Another random shot of the study from the corner chair, because once again, here I sit in the morning, drinking my coffee and getting my head around the day. I made up the daybed with my favorite twin sheet (actually deep-pocket enough to cover both mattresses), which Dora has managed to rip --- I guess I'll sew up the rent eventually, but for now I've just turned it to the back and covered the lot with the old couch pet cover, which does work well enough on the daybed. I'd washed it, too, quite thoroughly with Dr. Bronner's, because it was holding onto the doggy scent like nothing else I've ever experienced, but now it's fresh and clean, and the house does not smell so much like dog.
Still enjoying the freshness of the newly painted woodwork in here. This room used to be a complete tip, continually, but in the last year it's become the most pleasant room in the house, the place where I most want to spend time.
Today's agenda:
*dog walks
*essays for next week (I did get tomorrow's essay up by the end of the day yesterday)
*libretto
*maybe a look at the novel project I've been neglecting
*dinner out with the husband and a friend
Wearing today (I will change to go out in the evening):
*Secondhand Icebreaker merino (100%!) tee, bought February 2025, first real wear. I did cut out the men's crew neckline and crop the waist just a little, but have not touched the sleeves.
*Secondhand Garnet Hill cotton-modal lantern maxi, bought June 2024, first year of wear. I love this skirt, but it is getting to be too loose for me. The wide waistband is one of my favorite things about it, but now I have to fold it down to make it fit. I don't know that this is my loss of inches --- more likely it's the fabric stretching, and it could be solved by a hot wash and a spin in the dryer. I'll try that before I decide to move it along and replace it with a size down. Clothes that no longer fit really are exempt from the whole "wear it till it dies" rule that I have set for myself. I'm not going to keep trying to squeeze myself into too-small items OR rattle around in things that are too loose to fit properly. I do love this skirt, though, and would be loath to lose it without an exact replacement.
*Secondhand Birk Mayaris, bought April 2024, still in their first year of wear.
Half-dry hair.
A close-up of the graphic design on my gray-blue tee:
It is fun and funky, and I'm glad to have this tee to wear under and with various things in my closet. The fit is fairly slim and not bulky, and it is all merino, which is lovely. It'll be a great under-layer in cold weather, but it's also breathable and light enough for summer.
Anyway, this is comfortable and laid-back for a day when I'm not doing much, other than work at home. The projected high is 71F, still quite nice --- temps are supposed to drop overnight, however. Nothing below freezing, though, for the next week.
So I've got the day to decide what I want to wear out for the evening --- instead of the pub, for our last Thursday date night before Lent, we're going to the Mediterranean restaurant in Belmont, mostly because the food truck at the pub tonight is pizza, and I'm really kind of off pizza. It's just too much bread and cheese without actual substance. I eat a lot, but it doesn't fill me up. So we're going to go have some PROTEIN instead.
Meanwhile, the husband is on the phone arranging for the old Dodge truck he has just bought (a process that has taken almost a year, thanks to a lost title whose replacement got hung up first in Raleigh, then for about six months in the County Commission) to become the property of a woman from our parish who has no money and desperately needs a car. In case anyone wonders why I married this man, let me just say that this is the . . . fourth? . . . car he has given away to a person in need in the course of nearly 35 years. This one he didn't even get to drive. He had spent last weekend with the pastor of the cowboy church, who was the executor for the estate of the man who had owned the truck (all of which connection came to pass in the corner barber shop, which is also typical --- and OF COURSE the pastor of the cowboy church is involved), getting the title squared away. Then on his way home he ran into this woman in the grocery store where she was working. God basically said to him, You need to give her this truck. So that's what he's doing right now. Again, in case anyone wonders why I married him. We have had some fairly significant ups and downs in nearly 35 years of marriage, but this is who he is, and I am proud of him.
OK, well, this opera won't write itself, will it.
POST-WALK UPDATE:
Yes, I did write a few lines of that libretto, thankyouverymuch.
Here's how I actually presented myself in public, throughout the neighborhood, in company with Dora:
*Secondhand silk-cotton cardigan, bought February 2025, first year of wear.
*Half-updo hair with claw clip.
