The Hunt for Red Orange: one woman's attempt to pass her colour wheel assignment and not spoon out her eyeballs

My first assignment in my interior decorating class is due this Wednesday. We have to build a colour wheel out of scraps of fabric. Easy peasy, right? Go to Michaels or favourite fabric store, collect a rainbow and glue down onto a presentation board. Insert maniacal laugh here.

My mom dug up I had some scraps of felt in red, yellow and orange and a random piece of red-purple. In class last week were were permitted to beg, borrow and trade with each other to complete our collections. I scored some green, blue, blue-green, yellow-green and yellow-orange from my classmates, meaning I left that night only missing the blue-purple and the red-orange.

On the weekend I visited Michaels and found a square of felt in the blue-purple, and found a pair of magic gloves in the red-orange. So I thought. In the store the gloves were red-orange, in nature they were just red. I was literally, seeing red.

Tonight I searched my house and my parents' house for red-orange anything. A towel they wouldn't miss? Old shirt? Even a paper napkin would have satisfied me.  Every time I found something that might work I'd place it in the wheel and it would look like just plain, regular orange.

You would think a girl who drives an orange truck, (it had to be orange) would know the colour. And actually, looking at it tonight I mused that it might pass the bill for red-orange, but there is no way I was going to cut a 2-inch circle out of a quarter panel of my sweet ride.

Just before leaving my mom's and dad's I came across a Clinique makeup bag--the kind you get for "free", filled with samples as a bonus gift with your $26.50 or more purchase. The outside had a strong candidate for the colour and the inside lining had another solid option. I think I might have all the pieces now, just have to put them together in a presentable fashion.

I am trying to keep in perspective that I am doing this class to actually learn, not just to get through the assignments and tests. So today I learned that red-orange is a tricky colour that has the strength to drive me mad.

The hallway from the hotel in The Shining

REDRUM, REDRUM!

Ready, set, go

Call me Sign Up Sally because life is about to get busier.

This weekend was the Dragon Boat Festival. I don't know yet where my team finished, but we had a good final race. I'm undecided if I will join again next year.

After we finished racing in the two heats on Saturday I had a writing workshop on freelance travel writing that I'd signed up to attend. Why? Well, why not? Sometimes I travel. I think I can write. Maybe there's something I can do with that.

Tuesday is my first ballet class at the School of Contemporary Dancers. Why ballet? It's been a dream for years. Will I love it? Will it be a disappointment and ridiculously hard to pick up? Don't know, but excited to try, if only because it means I get to wear the girly, pink ballet slippers.

Wednesday night is my first Residential Interior Decorating class at Red River College. It's a Continuing Ed certificate program that I think I can do in two years if I decide to purse it to the end. Why interior decorating? When I was in high school I wanted to study interior design and architecture. At the last minute I applied to Journalism/PR/Ad school and was filled with bliss when I got accepted. I still love my job, but felt ready to study something again, y'know, because I'm a geek and I think learning is invigorating. But the idea of working all day in a communications role only to go to a class and study and talk MORE about communications or marketing stuff left me nauseated. So after much humming and hawing and some encouraging words from my mom I decided to explore that part of my brain that gets tickled about floor plans and paint chips.

Photo credit: Wonderlane

I think the most exciting part of this is that I'm not really worried about how well I do. It won't help me get a promotion and I don't need the credentials to fluff my resume. I am free to try and fail and learn from the experience. I've never had that feeling before.

I'm about to start week 8/10 of my learn to run program and would like to continue the practice to work my way to a 5k run. I'm not really interested in marathons or half marathons, but my interest has been piqued at the challenge of doing a duathlon--run and bike race. Maybe next summer if I can do some serious training in the winter. I've also signed up for an afternoon intro to the weight room class. I like doing weights but I have no idea if I am using the machines properly or what weight I should be lifting, so going to the gym started to get frustrating. I'd seriously looked into working with a personal trainer, but the cost ($7,000 for a year) gave me pause and resulted in me trying the Running Room Learn to Run program and this weight room class.

Last weekend Lisa and her friend were talking about this challenge to read the entire holy bible. Apparently if you read 15 minutes a day, you can do it in two years. They're going to get a small group together to meet every couple of weeks to talk about what they've read. I was baptized in the Anglican church, have attended a number of sermons in my life, but haven't really spent any time reading the bible. I remember this was especially frustrating in high school and university when every piece of literature we studied had some big reference to something that had happened in the bible and everyone seemed to know it but me. Today, it is still the one of the most widely read books in the world (comes second after the Quran, I believe). I saw the light of opportunity and told Lisa to count me in.

