Saturday, January 31, 2015

The Morning, So Far

1. We have been at the receiving end of rain, freezing rain, and snow for the last few days, so I've spent my time indoors, cuddling with cats, eating nachos, getting into fights in online celebrity gossip site comment sections, and binge watching the second season of Inside Amy Schumer and the first season of Broad City.

2. Dave was due back last night but, lucky him, got to spend an extra night in Minneapolis because his plane had a flat tire and he couldn't get another flight out. (Of course, his checked bags did make it back last night.) He got on a flight very early this morning--he texted around 5:00 a.m. to let me know he was at the airport--and I'll go pick him up in a couple of hours.

3. I got a parcel of books yesterday from Amazon, most of them big illustrated reference books about Victorian fashion. I have never been the least bit interested in fashion, but looking through these books made me realize that I would trade about half my belongings for a late-Victorian era silk taffeta day dress with a huge bustle. Like this:
But in darker, midnight blue silk. Because look at that! I would even give up my daily uniform of jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt for one of those. (Okay, no I wouldn't, but I think that would be pretty sweet to wear for just hanging out around the casita.)

Just so you know, the bustles were sometimes made of steel and sometimes made like big pillows, stuffed with down or horsehair. One design had a kind of scaffolding that folded up and sprung out again as the wearer sat and stood up. Also, just so you're perfectly correct, in the Victorian era the word "bustle" was considered vulgar, so they called it a "tounure" or "dress improver."

I'm fascinated by that. Can you imagine wearing one of those things every day?

I went down the rabbit hole of the online resources for the Victoria and Albert Museum in London looking for information about bustles and corsets and found, of course, that little girls wore both from a very early age and, hilariously, that their dolls also had tiny bustles and tiny corsets.

4. I was going to get up and go to the studio last night while I waited for Dave, but then there was the flat tire and then it started spitting freezing rain, so I changed into my pajamas and made another plate of nachos and watched two more episodes of Broad City.

 I texted my mother to find out if she bought a new phone and she said she was also in her pajamas in bed watching a movie. So it's genetic probably.

5. I was going to get up and go to the studio this morning while I waited for Dave, but then I went out earlier to put the return CSA cooler out (they exchange it for a filled box) and it was snowing large, wet clumped flakes of snow, so I came in, took a hot shower, and got back into bed with my robe on and put on another episode of Broad City.


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