I am very happy with this cardigan, one of my most recent acquisitions. It's a good light neutral for me, what I'd call an oatmeal or an extremely pale taupe or maybe a champagne. It's not really yellowy, which is key. At any rate, it does nice things for my pink-toned coloring. AND it's a good weight for warmer weather, while being actually quite insulating in the cold. Silk is just another of those miracle fibers --- I'm looking forward to wearing this cardigan with my vintage 1990s April Cornell purple silk maxi dress during Lent. That ensemble might well be what I wear out for my anniversary March 10.
Speaking of Lent, I am heading into that long no-buy season. Less than a week away now! My aim is not to buy anything that's not an absolute necessity: groceries, toiletries that run out, etc. I do have some underwear that's wearing out, so I might possibly find that I have to replace it before Easter, but I'll do my best to get by even with that.
The whole no-buy thing works better for me this way than it does as a year-long commitment. I always, always end up failing at that kind of long-term resolution, and there are reasons why no-buy isn't really an answer to overconsumption. A no-buy period can be a useful reset, but if you don't somehow proactively rewire your habits, you're right back where you started when the period is over. I find myself doing rebound spending, and/or pre-emptive purchasing --- Lent is coming, oh no, buy all the things now. I'm really trying not to do that this week, mind you, but the temptation is there.
As with an extreme diet, this sort of absolute restriction addresses only half the existing problem --- if in fact you do have a spending/buying/overconsumption problem. I'm not sure I do, truly. Yes, it feels as though I buy a lot sometimes. I definitely get dopamine rushes from novelty and packages on my porch. I just like clothes and enjoy wearing them.
But . . . I don't have things I don't have space for. I don't own more than I use, even though at this point I use (by which I mean wear) things at a slower rate of repetition. There's a lot of acreage between minimalism and hoarder, and I'm actually somewhere on the minimal side of the middle. Small closets. Not a lot of free storage. Yes, I probably need to cull my underwear and nightwear bin, because things are wearing out, but otherwise . . . really, I think my wardrobe is pretty compact, without being pared down to a single capsule.
But let's say I do have a problem, and I decide to address it by imposing a no-buy. Well, okay. There are upsides to this. I'd do well to save some money, and if I'm not spending it on clothes or luxuries or extras of any kind, then there it is in my bank account and not someone else's. I'm impelled to be creative with the things I have (honestly not hard at this point). I'm impelled to practice gratitude, not acquisitiveness, and that's a good thing, too.
BUT. All my no-buy is doing is addressing a behavior. Behavior: buying stuff. Solution: stop buying stuff. The solution works for a while, but until I can identify and address what is driving the behavior to begin with, the solution will just be a matter of white-knuckling it --- and I won't be able to sustain it over the long term. It's not really an answer, any more than a super-restrictive crash diet is an answer to a weight problem. You can summon your willpower, but eventually it will give out, and then where are you?
So the other part of the equation is the challenge of building new habits, especially new ways of finding dopamine to run on. Just don't need any more dopamine is not exactly an answer. That's like saying, Just don't need any more food. Problem solved! There has to be some kind of positive action --- a new set of habits to replace the old ones, that somehow meet whatever need is driving the current problem without being destructive in some way. With food, it's a matter of rewiring your associations with it, so that it's not your emotional support, but the way you fuel your body --- and it's a matter of adding in positive things, such as exercise. With clothing . . . well, again, maybe it's cultivating some positive things, such as new combinations of existing items in the closet. Maybe it's setting yourself mini-capsule challenges, so that you let some clothing items rest while you wear others, and then you pivot to the things that you haven't been wearing, so that they feel fresher to you.
Of course, Lent is a little different in that the very act of denying yourself something is good for you --- but it's not meant to be all year. We don't live in perpetual Lent. But it is a season when you offer yourself to be changed and converted, not just to pause your normal proclivities for a while. So it's useful to think about how, in even this relatively trivial area of life, you might come out permanently changed on the other side, with more faith, more conformity to the mind of Christ, less attachment, or less disordered attachment, to material things, though they are good in themselves. Lent should be a time of discernment as well as penance, and a time of real conversion as well as self-mortification.
So I think to myself: If one of my penances is this no-buy, what will I learn from it? How will be changed by it? How will I not just do a major rebound of buying and spending in Easter Week (which in fact I did do last year . . .)? How will I develop more moderation --- given that just have more moderation is not really an actionable order?
I don't know the answers to any of these questions, but I intend to do my best to find them over the course of the coming season.
DATE NIGHT UPDATE:
*Secondhand Not Perfect Linen Smock midi dress in Emerald Green, bought November 2024. Wears in 2025: 5