Continued visibility

I know, I know, I said I wouldn’t be posting so of course I’m posting. I was propelled by this post at Already Pretty.   Sal writes:

But here’s where I’m coming from: In my experience, vendors like Boden, Anthropologie, and ModCloth offer a few basics and classic items, but focus mainly on darling pieces that are absolutely brimming with personality. At least in the context of my own style, I find these pieces to be delightful but less-than-versatile. Unless I’m going for a pretty over-the-top look, I don’t generally employ more than one such item at a time, and that can be limiting. I prefer to work with garments that feel more like building blocks than stand-alones. I feel more artistic and creative when I feel like I’m making outfit soup from my own, relatively plain ingredients.

That’s exactly how I’m feeling this season.  Now that I’m much more aware of what I actually wear, and what I am happiest in, I realize that I like fairly plain clothes for exactly the reason Sal pinpoints.  This was my big style discovery this season.  I want great but resolutely basic clothes, with amazing fit but very little detailing, so that I can express myself and my style through color combinations and bold jewelry.   One of my regrets about not shopping for clothes this season s that, perhaps thanks to the color-blocking trend, there are so many wonderful, plain, building-block pieces.   Or maybe they are always there, I just haven’t noticed them until now because I’ve only just realized that they are exactly what I want.

I feel excited and even relieved about this discovery.  I know what I want to wear!  I have a delightful crazy print dress.  The bodice and skirt are printed with cats  (same designer, same fabric, different style — my dress is cut like this one, and the trim at the waist, wrists, and neck is printed with leaves).  It made me so happy in the fitting room that I had to buy it, but I only wear it 3-4 times a year — now I know why.   I know why I thought I craved a leopard print something all last season, but never actually bought anything.  I know why I get frazzled and uncomfortable every time I shop with my sister-in-law.  Her style is completely different, and she keeps trying, with her forceful personality that swells to 10 times its normal size when she shops, to put me in fringes, batwing sleeves, and ruffles.  (She also keeps telling me I need to minimize the line of my shoulders to look more feminine.  I have wonderful, lovely, strong shoulders that are exactly the right width to balance out my no-nonsense square jaw and solid, capable, athletic thighs and give my figure a gesture of waisty-ness.  My shoulders will not be minimized, thank you very much.  She wishes she had such grand shoulders.)

Speaking of elegant and plain garments that take accessories very well…. I saw a woman wearing this dress at a party this weekend, and she looked stunning.   I don’t like it much on the website, but in person, on her, it was the picture of elegance.  She wore a heavy, multi-strand bead necklace with it that somehow minimized the choking effect of that high neckline.  If I hadn’t recognized it as a Talbot’s dress,  I would have guessed that it was very very expensive.

Happy visible Monday.

 

Visibility and other episodes

Not disappearing is trending!

Oh so much has happened in the last week, including a very meaningful and tearful few minutes with an exceptionally understanding and gracious Orthodox rabbi who understood me about prayer and difficulty and doubt and was just lovely in every way.  Instead of trying to make it all better and explain that everything was God’s plan and that prayer was beautiful, he said (approximately) “Yes, it’s hard.  And I don’t know why things happen the way they do, and I don’t want to know and I don’t need to know, because I’m not God.  We all struggle with praying, and you’re pissed off at God right now, so tell Him you’re pissed off, and pray that way.”  This man isn’t my congregation’s rabbi, more’s the pity, but he was in my path at the right time.  And I’m not pissed at God, just sad sometimes and feeling like He’s left me out of something.  But I like to think that God might have put this rabbi in my path last week, and so is loving me in that way.  And I may talk to Him about being sad and left out over Rosh Hashanah.

What else?  A colossal fight with Daniel.  We are getting nastier in our fights.

A new dog!  We have a rescued dog in our house.  Rough going the first few days (see previous graph), but smoothed out now, I think.  I am going to write about the dog. I resisted it for so long, because a dog was so clearly Not a Second Child.  A dog is what you get when you are done having children.  But I’m okay with it now.  And Milo is over the moon.  This morning he said that now that he has a dog, he understands all the sacrifices Daniel and I have made for him.  His baby nickname was noodle-pie (not really, but I don’t want to reveal his real nickname on the blog).  He said “Percy (the dog) is my noodle-pie.”

A fabulous new cocktail.  I didn’t know I liked gin, but last night I had three of these.

A private yoga lesson today.  Just the thing to help one recover from a colossal fight with a husband, a new dog, and three gin cocktails.

