Day 7: Pink Is Not My Color, But It’s Evidently the Girls’ . . .
I never buy pink anything except for a cheapo pink and white polka-dot collar for Mona which amused me because Mona is the least pink poodle I’ve ever met. Mona should have a black leather collar with studs and a tattoo that says “Born To Kick Deer Ass and Take Delivery Men Names.” Mona may be the smallest of the dogs, but if any of the others cross her, she turns into that poodle from the penguin’s Christmas movie, all teeth and enraged black eyes, and the others back off because you do NOT screw with Mona. Whenever I get to feeling defeated, I think of Mona, taking no crap from anybody, bounding through life with the certainty that God made this patch of grass just for her, and I think, “At least I have kneecaps” and keep on trucking.
Where was I? Oh, right, I don’t do pink.
But things have been tense for awhile here, so when I absent-mindedly impulsed a marked-down $25 duvet cover and pillow shams because it was warm and bright, I didn’t even think about it being pink and orange until I got it home and stuck it in the mess that is the office and noticed that it went really well with the boxes I’d bought last year. They’re pink, too. Which is when I started to think about why the Girls were buying all these hot colors for a very small house that is almost entirely white with some blue and yellow dropped in so the place doesn’t look like a snowstorm.
Part of is that I am an Old. At 63, according to what I’ve read, I don’t see colors as brightly as I did at 23, so I now gravitate to more intense colors. Given how rapidly my eyes are failing due to age–I can’t read without glasses any more, damn it–with the extra kick of the AMD, I am willing to believe that that’s part of it, but it’s not all of it.
The truth is, as much as I love the rest of the house–the parts that are painted anyway–and as much as I am grateful for the quiet of all the white and pale blue and pale yellow (it’s called Champagne Tickle, which is probably why I picked it), it was starting to make me twitch. I know once I drag in all the yarn and the folk art, it’s going to be brighter, but until then, it’s just . . . white.
But once I dumped all the pink in that tiny, tiny room between the kitchen (all white with one pale blue wall) and the garage (will be all white one day), it felt right. It’s off at the end of the kitchen so it’s not going to fight with any of the colors in the other rooms, it gives that cold little room a warm glow, and it reminds me that I’m a romance writer and a women’s fiction writer. I’m not a romantic any more than I’m a pink person, but I didn’t sit down to write fiction until I read a romance novel at 41, romance is where my Girls live, and I think they just wanted a work space that reflected that, so they decided to spruce up my plan for a black and white office. Since it was pretty drab . . .
They went with a little pink which turned into a lot of pink and orange, and now thanks to one manic night, I have a decoupaged door and corkboard as the first color in my office (yes, it still needs one more coat of Mod Podge; I’m on it):
Go big or go home, that’s what I say. My next move: paint the window frame hot pink. The Girls are going to LOVE it.
