Turning Bedsheets Into A Wardrobe and Other Second-Hand Thoughts

The Dilemma

When it comes to my clothes, I'm a remarkably lazy snob.

I want things that fit well. (This isn't an unreasonable thing to want, I feel.) I want comfortable fabrics that breathe, and don't end up smelling like a billy goat slept on them. (I swear, since starting T, I strip my shirts more often than I ever had to strip the cloth nappies.)

I want colours - black and white and grey don't count - that don't make me look dead. (When did all the t-shirts in the men's section become navy and olive?) And I want them to last longer than six months before they start a part-time internship in the mending box.

The pile doth wax and the pile doth wane, but there's always a bloody pile.

This short list is surprisingly difficult to achieve, off the rack. Anything that fits my shoulders won't fit my chest, and vice versa. The armscye is usually either comically large, or too small to fit my biceps. And pants? Let's just not go there. (Belts help. Kind of.)

The Autumn Flush (AKA so much to do, so little time)

*Content note: discussion of spiders (no pictures)*

In which we discuss the weather

Overnight, it's becoming autumn here. This happens fairly reliably around the March Equinox, something for which I'm eternally grateful.

Summer here is hard. Even in a mild one, like the last two have been, the heat drags on you and makes it hard to keep on top of things. This is unfortunate, given that summer is also when the garden needs the most attention if it's going to stay alive. A single day of missed watering can easily kill off half the potted vegetables, if the north wind is blowing in off the desert. And the only thing that gets you out into the yard on the *really* hot days is the need to keep the chickens cool and well watered.

Summer *drags*. By the end of February you're certain it's never going to end. You'll be stuck sweating through your sheets at night and lying on the floor in the breezeway in the afternoon forever. You suck down gallons of water and curse the tiny eaves that let the mid-afternoon sun slide through the windows months before you want its warmth. You curse the weather service for promising low thirties (Celsius, my US friends) at the start of the week, only to revise it up, and up, and *up* as the days drag on.

And then comes the Equinox. Even when the daytime temperatures are still frying eggs on the concrete, the mornings start to smell like a promise of frost under the shade of the trees. The winds start to bend,  coming off the Antarctic instead of the desert, and though you can't smell the penguin shit in it yet, you know you will soon.

And the garden? The garden goes fucking apeshit.