The Circle of Life

What I’ve been thinking about:

In the time of the pandemic where a lot of people struggle with food insecurity I have a well-stocked refrigerator bursting with food.

When you have plenty what else could you need or want?

My goal when I’m able to get a FreshDirect time slot for food delivery is to use the link on that website to donate money to the Common Pantry in New York City.

I’ve become grateful today for the only thing that counts to me in this time: the grocery deliveries coming every week.

It’s not the Caudalie face scrub I bought that I really care about.

My thoughts go out to people who are unable to get food.

The New York City government has been delivering food boxes to anyone who needs food in the time of the pandemic.

Like Lyn Slater the Accidental Icon I’ve come to question the things I took for granted on an ordinary pandemic-free day.

As I’ve always thought those of us who are fortunate should be doing everything we can to help others who aren’t fortunate.

Now more than ever being grateful for your fortune in life should be the rule not the exception in how people think.

This is the circle of life: giving back what you have been given.

I will always talk about clothes and makeup in here. To cheer up readers. To make readers feel good. To spread joy.

Perhaps a spoon full of this sugar can make the medicine go down like Mary Poppins sang in the 1970s movie.

The fact is in America people are going hungry.

Actress Viola Davis revealed that she battled childhood hunger.

She has championed the Hunger Is campaign for No Kid Hungry.

In my view even donating canned goods like soup and vegetables to your local food pantry is a valid form of charity when you can’t do anything else.

My goal when I retire from my library job is to volunteer my time and money to social causes more so than I do today.

Hunger. It’s a real issue. No one should go hungry.

In America The Fruited Plain food should be plentiful. The fact that it’s not is a shame.

Living and Shopping with Intention

To live with intention has taken on new meaning during the pandemic.

To shop with intention is my new mantra along with living with intention.

I’ve come to realize that retail therapy isn’t what it’s cracked up to be.

Choosing and using what you buy with care and judgment makes what you bring home more special.

An edited collection of items is better managed and improves your mental health.

Having too much stuff can weigh you down.

My intention is to do only one thing: upgrade my lounge wear.

To throw out the old worn-out items.

I want to buy a few new outfits that will cheer me up.

It’s so easy to feel down in the dumps when you’re wearing pajamas at noon.

There might be a rebound of the coronavirus in the fall and early winter.

This is why I want to plan ahead and buy a few new at-home outfits.

The Dressing Well website is having a $99 virtual styling special through May 31, 2020.

The original cost was $250. You’re able to use the service within the year of first buying it.

I recommend this service as I’ve been using them for over 10 years.

It’s hard for me to find clothes that fit.

So I have the stylist e-mail me links to items she has referred me to buy.

In the spirit of Conscious Chic acting as an empowered consumer makes all the difference.

In coming blog entries I’ll talk more about things I’ve learned living through the pandemic.

My adventure with online food ordering has gotten me to think long and hard before going on a shopping spree.

Happy Birthday Spring Babies!

We are in the month dubbed Sprouting Grass Moon in the cycle of nature.

The idea of new growth and the greening of Earth sparks in me the hope that change is possible.

As I turn 55 I’m struck that self-care and more rightly so self-nurturing [as a form of compassion for yourself] is the way to go post-50 [or at any time in your life really].

It can be a challenge on a regular day to press the square button to pause the frenetic pace. I make the case for doing so no matter what.

In this time of crisis I haven’t been a saint in terms of self-care. Nor in terms of budgeting.

I thought: 55 is a big deal. It’s more of a milestone than 50 ever was. That’s because you’re halfway to 60.

For better or worse a person can face a new trial while living in menopause. This is the reason self-care becomes a necessity not a luxury at mid life.

Your life won’t wait for you. It’s moving on. Far better to move along with it.

Resisting change is futile in this era.

The motto as I’ve stated in here before [like a caterpillar to a butterfly] is:

Change or die.

Those are brave somewhat harsh words yet oh-so-true.

Who will you be tomorrow?

A more beautiful loving person when you take time out for yourself today.

Happy Birthday spring babies!

Birthday Feast Playlist 2020

12 Songs 52 minutes

_____________________________________________

“Paper Planes” M.I.A.

