What Does an Addict Do ... ?

When you have a bit of a (costume) jewelry addiction ... sooner or later, you have to just start making it, so you can give some away.  My dear KTA has a pair of glimmering black-diamond crystal earrings.

Here are a few more ...

There are also some cuff bracelets, and a few miscellaneous repair jobs to be managed ...

Brand Labels

There was a time it was not only tacky, but would have even been outright baffling, to wear an advertisement on purpose.  When I was a kid, the only labels you could ever see on someone's clothing would have been the Toughskins patch on the back of someone's jeans - and that was not a statement of status, wasn't meant to be a brag.

The eighties brought us alligator shirts, and eventually Izod skipped the non-explicit logo and went straight to putting its name on things.  Then came juggernauts along the lines of Tommy Hilfiger, and paying for the privilege of becoming a marketing tool for a brand was de rigeur.

I've been thinking about this because recently I had the experience of how omitting a label can give you a great deal on something which otherwise would be pretty ridiculously priced.

Some years ago, my sister-in-law found a pair of earrings for me, which I kept in very regular rotation all the time.  They were a simple sterling design, a slender cone with filigree.  A few months ago, one of them came out while I was working downtown, and it never cropped up again.

I've missed those earrings, but because they were made by (apparently) a schmantzy designer, in looking for a replacement I was finding that a few grams of silver were costing forty-seven to fifty-three bucks.  This, for me, is kind of stupidly high, particularly for a replacement pair of earrings.

Over the course of a few months, I kept looking now and then (eBay - and, yeah, I still capitalize it that way, I'm a Virginian after all), and recently I found a pair which had a starting price of ten bucks.

The seller also omitted the schmantzy brand name.  They probably didn't know it, and the failure to suck the teat of status lost them something on the order of thirty or forty bucks.  (And, no, I don't feel I chiseled this seller; they set their own starting bid, so they determined the lowest comfortable price at which to sell.)

Obviously, I won the baubles with no other bidders.  I'm pretty pleased, not only to have gotten my earrings back, but of course for doing so without having to pay half a hundred dollars for 'em.

My dad used to express bewilderment that people were eager to become advertising billboards.  I tend to feel the same, and mostly own vintage purses (one of the favorite logo items for a women's designers) and clothing which is not easily pegged in terms of makers.  I did once buy a dress with a label on it, but because the dress was navy blue and the logo was cotton, I just used a magic marker to stain the little white box, and it disappears pretty completely.  Nearly all my jewelry is vintage (even the earrings from schmantzy designer probably date back a decade, and I count on their simplicity not screaming out some irrelevant brand which you'll notice I have not named in this post).  If anyone recognizes a Coro piece from the fifties to the seventies, fine, but it'd take a pretty different sort of connoisseur to spot and identify vintage jewelry, than someone really dedicated to today's "status" advertising.

So it's a nice little grin, looking forward to having back a gift someone chose for me, which I really liked.  And getting it for about 20% of the schmantzy maker's asking price.

Good Friends

Good times.  *And* the house is clean.

Tomorrow looks bright indeed.

Confirmation

I had wanted to write about my confirmation in the church this past Sunday, but seem to have let myself get distracted.  It's the sort of thing you want to think of as important, but "no big thing" in the sense of epochal personal development - sometimes, it's too hard to contemplate the magnitude of the spiritual, and for me it is just too presumptuous.  It is hard enough for me to give myself up to guidance.  Harder still, when the power of my own emotional experience asserts itself - and my emotional assertion tends to take the form of attempts to control my life.

When I started to look for a church (my gracious, it'll be three years ago in spring), I was on guard against exactly the emotional experience I think some people hope for in this sort of a search.  Being a drama queen, I found I wanted something else to take me where I needed to be, rather than to turn this into A Very Special Episode in the mental narrative I tell myself as the story of my life.  In the end, it was fellowship and prayer which  bound me to my congregation, and the beauty and sense of comfort I felt in our sanctuary.

When the search for a leader yielded the Priest In Charge, getting to know her, I felt the blessing of her coming, and have been as grateful to know her as if I had been a "real" member of the church family.  So "getting my papers" now, so to speak, it is like a confirmation of something more than simple congregational validity.  And, to my honor, I was blessed by our Bishop on the same day she herself was named Rector.  We get to keep her; the ministry is hers, and that is wonderful.

Against those early wishes against being dramatically swept up in the moment, on Sunday I did feel a bit of that impulse.  The bishop's hands on my head as he prayed over me - a sensation I will remember, clearly.  And he meant it to be memorable - his hands were firm and direct, not avoiding really touching me.  His fingers moved, his pressure wasn't impersonal.

It was a little hard, this high-churchy-ness, on my mom.  A lifelong Baptist, there is a mild sense of her giving me over to another team, and as much as she wanted me to find a church home, she did hope I would find one more familiar to her.  The maternal dynamic of confusion at a child's rebellion was in play.  But she was there for me; as was a friend, my dear and generous B.  When the service was over, I got a "mazel tov" from her - and then from the priest.

Another step, and a blessing both in the religious, AND in the personal sense.  I am confirmed.  It feels good.

Gimme Gimme

Year before last, my step father bought me the Asus on which I am working right now.  Last year, mom (hilariously for so many reasons) got me an HP printer.

What is it I want for Christmas?  A kitchen timer.  A copy of "Up".  Maybe a baby gate or even two.  Maybe.  Earrings.  I want to see Siddy enjoy something as much as she loves her doggie blanket, the gift of the YEAR that mom got her last year.  I die of the blanketed, cuddly, cozy cuteness constantly, thanks to that like $8 gift.  Everything my nieces have ever made me is awesome in its own right, PLUS because it was made for me.  One of those giant peppermint sticks like I used to buy for my daddy, and which he dutifully consumed every dadgum year.  Something X drew.  Something his kids drew, with the art supplies I gave them some years back.  Scented candles.  Books for my research, from the Amazon Wish List.  Books NOT for my research - same list.

Extravagant gifts are amazing.  This laptop has changed my life, literally.  It was the tool I used to get my job.  It's where I finished the novel.  It keeps me in touch with those I love.

But extravagance is unfamiliar to me.  Two years running, I have been humbled by it.  This year - I don't think anything like that is in the offing.  And that makes me so happy.

The kitchen timer, though.  I seriously want that.  (Bro, don't forget to remind mom ...)