At last. A day celebrating my most favorite clothing.

Because when I wear them (as opposed to my other favorite clothing item, a long skirt) I can carry everything I need in my pockets (purses are not my thing, really) and I can muck out the creek, paint a picture, sweep the floor, sit on the grass. I love standing out in the fresh air, hands in pockets, listening to the birds. I walk differently in my overalls. I don't feel only feminine, or masculine, but both, or neither. I feel like a whole, comfortable self. I feel capable, and strong.

I wear them to the hardware store, the grocery store, and have danced the night away in them at our favorite little blues bar. My husband calls me "Farmer Girl".

No, they're not a high-fashion item. No, they're not particularly kind to a figure with more than a little extra around the middle (except they do give that middle room!) but I've had smiles and compliments from both women and men, and more importantly, I like the way I feel when I wear them.

If I need to fancy them up, I put on a gauzy hippie shirt and some earrings, and I'm ready to go. I've had people (younger women, or stylish younger men) look askance at them, but it doesn't bother me at all. I wear them with white or black tank tops summer and winter (I like to have my arms bare, because I'm vain about them, and I get overheated with sleeves now, actually) and usually have a few pens in one bib pocket, and my ever-present camera in the other, with the camera strap around my neck for jewelry.

And every time I see someone else wearing them I feel a sort of kinship. So I smile, and say, "Nice overalls!" and invariably get a happy, relaxed smile in return.

Happy Overalls Day! Be sure to stop over here to meet someone who loves them even more than I do.

I'm getting quite fond of painting directly on the wall.

Especially with the texture these walls have on them. I like to paint and paint over, and scrub some of it off, and put on more and so on, in what you might not be at all surprised to find out is a very obsessive, unplanned and meandering process. My husband says well, it livens up the walls and it makes you happy, so I don't mind the painting all over the walls. He's not much for art, my husband, but he did buy me a very nice Van Gogh print of The Starry Night, and it hangs over the fireplace, and one night it started sort of drifting out onto the walls, and that part of the painting is definitely a love song to my mother, who also loved the picture. I gave her a print of it once. And my aunt gave me a nice big plate with the picture on it, and we use it to serve fancy bits and pieces when company comes by.

This isn't that part of the wall. This is in the kitchen. It's a cold room, with dull beige (well. mushroom soup) coloured tiles on the floor and countertops and for a backsplash, but it feels much warmer now, even with the chilly and unforgiving floor. The painting's not at all completed, but I just wander around with a colour and then put it wherever I feel like, with no particular plan in mind other than putting paint on the walls, and sometimes I go into what I suppose could be called dissociative states, but it's not as if I'm gone somewhere, it's just that I can't quite experience the world the same way when I'm part of the wall, if that makes any sense, and I suppose it may or may not.

And I'm not even fifty yet! This late blooming is highly under-rated, I think.

As is not at all unusual, I don't have anything in particular of importance to relate.

But then again, what's of importance and what isn't? I don't really consider myself qualified to judge that, at least not at the moment.

Sometimes I have an idea that I've caught the tail of the point of things. Like it's something slinking off around an existential corner, either drawing me along or leaving me behind.

Of course it's hard to think at all with three girls in the house. So I won't bother, for the moment.