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If you were forced to wear one outfit over and over again, what would it be?
This is as straightforward of an answer I can give you: jeans & a sweatshirt. I live in an area within California where I can pretty much wear long pants & sweatshirts/sweaters all year round. There is one small stretch at the end of summer, just before fall, where it gets almost unbearably hot. However, pretty much throughout the other parts of the year, I can wear long pants & long sleeve shirts.
My go-to outfit pretty much every day is a pair of skinny jeans & either a long-sleeve shirt, a sweatshirt, or a lightweight sweater. Since I don’t have to get dressed up to go to a corporate office, or meet anybody in a formal setting, I don’t have much need to wear business casual clothing. I have some formalwear, a few basic pieces that I can throw on for special occasions, but most of my everyday wardrobe since becoming a parent, has been taken over by comfort-wear.
I have a small selection of skinny jeans in various shades of blue that I rotate through weekly. I don’t follow the major fashion trends, & I know skinny jeans are not in style right now, but I don’t care. I’m fairly short in stature, so I feel like wearing any other style of jeans (i.e. boyfriend fit, relaxed fit, boot leg, etc.) would just make me look shorter, wider in frame, & frumpy. I am a skinny or straight leg jeans lady for life. Also, being a creature of habit, I always stay within the blue hue range. I am not comfortable venturing out to other colors in jeans.
Because of the area I live in, the weather is always temperate, so I don’t usually have to put away my autumn/winter clothes or rotate my wardrobe based on the seasons. I have a dedicated shelf in my closet just for my regular-use sweaters & sweatshirts. I rotate through these items weekly. If you were to ask me, I would say that I prefer sweatshirts over sweaters, but that’s only because sweatshirts are easy to throw in to the washing machine, whereas sweaters need to be specialty hand washed or dry cleaned. I’m not a particularly messy or sloppy person, buuuttt…I can be rough & careless at times when I do things, & that can create irreversible messes on my clothes. So, casual sweatshirts are the way to go! They keep me warm, hides my body image issues, & can withstand my day-to-day activities.
So there you have it. I’m a sweatshirt & jeans kind of lady. I don’t have to take too much time in the mornings to choose an outfit. I can grab & go, & with a little child that takes for-ev-er to get ready in the mornings, it’s always easiest to have something simple to throw on & not have to think too much about it. Of course, I wouldn’t be my usual OCD self if I didn’t add on that my everyday clothing must be clean & wrinkle-free. I may be a basic dresser, but I will never compromise on cleanliness & neatness/tidiness. That is all. Cheers.
Today’s song of the day:
Recently I have found myself drawn to background noise videos on YouTube. Sometimes I will listen to Lo-Fi beats or soft café jazz music. Other times I will play a stream of sounds from a busy coffee shop. Even more recently, however, I have been very much enjoying city street background noise, especially the ones with light rain. I will put on a long-stream video & let it play in the background while I’m puttering around the house doing chores, or while I’m click-clack typing away on my computer. I know ambient static noise has become quite popular these days (i.e. white noise, brown noise, pink noise, etc.), but I have really found these everyday background sounds to be the most soothing/calming for me personally.
I live in a very stereotypical, quiet American suburban neighborhood. Sometimes I can catch the sounds of a delivery truck or a neighbor speeding up our hilled street, or the sounds of a lawn getting mowed. If I am in my backyard, looking out past the wooded area behind my house’s property line, I can not only see the freeway overpass, but I can hear the distant noise of the cars & motorcycles whizzing by. Every once-in-a-while, an airplane from the nearby airport can be somewhat heard flying over our neighborhood.
I would love to be able to crack open a window in the house & listen to all the sounds coming from outside, but I can’t for various reasons. For one, my mom dislikes anyone opening a window unless someone is cooking & it’s making the whole house smell. Secondly, she has a fear that someone will forget to shut the window at night & a random intruder will sneak in to burglarize our house. On top of that, my mom has removed all the screens on all the windows for easier window washing. So now we can’t find half the screens for all of the windows, which means bugs can get inside if we open a window…& not just one or two, but an annoying amount of bugs. Plus, we don’t get much ambient outdoor noise except for my next-door neighbor’s super irritating dogs barking at everything. (She has 4 fur balls.)
That’s when I discovered this completely new-to-me rabbit hole on YouTube of random background sounds. I have been listening to the Café Music BGM channel & the Chillhop Music channel on YouTube for the past couple of years already, but I have never thought of putting on ambient noise before now. This latest idea originated from something completely inane that I have already been doing for years, but never gave it much importance. It’s one of life’s small, yet impactful, pleasures that really brings me comfort & joy…listening to the sounds coming from an open window. Yes, it really is that simple, generic, & kind of dumb action that we take for granted every single day.
