Bling is Life, and Life is Bling

When you're alone a lot you get fixated, but it's very interesting, the folds of a fixation. These are my favorite earrings, natural brown pearls that blush red (rare), and their color and proportions go well with any type of clothing, and I like the white-gold bead caps and white-gold shepherd's hooks. The rich difference between white gold (gold plus palladium) and sterling silver became obvious after I traveled with a woman whose peacock pearls on white-gold hooks had a distinctive glint of quality that said so much about her classiness, her priorities, her affection for and care of herself. It's in the details. So when I could, I got my own pair and was delighted -- one of those purchases you later realize was a grant from the shopping gods (like the black silk skirt I wore for seven years and no matter what size I was it fit me) and gives terrific joy.

Then I lost them. At the mammogram center we women must cozy up, shoulder, neck and ear, to the squash machine and even my dangling pearls got in the way so I took care to remove them and put them in a small ziploc bag and stowed them deep inside my summer purse, or thought I did. Days later at home I looked in vain for my pearl earrings. I phoned the mammogram center which called back in the middle of an important meeting but for the first time in life I took the cellphone call (because a return call from a medical center is rare) and asked if they'd found a pair of brown pearl earrings with white-gold shepherd hooks, and they had not. And I thought, of course. Finders keepers with anything that classic and wearable.

The purse's patent-leather trim was cracking and shabby so after the last of many obsessive searches through the purse I tossed it and had since wondered if the pearl earrings were somehow in it and I just hadn't smoked them out. In that case they were gone forever.

I ordered another pair from the same company in Thailand and received two black pearls without any gloss or glow, like old bowling balls or shoe soles -- but kept them for their white gold hooks, hoping someday I'd find pearls like the first ones to hang on them. Then I ordered coffee-brown Swarovski (glass) pearl earrings on silver hooks, and they are nice but without that caress of red that made all the difference to my coloring, as if the lord of chic had selected them for me. And slowly, with many pangs, I gave up my fixation. They were lost.

I use as my two "jewelry boxes" those plastic shells that salads come in; one is for gold-tone metals and the other silver-toned. (Every normal woman over 50 will have amassed a cool-earring collection.) The other day I dumped out the container of gold-tone metal earrings and saw the little bag with my prodigal pearl earrings in it. In haste I'd mis-filed the gold under silver, and it hadn't occurred to me to look there.

Very pleased to have them back. I deserve this fine good luck, especially in the dead of winter when it feels sometimes as if one's earrings are close and fond companions.

Good, Good, Really Good!

At a Chicago conference last week I heard in person a famous channeler of positive messages, author of millions of books and CDs. She might be fake, but I liked her message and echoed to myself, “I will accept that things are always working out for me, and any expansion is good.” Minutes after starting back home on the tollway, my left rear tire blew. I take the next exit and, by the grace of God, it's a suburban Chicagoland avenue lined for miles with car dealerships and car-repair shops.

The repair shop I pull into mounts my spare for free and sends me to a tire dealer where I'm told there's a two-hour wait. “Things are always working out for me,” I thought, and in entirely foreign Naperville, Illinois, I take an aimless walk and two blocks down find a wonderful nail salon in which to spend an hour and a half. Across the street is a Greek restaurant. They know how to cook fish, and the waitress is great and gives me a free dessert. Hours off schedule by now, I’m as happy as they make ‘em. The weather is gorgeous. As I’m finishing lunch the tire place calls; the car’s ready.

Back safely in Missouri, I find a client has paid me. Years ago Mom had given me a floral-type 1950s white-gold diamond ring with a mousy little diamond that Dad bought for their 25th; I never much liked it. She swore me not to sell it; but bravely telling myself, “I can afford this,” I went to a jeweler I didn’t know and said since he was the pro he could give the stones any new setting he liked. The little squirty trailer-park ring is now dazzling, classy and worth more than before, and in the same shopping plaza was a frozen yogurt shop. Saying, “Things are always working out for me,” I scheduled my ten-year-old Toyota for removal of its two little rust spots and it’s in the body shop right now increasing in resale value.

At the bank, the fun never stops.

During my weekend in Illinois, summer came to Missouri. The public pool opened for the year but I lacked a beach towel; I’ve never owned one. Goodwill—next block over from the jeweler—didn’t have any. Oh well. Stopping by the bank I find it's Customer Appreciation Day with delightful free hotdogs and model trains. I told the teller this should happen every day.

When my last haircutter, a sub for my usual, gave me a “Moe Howard” (bowl haircut) and I'd cried, a friend recommended a stylist 30 miles away, booked up weeks in advance. Saying, “Any expansion is good,” I called, and drove for my appointment far into the city, and for my efforts got a soft and flattering haircut. Because any expansion is good (by then I was playing the channeler’s CDs in my car), I bought that same day my very first eyeliner and some brow highlight called "Living Luminizer." The next day when I’m wearing them (plus my new haircut) a man approaches me, the first in almost a year. He’s not a contender (his dentures smelled), but any expansion is good!

