Sweater: Last Valentine’s Day (2023), I went to the local bourgie grocery story and they had lobster tails and filet mignon on special. I texted a local friend:
Local friend had not and would not always been local. She had also briefly been my roommate in an era when both of us were younger and less clear on communicating how we actually were to live with. Or to put another way, we were not great roommates, but a week after I told her she was cool to break the lease and move out, she came by and asked me if I wanted to go out for a cheeseburger. That was almost twenty years ago and we’ve been friends ever since.
I fired up the grill and warmed up some lemony butter. I made a batch of gin martinis and we ate at the dining room table with all the fancy accoutrements because Valentine’s Day is a bullshit holiday but you might as well use it as an opportunity to pull out the linens[1] and Nana’s silver and set the dining room table. My favorite room in my house is my dining room and it’s not a room I use enough. Sometimes I think I ought to move my desk there or repopulate it with things that are inherently more functional, but then that kind of ruins it. I always swore I would not be one of those adults that had a room I did not use. And yet. Sometimes I just stand in the middle of it and try to inspire myself to make the rest of the house look so perfect.
Local friend and I had a lovely meal. She is a nurse with an academic background in Slavic languages, who lived in Russia for few years, which means she has an excellent, dark and dry sense of humor, as well as good taste in music and novels. It was an uncommonly warm night, so I opted forhis sweater, which felt more appropriate for February in South Florida than February in North Carolina. I told myself I would wear it regularly once spring had sprung.
Then the sweater disappeared. I don’t know what to tell you. It just disappeared into some deep, unnavigable closet crevasse. Maybe the little men who steal my socks and keys spirited it away. Maybe it got hung up on a shelf. Maybe there was a rip in the space time continuum. I can tell you that I clean out the closet regularly and the sweater was nowhere to be found for months, months, until it emerged last fall, stacked neatly under some t-shirts like it had never been gone at all. I have since relocated it to a secure location. I will wear this sweater throughout the spring. I will not be foiled again.
Pants: We’re about four years to the day of the world shutting down due to Covid. I’m not going to delve too deeply into that again, but I will also say we’re about two years to the day of me taking a good hard look at my post-Covid wardrobe and my post-Covid waistline and realized I would in fact once again need to buy work pants that did not double as either pajama bottoms or workout clothes.
These came to me in a dream. Or rather I dreamed about walking along the sea in some kind of demented Nice/Myrtle Beach hybrid (forgive me, France) outfitted in sailor pants. And while the dream was annoying, (I don’t think anyone is clamoring for a Cote d’Azur franchise of the Ripley’s Believe it Or Not Museum) I woke up sure that my subconscious was helping me plot out my spring wardrobe.
I found these at Saint +Sofia and promptly took them on a work trip , where I wandered along the waterfront near the Floribama line, posing with tugboats, nodding through work dinners, and soaking up the salty air from the balcony outside my hotel room. It’s hard to pretend that the Gulf Coast is the Riviera, but I am easily wooed by salty air and large bodies of water. And Pensacola has its charms.
I have since worn these pants so many times with such devotion that they will probably fall to pieces on my body. They are wildly comfortable and very cute. I cannot recommend them enough.
Shoes: I’m not a person that either a superfan, as a concept, or a person who is easily starstruck. I don’t think I’d know what to say to Beyonce if I were to ever hang out with her, but I also don’t know that hanging out with Beyonce would be enjoyable. God-tier celebrities are interesting, in part, because they are god-tier. The tabloid press and Taylor Swift’s PR machine makes a lot of hay with the notion that stars are just like us, but stars are not really like us at all. Especially stars at that level.
That said, I do entertain the occasional megastar hangout fantasty. One of my favorites involves going to a beach house and listening to dancehall records with Rihanna and just letting her gossip about people. Is Rihanna a gossip? I don’t know, but I’d love to find out.
These are Fenty Pumas, by the way. They were a high water mark in the mid-life crisis fancy sneaker era.
Outfit: For those following along at home, my left arm has been hurting since Christmas morning. It is a pain that radiates down into my fingers and up into my shoulders and chest. To date, I have been to the emergency room twice (to rule out heart attack), my GP thrice, three massage therapists, one acupuncturist, my GI, and two physical therapists (of those the massage therapists have been the most helpful). I have had multiple rounds of blood work, a CT Scan, and X-Rays. No one has been able to figure out what the problem is. I’m happy assuming this is just one of those inexplicable quirks of aging, but I’d like to go make sure that if, say, I do anything weight related at the gym that I won’t make it worse.
On Thursday, I drove to an office park by the state fairgrounds in Raleigh to see the neurologist my insurance covered. The waiting room was full of elderly ladies eating Taco Bell and a screaming child dressed as a lion. I got called back and reclined on a wooden table while an nurse/tech who looked really a lot like Penelope Cruz played “Operation” with my arm. I expected it to be more unpleasant than it was. The tiny shocks didn’t hurt so much as make me feel like a piece of human popcorn. Then a teenaged neurologist came in, stuck a few needles in me and declared me absolutely normal.
“What do I do now? “ I asked.
He shrugged. “I dunno. Lunch?”
I went to the mall instead. Because I’m still a medical mystery and I’m comforted by the department store smell of leather and perfume. I didn’t buy anything but some concealer. I came home, took two work calls and luxuriated in being able to be back on the deck, the other favorite room in my house, even if it is plantless and still a little bare without leaves. A friend came by. We drank cocktails out of jam jars and ate Oreos. I decided it was too beautiful outside to waste any more time worrying about my stupid bum arm.
Sweater: Consignment Shop, 2023
Pants: Saint +Sofia, 2022
Sweater: Nordstrom, 2018
Sneakers: Fenty for Puma, 2018(?)
Earrings: Minx, 2023
[1] Spirit of full-disclosure: the linen napkins from that night are still in at the bottom of a To-Be-Ironed pile in the guest room closet.
Tiny Commotions 