The Little Rose Gold Ring

In November of 1933, a little girl named Clarice was given a ring for her tenth birthday. Her mother, Marie, had picked it out.

It was a delicate little rose gold ring. A simple band with almost no shoulder and a bezel shaped to look like an intricate flower. In the center of the flower sat not a gem, but a tiny seedling pearl.

Clarice was Marie's only daughter. Born 15 months after her brother, Reid, who adored her dearly. However, Clarice was sick. She had juvenile diabetes in an era where insulin was still a new discovery and it wouldn't be until she was twelve-years-old that scientists would discover that there were two different types of diabetes.

And, maybe because she was sick, that little rose gold ring made for a child fit her finger until she passed at the age of eighteen.

Marie held on to the ring after her daughter died.

Reid never forgot his beloved sister. When he and his wife had their first child, Reid felt that they should have another child as soon as possible, in hopes that the children would be as close as he and Clarice had been. As it would happen, fifteen months later in November, Reid's son had a little sister.

When that little girl turned ten-years-old, Marie gifted her eldest granddaughter with that little rose gold ring. The girl loved the ring. She cherished it and the connection to the aunt she never knew other than by the love her father and grandmother expressed for her. 

However, by the time she was in college, the ring only fit her pinky finger. She eventually came to the conclusion to resize the ring, realizing that it would still be the same ring, in the end.

And when her eldest daughter turned ten, she gifted the ring to her child, telling the story of how she came to own it and the connection to the original owner. The daughter kept the ring for a few years, but soon gave it back to her mother. By then, it was the 90s and silver was becoming much more popular than gold in the eyes of teenage girls.

So, when her younger daughter turned ten, once again in November, the ring was given to that girl as well. The story of the original owner all the owners since Clarice were told to the younger daughter, who eagerly took the chance to cherish the ring and the history with it.

The younger daughter wore the ring frequently. Panicking briefly when, just a few months after inheriting the ring, the little seedling pearl disappeared while she was at school. She was terrified to tell her mother that she lost the pearl, but when she admitted what had happened, her mother soothed her worries. The ring was over 60 years old. The pearl had been loose in the setting for years and it wasn't the girl's fault that it fell out.

They found a jeweler and had a new pearl placed in it. The girl fretted over how ostentatiously white and glossy the new pearl looked in comparison to the old pearl, but eventually came to accept it was still the same ring.

The girl wore the ring frequently well into her twenties, despite how it didn't quite match the rest of her jewelry by that time. However, after a couple cross-country moves, she realized she no longer had the ring in her jewelry box. This would not have been too much of an issue, other than for personal grief, other than the fact that her older sister had a young daughter.

As her niece grew closer and closer to her tenth birthday, she dreaded the fact that she couldn't pass the ring on to the next generation. She also feared the day her mother would ask about the ring and if she was going to give it to the younger girl. But her mother never asked, giving the impression that maybe she was the only one that remembered the ring and Clarice's story.

Then, on the niece's 10th birthday- another November, in fact- they all had dinner together. And when the niece arrived at the restaurant, she was wearing a fine gold chain around her neck which held the delicate rose gold ring upon it.

You see, the aunt had not lost the ring in her cross-country move. In fact, when she saw the move coming on the horizon, she had asked her mother to take back the ring, so that it would be safe until the niece was ten and could be gifted with it as well. She had just forgotten she had done so.

And, earlier on that day, the ten-year-old's grandmother had gifted the ring for the third time, as she had intended to do for years. Once again telling the story of Clarice, of Marie giving it to her, and how she gave it to her daughters. She had no idea that her daughter had been riddled with guilt for so long about the ring, afraid to admit that she had lost it and ended the tradition.

So, the ring once again has a ten-year-old to belong to. It does not yet fit on this ten-year-old's finger, but it will eventually (or will be resized, eventually). And, maybe by the time the ring is a century old, she will pass it on to a ten-year-old of her own.

Manic Whimsy Dream Boy of Doom

So... I'm not the type to have crushes. I don't fall in love and I don't even prioritize romantic love. I'm not the type to have my favorite thing about a story be the romance. In fact, often it is my least favorite thing about most stories.

Sometimes I like love stories. Just not super often. But when I do, it's often when I'm feeling my moodiest.

At some point in my teens, I had a few certainties that just appeared in my mind. Be they weird mis-fires or what, they happened. They weren't all correct- I was certain I would die before my nineteenth birthday, for one, and that's clearly not what happened. I was certain I would eventually run away, which I did... before running back for two years.

I was also certain that when I did finally find the love of my life, it would be with someone that was bipolar with severe mania.