I expect I’ll write again on the other side of Rosh Hashanah.  Happy 5772 everyone.  May it be a very sweet new year for all of us.

 

Pretty as a Plimpton

Today, I am thankful for my commenters.  I am often thankful for you, but I feel it intensely now.  Rosh Hashanah is next week, and I am already wavering.  I’m brewing a post on reckonings, and coping strategies, and small moments of grace and readying myself for more buckets of tears.  But one thing that’s going to get me through it is knowing that Nicole, Sister, Belette, Neighbor, and Susan and my other readers (even if you don’t comment) are rooting for me.  When I feel low and small and lonely, I’m going to think of you and know that you wish me well, and that will make all the difference.

This is one of the prettiest pictures I’ve seen in a long time.

I mean, how lovely, right?  And she almost looks like someone who isn’t a movie star, someone who you might see at a party, or in the grocery store, on a very, very, very good day for her.

I am taken with this photo because, like Martha Plimpton, I have a face that looks about as broad as it is long.  In good photos of me, my cheeks and nose and chin appear round and knobby (in a good way!) just like hers do here.  My hair looks better short and sporty than long and Hollywood-y.   And we’re both close to turning 41 (I’m closer).

Martha Plimpton looks like an almost-41-year-old on the best day ever — but it’s the kind of best day that I can imagine having.  I can never imagine looking like most celebrities.  But if, for six months, or a year, you had enough sleep, fantastic healthy food, amazing and fulfilling physical activity; if you were happy in love, and had just done something amazing in your public life; if someone else was handling all the details of life for you at the moment, and you found the best dress ever and it was on sale, and your dearest friend had just told you the best joke ever, and your partner was waiting for you with stars in his (or her) eyes… if all that happened, don’t you think you could look like your version of this (adjusting for size, frame, coloring, style — maybe you look like Elisabeth Moss or Alfre Woodard or Camryn Manheim — I’m going for a mood and a feeling of almost attainability)?  I like to think that.

Elevated

I know — I’ve skipped two poems for Wednesday.  It’s been that busy.  Last night I dreamed I was working at the law firm where I had been a summer associate many years ago.  When I woke up, I realized that the dream made perfect sense: I’ve been working lawyer’s hours (almost).

Today I dreaded going to work.  I was tired, uninspired, lacking in confidence, entirely droopy.  I have a bad haircut.  I’ve been (way) off my A-game sartorially (with one brilliant exception last week).  Everything seems impossible and exhausting.  As I was preparing to leave the house I realized that, as much as I wanted to wear slipper-like flats at work, I needed armor.  So I wore these instead:

And it worked!  In these shoes, I am a giantess.  I am a force.  I stomp around and get stuff done.  My mood improved considerably.

 

 

Closet archive — all season long

Today I am thankful that the intensity of work has let up just a little, just for a short time, so that I have enough of my brain to blog.  This project I keep mentioning is weighing on me — it’s bringing up all of my shortcomings and all of my fears and it won’t be over for several more months.  So I just have to breathe and think and write through it, and also (importantly) think of my next work incarnation, in which I won’t have to do projects like this one again.  I am superb at work that builds up my own organization’s resources, very bad at work that requires me to interact with other people and engage in multi-organizational politics and networking.   This project is some of the former, but for the next several months (yes, months — through the end of the year at least), it’s mostly the latter.

When I came back from vacation — which was barely one month ago but feels like six — I considered testing my willpower and creativity and not buying any more new clothes.  I came home with two new dresses (one is an evening/cocktail LBD, and I can’t find a good photo of it online), a cardigan, and a pair of shoes.  I spent more than I intended on costume jewelry at the Tate Modern and Victoria & Albert museum gift shops, and much more than I intended on face creams, serums, and masks of extravagant promises, and just felt a little queasy at the thought of shopping more.  But then I saw these dresses (yes, those are links to the Talbot’s website), and thought about how nice it would be to have a few more top-notch professional outfits in my closet, and how nice it would be to reward myself handsomely for a work project milestone (reached last week), and how nice it is to find professional clothes that one could wash, rather than dry clean.

Last week, however, instead of buying new dresses, I bought new tires and new transmission fluid, and thus will not be buying much else this fall.  (Okay, tights.  I’m going to splurge on reversible tights from Spanx and kind-to-squishy-tummy tights from Commando.)