I’d been thinking about buying or leasing a new car because I want updated safety features, and even phoned around and daydreamed at CarFax but said, monetarily, “I’ll just keep and fix the 2007 Toyota,” but while it’s in the shop I am driving an impressive silver 2016 luxury Nissan. The body shop worked out a specially cheap deal with the rental place. Things are always working out for me. . .

Towel and bathing suit

I got up at sunrise and outside bathed my new ring in the rising sun and thought, "Life is great. Life is always expanding. Things are always working out for me."

At the gym, Nissan in the parking lot, I attempt and ace the strength class that last year sent me to the cardiologist. Meanwhile, the bank phones: I have won one of their Customer Appreciation Day prizes: a beach bag with beach towel and a $25 gift card. When I pick up my prize (the bank takes my photo), I see the towel matches my bathing suit! And the bag is great, too.

Things are always working out for me!

Hope Emerald, Etc.

I prized two pendants for sentimental reasons -- one emerald, not a crown jewel, cloudy but green enough to remind me of nature, and one handsome oval smoky quartz, in superstitious terms a highly protective stone, market value five dollars. Wore them joyfully. Last January, hid them and forgot where, so for weeks and months I have torn closets apart, dumped out winter boots, stood on stepstools, searched the garage, and clawed from the cupboard boxes of Jello, thinking: "Maybe I put them here. Or here. Or here. . ." Maybe I hid them in the bottom of a trash can and they got thrown away, or in the folds of an old sweatshirt I bagged and tossed. Could I have done that? The thought gave me a pang. I'd looked everywhere. They were gone. To get a hold of myself, I recalled the Roman poet Catullus, who chided, "Cease this folly, and what you see is lost, set down as lost."

Even so, in the final week of June before leaving for Washington I sheepishly googled "patron saint of lost items," and murmured this "unfailing" prayer to St. Anthony to find the pendants -- sweetening the deal with an offer, if I found them, of a $20 donation to the nearest church:

"Blessed be God in His Angels and in His Saints. O Holy St. Anthony, gentlest of Saints, your love for God and charity for His creatures made you worthy, when on earth, to possess miraculous powers. Encouraged by this thought, I implore you to obtain for me (request). O gentle and loving St. Anthony, whose heart was ever full of human sympathy, whisper my petition into the ears of the sweet Infant Jesus, who loved to be folded in your arms; and the gratitude of my heart will ever be yours, plus $20. Amen."

Son of a. . . In the pantry just a half-hour ago behind a stack of canned tomatoes I found a ziplock bag with the green pendant. I stepped back and felt my heartbeat in my throat and was so grateful I collapsed onto the futon.

I said, thank you, St. Anthony. It is half of what I wanted, so you get $10. Returning to the same pantry and shelf, I moved some cans aside and there was the quartz pendant.

All Bunnies, All the Time

The bunny charm bracelet got started in 2005. I have since added to it. I like mostly realistic bunnies, so there are no Bugses or Playboy bunnies. Notice the coins picturing hares: one from Ireland, and a Canadian nickel lasered to silhouette just the hare. Some are customized charms by one artist, some are vintage, and others are of contemporary mass manufacture. Most are sterling and 3-dimensional. My favorite is the bunny holding out its heart. I always pick that one out and tell people, "This is me."

I Sold A Diamond

I hated to sell, but I sold my diamond today, plus a few rings and things I liked but did not love, or that were broken. In return I received not thirty pieces of silver but $734 for the lot.

I knew this diamond for six years. It was .47 carats, grade SI1, color G, a solitaire set in 14K yellow gold, and my first and only diamond. Geologists say that the youngest diamonds are 20 million years old. So I had a very old and radiant companion. Whether it was wise I don't know. Unlike other gems I have known, this one was deaf and mute. It did not wink at me, or reveal its secret name. It was beauty and constancy incarnate, and absolutely nothing else.

My homework revealed that 24K gold is presently at an insane record-busting price high (this is technically called "price ecstasy") of close to $1000 per ounce. (You will of course get much less for 14K gold, which is 53 percent pure gold, the rest other metals). A diamond of like quality goes for about $850 wholesale, and an honest jeweler who is buying will give you perhaps 60 percent of that. The first jeweler I consulted offered me $250 for the lot. I left him staring at my afterimage, I fled so fast!

Now my stone will bring happiness and beauty to others -- for generations. It will exist until this planet is a cinder. I was a short interlude in its life. And as lovely as it was, it is just a material thing, after all. All is vanity and striving after wind.