As I write this, we are at T-minus 58 hours, 21 minutes, and a few seconds away from the Autumnal Equinox. This one has been a long time coming, folks, but it’s COMING!!!
This summer was, in terms of weather, rather unpleasant. We usually get our fair share of hot and humid here in the 716, though not so bad as the actual Eastern Seaboard and the cities of the Atlantic northeast. But what usually happens is a lot of low 80s, with some humidity, along with a few stretches here and there where the humidity spikes and we’re into the 90s. Those periods suck, I cannot lie; even though in recent years I have found myself having an easier time with heat and humidity than I used to be able to manage, I would never claim to like those things.
That kind of weather is usually in July, and then in August while it doesn’t exactly cool off a lot, it usually does a bit. Usually in August we’ll generally dip into the high 70s for the most part, and also usually in August we’ll start to have a few nights here or there with that blessed “good sleeping weather”: the humidity drops, and overnight lows dip down to the low 60s or even the upper 50s if we’re lucky. Because of this, and because the County Fair always takes place in August, I have long maintained that August is usually my favorite summer month. This usually happens. Usually.
You can probably tell by my liberal use of “usually” in that last paragraph that none of that shit happened this year!
Nope, didn’t happen. We didn’t hit the 90s any more than usual, so we had that going for us at least, which was nice, but we also had almost none of that wonderful August respite. What happened instead is that at some point in early July, the heat seemed to set up camp in the mid-to-upper 80s, maybe in the 85-87 range, which is just warm enough to start to feel uncomfortable. Along with those temps came humidity levels that weren’t soakingly unbearable for the most part; instead it was just humid enough to be unpleasant outside. It’s like this summer was calibrated to just exceed my upper boundaries of comfortable summer weather, and then…it just stayed like that.
Into September.
WELL into September!
Like, until more than halfway through September!
This, as Dr. Harry Vanderspiegel often said, was some bullshit.
I have two date-based strong weather opinions: Snow after St. Patrick’s Day annoys me greatly, and so do temps over 80 after Labor Day. And these are not equal opinions, either. Snow after St. Paddy’s is annoying and obnoxious. Eighty-degree days after Labor Day actively piss me off.
But…it seems that we’re finally turning the corner into autumn, and this is right on time for our annual trek to Ithaca and the FLX region for the Apple Harvest Festival and more.
This brings me to the brilliant YouTuber Rachel Maksy, who does a ton of great content about whimsical crafts and fantastical clothing and all manner of other stuff. She also rocks a mean pair of overalls, and like many people who play in the “whimsy” end of the pool, she welcomes autumn with deep relief when it is finally in the offing. She offered up this short video on her channel, and I don’t think a single video has summed up my feelings on anything more than this one does:
And no, I will not be attempting any kind of reproduction of that. Dancing is, ahem, not a thing I do.
By the way, in a longer recent video in which Ms. Maksy repaints a chest to make it more autumnal in decor, she briefly comments on her love of overalls even though she apparently believes they are not…complimentary of her body. At about the 6:15 mark she says: “I love overalls as much as the next girl, even though they constantly humble me. Why does it always look like I’m wearing a diaper? Why do I look like that?”
And then she says, “This is how I imagine my body looks when I wear overalls,” adding a sketch diagram to the right side of her frame:
At this moment I cracked up, because…well…I mean…OK, I’m struggling with how to phrase this without sounding creepy as shit, and I don’t know if I’m going to figure it out, so, here goes….
…ahem…
I love the way overalls look from pretty much all angles, but Ms. Maksy is right: overalls do not accentuate, or flatter, the backside. They just don’t. At their best they are still kind of shapeless back there, and in some extreme cases, they can bunch up and look like an extra bag in that vicinity. And they’re not supposed to, right? Overalls are originally intended as protective and functional clothing. So yeah, I get it.
But obviously I do love the way they look (otherwise I wouldn’t collect them or wear them more than anything else), so what gives? Well, in their protective and functional design, overalls end up concealing in a way that can be almost teasing, if you wear them well and pair them with a good top. Women’s overalls will usually compliment and accentuate hips while concealing…other things. And other parts of the figure are concealed from some angles, and tantalizingly hinted at from others. Instead of revealing the whole package, overalls make it something shown in brief, incompletely suggested.
Plus, there’s the whole fun and “whimsy” angle. It fascinates me how overalls, which are originally garments created for hard work, lend themselves to fun and whimsy while other articles of clothing in the “workwear” arena…do not. I mean, when was the last time you saw anyone being whimsical and fun in a pair of Dickies work pants? Maybe a pair of coveralls can work, but they lack that fun teasing nature that lends itself well to whimsy and play.
Anyway, that’s my thinking on the subject: overalls may not do the backside any favors, but they do enough other fun stuff that I’m fine with it. Overalls remain perfect for most of life’s informal activities, work and play. I’ve been saying for a while that overalls are the official uniform of shenanigans, and I stand by that.
And now, lacking any particularly good way to bring this to a conclusion, I’ll just lurch to a stop.
