Red and green and nothing to do with Christmas

The bridesmaid dresses for my sister’s wedding arrived today.

Long ago when my sister first asked if I would be her maid of honor I told her, “Yes, but please, please, please don’t put me in a red dress.”

I thought it was a simple request. I even repeated it several times over the years to make sure she couldn’t forget. I would wear any color except red. Considering my sister’s favorite color is blue, I can’t even remember why I was worried.

When she started planning her wedding this year she chose burgundy and gold for her colors. In my mind, the burgundy she was thinking about was close enough to red that it would still clash with my red hair. But she kept assuring me that it’s not red, wouldn’t be very close to red, would be closer to purple, etc.

The dresses that came today are red. Fairly close at least. The picture shows me holding a red ribbon and a burgundy cord to compare the dress to so it’s somewhere in between those colors. Everything else about the dress seems nice. But it’s red. Of all the colors in the world why do I have to wear the one that doesn’t look good on me?

 

Yet it’s not the color red that proves that my family members are all going insane because of this wedding. It’s the green.

Last weekend my mom called me and mentioned that my dad was outside building a greenhouse.

This was odd. We used to have a greenhouse for growing strawberries though, so I wondered if he was intending to plant those again. Never mind the fact that the strawberries had never grown very well and the rest of our vegetable garden had long since been converted into part of the archery range.

“No,” my mom said, “It’s for the palm trees. Right now they’re sitting in the living room but there are bugs crawling out of them.”

Palm trees?! I live in Washington. There shouldn’t be any palm trees in my living room. Yet my mom said this as if it was totally normal. Evidently the wedding decorator has gotten a little carried away, because sure enough, when I came home I found the palm trees still taking over the living room and some other plants turning the guest bedroom and the music room into mini forests as well.

 

Presently, a lovely wind storm has knocked out the electricity and I don’t know when I’ll be able to post this. In the meantime I have to go practice walking around in heels again…and that has plenty of potential to quite easily drive me insane. Maybe by the time the lights come back on the palm trees will seem normal to me too.