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dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/2FM3akj
My best friend is one of those people who likes to declutter, sincerely likes it, hates having too much stuff. i don’t understand. she also likes to shop ahead of time for gifts, so that at any time she can put together a gift package for anyone. she likes to have christmas sorted by august. sometimes she’s set years ahead of time. and yet, simultaneously, she doesn’t like having Too Much Stuff.
She bought opal earrings, decided she didn’t care for them much, and bought a replacement set in a more suitable size. She then asked if I’d like the first set, since she didn’t want to return them. She and I share an affinity for lab-created gems, meaning they’re sturdy and colorful but not expensive, so it’s not like this is extremely expensive jewelry. unlike me, though, she doesn’t buy plated base metals. (I buy stuff so cheap the coating comes right off, because it’s that or nothing, and I am not a person who dislikes having too much stuff. I’m kind of a dragon, really.)
Anyway, I said I’d actually been wanting opals; they’re not crazy-expensive but i’ve just had trouble justifying even that. She said she had just sorted through her jewelry-to-give-as-gifts basket and had other stuff she no longer wanted to hang onto, so she’d pass a few things along. I figured she’d give them to me next time I visited, so I thought nothing more of it until I got home today and there was a package from her.
She’d listed off the saints’ days on which it could arrive, clearly off a calendar of some kind.
Tyche is the Greek goddess of fortune/luck, and today is her feast day. I now have not only opal earrings, but an opal ring, and an opal necklace that is a silhouette of a cat, and also a silver bracelet that has the phrase “KEEP FUCKING GOING” stamped into it, and a silver spoon with the phrase “You are loved!” stamped into the bowl. (She had a similar spoon at her house, which I admired when we were there for her son’s 5th birthday party, and said her husband kept tidying away her coffee spoon until she got a decorative one that no longer offended his sensibilities. Hers says something slightly snarkier on it, though– I think it says something about caffeine, anyway.)
There was also a scratch-off drawing clearly done by a small child, and the note said her son had made it for my “tent”. (They’ve camped next to the yurt in the summers two years running now.) So I am feeling very fortunate, indeed, today.
Even if I did have kind of most of my retirement in the stock market. Well, I had it invested through a service, who hopefully saw this coming and mitigated the damage. I survived 2008 (though I had much less, then; I’d just invested the first extra money I’d ever possessed, and I dealt with it by just ignoring it until it rebounded five or six years later…) and I’m sure either I’ll survive this or none of us will, so I’m not going to concern myself much with it. I’m luckier than many of my contemporaries, to have anything I can call a ‘retirement’ at all, even if that’s mostly in past tense now. (And it’s because dude is terrified he’ll be unhireable after he turns 40, being in a pretty ageist industry; we’ve been putting money into retirement instead of buying things.)
I’m just not going to look. I’ve already made arrangements with my best friend; when our menfolk predecease us, we’ll move in together and do ridiculous crafts, drink too much, probably get in trouble, and hopefully not starve. She’s got kids, they’ll make sure we don’t die on the street. Even if that means we’re all living in a cave somewhere.
(Your picture was not posted)
My best friend is one of those people who likes to declutter, sincerely likes it, hates having too much stuff. i don’t understand. she also likes to shop ahead of time for gifts, so that at any time she can put together a gift package for anyone. she likes to have christmas sorted by august. sometimes she’s set years ahead of time. and yet, simultaneously, she doesn’t like having Too Much Stuff.
She bought opal earrings, decided she didn’t care for them much, and bought a replacement set in a more suitable size. She then asked if I’d like the first set, since she didn’t want to return them. She and I share an affinity for lab-created gems, meaning they’re sturdy and colorful but not expensive, so it’s not like this is extremely expensive jewelry. unlike me, though, she doesn’t buy plated base metals. (I buy stuff so cheap the coating comes right off, because it’s that or nothing, and I am not a person who dislikes having too much stuff. I’m kind of a dragon, really.)
Anyway, I said I’d actually been wanting opals; they’re not crazy-expensive but i’ve just had trouble justifying even that. She said she had just sorted through her jewelry-to-give-as-gifts basket and had other stuff she no longer wanted to hang onto, so she’d pass a few things along. I figured she’d give them to me next time I visited, so I thought nothing more of it until I got home today and there was a package from her.
She’d listed off the saints’ days on which it could arrive, clearly off a calendar of some kind.
Tyche is the Greek goddess of fortune/luck, and today is her feast day. I now have not only opal earrings, but an opal ring, and an opal necklace that is a silhouette of a cat, and also a silver bracelet that has the phrase “KEEP FUCKING GOING” stamped into it, and a silver spoon with the phrase “You are loved!” stamped into the bowl. (She had a similar spoon at her house, which I admired when we were there for her son’s 5th birthday party, and said her husband kept tidying away her coffee spoon until she got a decorative one that no longer offended his sensibilities. Hers says something slightly snarkier on it, though– I think it says something about caffeine, anyway.)
There was also a scratch-off drawing clearly done by a small child, and the note said her son had made it for my “tent”. (They’ve camped next to the yurt in the summers two years running now.) So I am feeling very fortunate, indeed, today.
Even if I did have kind of most of my retirement in the stock market. Well, I had it invested through a service, who hopefully saw this coming and mitigated the damage. I survived 2008 (though I had much less, then; I’d just invested the first extra money I’d ever possessed, and I dealt with it by just ignoring it until it rebounded five or six years later…) and I’m sure either I’ll survive this or none of us will, so I’m not going to concern myself much with it. I’m luckier than many of my contemporaries, to have anything I can call a ‘retirement’ at all, even if that’s mostly in past tense now. (And it’s because dude is terrified he’ll be unhireable after he turns 40, being in a pretty ageist industry; we’ve been putting money into retirement instead of buying things.)
I’m just not going to look. I’ve already made arrangements with my best friend; when our menfolk predecease us, we’ll move in together and do ridiculous crafts, drink too much, probably get in trouble, and hopefully not starve. She’s got kids, they’ll make sure we don’t die on the street. Even if that means we’re all living in a cave somewhere.
(Your picture was not posted)
