Arachnophobia

Thanks so much for all your words of encouragement and understanding. Taking a few days' break was exactly what I needed, and blogging will probably continue to be less frequent for awhile until things settle down. I haven't been photographing my outfits every day, mainly because many outfits lately have either been repeats or just truly aren't that exciting. It's been nice freeing myself from what was beginning to feel like an obligation; setting up the camera and taking photos takes time in the morning, and lately I haven't had much of an urge to deal with it, especially for outfits that I wasn't too excited about.

It doesn't help that we're having an absurdly cold summer, which is ironic when nearly everyone else in the northern hemisphere is melting in the heat. Cold, foggy mornings aren't very inspiring for summertime style; sandals are left languishing in the closet, and jackets and boots are getting way more rotation than they ought to be. And because I work in shitty South San Francisco, I miss the few hours of sun and low wind that we get in the city after the fog burns off in the afternoon and before it rolls in again in the evening. On my work campus a freezing, awful wind just blasts through all day long, making it miserable to go outside even when it looks sunny and beautiful.

There's one upside to a cold summer, though. At this time of year we typically start to see big, creepy spiders in areas that have a lot of landscaping. And because the area around our house has a lot of plants and trees, we tend to see many of those big garden spiders, some of which will occasionally make it into the house and terrify both me and the equally arachnophobic Mark. Not this summer though; I've only seen a few spiders this year and the ones I've seen have been pretty small. So Mark is getting off easy this year, because at one point I put my foot down and declared that as the man of the house, it is his responsibility to put the spiders outside, like it or not. Was that a strike against feminism? Well, I don't care; what's important is that the spiders go back in the garden where they belong.

Shirt: Target
Scarf: Banan Republic
Pants: Cynthia Steffe
Shoes: Born