“Caution” The Killers

“Lazy Eye” Silversun Pickups

“Sunday” Sonic Youth

“Sunday” Iggy Pop

“Sunflower” Vampire Weekend

“True to Myself” Ziggy Marley

“Love Letters” Dirty Heads

“Viva la Vida” Cold Play

“On a Saturday Night” Artificial Pleasure

“City of Angels” 24k Goldn

“Life in the City” The Lumineers

“Black Madonna” Cage the Elephant

Fashion Revolution Week

Fashion Revolution Week has come on as a response to the breakdown in worldwide commerce due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Quite awhile ago I said I would write about the book Wear No Evil. Yes–I forgot to do this. It’s a guide to sustainable fashion that offers a system for choosing and using wardrobe items.

The author lists 16 criteria you can choose from and a diamond-design method for prioritizing each choice.

My prime choice is to buy clothes that require low water use to manufacture. And whose vendors don’t pollute the water with chemicals in the process of creating garments.

From the people to the products a fashion revolution is an idea whose time has come.

I recommend reading Wear No Evil. It’s the most concise, helpful, and cheerful guide to sustainable fashion. It refrains from judging the reader or belaboring the point with a academic treatise. Actionable steps are given for right now.

Alas, I regret that as a tiny person who is only 5 feet tall and a size 2 Petite I have yet to find clothes of any sustainable origin that would fit me. If anyone knows of a suitable vendor, I’d love to hear about these options.

My solution is to “shop in my own closet” for the foreseeable future. To mix-and-match items I already own to style new outfits.

Accidental Icon Lyn Slater in her Ripping Seams blog post talks about taking apart your consciousness as well as the seams in the clothes you wear.

Fashion and social justice seem like odd partners. Yet taking apart the fabric of society and getting under its seams is the first step in deconstructing the tattered clothing we’re in. That is the raiment we cloak ourselves in mentally as well as physically.

Living through the COVID-19 outbreak seems like the perfect time to do what Slater suggests: start ripping seams.

I estimate I have another two or three years before I have to buy a whole slew of clothes again. By that time perhaps more sustainable lower-cost options will arrive for a person like me who doesn’t fit into Regular sized clothing.

My goal is to at least buy fewer clothes and shop less often. To read up on the social standing of clothes vendors.

If you ask me doing whatever you can is all that matters in the moment.

Do Just One Thing. And do One More Thing after that.

This is the way to start a revolution from your closet.

Plenty of Fish-y

I haven’t found Mr. Right. Nor have I found Mr. Almost Right. And I haven’t found Mr. Not-Right-Yet-I’ll-Take-Him Anyway.

Yes I’ve tried–OKCupid, Chemistry, How About We, Plenty of Fish, eHarmony, and Match–I’ve tried them all.

I only met one guy in person. He was a personal trainer yet curiously wasn’t certified as a personal trainer.

In his profile photos he had black hair. In person he had gray hair. So his photos were 10 years old.

His online requirement was that he sought to meet:

“An intelligent woman who loves life and likes to laugh.”

Though I fit this criteria he wasn’t interested in me. He acted like I was a charity case–like he was doing me a favor sending me messages.

To meet him in person I wore a sleeveless denim dress with an ombre hem and cut-out back like a keyhole. I had on navy-strap platform sandals.

His idea of “intelligent” involved reading James Patterson novels.

This date took place 3 years ago. It’s the only time I’ll spill details about a person.

After I met this guy the better highlight of that day was shopping at a fish market to pick up dinner.

It pays to stock up on plenty of fish in your refrigerator when you dine alone.

I turn 55 in the spring and will be treating myself to a birthday feast for dinner in my apartment.

Complete with a new set of flatware, dishes, and cloth napkin.

And yes a lobster tail should I be able to get one.

Serve yourself. Don’t wait for a mate.

Get dolled up and dine like you’re in a restaurant when you’re at home.

Conscious Chic in a Crisis

Yes–I’ve been thinking about what I termed Conscious Chic in a blog category.

The Accidental Icon Lyn Slater talks about this in her latest blog post [see below].

Who needs 10 pairs of the exact same pants?

Who needs a bursting closet and overstuffed dresser drawers?

The manufacturing process of garments has long been a destroyer of our natural world.

It’s time to act in a considered fashion like Lyn Slater believes.

Though I’ve bought an eye shadow compact I intend for this to be the only beauty buy for the foreseeable future.

As well I have the intention to dress in the clothes hanging out in my wardrobe today.

I’m not a Green saint as far as this goes. Like Lyn Slater I’ve been thinking about this.

She talked of being creative.

Acting creative can do a world of good in transforming a simple wardrobe of clothes and collection of makeup into a stunning reflection of individuality.

You don’t have to be rich or thin to express yourself through beauty and fashion.

You can trust that you’ll look good without needing a trust fund.

Read the Lyn Slater Accidental Icon blog entry here.

