Speaking of flowers, I'm not completely hopeless when it comes to plants! I kill houseplants with startling regularity, but I think most of the bulbs that I planted last autumn survived!
Actually, I'd known that already. Last autumn, I planted a bunch of daffodil and tulip bulbs that Matt's mom had sent us as a housewarming present, augmenting them with some grape hyacinth bulbs that I bought myself because hyacinth flowers smell divine.
The hyacinths sprouted immediately. Short green shoots turned into long green shoots which lay across the ground and turned brown with the end of winter. I figured I'd killed them - that I'd managed to stumble across the one bulb that should be planted in the spring rather than in the autumn. I tried not to let it bother me too terribly much, because about the same time I noticed all the hyacinth leaves were turning brown, I also noticed that the daffodil bulbs had put up shoots.
About a week or so ago, I started getting depressed again. All of our neighbors who have daffodils planted already have flowers. All I have are green shoots. None of the directions I got with the bulbs said there was anything special you had to do to get them to flower! And the tulips haven't even put up shoots yet. How distressing.
This morning, while Matt was scraping the frost off his car, I stepped over to look at the daffodil shoots again. And lo! most of the little shoot clusters are sporting a shoot with a suspiciously yellow bulge at one end. It looks like I'll have daffodils after all!
And better yet, when I leaned over to look at one of the shoots, a bit of purple caught my eye - there's a hyacinth flower, half buried in the mulch! I didn't see any others, unfortunately, and I thought hyacinth stalks were at least a few inches long, but heck, I'll take what I can get! I guess I'll just keep an eye on them and see what happens. Maybe hyacinth flowers aren't really flowers, and they come out of the ground already like that? I have no idea. It doesn't seem right, but right now I'm so thrilled that the daffodils are going to bloom that I don't care.
I wore a yellow shirt to work yesterday.
I broke rules for that. Fat people are not supposed to wear bright colors and call attention to themselves. Besides, I've thought for years and years that yellow looks absolutely awful on me anyway.
But I went shopping a couple of weeks ago, and there was a rack of these shirts. Bias-cut t-shirts, with sortof ruffles around the arms and at the bottom, and when I pulled the grey one on and turned to look in the mirror, my eyes nearly popped out of my head. The way the shirt is made, it calls attention to my curves while de-emphasizing how big my hips are. This shirt was made just for me. It was perfect. I had to have more than one.
So I went back over to the rack. Besides grey, they had them in white, black, and primary red, yellow, and blue. I tried on the black. It made my chest look smaller. The blue looked all right, but my eye kept being drawn to that yellow. Don't be absurd, I told myself. Yellow makes you look sick! But I couldn't stop looking at it. Blue is my favorite color, but for some reason, the blue shirt just didn't work...
Okay, I said, exasperated. Try on the yellow shirt, see what it does to your complexion, and then put it back, okay?
I put the shirt on, wrestling momentarily with the stupid anti-theft device, which was as big as my fist and attached to the shirt in the armpit, of all the stupid places. I turned around...
This yellow didn't make me look jaundiced. It made my skin glow. It made the highlights in my hair lighter. And even more importantly, the way it hugged my curves made me gasp with surprise.
I argued with myself. I don't wear yellow. I don't own a single piece of clothing that has so much as a yellow button, stripe, or flower on it. I'm fat, for petesake - fat people can't wear bright colors!
I tried to compromise on the red. Still a bright, happy color, but not nearly so eye-grabbing. I tried it on, and had the same blah reaction as I'd had with the blue. Apparently the magic of the shirt worked with the very neutral grey, and with the extremely bright yellow, but not with the slightly less neutral blue or less bright red. Normally, I'd have just given up and bought the grey. But, heart pounding, I approached the register with the grey and the yellow.
The same trip, I bought a bra specifically to wear with a shirt I have that tends to slip over the shoulder. You understand? I bought a bra that's meant to be seen. (Well, part of it, anyway.) I've been fiddling around with makeup and hair accessories lately, too.
Is it a sign of increased self-esteem? A reviving fashion sense? A mental spring cleaning?
Whatever it is, I hope it doesn't go away anytime soon. It's kindof fun.
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