Shiny! Pretty!

I’m just gonna come out and say it: I love jewelry.

I do. Really, really. Shiny or colorful or gaudy or just plain bizarre? Sign me up. More than once, I have come home from the flea market with some treasure purchased from a card table set up outside of a Winnebago and had this conversation:

Dad: That’s … interesting. What are you going to do with it?

Me: Umm … I’m gonna wear it?

Dad: Oh. Well, that’s nice.

I am somewhat embarrassed to admit that because I never get rid of anything, I have secret stashes of jewelry around my house. That way, I’m totally prepared once those huge earrings from 1983 come back. All that stuff they sell at Forever 21? I probably have the banged-up original. And yeah, it’s way cooler than the knock-off.

Lest you consider busting into my house, the total value of my shiny! pretty! hoard is probably about $12. But I love it.

It’s not often that I am insanely jealous over another woman’s baubles, but I’ve definitely had my moments. Usually, it’s some over-the-top vintage piece. But there was a time when I had severe engagement ring envy.

I was jealous of the shiny! pretty!, but mostly, I was jealous of what it stood for. I was lonely. I felt like I was destined to be alone forever. I wondered if my friends with the shiny rings truly appreciated the value of having a best friend who was their partner in crime. I wondered if they occasionally looked down at their left hands and smiled, seeing both the physical beauty of the jewelry and the galactic, holy-shit amazingness of having 2 humans promise to work together to figure everything out forever.

When My Guy and I talked about getting engaged, he was surprised at my enthusiasm for ring shopping. He didn’t think I’d want to go. Shaaa - right! I totally wanted to go!

Except it was totally stressful and overwhelming. None of the rings were quite right.

Until … we saw The Ohmigod Ring. Because I tried it on and all I could say was, “Ohmigod.”

My sweet husband gave me that ring 2 years ago today.

I look at it all the time. Sometimes I wear my wedding band and engagement ring on different hands, so that I can appreciate them separately. Sometimes I just look at them because ohmigod, they are so pretty. But mostly?

Mostly, I look at my rings and think about My Guy, and the look on his face when he gave them to me. And I think about how lucky I am to have a true partner and friend, and how My Guy was so totally worth the wait.

Now, granted, sometimes I look at them and think, “Damn! I need to clean these rings - I look like a hobo!”

But, keep in mind that My Guy always refers to his wedding ring as “My Burden” - typically while raising his left hand to the heavens and pantomiming a classy “Why, God, whyyyyyy?” moment. Either that, or he’s playing with the ring - err, excuse me, I mean burden - spinning it around, tossing it in the air, and generally making me believe his prediction that at some point, he will lose the ring - err, burden - and I can’t be upset.

So, it’s cool. Marriage is all about balance. Plus, I have a bunch of lovely plastic flea market rings he could wear instead.

Dog lover or mentally unstable mess?

I’ve been thinking about volunteer opportunities. Basically, I need to get out of my rut of hating my job and hating everything because it’s, like, 847 degrees all the damned time. Also, I think a chance to do a little nurturing will help me figure out this whole “we’re probably never getting knocked up” thing.

It’s complicated.

I’ve researched helping socialize dogs at 2 different animal shelters. I could just hang out with dogs! I like dogs a lot! I am good with dogs! It would be a win / win!

Gratuitous dog photo

Except both my mom and My Guy had the exact same reaction:

“Shaaa, riiiiiiight. That would be the worst volunteer match-up ever. You’d adopt, like, every single dog.”

Actually, I believe My Guy added a healthy dose of “oh, helllll no” to his response. Given that he lives with 4 dogs, I guess it’s understandable that he’d have a really intense reaction.

But, see? I could go, work with the dogs, and then go home. I’m not dumb enough to believe that I could work at a kill shelter. I’m talking about a super low-kill shelter, and only working with the dogs who need to be socialized so that they can find their forever homes. It would be like I was running a finishing school for debutantes, but we’d work on not shitting on people instead of, you know, which fork to use.

My Guy was gentle, but firm. “Your heart is just too big,” he said. “You’d bring all those dogs home, and we already have too many. You know there’s undiscovered pee somewhere in our house. We have too many dogs, and only 1 of them isn’t an asshole.”

I considered this. I do have a track record of adopting special-needs (read: cute but completely untrainable) canines. I will not comment on how this also correlates to my choice of husband.

