The first bloom on the lupines I grew from seed last year.
We are home, and it is good to be here. The weekend was a whirlwind of activity and emotion, as we helped the Artgirl move across town to the apartment she'll be sharing with friends, not to mention all the graduation festivities. But we did get them graduated, and now . . . it's Tuesday.
A rare online glimpse of all four progeny, outside the Toyota Music Factory in Irving, Texas, on Sunday.
It was good to be with them all, but now we're home, and grateful to be here. The thought of going nowhere this coming weekend is very sweet. Our backyard looks like Cambodia, and there are many things to be done in the house, as well as essay-writing catch-up. It's also somehow, weirdly, almost the end of the Great Fifty Days of Easter, which I see slip away and wish I could hold onto (rather as the apostles probably wanted to hold onto the Lord Himself in His risen body). But time does rush forward, as graduations are apt to remind us. Soon it'll be Ascension Day, then Pentecost --- and then we're well and truly into the summer.
I didn't write any blog posts over the weekend, obviously, and I hardly photographed myself. Our hotel room was quite dark and not great for outfit shots, though I did get a couple. Suffice it to say that my travel capsule was well planned. The breakdown:
1. Friday travel/dinner/visiting: Beetroot Brooklyn, Crocs, champagne silk cardigan (pictured)
2. Saturday daytime/helping the Artgirl move: Iris Blue Sierra, Crocs, champagne silk cardigan for indoors in air conditioning
I like that cardigan tied, by the way --- it's big enough to tie, and doing so adds some nice waist definition.
3. Saturday evening/Baccalaureate Mass, President's Reception: Cinnamon Rose Leila, pink silk-rayon cardigan, Crocs (basically this outfit)
4. Sunday/graduation/lunch at the Brazilian steakhouse/evening at the TXabode: Emerald Green Smock, Crocs, pink silk-rayon cardigan
5. Monday/flights home: repeat of Friday's exact outfit
The one thing I packed that I never even took out of my backpack was my pair of Xero Jessie sandals. I might as well not have brought them --- it seemed too much trouble to change shoes. BUT I thought I had better have backups in case my Crocs broke, so I'm glad I took them, especially as they pack so flat that you don't even notice their presence in your bag. In fact, I put my backpack away last night without remembering to take them out, so I had better do that.
The two pairs of shoes I had ordered were here when I got home. I'm not sure about the Alegrias --- something about them feels a little weird, but I'm going to hang onto them for now and see if I wear them. If not: resale. The Art Company shoes I also bought, on the other hand, are a total winner. I will probably just wear sandals all day, but I do really like those shoes. They are insanely cute and comfortable, exactly what I have been searching for all this time.
Again, it feels wonderful not to be planning a travel capsule for any upcoming movements. My capsule: my whole closet. I can wear whatever I want without reference to packing or specific events. This is a beautiful thing. As fun as it is to plan and dress for things, you can have too much of that kind of fun after a while.
Today's agenda: recovery, basically. I do need to look at some essays for next week, but there's no particular hurry. I want to lift some weights, eat well but not too much, walk the dog, read, and not be stressed out. Eventually I want to do some major cleaning in rooms upstairs, but probably not this week. This week I'm going to do what I feel like doing and not much else. I have been reading E.F. Benson's frothy Mapp and Lucia series, which I had been meaning to read for years and never gotten to until now --- this is just fun escapist storytelling, about middle-aged women's social rivalries in a 1920s English village. My favorite character is Lucia's effete friend Georgie, who for a time worries that the widowed Lucia is going to want to marry him, and whose favorite word is tiresome, pronounced tarsome.
While I'm being grateful, let me just say how grateful I am for my house, which is good to come home to. Yeah, it's kind of a mess sometimes, and there are always things needing repair (a whoooooole list of things needing repair). But after a weekend in a hotel with some dampness issues, in a room on the ground floor where those issues were pronounced . . . gosh, I'm glad to be back in my light, airy house that doesn't not have dampness issues, but does not have dampness issues the way that hotel does.
We couldn't move rooms, because they were fully booked for the weekend, so we were stuck in a room with a very strange, unpleasant, and pronounced smell --- I found it difficult to relax and sleep, the smell was so pronounced (like wet carpet that had never really dried out all the way, though it did feel dry to the touch, but also sort of like a cat litter box). The hotel was otherwise decent and in the right location, and my mother and brother, upstairs, reported no such problem with their rooms, but I was glad to get out of there. I slept beautifully in my own bed last night, and the old-house smell that always hangs about here was music to my nostrils.
High of only 80F today --- warm, but not too warm for a dress with sleeves. I've been wanting to wear my NPL Mama dress, which I'd considered reselling but for now am not reselling. This is why I deliberate: once something is gone, it's gone, so I need to be really sure it's not serving me before I sell. The good thing about putting a dress in the outbox for a while is that when I get it out, it is as though I had gone shopping and bought something new. This week my well-traveled Sierra and Brooklyn are getting a rest, while I explore the rest of the closet and put on some things I haven't worn in a while.
Speaking of Brooklyn, the best thing I ever did was put those stitches in the bodices of my two Brooklyn dresses. I could wear Beetroot Brooklyn, all hot magenta, through three airports yesterday without feeling self-conscious about flashing anybody. I just felt fun and put-together, truly a great feeling to have. That dress is going into my rota of Default Perfect Travel Dresses for sure.
Wearing today (as promised and predicted):
*Secondhand Not Perfect Linen Mama dress (S) in Caffe Mocha, bought September 2024, last worn April 7. Wears in 2025: 8
THESE, friends, are the Mary Janes I've been looking for all my life. They are so adorable, but also comfortable, with a cork sole that's a lot more minimal than a Birkenstock footbed. The uppers are leather, so will give and mold to my feet, but there's plenty of toe room in those wide toe boxes. I generally wear a 39 in European sizing, and these are a 40, but the seller had indicated that they ran small. They're just about perfect for me.