As it happens, because I tend to keep clothes for a long time, because the clothes I keep are the ones that accommodate my middle-aged (there, I said it.  I am middle aged) shape shifting, I have at least one representative piece from most of fall’s major trends already in my closet.

1. Lace

I bought the dress on the left in March.   The contrast beige you see is the under slip of the dress.  The dress itself is of an animal print meets lace hybrid.   I found it, forlorn, on the sale rack, 85 percent off.  I tried it on and loved it, then wondered afterwards if I really should have bought it since it wasn’t on my spring shopping list.  I wore this dress last week to a major event.  James, my electric flower, looked at me and said, “Tonight, you’re really killing it.”   I bet a got a dozen other compliments on the dress — none as thrilling.  It’s not really a work dress, but I don’ t care.  I love this dress.

I bought the skirt in December 1997.  I hated the job I had at the time and was counting the days until I could start a new one in the new year.  I saw this skirt in Glamour magazine, and bought it the next weekend.  I wore it to every party I went to that winter.  Then it had a long hibernation in my closet.  I pulled it out last year when the lace trend was beginning.  I don’t wear it that often, but it ticks the on-trend box.

2. Red, 3. Color blocking/”mono blocking”

The red sweater is from… late 2008, I think.  A Hanukkah present from Daniel.  Daniel also bought me the skirt in fall of 2000, if I remember correctly.  I acquired a lot of clothes that fall.   Daniel and I married towards the end of 2000, and  fancied that these clothes were my trousseau.  The lining of this skirt is ripped to pieces, and the fit is not completely flattering (it hits at the fullest part of my tummy, and the skirt itself is made of very thick boiled wool, so it’s not a great silhouette), but I can never bring myself to give it away.  I don’t love the skirt, but I love the elements of it, the color, the zipper, and I like the skirt enough to keep it.  Worn with anything else, these tick the “color blocking” box; worn together, I have a red dress, or am “mono-blocking” (a term surely coined by Lucky magazine).

3.  Giant sweater/cocoon shape

Another gift from Daniel, from fall two years ago.  I was searching for a sweater coat, and he found this one.  It’s hard to wear — I find sweater coats generally hard to wear.  I never know whether to treat them like sweaters (e.g. wear them inside) or like coats (take them off).  They seem sufficiently important to wear inside — it’s what the rest of the outfit depends on.  But they’re bulky and hot — usually too hot to wear inside.  But this year I’ll make more of an effort to wear this more.  Unfortunately, I had to pull the plug on shopping before buying the slim black trousers that would have made an excellent match with this.

I could go on.  I have another big sweater coat, a hand-me-down from my sister-in-law.  I have a long, dramatic black coat (more dramatic than warm or practical).  I have a mustard colored cardigan that looks great on me.  I have two jewel-toned sweaters that look less great on me (jewel tones are not the best for me.  I’m more rainbow-flower-crayon — elementary school colors).  I have red jeans and red corduroys.  I have black wide-legged pants, flat lace-up oxfords, and two pairs of black pumps (2.5 inch and 3.5 inch heels).  I have a polka dot scarf and polka dot stockings (I wish I had a polka dot blouse or dress — oh, I do have a polka dot blouse, but not in the style I wish for).  I have two black pencil skirts.  I have a couple of mid-calf length skirts.  I have color, I have neutrals.

I have, in fact, no need to shop.   I wonder if this post will stop me once my credit card balance is tamed in October (or November… just about when the sales are starting).

 

 

Thanks, WordPress

I hit “publish” 30 seconds ago and got this message from WordPress:

“This is your 221st post. Fantastic!”

No, NOT fantastic.  That’s 221 posts I’m very proud of but wish with all my heart that I had never, ever had to write.

(Of course, when I publish this post, I’ll likely get the same damn message!  I can manage to find that funny.  I can manage.)

Live-blogging my life

Usually when I write, I have a narrative before I start, and writing is transcribing a story that I’ve already finished.  But this post started in one place and then ended somewhere else, so it’s muddled and ungoverned and unwieldy.  But I think it’s useful to show how writing helps direct thinking, and leads to thoughts that would otherwise have not existed — it’s useful to show myself that, particularly on my unexpected return to more regular blogging. 

Today I am thankful that all the work I have done, with help from my amazing commenters and others (but, really, mostly my amazing commenters), to be aggressive, even ravenous, about the joys I have and worry less about the ones that are forever closed to me has paid off.  (Can I just pause to say that it’s very hard work, and I know that because I really really didn’t want to type “forever” in that last sentence.  I wanted to sneak in a little Pandora-like parenthetical “forever (for now)” so that forever wouldn’t really be forever.  But, alas, it is).

