Yellow

Four pieces of my wardrobe are the same shade of goldenrod yellow. It's a ridiculous 70s color, I know, but I love it. I enjoy having so many ways to wear it (don't worry, so far I've resisted the temptation to wear all of the pieces at once, although I will admit to having worn three).

Today I dressed myself in the sunny sweater, which happens to be a favorite. Jess and I bought it on a long-ago Christmas shopping trip, which turned into us buying clothes for "each other" (i.e. ourselves) and saving ourselves the trouble of wrapping. I really like wearing this sweater; it stands out and puts me in a good mood when I catch a reflection of myself in the sliding entrance door to the office that's next to my desk. (Thank goodness it's just shiny and not reflective like the other side. I catch people doing their hair in it and/ or making faces all the time.)

I only mention the sweater because it factored into my pleasant afternoon, which started when I went to the little restaurant down the street for my new go-to lunch. The sandwich of black beans and cheese probably isn't the healthiest thing I could eat every day, but at 50 cents it's completely worth the calories. I'll just add a song or two to my morning jogging mix to work them off. Anyway, I'm starting to make friends with the people who work there, and today I got in a discussion with one of them about the colors I dress in and how much she likes them. Score one for the sweater.

I walked a little further to one of my favorite places in Guatemala City to study for the LSAT during the remainder of my lunch break. I love the newly-opened coffee shop it because it's original; in a city filled with McDonalds, Pollo Camperos and Pops ice cream stores, it's great to find a place that's all its own. It's located in a building downtown with high ceilings, green walls, interesting seating and the occasional art exhibit. Today there were an array of paintings by a feminist artist whose work was all, as the staff and I noted with glee, in the shades of brown and yellow I was wearing. Score two for the sweater.

After finishing up my work for the day, I decided to stop by Blockbuster for a movie so that I could pretend like I actually prefer to spend Friday night alone in my room. I got there and picked out a movie (I'm not proud of my choice, so I won't share) and went to the desk, planning on using a friend's name to check it out. Unfortunately, the smiley guy at the counter couldn't find Victor this time, so I started racking my brain to see if I knew both last names of any of my other friends. About this time the clerk suggested that I sign up for my own account. Makes sense, right?

He handed me the form and I began to fill it out, but quickly realized I didn't have most of the information it was requesting. For starters I don't really know my address. I definitely don't have a home phone number. I did know my birth date, but license number? Well, since it was stolen, not so much - that's not something I've memorized. I looked at Bridget Jones (ok, ok, yes that's the movie I rented) and looked back at the form, and back at Bridget, and made the decision to bluff my way through.

So I bring the nearly- completed form, filled with a nice array of fabricated numbers that may have included the telephone number of my childhood neighbors, up to the desk. I think at this point the clerk was a little suspicious (I took a ridiculously long time to provide a very small amount of information) but he grinned and started typing it all into the computer. When my rustling around in my purse for five minutes failed to reveal my nonexistent form of identification, he smiled at me and told me Lerae is a beautiful name. When one of the phone numbers I had put down for a reference was one digit too long, he laughed and told me he liked my sweater.

And that is why I'm giving my yellow friend the credit for my movie, butter lovers microwave popcorn (one more lap tomorrow) and for my new Guatemala-style Blockbuster card: an old gift card with a printed-out barcode scotch-taped on.

Three points for the sweater.