It's been a little minute since I took a seasonal window view. How things have changed in the last few weeks --- look at the sun in the new leaves of Miriah's weeping tree, over there across the way. High of 70F today, absolutely perfect.
And all I have to do between now and this evening is work. I say that like it's a good thing, because it is. I'm within sight of the finish line for this book chapter, and I also need to run a careful eye over a friend's book manuscript (fortunately it's poetry, and a short book) to write an endorsement for the cover. All this I can do while sitting in the sun.
Choir practice tonight at 6:45 --- I'm going to put some soup on in the crockpot, and we'll have a late, light supper when we both get home, around 8 p.m.
I think I have everything I need for tomorrow's Holy Thursday dinner before Mass: some bone-in chicken thighs, makings for haroset, vegetables, flour for unleavened bread. The husband will get wine. I am still going to need to shop for Easter dinner, because Aldi was out of any sort of lamb, and in any case, I never buy strawberries (our usual dessert) until right before I'm going to use them. My hope is to get all this work knocked out so that I'm not stressing about it while also stressing about groceries. Not that I plan to stress that much, but it would be nice just to have some time free and clear to concentrate on the feast and nothing else.
Have just sent Easter candy to progeny with fixed addresses --- the one on the move is rather out of luck, I'm afraid.
Wearing today:
*Wool& Sierra dress (XS) in Iris Blue, bought January 2025, last worn April 12. Wears in 2025: 19
*Very old thrifted Eddie Bauer cotton cardigan, second decade of wear
*Secondhand Birk Mayaris, second year of wear
And again. Sierra, we can't keep meeting like this. This is the first time I've paid the default Iris Blue Sierra with the default Lenten cardigan --- I kind of assumed I didn't like those shades of purple together. Turns out that instead, I kind of do like those shades of purple together. I hope I remember this when Advent rolls around, as it inevitably will (and faster than I think . . . though it seems a million years away right now).
No idea right now what I actually put on my outfit plan for today. This is what I felt like wearing, so here we are. (Oh, yeah, I thought I'd wear my Grape Wine Smock dress . . . maybe I will change into it for choir practice, since that's in the church).
I keep noting the degree to which the fabric of this dress has relaxed since I first put her on, on the second of January this year.
You can see how, straight out of the package, it pulled across the back. You can also see that, on this first wear, it's shorter than it is now. I almost packed it up and sent it back. But I didn't, and here we are.
At this stage, after nearly five months of very continuous wear, the pull across the back is greatly reduced. Yeah, it could still be even less, but then the dress would be a lot more voluminous all around than it is, and I think I prefer less volume. The pockets might have lain flatter in a larger size, but at this point, if they stick out at all, it's probably because I've had my hands in them, not because the fabric is pulled across my hips.
I kept the dress in this size mostly because I have seen just how much the same dress can stretch out. Looking back at photos from 2023, in the months before I dyed my original dress, I note that already a dress whose hemline had initially hit above my knees had become a midi-length dress, with the hemline just below my knee. The armholes had stretched out a lot. And I wasn't maltreating that dress. I wasn't hanging it on hangers or washing it a lot --- though I did wash it in hot a few times and tumble-dry it to try to get it to shrink again.
And I am really not sorry I kept the dress in this size, because it continues to relax to fit my body better. I hope it doesn't just keep going and going --- sizing down, I thought and still think, gives me something of a limit. I love the fabric and style, but I don't want to wind up with another tent!
Meanwhile, this dress has never felt tight or constricting, even brand-new. It's always been comfortable.
Anyway, I have no idea what kind of review I'm giving for the Wool& Sierra dress --- yeah, it's a great dress, but look out!
Going through my older style albums is always illuminating. You just forget what you've worn, which is sometimes a good thing (oh, my, I thought that was a good idea??), but sometimes it is helpful to be reminded of how you looked then, versus how you look now. One thing I notice is that although I have not actually lost much weight in the last two or three years, I have lost a good bit of bloating or belly fat, and that is encouraging. I think my clothes are fitting better now than they did last year or the year before, in subtle but important ways --- and I do mean, largely, the same clothes I'm currently wearing. It's good to have some visual confirmation that numbers on the scale mean less than body composition. While I'm not about to be a female body builder, I think I have built some more muscle mass to replace fat. I think my bloating issues are better, though I don't really know why. No, my stomach is not flat, but it's flatter than it was. I feel better in just about anything I put on than I did two years ago. Again, all of this is very subtle, but looking back at older photos, I notice it.
ETA: This might even be true since January. I have not weighed myself in a while, because that gets discouraging (numbers don't budge much), but things like walking with the weighted vest, lifting weights kind of on the regular, a little bit, and generally working more movement into my day are maybe beginning to pay off in terms of lean muscle mass and fat loss. I don't really need to be skinnier, just leaner and fitter within the parameters of my particular body type. And stronger. And better at balance. And everything that might prevent me from waking up helpless and saying to myself, "How did I get here?" I might very well find myself helpless one day, and in that day I will have to accept it as a sanctifying cross. But today is not that day. Today it seems prudent to me to do what I can to preserve the health and strength I have, as a gift I've been given and charged with tending.