I started consciously & actively doing this from the time Jian & I started traveling together. Whenever we stay in a hotel somewhere, if there is an openable window, I’m going to open it. I love letting the everyday sounds from the outside waft in to our room while we’re settling in & unpacking our suitcases, or open the window when we wake up in the morning to circulate the air in the room. Obviously, due to hotel regulations, the windows do not open wide enough to get a full breeze circulating around the room, but at least we can feel a modest flow of air.
When we take breaks in our hotel room, I like to crack open the window & listen to the sounds coming from outside, rather than always have the TV on in the background. Some of my fondest memories are of the times when I’d accompany Jian on one of his work trips, & I’d be on my own for most of the day while he was working. I’d explore the city on my own for a while. Then, I’d grab an afternoon coffee & snack, head back to the hotel, & just listen to the sounds from an open window while putting my feet up on the chair & taking a relaxing break.
Jian is not too keen on my penchant for window-opening. He likes to colorfully express his fear of pervy voyeurs peering into our room, especially while we’re getting dressed or getting ready to take a shower. It doesn’t matter if the hotel room is on the 3rd floor, 20th floor, or 50th floor, or even if the windows are shaded. He believes there’s always someone out there trying to sneak a peak at us, either partially or fully in our birthday suits, perhaps with an HD resolution, military-grade, telescopic lens. Much to his chagrin though, I still enjoy cracking open that window, however much the hotel regulations allow. As long as we can hear the sounds from outside filtering in to our room, or we can feel a slight breeze, that makes me feel content.
Seeking these kinds of little pleasures in life is what truly lifts my spirits. It gets me in a good mood & puts a smile on my face. Like Gen Z aptly puts it, it’s giving chill vibes AF. I’m in my “vacation mom” era. Ahem, I’m only kidding. I don’t talk like that in my everyday life, let alone write it out. Let’s forget all that nonsense & just enjoy the ambient tunes of idle café chatter & cars passing by some nondescript city street, pretend we are people-watching as we sip our iced lattés at the sidewalk table under the awning. It’s getting closer to happy hour, & the sky is no longer a vibrant blue. Shades of pink & orange are starting to streak across the skyline. The 21 and over spot next door just put out their $1 dollar oysters sign. I’m about to reheat some leftovers for tonight’s dinner. Until the next cup, cheers!
Change in environment freaks me out. It makes me feel anxious & very unsettled. That’s probably why I am a creature of habit. I watch the same TV show episodes & movies over & over again, & don’t really look for new things to watch. I do all of my daily routines in the exact same order every time. I like things to (mostly) always stay the same.
That has also trickled down in to my little bean’s life as well. She eats roughly around the same time everyday, takes her nap around the same time daily, & bathe around the same time before bedtime as well. This has programmed her body to naturally want to eat & sleep around the same times every day. While these habits are good to build structure in my little bean’s life, it also provides a sense of comfort for me as well because I know what to expect each day.
Tomorrow Jian & I have an appointment to take a tour of a potential daycare facility we might want our little bean to start attending. My mom has been hounding pushing us for months & months to send our little bean to daycare. She & Jian have both been pushing the narrative that our little bean needs to learn to interact more with other kids her own age & not stay cooped up in the house all day with no other kids to play with. However, I also know that they want a break from our little bean, so they have time for themselves.
Yes, it is important for our little bean to learn to play with others & interact with kids her own age. She needs to develope her own social skills & become more independent, but I’m terrified to let her go. Sending our little bean to daycare, even if it’s once or twice a week, scares me so much. I am having a very tough time coming to terms with letting her out of my white knuckle grasp.
Our little bean was born during the height of COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns. For the past 2 & a half years, she has always stayed by my side, & I was able to use the pandemic as an excuse to delay the inevitable…sending our little bean to daycare or to even hire a babysitter for a couple of hours. Just thinking about it sends alarm bells ringing in my head.
I have not been able to stop overthinking about tomorrow’s appointment. I know we are only going to take a tour of the daycare place. Who knows if they’ll even have availability for our little bean to go there. However, this kind of major change in her life & in mine, it freaks me out, & I don’t know how to cope with my anxiety.
I understand that I cannot keep our little bean locked in our house forever. I will have to let her grow up sooner rather than later. I am just overthinking things. My heart will break seeing her cry & cling to me as I drop her off at her future daycare place. I will also feel super embarrassed to see all the other parents glare/stare at me while my child throws a fit as I drop her off; the whole time I will be thinking internally that the other parents are judging me.
My mind is racing even as I am writing this post. The more I think about it, the more my thoughts become illogical. I think I should stop this post here for now. Until the next post, cheers.
Today’s song of the day:
Rabbits & Foxes 
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