
Tunics:
*Flax periwinkle linen tunic
*blue cotton gauze Indian tunic
Tanks:
*pink merino Eileen Fisher tank
*teal cashmere/silk/merino tank, if I can ever find where I put it the last time I took it off.
Other shirts:
*pink linen boxy top
Pullover sweaters:
*teal cashmere I'm wearing today
*blue cotton
*green merino blend
*lavender merino
*J.Jill pink cotton-ramie
Various combinations of the above would work well with a pair of mom jeans, I think. I can see wearing my pink merino tank under a button shirt quite a lot, or a button shirt under a pullover with the shirttails hanging out.
I think I'd also wear my Stegmann clogs a lot more, because I could wear them with socks. AND my floral Mary Janes might actually see some wear this way. They don't work the way I'd evisioned with skirts and dresses, but with jeans, in an otherwise kind of masculine-tending ensemble, they might be fun. I'd like actually to wear those shoes, since I bought them. I have been contemplating reselling them, but thought I would wait . . . these jeans might be the missing piece I've been needing. So I'm kind of excited about them.
Maybe I'll go read a little more now.