Pattern interrupt

If you know me, you know I like stripes. Stripes do occasionally take a turn for the worse, but usually if there's a stripe involved, I am going to like it.

What you might not know is that I have a low tolerance for plaid. Seriously, it's a rare plaid that won't give me a headache. If it's made out of cotton flannel, the fuzziness can make it bearable, but beyond that, I steer clear of all things plaid. I can only look at houndstooth sideways, and glen plaid is like a three hour car ride on a rainy day while sitting in the middle of the back seat. People's fascination with the Burberry plaid (which they call "check") is totally lost on me. It's a good thing I have no pedigree and therefore am not forced to wear my family's tartan on special occasions.

This issue with plaid extends into the patterns you see inside of "security envelopes". These patterns are always a risky thing to encounter. If I was prone to seizures, these would be a trigger for sure. When I pay my rent each month, I slip my check into the envelope by feel, not by sight.

A while ago, I came across a collage that someone had made using all the envelope insides they had collected. At the time I thought "How could they stand to even look at it long enough to make it?!" But, it did get me wondering about the variety to be found inside a seemingly boring envelope. Then, recently, I came across an envelope, and lo and behold, I ~kind of sort of~ liked the inside.

So, like slowly introducing a food to which you are allergic back into your system, I decided to practice exposing myself to the insides of envelopes. I started looking around as I went about my days, and in less than a week I managed to accumulate a pretty good variety. It's amazing how many discarded envelopes you can find blowing around if you have your eyes tuned to look for them! I almost got rid of each one when I found it, since they were each so hard to look at, but I decided to keep them after all, for the sake of my experiment. And I think I now can handle the insides of envelopes a little better.

That being said, Glen Plaid and I have a long way to go before we will ever be friends.