I'M A VULCAN

Sometimes, I find that a path I have followed along a specific journey seems, in hindsight, well thought out, well planned and very obviously placed before me. Not by me, and not by any means I can readily explain.

You know what I'm talking about. Times where you just hear that "little voice" telling you what to do or you get that "gut feeling" telling you what not to do. Times where, upon seeing the results, you just have to pick your jaw up off of the ground and say, WOW!, or WHEW!, or DAMN!

Here's such a time:

When I was very little, my great grandmother (on my dad's side) passed away and left the beautiful diamond from her wedding ring to me when I turned 18 years old. My mom kept it safe for me and when I received it, I had it mounted in a ring that I wore for a few years.

Many years later, after John and I got married, my grandparents (on my mom's side), gave me a 24 kt. gold band that had been in their family. So, for Valentine's Day 1986, John, with my elated approval, had the diamond mounted on the band for me.

It was a lovely ring. Oddly, however, I seemed to get the feeling that it just wasn't a good fit - that somehow the diamond was not meant to be on that band. But I sometimes wore it on my right hand as an accent ring, all the while trying to figure out what to do with the diamond.

You see, here's the dilemma I faced on that front:

When John and I got married, he was a poor graduate student and I was working only part time. We had very little, and our wedding rings reflected that, shall we call it, simplicity. My ring is an unadorned white gold band. His is a bit more elaborate with ribbed yellow gold edges and an etched white gold strip in the middle. Plain. Simple. Unimposing. Very representative of us.

Since John is left handed and since he does a lot of writing at work, he was never very comfortable wearing his wedding ring. That was okay with me, because he bought me a beautiful yellow gold watch one year for our anniversary and since I wore it on my left wrist, I didn't like how it looked so close to the white gold ring on my finger. It just seemed to clash. So, the perfect solution (drum roll, please) was to wear his band with my band, thus creating a striped effect of yellow gold/white gold/yellow gold (his band), white gold (my band), yellow gold (watch).

As an added bonus to this, whenever John and I went out, he'd ask for his ring and I always had it handy for him.

LOGICAL!! FLAWLESSLY LOGICAL!!! I'm a VULCAN!!!

At one point, I thought about having my diamond mounted as a solitaire on my wedding band, that way I could keep the ensemble as it was and still wear the diamond. You see, I wanted to have my cake and eat it, too - I wanted to wear both of our rings AND the diamond. But John didn't want me to disturb the symbolism of our love.

I felt the same way, actually, so I continued to wear his wedding ring with mine, I wear a beautiful emerald ring John got me about 10 years ago on my right hand, and the diamond ring spends a good deal of its time in the safe. I think about getting it reset periodically, but I'm still looking for that perfect solution - how to incorporate it into the ensemble I wear.

Well, one Monday morning about 4 weeks ago, I kept thinking (or hearing that little voice, maybe) "wear your ring", "wear your ring". It was a strong urging, so I got the diamond ring out of the safe and wore it.

After a few days, nothing happened. "Yeah, right", I thought, and put the ring back in the safe, exchanging it for the emerald.

On Saturday morning, just two days later, John asked me what was on the agenda for the day. Out of my mouth - OUT OF THE BLUE - for no known reason at all, I said, "you're taking me to the jeweler to have my diamond reset. I'm going to have it put on a band just like my wedding band and that way I can wear it in addition to my ensemble, instead of my ensemble, or as an accessory. In essence, I'm going to have my cake and eat it, too!"

As I said before, LOGICAL!!! FLAWLESSLY LOGICAL!!! I'm a VULCAN!!!

I picked my new ring up two weeks ago and slipped it on my finger beside my wedding band. It is absolutely GORGEOUS! The diamond sparkles with an intensity I've not seen before. And it FEELS so right. It's almost as if the spirit of the diamond was released from the spirit of the band. Or maybe it's happy to be nestled beside the symbol of John's and my (perfect) love. I don't know. But it's LOVELY, truly LOVELY.

But another, most interesting event happened when I picked up the ring. Since it sparkled so brightly, I asked the jeweler to clean my other rings while I was there. He cleaned my band and John's band but came back holding my emerald ring in his hand. He informed me that he would be putting it into a jeweler's envelope for me and would not permit me to wear it home. It was in desperate need of resetting because the prongs were worn flat and any trauma to the ring could cause the stone to shatter or fall out!

WOW! WHEW! DAMN!

How could I have known that?

