Evening light, storm incoming --- though not fast enough to stop the people shooting off fireworks in the neighborhood, terrifying my dog out of her tiny mind. It was not a great night, but she did settle eventually down, and we did get some sleep.
This morning: up and ready for Mass. We're through all the big solemnities and feasts of the summer, the final reverberations of Eastertide like breakers before you push out past them, into the open and featureless sea. There's Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, which is also the Viking's birthday, but otherwise nothing much until mid-August and the Assumption.
The other day I retrieved from my sales outbox a linen-blend maxi skirt that hadn't sold.
Wearing today:
*Secondhand Christopher&Banks linen-blend maxi skirt, bought . . . 2021? Early 2023? I can't remember. Let's just say that this is in its third year of wear, although honestly in all the time I've had it, it's been worn less than it's been not-worn. First it was too small, so that I could barely zip it up. Now it's kind of too big, and sits low on my hips. And I've kept trying to sell it, but it doesn't seem to want to go away, so here we are. I paid about $10 for it to begin with, $15 at the most, so it won't be hard to drive the price-per-wear down into the negatives, even given all the non-wear.
*Secondhand Not Perfect Linen tank, year 1 of wear
*Thrifted Crocs sandals, year 2 of wear
I love this pale tonal combination --- it's worth having hung onto the skirt, just to pair it with this lighter-natural tank and these bronze-y sandals. I guess this outfit is very coastal and beachy, but anyway, it feels like summer without feeling too white or bright.
I do need something for my shoulders in church, so:
I might have worn my longline champagne-colored linen-rayon cardigan, to keep things completely tonal, but I have been looking for occasions to wear this silk-cotton kimono, bought last year with credit I won in a drawing at a Trades of Hope online party. The colors are ocean-ish enough to work --- I feel as though I'm wearing sea glass over sand here.
The nice thing about this base outfit is that I can wear it into the fall. It's light but not white, so could read as not entirely summery if I needed it to. A change of cardigan and shoes, and it becomes a transitional outfit. Add boots and a heavier cardigan (and maybe a thermal under-layer), and welcome to winter.
I'm also enjoying that everything I'm wearing, except the kimono, which was a fair-trade purchase to aid anti-human-trafficking initiatives, is secondhand. Take that, fashion industry, with your slave labor and your global waste.
Anyway, it's about time to take out the dog, who refused to set foot outside the door late last night for her customary bedtime potty break. Love the 4th of July. Love it. Love it. You love to see it starting on the 20-freaking-8th of June.
ANYWAY. Jesus, I trust in You.
*I STAND CORRECTED
Today is the great feast of Sts. Peter and Paul --- name day of Fr. Paul Shanley of Belmont Abbey, and the 50th anniversary of the ordination to the priesthood of Fr. David Brown, ordained at St. Peter's Basilica by Pope St. Paul VI.
So, a great day after all.
Not that any day in Ordinary Time can't be a great day, but I was thinking we were all out of solemnities for the time being.
OTHER STUFF . . .
Finished reading Virginia Woolf's The Waves and thinking what to read next. Something else brain-stretching, or maybe all 33 of Ngaio Marsh's Roderick Alleyn mysteries again . . . or Barbara Pym . . . or Gaudy Night, or something else purely fun? Who can tell? I don't know what I want to read.
ALSO
As hot as it's been and is likely to get, and as I've concluded that I need to lay aside my Sierra dresses for slightly cooler weather (or mountain hiking), I've washed out my Aegean Teal Maggie dress, which I last regularly wore, as a dress, back in the winter, for some summer around-the-house wear. I've been sleeping in that dress, having kind of gone off the whole swing-dress thing, but again: it's hot. I need a simple t-shirt dress to toss on. Good thing I have a simple t-shirt dress to toss on. That might be what I toss on tomorrow --- who can tell? That dress is my favorite Wool& color, and despite being rather banged up and much mended, she's still wearable. And on her own with a pair of sandals she'll just be floaty and cool, and I won't mind the swing-dress thing so much.
Even though we're looking at a somewhat cooler week this week --- low 90s, high 80s Farenheit --- I think this is a good move. This would possibly be a good week to wear my Caffee Mocha Mama dress, too, with its 3/4 sleeves. We'll see.