It's quite specific, I know. And I've managed to yet to actually achieve that. I have never fallen in love and I've yet to have a romantic relationship with someone that is bipolar with manic episodes.

I have, however, had some amazing friendships with more than one person with tragic mental illnesses that have made our friendships all the stronger. I gravitate towards people with intense emotions and I have been that way my whole life. I don't know if I quite realized that during my teens yet, though.

But, I will say, that a couple years after that certainty planted itself in my mind... season four of Ally McBeal happened.

I probably need to explain that further, don't I?

My father watched Ally McBeal regularly as did a great amount of people in the late 90s. My father watched it mostly for the musical element of the show but the show did seem mildly amusing in the 90s. I would watch with him, rolling my eyes at Ally's man-hungry ways and not understanding her motives at all. But I found it amusing for the most part, not realizing how disgusting most of the characters were in a human rights point of view about quite a few "funny" topics (like any time a LBGTQ character appeared or any character with a diagnosed serious disorder).

But then came the fourth season. And Robert Downey Jr came with it. For those of you that don't remember this time in history, Downey had just spent about a year in prison after being in a Lohan-esque spiral of missing a few court-ordered drug tests that were part of his parole agreement. The lawyers that got O.J. off could not save him from a year in prison, that's how damning the situation was.

And, a week after he was released from that long stay, he was hired to be a new cast member on the fourth season of Ally McBeal as Ally's new love interest. Because that was David E. Kelly's hiring style.

And he was... amazing. He was the male version of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl.

He wore plaid shirts with suits. He had adorable glasses that matched his outfits. He had Robert Downey Jr's amazing thick eyelashes that make it look like he's wearing eyeliner. He was quick and funny and quirky and just... got people. He played the piano and sang (he sang Joni Mitchell's "River" when he thought no one was listening). He built Ally a snowman version of himself to keep her company while he was out of town. He was broken and sad at Christmas because he was also anastranged father to a little boy. Hell, he even had great kind relationships with both the mother of his child and his ex-wife. Also: he was Robert Downey Jr- do I really need to explain the charisma more? He was universally adored for his performance on the show, needless to say.

It was in that character, I now realize, that I saw the embodiment of the imaginary love of my life that I had imagined for myself (and doomed myself to).

Now, like I've said, I have yet to actually fall in love. I'm not looking for love and I'm not too keen on the topic. But November is difficult for me. And I've found myself watching that season of Ally McBeal on Hulu (and have now seen the same ad for NickMom so many times that I have lost all fondness for Tia Mowry).

I thought I just had a thing for Robert Downey Jr but I tried watching some of my favorite RDJ movies (other than the Marvel movies or Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) and it just wasn't the same.

But I do know that, no matter how much the character of Ally McBeal bugs the hell out of me, I do feel a sadness for how the season ended- more for how it ended in reality than how it ended in the show. As you might remember, Downey had not quite finished his downward spiral and was arrested two more times and found to be under the influence of drugs during his time on the show and was fired at the end of the season and the wedding between his character and Ally was scrapped (however, the season finale was still called "The Wedding" and I have to wonder if that was because the title had already been released or if it was David E. Kelly being weird/funny/whatever).

The next year, the ratings plummeted. Jon Bon Jovi as the new love interest just wasn't the same. The cast was itching to move on. The show was canceled. And, as a viewer, you just felt bad for everyone involved, as the show had clearly gotten reinvigorated the previous year, only for life's harsh realities to step in. Like when you date someone who seems amazing and draws you into their fantasy world only for everything to come crashing down when they go into a manic depressive spiral that you weren't expecting and can't fix.

And I'm still watching old episodes of this stupid show for this one man. Like those creepy old ladies that talk wistfully about their lost loves and stare at their old pictures.

I have no idea where I was going with this. Other than I need to remember to go into my Hulu account settings to hide all the Ally McBeal. And that I fucking hate that theme song.

Cut Your Own Damn Bangs.

In the past decade, whenever I have requested bangs to a hairdresser, they have been reluctant. Even when a dear friend of mine cut my hair, she was hesitant to give me full-on bangs.

Now, I understand it to a point. Pictures of me from ages 6 to 12 are pretty good evidence for why I shouldn't really have bangs. But that had more to do with the terrible helmet-like bob cuts that I had with those bangs while also not being allowed to wield a curling iron yet.

Since those days, I've gotten pretty good with my hair. I understand what different brushes do to it. I can french and dutch braid. I can do a lot with a single curling iron.

But hairdressers still will never go full-on with bangs. Except the one time where I let a woman that barely understood English give me a $10 bang cut and she gave me really uneven baby bangs rather than "just above the eyebrow" like I wanted. All others will basically give me nothing more than short layers that can work as bangs for about a week before they grow out too much to work with.

