TheBanyanTree: feeling purple

[Julie Anna Teague]

Feeling purple is my version, apparently, of feeling blue.  When I'm
getting through a period of stress or of feeling down, I start painting
things purple.  It took me years to notice the pattern.  When the
purple started piling up--a Lilac Frost bedroom, Pretty In Purple porch
furniture, a Wineberry front door--I became suspicious.  Yesterday, as I
finished the first coat of my Passion Plum laundry room, I was convinced.  
This is what I do when I need to pick myself up, dust myself off, and
renew my optimism.  

Last week, before the laundry room project, I painted my nails bright
purple.  I don't generally paint my nails, but I was compelled by
mysterious forces.  I should've seen the signs before the same forces
drove me to the home store for a gallon Passion Plum.  (My mother had
suggested peach.  The boys wanted a mellow yellow.)  If asked, I wouldn't
claim purple as my favorite color. That honored position is forever
reserved for blue.  But there is something in purple that lifts my
spirits, feels freeing and crazy and joyous.  Average people don't go
around painting their walls and doors and furniture and fingernails
purple.  It takes someone special!  Brave!  Different!  Viva la
difference!  That is me!  (Is that me??) 

Perhaps it's an act of extraordinary silliness to go slashing through
one's home with a purple paintbrush, a plum purple haze of insanity
clouding rational thought.  But so it is, and with the first coat on,
there's no time to repaint now.  I've purpled past the point of
reconsidering.  And I'm feeling better already. 

Julie