Owning It and Working It

is how I feel about scarves. The Sartorialist is boosting my confidence -- I mean, I'm an unstoppable scarf-wearer anyway, but the folks in his photos are so lovely in theirs. And I do get made fun of, from the way-back girls in high school who really did say to the air next to me, at the movie theater: "Oh my god, is she wearing a scarf? It's, like, spring ..." Down to the fellow poets and writers at writing conferences, who commented every time I put on a scarf, "Oh, at least we can tell you're a writer now." Also keeping warm! People! They are very practical accessories!

And then the scarf problem becomes worse when traveling. I mean worse in that I end up bringing so many. Pashminas and fake-minas are so great for travel, especially in that casual "oh no really I did bring this blanket with me" thing they can do in cars and planes. And that they are so low-volume to pack but big volume to wear, no?

I'm easily annoyed with scarves, though, as well. Little ones, mostly. I need something about them to be bold enough to be seen, if that's structure, or color, or pattern, or volume. I usually hate skinny scarves for this reason (sorry skinny-scarf-wearing friends, it isn't you, it's me). But dooce in that (is it skinny) blank one is fabulous enough to make me drop the charges of hate.

Anyway, I am wearing a huge blue-red pashmina thing, beige cordouroy coat (thanks Karen!) two blah tank tops, lilac socks, and these flower-printed ballet flats. And I don't think downtown yuppie Kirkwood can handle me. Or at least the dudes that work at this Kaldi's.

Knitting makes this scarf thing so much worse. I'll just stop there.

What's your limit on the comfortable shoe? How ugly will you go, and on the other end, how much pain will you endure?

I am learning lately that I may have a kind of huge pain tolerance for badly made shoes. Some product of being poor and stylish? Of having FAITH in cheap shoes, FAITH that they will feel okay out of the store? Faith that vinyl can stretch (which it can't really, it just breaks)?

Anyway, I am ready for more owning of and working 'it.' Yeah fashion, but really everything. I own what I am, and can I work it? Can I?

To end, the world's most awkward wedding (second only to Heidi's, and that had little to do with them as a couple, it was circumstance) is coming up for us on Saturday. Like tomorrow. And today is Purim, so it's time for Hamantaschen by the dozens, and I want to be more adult about all this grieving Noah's mom and accepting his dad's remarriage this weekend and meeting the woman who will be my stepmother-in-law and her children, etc., etc. But I am not feeling so adult about it. Distant from the real and violent feelings of it, but not actually here with it.

And it's Easter. Easter. What a mixed bag. Growing up, it was one of my favorite times of year, Lent and Easter and Pentecost, for all the ceremony next to the story of the gospels and Acts and all accentuated by the full choir and brass quintet and organ at my childhood church. Wow, wow. All my classical training is still ready to rush in there and sit down, with that church, on Sunday, just to hear it all. But now it feels like another thing on the list of 'things I don't know how to do now that I am not a child.' I still think in eggs, people. And songs like this with full brass:

O that, with yonder sacred throng, we at His feet may fall,
Join in the everlasting song, and crown Him Lord of all,
Join in the everlasting song, and crown Him Lord of all!