orange peel

I’ve developed a penchant for the color orange and it’s creeping, ivy-like, across my walls and floors. Most of my life I never cared much for yellow or orange, but preferred instead to decorate my home with blues and purples. The house I live in now is dark, and I soon despaired at the dark paneled walls of the living area. I tried painting the wood with whites, then pinks, then ochre, and finally covered it with a medium bright yellow. Maybe I like yellow because it gives the illusion of sunshine. Now the oranges are insinuating themselves in the curtains, in the design of the carpet, in accents accompanied by red. More than the feeling of light, it feels like hopefulness.

The holiday season is here, which means I’ll have no time to enjoy it. It’s the beginning of our second-busiest time at work as we prepare catalogs for spring, easter and summer. It’s a sad and sorry situation. We have to produce a certain number of pages to meet a company-set goal but the work comes in waves; we have a few months of almost no work and then we have a few months where the work is almost insurmountable. The work in the peak period can’t be done without all hands working extra hours and/or hiring temporary personnel to help us but the net monetary gain is lost from money paid in extra wages. We have to cut back on personnel and then we have to work more hours. So the holidays are a humbug for me.