“Are you saying that without you, I’d become an animal hoarder?”

My cute husband got that evil little lying smile. “Your parents and I talk about it all the time,” he said. “I saved you from being a hoarder. You were 1 marriage away from being on that show. Your folks are always thanking me for saving you from being knee-deep in poo and dogs.”

Hmm.

Considering that I am somewhat fastidious about keeping the level of filth in my home to a mere yellow on the Homeland Security threat level chart, I find this hard to believe. But maybe my husband and my mama have a point.

Any tips? Ideas for other volunteer opportunities that might be less likely to get me my own humiliating show on TLC?

Yet another example of my mom's extreme awesomeness.

She sent me this response to the post about my evil choir teacher:

[Choir teacher] was a total shit. We hate her (I'm sorry, Lord - but it's the truth).

In which I am overly sensitive and carry a grudge about things that happened in 1990.

Since I’ve been living in the past lately, let me tell you about a recent Facebook mindfuck.

One of my high-school classmates posted a photo on Facebook. It was the group photo of the high school show choir in their performance outfits. (Costumes? Crimes against fashion?) As you might imagine, the pic featured lots of radar bangs, shoulder pads, and gold metallic fabric. I laughed. I pored over the photo, trying to remember names and playing that mental who’s who game.

We had this choir teacher who made kids cry on a regular basis. As a somewhat mentally healthy adult, I can now see that she had real Problems. She got involved in her students’ social lives and played mind games and was generally a walking billboard for Hot Mess.

She eventually got fired for hitting a kid. This surprised me, because I remembered her hitting kids. When I was in school, that wasn’t the sort of thing that got you fired. Reprimanded, maybe. It was a different time.

It was this choir teacher who called little sophomore me at home the night before the show choir list was going to be posted.

Of course I had auditioned. I was the strongest soprano in my grade. I had tons of musical theatre experience from our community theatre. I had been fantasizing about being in show choir since I had first seen the group perform at our local Miss America pageant when I was 4 years old. Of course I would be in show choir!

Except that I wasn’t. The choir teacher called to give me a heads-up that I didn’t make the cut, on account of some intricacies she explained to me which now escape my memory. I think it had something to do with holding a spot for a girl who was being treated for an eating disorder even though I was the better singer.

At any rate, it was not fair. And it was especially not fair how the teacher told me to be on my best behavior and maybe she’d change her mind in the middle of the school year - after all, she had a skirt in my size.

Yeah, I wore the same size skirt as the girl with the eating disorder. Keep in mind, too, that I had no idea that girl was being treated for an eating disorder, but the teacher told me alllll about it.

Anyway, she lorded this shit over me for the rest of the school year, and I was never “called up “ to show choir, except when they needed help hitting the high notes in the national anthem. So I stood with them, the only one not in a matchy-matchy outfit, and I sang, and then I had to leave. Later, the choir teacher would tell me I’d made them look bad because I’d worn a too-short dress.

By the time my junior year rolled around, I realized that I wanted to limit my exposure to the choir teacher as much as possible. Also, I decided that the show choir was lame in their gold lamé. So, screw you guys!

And I never looked back. Except for 22 years later, when I can admit that dammit, it hurt my feelings.

Also? That dress was really cute and it wasn’t too short. My mom bought it for me, and it was adorable.

Rain, ice and lack of sunlight. Oh, and bomb threats. And no, the heat isn't making me delirious - why do you ask?

It's been so hot for so long that it's starting to color everything. I feel wilted. Even the dogs look haggard. And let us not mention my landscaping. Not my ladyscaping - I'm talking about those dead plants in the yard that give off a very Morticia Addams feel.

Late this afternoon, I heard thunder. It made me giddy! And then? Then, it rained. I know this because I immediately ran to the window and watched fat drops run down the glass.

It made me think of my junior year of high school. That winter, we went 23 days without sunshine. It was one of those winters where we got snow Nov. 1 and everything stayed icy and decrepit until the end of March. Yay, Iowa!

But that February day when the sun finally came out? I was in accounting class when the sun broke through. Our teacher didn't have a firm handle on our class - her mind was elsewhere. It was an open secret that she was having an affair with the athletic director - the athletic director who had just been fired for embezzlement. And she was the accounting teacher. I don't think us kids in Accounting I: How to Balance the Checkbook You Might Someday Have were her top priority.

