Full Moon – Cold Moon Crests

So, just as Cold Moon was cresting (I’m technically a day late on this post), we flipped over into March. We’ve only had one day where the temperature got anywhere close to 0-Celceus, but we’re getting there. All around me are people grinning and assuring each other that we’ve made it through another one. I keep watching the snow on the neighbourhood roofs, wondering how much of the melt-off is due to poor insulation versus how much of it is the noticeably warmer (and longer hours of) sunshine happening these days.
 
I got my honey-pot made (finally) last week, and did some magic to help me out with my job interview, too (it went well, FYI, though I won’t hear anything until about May, so…). At the moment, things are feeling pretty “up” – although part of that is that it’s been an employment-full week – four modeling gigs plus an easy day of answering phones near my house – and I’ve got a cupboard full of groceries and even some tasty treats (I got us cheap fizzy white wine + orange-mango juice for mimosas, for example, and a box of mini pain-chocolates as well – we’ll will be brunching this weekend, and I wanted to get in something kinda fancy. $25 for three people is… pretty okay, really) as a result, SO. Part of the “up” is just basic stuff like “we paid the gas bill” and “the rent cheque didn’t bounce” (seriously, that was a worry, however briefly, a few days ago) and “our freezer is full of sausages and ravioli”.
 
Some of it is also this: I got a new purse.
Which you’d think, if I’m simultaneously worrying about the rent, is not something I should be buying, but bear with me.
The zipper on my one remaining non-ratty purse broke, a month or two ago. All of my other purses are pleather, and – while they started out beautiful – they are now peeling messes with jerry-rigged handles and they just don’t look very nice. And I am trying to Look Nice, at least when I leave the house.
I did a gig today, a portraiture class where they like it when the model gets dolled up in something kind of thematic. So I turned up in my Leather (and my PVC, and my Unholy Harvest dogtags), some dark lipstain & black eyeliner, and a pair of German engineers goggles and gave them a deiselpunk aviator to draw. Thing is, I felt like Amanda Fucking Palmer in that outfit. It’s not something that I wear all the time – waist cinchers being what they are, and leather “airforce” caps being almost as impractical and hard to keep on as miniature top hats – but it was comprised (with the exception of the goggles) of my actual clothes. I felt like a million bucks, and I loved what I saw in the mirror! AND I was constantly fretting that my hair and/or stockings would fall down, that my hat would fall off, and that I’d slip right out of my sling-backs because, hello, you do not wear open-toed slingbacks with nylons, end of story.
Look. This is going to come as a surprise to nobody, but Looking Nice Takes Effort.
A lot of what I’ve spent the last, gods, eight years(?) doing, wardrobe-wise, is trying to do what boils down to “Glamour Hacks” where you front-load all the labour – investing (by whatever budget you can reasonably do so) in clothes that fit & flatter[1], shoes that look good and are gender-consonant but don’t destroy your feet[2], and something to haul your crap around in that doesn’t make you look like the Loblaws Lady[3] – so that when you have to drag your ass out of bed in the mornings, or convince yourself (MYself) to really, really, this time, leave the house… the part where you look Put Together is already done.
The goal, in my case, is to get my Stuff dialed in enough that I just have to pull something, anything, out of my closet, slick on the easiest possible makeup (waterproof Very Black mascara, tinted lipbalm, and if I’m feeling really ambitious, a scribble of eye-shadow pencil, which is basically a crayon for your face), slap on wahtever footwear happens to be the most weather-appropriate, and GTFO… looking Fabulous and Noticeable all the while.
The big purse – which I bought for $30 off ebay and which, alas, has a couple of design flaws that I’ll have to work around if I want this to be the functional Diva Bag of my only-somewhat-practical dreams – is part of that process. It’s basically my answer to the Loblaws Lady problem. It’s big enough to hold a notebook, a novel, and even a makeup case on top of the more typical “purse stuff” all at the same time and, while I can’t stuff a yoga mat in there, I can use it to carry a water-bottle and the rest of my (minimal) yoga gear. It’s about the right size to carry a book of sheet music, if I need it to. It has a handy outside-pocket with a BIG, decorative zipper-tab where I can keep stuff – like a bus pass – that I want to be able to grab without having to dig around or take off my mitts. It’s Black And Shiny And Buckle-Y enough to work with my “edgy”[4] stuff while being Basic Black Professional enough to be appropriate when I need to not look Scary or like some kind of a tramp[5]. It may not be Mary Poppins’ TARDIS-like magical carpet bag, but it’s got enough pockets to carry at least a little bit of magic around.
 
So that’s where I am right now. The same place I always am, though maybe a tiny step further along, trying to balance What I Want with What I Have and What I Can Manage on any given day.
Now I’ve got altar candles to light, wine to chill, and a chicken to roast, so I’m off.
 
 
TTFN,
Meliad the Birch Maiden.
 
 
[1] In my case, this means hitting up the local second-hand stores + getting good enough at sewing to taylor items at least a little bit and/or make simple stuff myself, because gods know I don’t have a lot of money to throw around.
 
[2] A constant work in progress, I’m afraid…
 
[3] This was a (brief) conversation on twitter, earlier today. My sister used to be a professional actress. She bought a hella fancy purse that was big enough to carry a small child (which, ha, she is about to birth, as it turns out) because she needed to (a) carry big old scrips and indoor shoes and so-on around all the time, but also (b) actually look put-together when she showed up for an audition.
 
[4] Ahahahaha… At the moment, this basically means wearing black eyeshadow and pinstriped skirts.
 
[5] These situations are getting fewer and farther between, granted (and also YAY), but it doesn’t hurt to be versatile.