sunday morning

[dragonlady7]

I feel very cute, I'm wearing these great Lunapads boyshorts and a unicorn-screenprinted sleep crop-top bra thing from Torrid and a black terrycloth bathrobe, but Dude laughed at my outfit and said it was "quite a look", so I'm not letting that deter me but understand, my life is a great trial. I did learn long ago that while Dude can be relied upon occasionally for useful outfit feedback, most of the time he is a complete ignoramus about fashion. I mean, so am I, so odds are quite good that I look like an idiot, but I feel like a girl from a rom-com so I'm just going to pretend, and hold my oversized mug and stare dreamily out the window, and such.

(Actually I'm going to sit here until my hands recover a little from doing the dishes, and then I'm going to finish doing the laundry and begin a minor tidying of the house, since I believe, but have no evidence, that the Farm-Fam is coming through tonight on their way back from Hell the Midwest. (One would think one would text one's imminent hosts upon departure, but one would think that not knowing my family. I mean, we're great communicators on a holistic scale, but holy cats, we Do Not keep one another informed of immediate events. I can't even tell you how often we've had dinner and said "oh couldn't Middle-Little make it?" and everyone has shrugged and revealed that they assumed someone else would tell her it was occurring. Though about one time out of five, someone did tell her and she just blew us off, so. Like. Shrug.)

I have not been able to do any work on the Mammoths Novel this weekend, ever since I realized I've got to cut literal weeks of work. But it's been hard going for a while, and that's why, so. I need to do that. I was going to put up the second part today, so we'll see if I do; if not, it'll be a Monday Morning special. I have no idea what time works better for readers; it's all subject to change I guess.

I did do some sewing last night, and in the process determined that my embroidery machine is emphatically Not Fucking Working, so maybe I'll attempt one more small thing and then I'm just going to hand-embroider my mother something completely fucking lame for her Christmas present. She just wanted "a sample of my embroidery" and fuck you, Mom, you gave me a tambour frame two years ago and I wasn't able to teach myself how to do it and nobody local knows what the fuck that is and YouTube tutorials are fucking useless, and my sisters gave me an embroidery machine that I've spent a year and a half swearing at without once accomplishing an actually-pleased-with-the-result project, and so you're going to get a goddamn handkerchief I've hand-embroidered with a single word because that's the only thing I can reliably do and I've been doing it for years and it's boring. SO THERE.

But I succeeded in making tiny drawstring "His" and "Hers" banjo-pick bags, because Dude thought it would be funny and I figured it was a good way to use the built-in text on the machine to make sure my issue isn't the third-party design software I've been using. (It isn't! It's the machine itself, which just doesn't fucking work.)

On the new phone front, I can't import my contacts until I get the transfer cable from Amazon on Monday (again, supposed to be in the box, wasn't, can't be purchased locally, fantastic!) but I'm having fun with the camera and most of it's in my Instagram stories, so.

It supposedly had a slow-mo and time-lapse feature in the video camera, but it only has the former, not the latter, so that's irritating. Maybe I can download an app; I really want to make time-lapse videos, and I have assembled still shots to make them in the past, but it requires waaaaaay more video-editing expertise than I have or can easily get, it turns out. In past years I was able to teach myself things like that, but I am so profoundly stupid lately, I can't even get through reading the directions. It's a shame, but.

I managed to text my sister by finding her phone number on my old phone and typing it into my new phone. Fantastic. She's still stuck in Chicago, her mother-in-law is more or less physically preventing them from leaving the house because she's constitutionally incapable of giving a shit about the fact that they have a 12-hour drive in front of them. I hate that woman, I really do; the reason I didn't visit my own family for the entire month of December is that she was supposed to be visiting and I try to avoid her. (She, last-minute, didn't even come, which is how she operates. Fuck you if you have needs or boundaries, she's just going to ignore them.)

I would like to sew myself something just for fun today, but I doubt I'll actually do that.

And oh, my wireless Bluetooth ear pod things are terrible. They have great sound quality, but it's very hard to turn them off (they like to just... be on and drain their battery, which wouldn't matter if the battery was a lot but it's really not), and once you've turned them off, re-pairing them to the phone is a fucking nightmare, and when you wear them, they block out all other sound which seems great until you're sewing in the basement and suddenly suffer a heart attack because you couldn't hear your dude calling you and he came down the stairs and put his hand on your shoulder out of fucking nowhere because you didn't hear him coming, and boy, wearing those to walk near traffic sounds like a fucking fantastic idea if you would like to die without ever knowing what happened because you couldn't hear the bus that hit you leaning on the horn to warn you. And, I managed to lose them, by removing them so I would know if anyone was approaching, and then putting them in my pocket, and they're so small I couldn't tell if they were in the pocket by shaking the garment, I had to actually turn the pocket inside out to find them. So... yeah I hate these fucking things. Fortunately I also bought an adapter so I can just plug my shitty headphones in.
(Even with the music off, they're basically earplugs, so I can't hear anything around me even if I'm just wearing them so I don't lose them. I was trying to talk to Dude with my music paused and he kept cringing and saying "please stop yelling" and I was like "WHAT DO YOU MEAN I SOUND NORMAL" yeah I sounded exactly like the guy from Twin Peaks. "FIX YOUR HEARTS OR DIE.")