If I hadn't heard that voice telling me to wear my ring; if I hadn't come up with the idea, for no apparent reason, to have the diamond reset; and if I hadn't asked the jeweler to clean my rings, I could have, and quite probably would have, lost my emerald. A very beautiful (and expensive to replace, I found out) emerald.

Yes indeed. Well thought out. Well planned. A path very obviously placed before me.

COACH Accessories

A few weeks ago, out of the blue, I received a call from my lovely daughter. She was ending an afternoon of shopping with her best friend and wondered if she could stop by.

"Of course you can!", I told her. You see, it's ALWAYS a joy to see her and she's ALWAYS welcome here.

She arrived a short time later sporting a beautiful COACH box. Wow, she really has been shopping, I thought. Then, imagine my UTTER DELIGHT when she presented that box to ME!!!

With great excitement, I opened the box and found a very neatly (almost obsessively) wrapped package containing a purse. A black leather purse with white stitching and silver hardware. It is, in traditional COACH quality, beautifully lined and smells just wonderfully leathery.

But wait - that's not all...............

The box also contained a smaller cardboard envelope/box bearing the COACH logo. Inside that box was a black and silver COACH case holding a cute compact mirror to go with the purse. Ooooooh, this is nice!

So, I've had the purse sitting here beside me for a few weeks now. I feel it, I smell it, I inspect it, I pet it. And since I'm probably wearing it out without even using it, I think it's time to take it out in public.

Now, I've never been a materialistic person, but I'll have to admit, there's something about accessories like these that strike a "feel-good" chord in me. Or maybe I feel good because I'm fortunate enough to have such a considerate daughter who surprised me with a wonderful gift for absolutely no reason at all.

Yeah, I think that's it.

Like I said before, it's ALWAYS a joy to see her and she's ALWAYS welcome here. She's just that great.

And if you happen to see a middle-aged woman carrying a black COACH purse and a HUGE smile, say hi, because it just might be me! Fortunate, indeed!

AND THE ENVELOPE PLEASE

Well, it's been three months since John and I made the new year's resolution to save money by spending only on necessities.

You see, we made the commitment to take out an allotted amount of cash each week to cover necessities like groceries, lunches for John, etc.. At the end of each week, I take whatever money is left unspent and put it into an envelope. I think it's time for an update, wouldn't you say?

Things have gone better than I expected them to go, but not as well as I had hoped (duh!).

The first few weeks of this challenge, we'll call it the novelty period, went quite well. We didn't eat out. We didn't go out. We didn't do much. Not spending money was always foremost in our minds whenever we contemplated doing anything. Sort of fun, actually.

As you might have guessed, the novelty period wore off somewhat. Cooking, eating leftovers, having grabs for dinner and the like became a little boring. And since I am the one who has to plan and prepare all the meals, I started to feel as though it was a little like self-abuse. After all, who doesn't need the social experience of the fast food drive through once in awhile? Or the colon blockage you get from eating institutional food at the local greasy spoon?

So, we decided that eating out about once a week, maybe twice if John takes me out to lunch, was a necessity. Nothing fancy or expensive, mind you. After all, we are still committed to this challenge. It's just, as I said, a (new) necessity.

Sigh!

Then there was the dry cleaning. I don't go to the dry cleaners on a regular basis (maybe 5 or 6 times a year), so I certainly didn't think of it when I thought of necessities. And as long as I'm going to the cleaners, I can always find things that NEED cleaned, so, there's that necessity!

Double Sigh!

Same goes for the water filter I have on my refrigerator water and ice maker. It needs replaced every 6 months, so who thinks of it if it's not time to replace it? And the kicker to this is the special they were offering when I ordered the filter. You see, I could buy one filter for $52 or I could buy 4 filters for $149 total, which works out to be about $37 each. So even though I spent $97 more (actually $149 more since I hadn't planned on buying a filter in the first place), I really saved $60. And found yet another necessity!

Sigh again!

And then I went to the jeweler and had my diamond reset on a new ring. This ultimately proved to be more necessary than I could have ever imagined (I'll tell you the story in a later post).

And then we took a short overnight trip to visit family. Definitely necessary.

And then there was the trip to Sam's Club. EVERYTHING is a necessity when you're at Sam's Club.

And then........(on and on and on..............................)

And despite all of these "new necessities", I still ended up with (drum roll please), $97 in the envelope!

How cool is that? $97!

As I said before, while it hasn't gone as well as I had hoped, it is most certainly better than I had expected.

And we only have 274 more days to go.