And when I got my hair cut this past August, once again I had a hairdresser that was hesitant to give me bangs. I convinced her on the grounds of trying to frame my face to thin it out a little, as I have a round pale Irish pie face that is made worse by frequent swelling in the jawline from my TMJ problems. I need my hair to make it not quite so daunting and terrible to see.

So, the hairdresser gave me some angled long fringe into some long side pieces. But it was rather thin and, when I went to style it the next day, I realized that she hadn't been very precise about where she got the hair for the fringe from. Which seems to be the case when it comes to giving me haircuts. I don't understand why, though, as it's pretty easy to see if you made a straight part in my hair as my hair is so dark brown that it's almost black and my scalp is so pale that it almost glows.

Over the past few months, I bought a cheap pair of trimming scissors. I mostly just tried to keep trimming the fringe to keep it out of my eyes and also try to even it out a little bit into more of what I was looking for. But I didn't want to go crazy with it, as I've had my fill of "I let my sister cut my hair and now I have this one chunk that's mysteriously too short for my ponytail" moments.

Until today. Armed with nothing but hazy memories of a "how to give yourself bangs" guide that I read online over a year ago, the cheap scissors, a mirror, and a terrible mood motivating me more than ever- I just did it.

And I did a pretty awesome job!

It did take hours to get it perfect, however, as the key to not fucking it up was to do a lot of tiny trimming with the scissors almost completely vertical, something I had picked up from the few times I could get a hairdresser to cut me some bangs. They're not as super blunt looking if you do it that way and easier to play with and cover minor uneven-ness. It possibly also creates texture.

The other thing I did was carefully map everything out. I found the center of my face and, using the pointed end of a make-up brush, I etched out a perfect triangle in my hairline, with the point lined up with the center of my face. I pulled the rest of my hair into a ponytail. Then, out of the wide triangle (think Zooey Deschanel-style), I carved out a smaller rectangle in the center and pinned back the rest of the triangle for later. Basically, I first cut a pretty uniform set of straight bangs that went just the width of my eyebrows and were just above the rims of my glasses. Then, I unpinned the triangle and let those have some more length to them so that they skim the rims of my glasses for the most part and then go longer on the sides.

It's hard to explain and I'm not putting pictures of myself up here (too incriminating about other parts of my life- like who I am). But it worked out really well. This way, I can have thick and full straight bangs  covering my entire forehead and framing the sides of my face without pulling out the curling iron to fix them.

BUT! I can also style them as slightly side-swooped, which is what really looks best on me. And, best of all, I can do it from either side- which was not an option with what the hairdresser had given me. To add to that, because I made them thicker and start further back on my head than previously, they're also easier to fluff and fix.

The biggest downsides to the self-cut:

1) Uh, I did it in my bed. So, I had to shopvac the bed and change my clothes to stop itching.
2) My scalp in the front of my head is now very sensitive from excessive brushing to make sure the hair was even as I was trimming. Ow.

Being the I.T. Girl

In my first major project since becoming full-time I.T. for my main job, I may have over-scheduled myself.

Basically, I have left time for a day of doctor appointments in two weeks and then two weeks after that, I've penciled myself in for finally getting a moment to just opening cry.

My goal for the month leading up to my conference at the beginning of October was to get to the final day of the conference and then I would be free to cry.

Somehow, I've managed to hang onto not crying. It's very new to me. But I still desperately need it frequently. Just about any time I'm at any of my jobs or in front of a computer, I feel a underlying desire to just weep and finally release everything I have been holding in.

I basically will have that chance... just in time for the holiday season to go full blast.

I still haven't figured out when I'm going to sleep or take care of my leg, however. One luxury at a time.

The Knightly Situation

I love Emma the most out of all of Jane Austen's leading ladies. And I feel like she doesn't get the credit she deserves. Hell, even Jane Austen was worried that she was the only person that liked Emma. But that's part of how Emma has taken up such a large portion of my Austen-based love.

The other part is that I find Knightly, by far, the most interesting of Austen male leads. If you ask me, he's a lot more accessible as a character than Mr. Darcy or Edward Ferrars. I have a theory that Darcy is possibly on the autism spectrum for his inability to understand emotions. Edward is... kind of a confused sad puppy for most of Sense & Sensibility. 

But Mr. Knightly, I feel makes a tad more sense. Even the whole "fall in love with the girl fifteen years younger than you that you've always thought of as a sister" thing. Because he's more logical in working through his realization and I really respect that his big move, initially, was to remove himself from the situation completely and not fuck things up. He only finally gives in and admits his love when he finds out that Frank Churchill is no longer a concern when it comes to Emma and he admits his love while also having already come to terms with the very real possibility that she would not return the feelings.

