Today is dark, damp and chilly, but I don’t mind. My dance card is empty so I’ll probably just stay around the house and read. Last night I started a book called The Altar of Bones. It will keep me occupied.

I feel witless today. Nothing of import rambles in my brain. I looked out the window over the sink for a long while waiting for the coffee to brew. The male gold finches are at their most beautiful. Their feathers are deep yellow and striking in the darkness of the day. I noticed the red chests of the house finches. Even slight colors pop on a day like today.

For the longest time, probably well over twenty years, the walls of my house were white. Color came from whatever I used to decorate. One year, though, when it was time to repaint, I decided to go with color. I didn’t just choose pale or pastel colors. Nope, I went put on your sunglasses bright. The living room is lipstick, a deep red. I chose grey as its companion color. The bathroom went pink, bright in your face pink. Nutmeg was my choice for the dining room, and it is my favorite of all the colors. The kitchen is green but an odd color green difficult to describe. The hall is blue, a light blue. Upstairs the hall is grey because the walls leading to it are red. The open linen closet is red, sort of the living room in reverse. My room is a bright yellow; the guest room is deep blue and the bathroom was lilac. I say was because that bathroom is now blue-green to match the new shower curtain, but I liked the lilac so much I used it downstairs in the once pink bathroom. I like the lilac better.

All this talk of color has reminded me of my Crayola crayons, the box I always got for going back to school. There were 48 colors back then. No other kind of crayons would do. They would be an embarrassment, just pale imitations of Crayola crayons. I remember opening the box and getting my first whiff of those crayons. It was a special smell that only came from a box of crayons. I’d look at those perfect crayon tips lined up in the box then I’d pick the crayons up one at a time to see the name of the color. I learned burnt Sienna is a sort of brown and periwinkle is a kind of blue. It wasn’t just a red crayon in that box. It was brick red or violet red. Yellow was lemon yellow, as bright as the fruit. There were new words for me to learn like magenta, thistle and maize. The colors were the hints.

I have a commemorative tin of Crayola Crayons. It contains all 48 colors that were in my box some of which have since been discontinued. The tin isn’t valuable in money, but when I open it, I smell the crayons and see those tips lined up in a row, and I am seven again. That tin is invaluable to me!