All of that encourages me to pick up some weights, which I haven't done at all this week (other than wearing my weighted vest to walk). Every day that I do something oriented toward strength and mobility and balance is a good day. I saw an Instagram post, yesterday or the day before, about a 68-year-old woman climbing a ladder to change a lightbulb, and saying that neither her mother nor her grandmother at the same age could safely have done such a thing. This is . . . only 8 years older than I am right now. The thought that I couldn't safely and competently climb up on my kitchen counters to clean the tops of the cabinets --- a thing I do more often than I climb a ladder, but in the same universe of activities --- is a little scary. Maybe I wouldn't do it at 98 . . . but I hate to think of a time when I could not do most of the things I take for granted now.
Yeah, so, totally, we're picking up the weights. We're standing on one foot, then the other, to put our shoes on. We're sitting on the floor and getting up again. We simply are not going to stop doing these things, because once you stop doing them, it's a lot harder to start again.
And we're going to walk the dog, because a walk in the sunshine is good for anybody's soul.
PS: I'm still continuing my Lenten purple penance, but this is an interesting take on dressing for Spy Wednesday.
LUNCHTIME UPDATE
ALMOST DONE with this book chapter. Over the word limit, trying to tie it off. So close I can taste it.
So I'm taking a little break. Just hand-washed some small items, underwear and my Maggie dress (which I've been sleeping in, but might rotate back into wear as the weather warms up more), and hung them out on the line. It's so hard to decide sometimes what I do and don't feel like wearing --- and I love that Aegean Teal color so much. I wish Wool& would make more things in it, like a Sierra, for example. They do make an Aegean Teal Brooklyn, but I have two Brooklyns, and I'm not sure I would want another crossover-bodice dress like that. Of course, I'm not sure I wouldn't. I'm really not sure about anything!
ALSO
I had excluded underwear from my Lenten no-buy, which is fortunate, because the elastic is pulling away from the last of my favorite black bike-short pair, which was getting to be a little big anyway. It's just no fun to have your shorts continually slipping down under your dress, and having to find some secluded spot where you can hike them back up again unobserved. I have liked these Understance bike shorts, of which I originally had three pairs in "nude" and three pairs in black. I've worn them in continuous rotation for about two years, but by now they've all lost their elastic, which was glued around the waist rather than stitched, and I have not had time to stitch it back. I can wear these under tights and leggings, which hold them up, so I won't be tossing them, necessarily, but I really need something better to wear under summer dresses.
So, I have one pair of Huha bike short underwear, which I like a lot. Huha's deal is that they have some kind of mineralized lining in the crotch which is supposed to be antimicrobial and better for your intimate health, blah blah blah. No idea whether that is true. I do like these modal shorts, which are much sturdier than the Understance ones (elastic sewn into a proper waistband, for one thing), and provide a little more smoothing under my clothes. This last aspect I definitely appreciate.
The whole reason I started wearing bike-short underwear, aside from hiking in dresses and not wanting to flash people behind me on the trail, was that this way you don't get panty lines under knits. I do have some regular cheap cotton Hanes briefs that I wear under linen dresses, where lines aren't an issue --- I've had these for at least four years and don't foresee replacing any of them any time soon. They came in big packs, of which I think I bought two, and they're in great shape to have been so inexpensive. They also dry surprisingly fast, for cotton.
Which brings me to the one thing I dislike about my Huha bike shorts: they are thick, and they take a relatively long time to dry. There's no wash-them-out-tonight-to-wear-tomorrow with these bike shorts. They work okay if you have enough pairs of underwear that you can go without wearing this pair for a couple of days, and they do dry faster in the sun, but they are not totally ideal for travel, for example. Okay, but not ideal. I like everything else about them, but this is a big caveat.
So I bought, experimentally, a pair of wool bike-short undies, the cheapest ones I could find on Amazon (I know, I know, not ideal, but you do what you need to do sometimes). I want to see how these perform as compared to both the Understance shorts --- which I'm not going to spend money to replace in kind --- and the Huhas. If I like these, and especially if they're as quick-drying as my other wool items, I might buy one more pair (they were about $45), so that when I travel I can just take two pairs of this kind of underwear and rotate them, washing the pair I take off immediately. Depending on what else I pack, I could also take cotton briefs --- or not, if all I take with me are knit dresses.
I even forget the name of the brand I bought. I don't have great hopes for its longevity, actually, but at some point maybe I'll buy some in a better make. I just wanted another pair of black bike-short underwear fast, because I am wearing these things almost daily --- just wearing my plain ol' Hanes when I wear linen.
OK, back to thinking big thoughts about the divine imagination. You can see how I might need a palate cleanser from time to time. That this afternoon's palate cleanser is underwear is just your especial luck.
AND at 2:30 this afternoon, I sent off that book chapter, so hooray. I'm sure there will be edits, maybe major ones, but this part at least is DONE.
PRE-CHOIR UPDATE:
Learning Beethoven's "Hallelujah Chorus" from "Christ on the Mount of Olives" on. the. fly. here. I really want to sing this! I think the regular choir has been practicing it for a while, but I hope I can sing along.