Beauty and the Boots

purple boots

I’m thinking more about the confessions in the Patti Smith article in Harper’s Bazaar.

She invests in coats and boots which has been my game plan in recent years.

The idea that your fashion gives you freedom resonated with me. Boots aren’t traditionally sexy when they’re the type Smith wears.

This is what cheers me as a cisgender woman. That you don’t have to wear stilettos to make a statement about who you are and what you stand for.

The boots above I bought in December in a shoe-buying frenzy. I decided that boots were going to be my thing since I really don’t care to totter in stilettos and pumps.

I”m not keen to wear classic pumps. Not after having worn them for 9 years to legal and corporate office jobs in the 1990s.

A lot of guys on internet dating websites express an interest in meeting a “sexy” woman. The definition of sexy is erotic. I don’t want to walk down the street with everything hanging out for men to see.

It gives me hope that if Patti Smith had a husband and was an iconic rock star that I can meet a guy without having to wear a skintight cleavage-baring dress with a slit up to there.

I’ve decided to wear booties and boots on dates. Mid-heel black booties and the purple ones shown above.

The Bazaar article is right: fashion gives you freedom.

On the cusp of 55 today I think about how we can use fashion as a means of expressing who we are and what we stand for.

There’s a beauty in expressing your Individuality. That’s the ticket to living in health harmony and happiness.

I want to talk more in coming blog entries about searching for Mr. Right. A person that in my case should be Mr. Left in terms of politics.

Fashion and Freedom

Venturing outside I bought the April Harper’s Bazaar. There are great articles peppered throughout this book.

A feature on rock innovator Patti Smith stated:

“For Smith fashion has always been about freedom.”

In the singer’s own words:

“Even as a kid, what I was wearing was always very important to me. I very much identified with my clothing.”

Decades Later I too remember the clothes I wore that were imprinted on my mind about who I was and what I wanted to tell people.

In the 1980s and 1990s I dressed in an Avant Garde fashion precisely to rebel the strictures and sanctions imposed on women where I lived.

On Staten Island the standard fashion fare was a pink sweater and the original Guess jeans.

I shopped in Unique Clothing Warehouse in Manhattan. My goal was to make a statement via how I dressed–it was how I wanted others to perceive me.

The photos of Patti Smith in Bazaar I tore out to insert in my fashion binder. Once a week I view the photos in the binder to get ideas on how to style outfits.

What I know:

It’s always right to dress in your own style even if it differs from what is popular or has become a trend.

I’m glad the 1980s and 1990s are gone and with them the bizarre outfits I wore then.

In the 1990s I bought a blouse with this quote on a hang tag:

You say much more when creativity speaks for itself.

Today I’ve learned that my outfits don’t need to scream for me to command attention.

I say: do your own thing with fashion. Speak your truth through your clothes.

The April Bazaar also features fashion designer Marc Jacobs wearing clothes that women traditionally wear.

His quotes are a must-read as well.

In the next blog entry I’ll talk more about the Patti Smith article which to me was so empowering as a woman.

Acting Grateful in a Time of Crisis

New York is the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak.

To be safer I’m risking going outside only twice a week.

Walking outside I was suddenly grateful like I hadn’t ever been before for things I took for granted:

In 1999 I moved to Brooklyn when it wasn’t popular to do so. I wasn’t guilty of gentrifying a neighborhood by moving there.

I’m grateful that no one wanted to move to this area. It’s mercifully free of hipsters and multi-million apartment high-rises like in Williamsburg.

I was not ever as grateful as I was this week to be able to walk a long, long distance to and from a food market.

Grateful for my 2 feet that I can use to walk wherever I want to go.

Grateful for the air I breathe.

Grateful for the organic food I could find in the market.

Grateful that I had lifted weights for the last 9 years.

This gave me the strength to carry 2 tote bags filled with 50 pounds each of groceries.

I was also grateful that a woman asked if I wanted help carrying the bags. Even though her face was not covered.

“No thanks,” I told her.

I was also grateful to be able to use a spare orange bandanna to cover my nose and mouth diagonally.

You’re not supposed to buy masks. This diverts the masks from medical staff.

I was the only one on the street wearing a colorful bandanna as a face mask.

It matched the orange FreshDirect tote bags I carried. An unintended fashion statement.

It was a scary experience having to breathe through a bandanna.

That’s when I was suddenly grateful for the air around me.

I tell readers everywhere:

Live with gratitude. Take nothing for granted.

Live for today. You don’t know when it will be gone.