Race You To The Rubies!

I got to see Real Live Padparadscha the other day!

My sister and I went to the Gem Expo to check out the sparklies. Now my budget does not exactly cover Rare And Valuable Gems, but, contrary to the vibes some of the vendors give off, there is no crime against looking at shiny pebbles. My sister was trawling the affordable jewelry stalls, but I had this tendency to gravitate toward the booths selling cut and unset stones. She frequently had to put up with me dragging her over to squeal “Look! Have you ever seen star sapphire?” or “Eek! Pyrope! It’s got such a fantastic name!” or “LOOK AT THIS FUCKING PERIDOT.”

And of course, I had to fangirl the padparadscha. I can’t help it. The color is fantastic. I gravitate to orange, and the pink in there makes it even lovelier. I got to compare the lab-created variety to the natural variety—natural has a lovely subtlety to it, but lab padparadscha is vibrantly colored. I couldn’t decide which color I preferred. Gem collectors, however, do seem to have an opinion. The lab gems were $8/carat. The natural ones were $1800/carat.

Sadly, our other favorite tables were one for glass jewelry, and one for leaves dipped in gold or copper or silver. And one random lady was of the opinion that my jewelry was the highlight of the fair—my chain-link handflower and my Zulugrass.*

“Gemstones are very cool to look at,” I said to my sister when we realized we weren’t actually buying rocks, “but I’m not interested in wearing them. I just want to pile uncut gems around me. And that requires a lot of money and time to sit around having them piled up around you.”

“Your inner dragon is showing,” she said.

I think it may have shown quite a lot for both of us, but the inner nerd was in there too. Get me interested in a subject, and I’ll have a great time no matter what it is.


*Nobody believes they’re actually grass.

Behold! She Makes Arts!

Hey, dudes! My sister’s on DeviantART!

Dig!

I was going to post links to my favorites, but I can't decide which those are. She’s one of those people who understands how photography = art. I understand that photographs can be evocative, but grasping how to make that happen? MYSTERY.

Notice, too, that she spells “anemone” right. She gets extra super bonus points for that.

Bad Sign Number Six Million And Seventeen

Here is the entirety of the last sentence at the very bottom of the “about your medication” sheet for this round of Fukitol:

CONTACT YOUR DOCTOR AT ONCE if

Good to know they're looking out for me.

I’ve been having to censor myself from the world recently. Sometimes that happens—I become unable to shoulder the weight of the world, from social injustice to overly emotional movies. The low-level panic attack I’ve mentioned can flare into something not-so-low at the slightest provocation. Last time I had to do that was in high school, when I would refuse to take an interest anything I could get even slightly emotionally invested in because it would trigger panic that the thing I was invested in would Come To No Good. I didn’t want to bury my head in the sand for the rest of my life, but I remember explaining to someone it was like a raw wound—not something you’d expose to even normal elements or wear and tear until it got back its normal strength and resilience.

I’ve tapered enough off of Failed Fukitol Trial #1 to start Hopefully Not Failed Fukitol Trial#2 today. Let’s see if it works.


Also! I wasn't going to bandwagon onto a fandom I'm not really into, but this image of Rorschach is pretty much dead-on to my own feelings about antidepressants.