Essay Camp day #3 - 11.17.2025

Yes I skipped a day, opting instead to stick with the #SilentSunday protocol.  Yesterday's picture was actually from an online friend of long standing, who I was able to meet and spend a weekend with a few years back.  I did do the reading assignment though

Today?  There are several prompts that spoke to me, but I ended up fixing on this one:

Write about a favorite piece of clothing that you no longer own.

Frank had a tradition for his Christmas presents - every year he bought me outfits to wear.  Sometimes I really liked them, sometimes I didn't care for them.

There was one particular dress - I don't have a picture of it because I didn't like it at all.  It was a shift, with a jewel neckline, made of polyester, and it had wide vertical strips that varied from light to dark grey with one burgundy strip.  In the front there were two sheer pieces that fastened at the should and the hem and crisscrossed in the middle.  I didn't like the material.  I didn't like the pattern.  I didn't like the style.

But I wore it regularly.  Why?  Because every single time I had it on, without fail, someone, often a man, would compliment me.   I wore that dress until one day a stray ember from Frank's cigarette landed on it and burnt a hole that I couldn't mend and into the trash it went.  

My daughter had a similar experience.  One Christmas Frank bought her a white suit with a zebra scarf.  No we aren't talking off-white or cream-colored or ivory, it was stark white.  She really hated that suit - and she wore it all the time for the same reason I wore that dress;  every single time she wore it, she got compliments.  It was given away after she had her first child and couldn't fit in it anymore.  

Frank knew what looked good on us even when we didn't agree with his taste

Today is a very Mondayish Monday and there are just too many tech issues.  Nitro Pro support finally resolved the issue I have had since last Wednesday, so it looks like I will not have to go into the office tomorrow to print out things and complete them manually, then scan them in - but boy do I have some catching up to do.  We'll see how that all works out.

My co-worker, who was a TMobile customer who suddenly learned last week without prior warning they had decided to stop supporting VPNs is in the process of switching to a FIOS Gateway, which will cost much more.  We'll see how that works out for her.

I seriously need to come up with a better retirement plan than "win the lottery".  Either that or start actually buying lottery tickets....