First four-o'-clock blooms of the season. Come on, hummingbirds! I've seen one this year so far, but that was back in April. Now that things are really blooming, I'm ready to get buzzed again (so to speak). I used to put out hummingbird feeders, but then I read that the sugar water (which is essentially what the commercially-available "nectar" is --- sugar water with food dye) ferments fast in the sun and can get moldy as well, which makes them sick. So I've concentrated instead on simply having a lot of summer flowers. They seem not to be that picky. I've seen hummingbirds sipping at my hosta blooms before. But they really love red and pink flowers with trumpet blooms, so four-o'-clocks are perfect. These are plants I grew from seed . . . ten years ago? Fifteen? Once you have them, YOU HAVE THEM. They bloom the first year, in kind of a piddly puny little fashion that does not in any way indicate what you're going to have forever after, which is MONSTERS. Year after year they come up out of the ground like something intent on ruling the world, in shades of pink, yellow, and white. And hummingbirds love them.
On today:
*hair wash
*dog walks
*writing this book review (of which three paragraphs currently exist) so I can send it in by the end of the week
*looking to see what I'm supposed to be writing for next week on the Substack, because I have forgotten
*calling the Urgent Care, because apparently they called me about my Lyme test and I missed it
*cutting back the massive thorny rose whose canes are currently blocking the door to the crawl space under the house
*if I don't have Lyme, and maybe even if I do, going out to dinner because tonight is pub night, calloo callay UPDATE: Negative for Lyme. Double calloo callay.
Yesterday I dusted downstairs for the first time in a long time, paying particular attention to the tops of door frames and picture frames, which let me tell you, do gather the particulate detritus of time, yes they do. And I made bread. It's been a while since I last made bread, but I have this marble slab on my kitchen island now, and while really marble slabs are good for pastry (because they keep the butter chilled, I presume), I'm a lot more likely in the normal course of things to make bread than pastry.
This time I made bread that was about 2/3 King Arthur Unbleached Bread Flour and 1/3 milled rolled oats --- I have a canister of "old fashioned" oatmeal on the shelf, which can be rendered into flour in about a minute in the NutriBullet the husband bought to make smoothies in. I've been making bread my entire marriage --- that's 35 years, for the people in the back --- so at this late date I don't really measure anything. I know how it's supposed to look. I know what just about the right amount of butter is. Etc. I can make bread in my sleep. This turned out quite well, I must say. Oat flour renders a more crumbly loaf --- you would not necessarily want to use this for sandwiches --- but it's moist and delicious, especially hot with butter and peach jam, which was how we ate it at dinner last night.
If you are not a bread baker --- well, nobody has to make bread. It's cheaper to buy it than to make it yourself, generally. BUT it's a nice skill to have. Once you master basic bread, then you can make things like cinnamon rolls (I made some divine ones for Easter morning this year). There is just about nothing nicer than to have your house smell like baking bread. And it's honestly not hard. You need a solid two hours in your day when you can be kind of paying attention to the rise, but as long as you set a timer, or don't decide to go out and leave it or something, you're fine. I've long since lost the basic recipe, given to me by a friend when I got married, that I started with. But the King Arthur Flour website is full of good information, if you're interested. And flour will keep indefinitely in the fridge. That's where I keep mine --- in the fridge door --- to prevent any infestation of pantry moths. Sealed canisters can be good, but the fridge is pretty much failsafe in that regard. Even if the power goes out, no pantry moths are getting into your refrigerator.
I had better go ahead and wash my hair and get dressed, before the dog wakes up for good and aye. She is a late sleeper, and I probably have another good two hours, but I should get on with things anyway, while I'm thinking about it.
SLIGHTLY LATER
Wearing today:
*Wool& Brooklyn dress (S/Long) in Pacific, bought May 2023, last worn --- wowzers, May 9, over a month ago. Wears in 2025: 5
*Secondhand Xero Z-Trek sandals, year 1 of wear
Well, it was winter, then it was Lent, and only fairly late in the game did I put a stitch in the bodice of this dress. I think that stitch will change everything. I have often not packed this dress (though I love it) for events of any kind --- or if I packed it, I didn't wear it --- because I was afraid the bodice would gape, and that I'd be filmed giving a talk or a reading, or just be circulating around some reception, not realizing that half my bosom was on display. Now I will not fear that.
I really need to get over feeling that this is a revealing dress, because in actuality, unless you feel weird about elbows, it's not any more revealing than my two Fiona dresses. The skirt is a little less full, but it's not shorter. I know there are people who feel weird about knees, but I'm not one of them. I wear those Fiona dresses to church. Why I would feel any differently about this dress I'm not sure --- except that the bodice did used to gape, and it's hard to shake the feeling of being a little more exposed than I'm comfortable being, even in the privacy of my own home.
And I need to get over it because I love this dress. She maketh me to feel beautiful, yea, without any effort on my part. I love the (modified) neckline. I love the waist definition. I love the color. I love the dress-up/dress-down potential --- I have worn this dress to weddings, and I have worn this dress to knock around Norwegian cities. I have worn this dress on the plane. I have worn this dress to my daughter's art reception and to walk in the mountains with friends. At this point, pretty much all the dresses I own are favorite dresses, because otherwise I wouldn't still have them. But this one: yeah, a favorite.
I was also thinking again, as I took my obligatory selfie series in the bathroom mirror, about how much you can learn by taking pictures of yourself. It gets tiresome, I'll admit. I get very tired of myself. Even now, I am tired of the first-person pronoun, but it's hard to see how to get around using it here (I could adopt the royal "we," I guess, or else just be like Prince King Charles and say, "One gets very tired of oneself, doesn't one?").
ANYWAY, among other things, what one learns when taking daily photos of oneself is how to pose for photos. This is useful, so that when one is caught on camera, as one so often is when one isn't expecting it --- shoving a big hunk of cake down one's cakehole at a wedding reception, for example --- one can say, "Well, that isn't one's best angle, is it?" One knows from experience that one does have other angles, and that those other angles are largely what other people see.
And when one is asked to pose for a photograph, as one also so often is, one is armed with knowledge that enables one to pose in such a way that the resulting photograph will not cause one to cringe in shame. There are accounts on Instagram that devote themselves to teaching people how to pose flatteringly for a camera. One forgets just now what any of them are called, but they're there. They instruct one how to sit on a couch so that one's legs --- the closest thing to the camera --- don't look all gigantically out of proportion to the rest of one. They instruct one how to turn and angle one's body so that one is not presenting one's widest aspect to the camera.
This is one reason why one practices in the mirror and takes multiple poses. There are the more angled poses above, and then there is this outtake:
This is not a bad photo, per se, but it feels less interesting than other photos where there's more movement. And it's just . . . this barn is not that big, but it has turned its broadest side to the camera. Or one of its broadest sides. A full profile shot would be just as unflattering in its way. Angling the body simply means that the camera's eye, and therefore the beholder's eye, glances off edges rather than resting on wide surfaces. Any person of any size is going to appear to best advantage in a photo where that is the case.
And if you think that one does not angle one's body (even a little bit) and shift one's weight and tilt one's leg when one appears in photos, think again (also: shoulders back but not strained, ribcage lifted, no slumping). One absolutely does something like that, every single time one is asked to be in a photo. As a result, one hates being in photos a whole lot less than one used to hate being in photos.
OK, one has learned one's lesson. Prince King Charles is fairly unsustainable as a written persona. And it's time to walk the dog.