Shopping Life
After being good about not shopping much this year, I gave in to Black Friday sales. Up until November, I had bought a total of 11 items of clothing in 2020. During holiday sales, I ordered nine things totaling $670, though two of them are the same item in different sizes. I know I’m not going to keep all of it. Still, compared to the rest of the year, this is a significant burst of shopping.
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One reason I gave in was because I had volunteered so much on election work these last few months and felt that I deserved to treat myself. The first thing I bought were these boots from dr. Liza during a big sale. I’m pleased with the leopard print flats I bought earlier from this brand (review here), so I decided to give the boots a try. However, according to tracking, the boots seem stuck at U.S. customs. It’s been nearly two weeks and counting. This has never happened to me before and I’m not sure that I can do anything but wait.
From Eileen Fisher I ordered the most items, shopping exclusively in the sale section, where an additional 50% discount was applied. We’ll see if I keep any of it, though. (Items should arrive tomorrow.) I ordered a black midi skirt (an item I put on my wardrobe want list after trying and returning a two-piece Vetta dress last year during Black Friday/Cyber Monday), a silk top (impulse purchase), and several pairs of pants.
I don’t exactly need more pants; these days I spend most of my time in one of two pairs of sweatpants. In the back of my mind, I was thinking I should get another pair of pants that aren’t sweatpants, something I could leave the home in that were more comfy than jeans. However, since I shopped the sale section with off-season items, it’s unlikely that any of the pants I ordered are warm enough for the current weather. They’re mostly cotton or jersey, like this slouchy pair. Ooops. I fell into the it’s-on-sale-let-me-throw-it-into-my-cart mindset.
Lastly, I ordered some sweaters, including cashmere from Italic, a direct-to-consumer, membership-based brand. Regular readers will know that I’ve been trying to build up my sweater collection, in particular warm ones that work for my sensitive skin. The Italic ones have arrived and seem promising. I’ll write a review soon. (UPDATE: here’s my review of the Italic Boxy Cropped Cashmere Sweater.)
Things I Ordered: Eileen Fisher stretch cotton pants, Italic cropped cashmere sweater, dr. liza boots
Lockdown Life
Due to the alarming acceleration of Covid-19 cases, California is rolling things back. A number of Bay Area counties are locking down tonight through January 4 before we’ve even hit the number set by the state that triggers shelter-in-place orders. That number is 15%, as in when a region’s hospital capacity dips below 15%, it goes into lockdown. But health officials in the Bay Area say that by the time we reach 15% it will be too late; we must act now. Hospitalizations in the Bay Area have gone up 82% over the past two weeks (and 90% for California as a whole).
My household has been cautious even as things loosened up over the summer. We get groceries about once a week and have only eaten outside at a restaurant twice (both times only because the table was far from others; we are not comfortable with many of the outdoor seating arrangements in the parklets that have sprung up). I can count on one hand the number of times I have been inside a retail store that was not for essential supplies. We have seen friends occasionally and always outside. No one has been inside our apartment with the exception of an electrician once (and we were all masked).
Since we both work from home, I don’t anticipate much change for us day-to-day with new restrictions. Before this stay home order, we had already decided to stay put for the holidays and not visit family. (Mine live halfway across the country.) This is a scary time; we haven’t even seen the anticipated increase in cases from Thanksgiving gatherings. I get angry thinking about it and how some of the spread could have been prevented. It’s hard not to despair at the behavior of other human beings.
Yikes about the customs issue. I imagine they must have a big backlog! Did you have to subscribe/pay for Italic membership? I bought an Italic leather card case quite a while back, before they fully started their membership-based business model so I only paid for the item back then. (The same card case costs less now, provided one has a membership, though I thought it was a fine value at the price I paid.)
COVID cases are increasing here too, unfortunately, after a well-managed several months from around June through October. I’m not sure our local and state governments are being aggressive enough about shutting back down in most parts of NYC, only a few “orange zones” in NYC have seen significant shutting back down. (It’s not even particularly clear whether the state or local authorities have final say which is… not too reassuring.) It really is a tragedy how much preventable death and suffering there is nationwide from the poor handling of the pandemic here in the US :(.
I’m sure there’s a backlog due to Covid-19 and the holidays, but I do wonder if my boots were in a forgotten pile of packages. Finally got a notification that they’re on the move, though! For Italic, a friend with a membership gifted me one through a promotion. We’ll see how much use I get out of it in the next year. I’m not sure that there’s enough stuff I’d want to buy to warrant paying for a membership.
The U.S. Covid response has been horrendous. I’m sure you saw the news yesterday about how the Trump administration passed up the chance to order more vaccine doses? I can’t look at the news too much or I’ll get too angry.