(Has anyone noticed that when I write about secondary infertility and its emotional upheavals, I sandbag my sentences with commas and parentheses?  I divert, I shore up, I am the opposite of Hemingway.)

I know that work has paid off  because I tested it today.  Early this afternoon, after I had met an important deadline for this very stressful work project, I was I noodling around on the internet, and I did a Google search to find out whether ICSI is correlated with health problems in the children who are conceived through that procedure.   (ICSI is the fertility treatment the doctor recommended and we didn’t do.)   Why?  What follows is the ostensible reason.  It’s not a good reason.  At the school bus stop this morning I saw a friendly acquaintance who I believe is several years older than me; her husband appears to be Daniel’s age or older.  They have a daughter who goes to Milo’s school and a younger son, and on occasion I have wondered if their son has a cognitive impairment.  Notice all the assumptions piling up here.  Given what I assume (there’s another one) to be their ages, I assume (again) that there was a fair amount of medical intervention to bring their children into existence.   And so I wondered if maybe the child was conceived using ICSI, and if maybe ICSI is correlated with cognitive difficulties.  It’s not.

Oh when I write that out, it just seems so pitiful and shameful and small.  Here’s what I think now.  I think I saw my friendly acquaintance, who did have a second child at whatever age, with a husband older than Daniel who apparently has come to grips, as Daniel never quiet could, with the rigors of child raising when most people are retiring, about to take her sweet, happy son to play in the park near my house.  I was racing to work, not the park.  I don’t have a younger child to play with.  And I am still sad about it.  And so I wanted to make her picture a little darker.  I wanted to have a reason not to want so much what she got and what I don’t have.  And thus, the Google search.

When I dreamed up this post, I didn’t think it would go in this direction.  I thought I would talk about how I played with fire (“stabbed myself with a red-hot poker” was the image I intended to use), but then was able to come out of it and stabilize myself without a lot of drama.  I was full of upbeat talk to myself when I finished my Google roulette.  I knew it was foolish to do what I did, but I also noticed myself catching myself before I fell.  I was all set to write, “I know this seems like stabbing myself with a red-hot poker, and then applauding myself for my first-rate rapid-response emergency medicine skills.  But stress+Google+me can equal a carelessly wielded red-hot poker, and since both stress and Google will be part of my work life for a while, I might as well be superlative at first aid.”  But I don’t know if that’s true anymore.

This is my life.  I am forever subject to these interruptions.  They won’t ever go away.  I will manage them better, and then I’ll see through my own subterfuges, and I’ll learn that way, and then manage that better, but I will never be completely free from the need to manage.

I fear I will be managing much more.  A few years ago we rented our basement apartment to a lovely young man.  About a year ago, his girlfriend moved in.  Today she emailed me to say they are getting married on Sept. 18th, and would like to get married in our backyard.  I said yes, of course, congratulations, how lovely.

Who gets married with 17 days notice?  Members of the armed forces who are about to be sent overseas, and want full spousal benefits for their beloved partners.  People whose immigration status is tenuous, and need the protection of an American spouse.  Gay people long-denied the right to marry who don’t want to wait another minute.  Our tenants are not any of these people (well, the girlfriend could possibly be a Canadian, but I don’t think so).

Who else?  People who need health insurance as soon as possible.  Our tenants could be that.  It could be that one of them is about to leave a job and needs health insurance.  People who just don’t see the point of all the drama and wedding fol-de-rol, and want a fast simple way to be married.  Our tenants do seem like folks who march to their own drummer, so that’s possible.

But you know what I think?  I think she’s pregnant.  I think a pregnant woman who is not me lives under my roof.  I think I might have to face the possibility of a baby living in my basement.  I think I will have to fight off fantasies that they will decide to give the baby to us (in exchange for rent?!).  I think I will find baby clothes in my washing machine that don’t belong to my baby.  I think Daniel will have no idea that this might be troubling to me, and I think he will react badly if he does have an idea.  I do not like this one bit.  This seems like very much to ask of me — but no one is asking.  This seems a bit beyond my psychological first aid skills, amazing though they are.

A bad thing happened to me, and it keeps happening in small versions.   When I started typing that sentence, I thought that my bad thing was unique because continuous on a small scale.  But by the end I believed that many bad things  are experienced as continuous.  We are all only incompletely over it.  We are all never completely free from the need to manage.