And so, when the sun broke through? We ran to the windows and laughed. The glass was steamy, thanks to the unpredictable-at-best HVAC system, but we rubbed it down with our sleeves and basked in the sun.

A few weeks later, we ran to the same windows to check out all of the squad cars and fire trucks that had surrounded our school. There had been a bomb threat, and the authorities were checking it out.

Notice that they were checking it out - not letting school out. Because this was 1992 and not 2012, they did not evacuate the building. No, instead, they locked down the school. Because, see, bomb threats? Were how degenerates got their girlfriends dismissed from school. Call in a bomb threat, school is dismissed early, and your girl is free to hang out with your lowlife self.

But the school administrators and the law nipped that in the bud. They outsmarted the scum, and locked a few hundred high schoolers - including the girlfriend in question - in a building that was purported to contain a bomb. Bwah ha!

It was a different time.

I am old. But moderately informed.

Today, my childhood officially ended.

Sally Ride passed away. And Weekly Reader is shutting down.

Sonofa.

I feel like I should have smart, thoughtful things to say here, but I really don't. Sally proved that a girl could do anything and go anywhere. And Weekly Reader proved that school can be really boring, but consistent.

Sorry, but when you're in 2nd grade and read at an 8th grade level? Weekly Reader isn't a star in the great educational-engagement sky.

I will say, though, that Weekly Reader represented my first foray into presidential politics. Right before the 1980 presidential election, the Weekly Reader had photos of all 3 candidates on its cover. My kindergarten class voted, and the ballots were tallied.

I had a moment of panic because I had no idea who to vote for. So, I voted for the candidate who looked the most like my grandpa. I distinctly remember this train of thought: Grandpas are smart. Therefore, grandpas make good presidents. Which candidate looks most like a grandpa?

Sadly, my little 5-year-old brain thought that independent John B. Anderson looked most like my grandpa. I was 1 of 2 students to vote for him. A lot of kids must have thought that Ronald Reagan most closely resembled their grandpas.

I worried that since only 1 other kindergartner voted for Anderson, I had voted wrong. Who knew who that other voter was, anyway? It could have been 1 of the paste eaters. So, I figured I needed to expand my political horizons a bit and, you know, learn some stuff.

Since 1980, I've sided with the candidate who looked least like my sweet grandpa. Not because that's still the only criteria I use, but because, well, I guess my grandpa looked like an old-school Republican. And please, don't make me decide who looks more like my grandpa: Obama or Romney.

So, Weekly Reader? You expanded my horizons and turned me into a political activist. Or, at least someone who tries to place an educated vote. Thanks for that.

Stone cold. Stone in love.

It's so hot!

Cha Cha, how hot is it?

Lemme tell you. It's so hot that I am sweating in my house. It's so hot that My Guy and I are stuck on our couch - literally. We're talking skin merged with leather, thanks to the industrial glue commonly known as ass sweat. It's so hot that we didn't change the channel and watched an entire movie featuring Stone Cold Steve Austin.

See, he was a former cop turned vigilante. And there was this bad biker gang, running guns and drugs. And Stone Cold Steve had to get all stone cold and kill some bad bikers. Like, they'd come at him with tire irons and he'd just, you know, kill 'em with his stone-cold fists.

I have to admit: I enjoyed it. And perhaps Stone Cold Steve is the answer to the Hades-like weather. Perhaps the A/C in my car - for which I paid $95 for a fix that stayed fixed less than 24 hours - could be permanently fixed if Stone Cold Steve would just drive around in my car with me.

Now, I kind of doubt that the real Stone Cold Steve would be available to just, you know, cruise around with me all the time and be cool. So, I just figured I could get a Stone Cold Steve action doll, and plop him on my dash - kind of a "Stone Cold Steve is my copilot" sort of thing.

Except! If you Google "Stone Cold Steve Austin doll," you know what comes up?

The Danbury Mint made a porcelain Stone Cold Steve baby doll - complete with WWF belt.

It's so, so wrong. How can a baby look so hard? So ... stone cold, if you will? This doll doesn't make me feel cooler. It makes me afraid for my safety. I'm pretty sure that if I put this doll in my car, I'd end up in a drive-by, possibly as the shooter. And that just doesn't feel in keeping with the spirit of adult Stone Cold Steve's style of vigilante justice.

So, I guess I'll go back to the auto shop and throw some more money at the little A/C problem. Anything to keep this creepy doll away from me.