A Maven I Am Not

Mamakat's Wonderful Prompt:  What’s your Summer Fashion? Share a favorite outfit you’re loving this Summer.


I live in Texas.  Actually, I live in South-ish, Central-ish Texas, which is not the same as living in the North-ish of Texas or the West-ish.  We won't discuss the East-ish portion.  My point here is that I live in a part of the world where it is hot 365 days of the year.  In this part of the world, a day with a temperature less than 80 is considered a hard freeze.  People who live here either get used to the heat, or they go back to where ever they lived previously and complain about how hot it is in Texas. 

The heat does cause some consternation for non-fashionistas like me.  (I used to care about fashion, but that was when I was younger, drank a lot, and believed that Cosmo knew what they were talking about.)  At home I spend hours in shorts and a t-shirt and don't even fix my hair or put on makeup.  Work presents a different problem. When I leave the house, I am required, by some arcane female laws that I don't fully understand, to look 'presentable'. 

It might be hotter than the surface of the sun outside, but inside the building where I work it is meat locker cold.  If I am dressed too summery, I end up turning a shade of blue that is sooo not my color.  I have to balance sweaty outside with ice cold inside, without resorting to a parka. Because that would be too weird. 

What is a woman clueless about fashion supposed to do? 

She resorts to a maxi dress!  Maxi dresses are very comfy.  It's like you're wearing jammies, except that you don't look like you're wearing your jammies.  Maxi dresses cover the legs so your cankles don't freeze.  They also cover up the fact that occasionally one might forget to shave their legs, or cover up their ankle tattoo that violates dress code. 

Add a summer weight sweater and I look downright decent.  Certainly I meet the dress code.  If I want to get more dressy, I add a belt and bracelets, earrings, etc.  But who wants to get dressy during the summer when it's so melty outside?  On the East and West coasts, maxi dresses are already last year's fashion, and that's okay.  What I care about is that I am comfortable in a way that doesn't scare small children.  This summer, and probably most of the fall,  maxi dresses rule.  For me, anyway!

***I couldn't take a decent picture of myself in the dress.  Sorry. 

I am a Weather Geek

I am very interested in the weather lately. I don't remember being all that interested in weather when I was a child. Unless it was raining when I wanted to be outside--then I certainly noticed. Weather was something that just was, like Walter Kronkite.

But as I got older and moved to Texas, weather started to matter. I can remember being fascinated one day because I could see it raining way off in the distance. Because buildings seem to unfurl from the center of San Antonio like a rug, there's no tall buildings in my way. I can see what is coming, weather-wise. If you look outside your window and there's a black wall of clouds rolling in, it's kind of hard to miss. I like that.

I used to just watch the weather everyday, but the internet has allowed me 24 hour access to weather information. Hurricane season is especially interesting to me, and I love checking out the tropical waves rolling off the coast of Africa. I try to guess which ones will become hurricanes. That sounds much geekier typed out than it did in my head. But my husband encourages my minor weather obsession, because I tell him when he needs to turn off all the computers so they won't get fried during a storm.

Then I found this extremely cool website, the National Hurricane Situation Page. It's my new all time favorite website that I visit every day. The company that offers this site also does emergency situation pages for emergency management, and that is how the page is set up. Go check it out.

Right now, Texas is in a drought and a heat wave, so the weather pages have been kind of boring. But I am hopeful that soon I will see green or yellow on the radar map, indicating mild to moderate rain. I don't want to see red or fuschia, because that would mean bad storms. And no rotating circles, indicating possible tornadoes. Just pleasant, mild, happy, green or yellow. Rain. That's all I am looking for on the weather websites these days. And maybe I keep visiting those pages hoping that they will tell me something new.