Comments

[toujours_nigel]

Well, that outfit sounds super cute to me at least?

[dragonlady7]

well thanks!!!

I still don't really understand what his taste in clothes is. He doesn't buy himself clothes, he just wears the same old things until they're threadbare, and then he waits for his mom to buy him new clothes because he never asks for gifts and so she falls back on that. but in recent years I've taken over, and I almost always just buy him the same things because I don't know what else he'd like? And literally yesterday he was like "I would wear anything you bought though," and I'm like, "not if it was uncomfortable," and he's like "well true," and so I attempted to explain to him that that means he won't actually wear *anything*, so--
but I did buy him more up-to-date-styled khakis for Christmas, not quite so wide through the legs as his usual, and he does look cute, and isn't uncomfortable, so. Baby steps. (He's super thin so he has these really great ridiculous long thighs that I've long thought would look great in more skinny-jean kind of cuts, though of course I wouldn't put him in leggings like the kids are wearing because he's not a kid, but. Anyway. Progress I guess.)

So I don't really take it personally when he finds one of my outfits baffling. I suppose I ought to find it freeing...

[toujours_nigel]

My SO doesn't like me in lipstick and generally finds it baffling that she looks good in it as well, so *hands*. I've spent the last eight years trying to get her to dress pretty, and it's only in the last couple that she's responded at all, and even mostly because she's needed to look like a Grownup Who Is Not To Be Trifled With.
I understand your bewilderment, is what I'm saying.

[dragonlady7]

I'm currently agonizing over the fact that he put me in charge of telling him when his hair had thinned too much for a ponytail and I think he's drawing nigh to the deadline, but have absolutely zero idea of what sort of haircut I should recommend instead. (What he has, is the Sophomore Year Of College Overworked Forgot To Get A Haircut So It Grew Out Ponytail, and that's... a long time ago now, and also many years of habit of letting it be like that.)

Also I don't know anything about men's fashion. I mean, I don't know about women's either, but. Fifteen years ago I said dude you gotta wear black socks, the white athletic socks look gross, and he challenged me to find black socks that were comfortable, so I loaded him up on the Gold Toe Athletic Socks in Black from JCPenney, and they're identical to the white ones but they're black instead, and so he looks like he's wearing dress socks, or at least doesn't look like a gross 80s gym bro when his trouser legs ride up, so, that's been a success. But that's as much of a revolution as I've effected.

[toujours_nigel]

I... look it up on Pinterest or something, I guess? I've been getting variations of the same haircut since I was three, because there's only so much you can do with coarse curls, and I sometimes go stare wistfully.

[krait]

Pfft, your dude's sense of What To Wear is pretty much identical to mine!

Do I already own it, it fits, and there aren't any holes larger than a sequin? Wear it!

My mother despairs and has probably bought me more clothes than any three people need, because it drives her crazy that I wear stuff till it wears out; without getting into too many class/wealth details, why be wasteful? I wear what I have for as long as I can make it last, and I'm not too fussed about details. (Besides, apparently this approach to clothing is something I inherited from my dad. The reason I can predict her feelings in the matter is because it's exactly what she's complained about to me, with him as the subject!)

[dragonlady7]

I've always liked to dress up, but I've also noted as a fat woman that if I dress more presentably, I'm considerably better-treated.
I don't always get it right, though, but it's noticeable.

Sometimes I think I'm overthinking it. But I know my mother struggled with the same thing. Left to her own devices, she'd dress pretty plainly, but she's felt like she has to maintain a particular standard in order to be respected.

Dude and my dad have similar aesthetics, where their "professional" and "bumming around" clothes are the same, just the older and worn-out ones get demoted to "bumming around". My professional workplace dresses can't really become loungewear when they get shabby. I have to have separate clothes for, like, farm work, regardless of whether they're shabby or not. I can't possibly pare my wardrobe down the way they do.

Dude is generally considered a sharp dresser by his peers, who are computer programmers who work remote and so don't have to change out of PJs. He prefers to wear button-down shirts to work, and t-shirts for lounging; none of his coworkers ever wear button-downs and so they think he's Super Classy.
I wish I could get him to wear more tailored stuff, is all. He's interested, just not interested enough to pursue it.

[krait]

their "professional" and "bumming around" clothes are the same, just the older and worn-out ones get demoted to "bumming around"

Haha, this is exactly what I do! :D If it's faded, or has holes larger than a sequin, I still wear it, it just moves from the 'regular clothes' drawer to the 'pyjamas and workout clothes' drawer. :D

The demotion after on the scale is "remodeling project/painting/gardening clothes."

[toujours_nigel]

oh I do this too! Except my jeans, which only get tossed when they have holes or rips my mother refuses to ignore.