I respect that in a man. Colonel Brandon was a similar type- willing to gracefully remove himself from the situation and being very stoic and manly about it. Which makes sense for Austen to write the older suitors for her leading ladies to be wiser yet silently suffering from heartache (especially Colonel Brandon).

And while the whole "known Emma her whole life"/"15-17 years her senior" thing has some ickiness to it, I also like that Knightly and Emma's story has a lot of history. They know each other ridiculously well and interact constantly throughout the book. You start to realize that at least part of why Emma has no desire to marry is because she already has a pseudo-marriage with Mr. Knightly. One of my favorite details in the 2009 BBC miniseries is when Mr. Knightly comments lightly that Emma looks so comfortable in Donwell Abbey that one would think she was its mistress. Because she really did seem that comfortable as she settled her father for his place at the party.

Also? Mr. Knightly is actually a nice person. Which I really don't feel I can say about Darcy all the time. Mr. Knightly was really trying to help out Robert Martin, he bothers to get to know Harriet and takes back his comments about her, he expresses concern for Jane Fairfax when she is not well, and he even solves the issue of how to make Mr. Woodhouse comfortable with the concept of Emma marrying. 

It also helps that Mr. Knightly is one of the few Austen men that has total control of his own life. Darcy has his aunt trying to control him, a sister to watch out for, and a scumbag of a former best friend all getting in his way. Edward has a terrible mother and sister in his way, as well as a long-term fiance that he's too nice to dump when he falls in love with someone else. Henry Tilney's father try a lot to control his life entirely. And Edmund Bertram is... in a book so boring I can't even finish the Billie Piper film version. Also: in love with his cousin. Even Colonel Brandon had his ward and her child to consider and care for.

But Mr. Knightly has no one to try to force him to do things he does not wish to do. His obstacles are just that the woman he loves possibly does not feel the same. 

I do wonder, however, that when he started to realize that part of his dislike of Frank came from a point of jealousy for Emma's attention, if Mr. Knightly had a giant, "OH SHIT" moment with himself. How do you come to terms with the fact that you're in love with the little girl from next door? With the younger sister of your sister-in-law? Or was it that over the years he kept trying to make himself not feel attracted to her, but when she finally seemed to be in love with someone, he couldn't take it anymore?

I always wanted to know more about the connection between the Knightly and Woodhouse families before the book began. More about why the Knightly boys were so comfortable being around Mr. Woodhouse and his family.

My other wonder is always if Mr. Knightly and Anne Taylor (later Anne Weston) ever considered each other. They're around the same age, were around each other constantly, and both have a strong sense of morality and loyalty. Or would their different statuses make it completely not even worth considering?

But I also wonder how well Mr. Knightly's marriage to Emma would go after the book ended. Would all that history, all that antagonistic back-and-forth, still come through every so often? Briefly forgetting "this is the person I married"? Emma wasn't even sure if she could ever call Mr. Knightly anything other than "Mr. Knightly", despite the change in their relationship. How much would actually change? Especially since they would still live at Hartfield with her father and he would probably like to pretend nothing had changed. Would just that aspect of it get in the way at times?

So, in conclusion: I think a lot about Mr. Knightly.

Killing the Fishtank- S.H.I.E.L.D. "0-8-4"

Episode 2 was a grand improvement, with the help of Angel alum writer/producer Jeffery Bell. Yay!

It's nice to know the writers were aware that the first episode was a bit of a clusterfuck and addressed it head-on immediately. And finishing it with a weird hissy-fit from Director Fury was kind of awesome.

Also, two thoughts on Coulson:

1) I think he's actually a robot.
2) I sort of feel like he's being written as a non-villain version of the Mayor from BtVS.

Final note: this is basically the only new show I'm bothering to follow at this point this year. TV time is very rare for me at the moment.

Return of the Amazonians!

Hey, remember when I tried the Amazonian Clay face mask sample and bitched about how Tarte expected people to pay $38 for five applications of the mask?

Well, a couple months ago, Sephora started carrying a "Limited Edition" version of the Double Detox Amazonian Clay face mask that is one 2.64 oz tube for the same $38 price. That's quite the better deal than the 5 tubes of .1 ounces.

And, yeah, I bought it. Even though it still smells like pee every time I use it. And I like it. Although, it seems to be no better than any thing else at dealing with the pours on my nose, but that is the curse of the glasses wearer, I guess. And I should just be thankful that I don't have a W.C. Fields nose going on yet.

But why does it smell like pee? Does anyone know? Is it just Amazonian pee mixed with mud and jojoba? Because I think that might be the case.