Photo credit: The Pumpkin Papers

My sister's wedding is July 6, 2012 in Kelowna. On Friday the wedding party got together to start talking about the social (March 31, 2012) and the plans for the big day. I'm maid of honour so that also means dress shopping, shower planning and shoulder-to-cry-on lending.

So yeah, life is about to get pretty full here for me. I'm kind of scared I will burn myself out, but excited too to be doing all these dream come true things. You don't need to win the lottery to live your dreams, you know.

To right the unrightable wrong
To love pure and chaste from
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star
This is my quest
To follow that star
No matter how hopeless
No matter how far

--The Impossible Dream, lyrics by Joe Darion

Everyday is Mother's Day

My mom made me veggie burgers (with no hidden agenda cheese) and a vegan apple pie today. Even though I am 29 and far beyond my temperamental, experimental teen years, she goes along with my whims. It is because of her that I can keep my youthful curiosity and spirit. The Grand Canyon filled ten times over could not hold my gratitude for this gift.

Also, my dad fixed my heaved patio blocks today so I let him drink the beer in my fridge.

(If you filled the Grand Canyon 10 time over with beer, you'd just have a lot of drunk dads.)

Mad Cow Disease?

I was ready to quit on day two.

I was hungry and I was out for after work drinks on the patio with work friends on Friday night, ready to order the veggie burger. This was my meal chosen for me by elimination. I had eliminated meat, dairy and eggs from my diet and thus 98 per cent of the average chain restaurant's menu was not an option for me.

I had decided I was going to go vegan for a 28-day experiment. Not for health, not for politics or a new set of animal-friendly beliefs, just curiosity mostly. Will I feel better in some way? Will I drop a dress size? Will I turn into a chickpea from eating too many lentils? Don't know. Will report back on September 29 or so.

I was happy to see a veggie burger on the roster. It came dressed with a slice of mozza cheese, but I figured that was an easy nix request.

"Oh, are you vegan?" The waitress asked.

It felt weird to say yes to this new label. Suddenly I had a new angle to my identity. I've been asked many times before if I was vegetarian, I don't know, since I happen to like vegetables and don't bring chicken legs to lunch regularly I s'pose. I could have still been that person, ordering the veggie burger, but perhaps wanting to skip the cheese that night to save 100 calories or maybe I just don't like mozzarella or maybe I'm trying to take my Reiki therapist's advice and eliminate cheese from my diet. I spared the poor girl the identity crisis speech though and just said, yes.

"Oh, well the burger actually has cheese in it, so is that okay? I know just because I just went through this with another person who's vegan. There aren't really many options, unfortunately."

She pointed out a rice dish, the hummus and a green salad. All I'd been eating for the past two days was chickpeas, hummus, variations of greens and fruits and breads and cereals. I missed cheese. I missed eggs. Why was I doing this stupid experiment again? Curiosity cured! Vegan diets are no fun! And they're expensive and they draw attention to you as a picky eater! Maybe the withdrawal was making me cranky. My head hurt too.

I looked at the menu again and settled on the bruchetta--without the cheese melted on top. I'm pretty sure there was parmesan in the tomato mixture but given the fact that this was a pretty casual place, I was pretty confident that cheese was fairly far removed from any true dairy content.

Yesterday Lisa invited me to join her at her friend Alison's place to watch the football game. The game ended around dinner time and we got invited to stay and eat barbecue food which included chicken, salads and cut up veggies. The chicken looked so good and everyone was raving about it. I was pretty happy with my veggie plate that included a particularly yummy, garden fresh tomato. Dessert was an apple pie, another no-no because the pastry had part of an egg in it. Lisa doesn't do eggs but even she ate a slice. I gutted the beautiful, flaky crust and enjoyed the apple filling. People admired my will-power and I again questioned my logic.

Going vegan isn't easy as pie (and let me tell you, pie ain't easy). But I'm sticking to my 28 day challenge anyway. If anything, I've reintroduced carbs into my diet, which I'd previously been trying to keep at bay, and I think I was really really missing them. My prediction is that this will be another experience that shows the value of balance.

I got new shoes today

First class is September 13. If I make it to the recital, you are all invited.