As I continue to literally sit out this pandemic on my couch, I spend more hours scrolling through Instagram than I’m going to admit. It used to be just photographers and African models. Then, I expanded my interests to jewelry, and now to antique jewelry specifically.

I used to be interested in antique jewelry but then I felt I had enough and forgot about it as a category of desire. I was content to wear two rings, my grandma’s and my wedding ring. I have a nice collection of Victorian tiger claw jewelry, which I have bitched about here. But Instagram triggered my lizard brain propensity to hunt-and gather. I wanted more jewelry. I needed more jewelry.

I discovered a whole bunch of antique jewelry vendors who showcased the stuff they sold on Etsy or Ruby Lane. Then I discovered vendors who only sold their pieces on Instagram, which meant a hectic competition to DM your interest. All these people called their rings “she.” This is sickening, obviously, but not enough to put me off my new obsession.

I realized that these people, mostly women, formed a community and knew each other by their first names. So a compliment from Something Something Jewels brought a reply of “Thank you Judy!” or in the case of a ring, “Yes, isn’t she a nice one?”

Then I found the worst kind of Instagram Jewelry Woman in existence: The collector (i.e., hoarder) who is just there to show off her stuff, which tends toward the dazzling and shockingly expensive. They will photograph their hands festooned with fifty thousand rings, captioning them with casual descriptions like “Saturday stack” or “Can you guess which ones are new?”

One of these collectors posted a literal stack of gold rings, a type I personally love, and remarked giddily, “I just can’t stop buying —–rings!” I restrained my self from commenting, “TRY!” I asked a friend to leave that comment but she has the same reluctance to identify herself as an asshole, and refused.

I came across a woman whose passion is mourning jewelry. She is quite scholarly about it, and has written a book on the subject. She sells the occasional piece but is mostly there to educate. Her account led me to a person who collects and sells mourning jewelry, who captioned one photo with “Love me some sad ladies and urns!” Ew, I thought. I looked at her jewelry with a mixture of envy and irritation. You can go look yourself at @yulianaeternalmourning.

I began to ponder the attraction of mourning jewelry. Victorian regalia is so romantic, let’s face it. And mourning was part of Victorian life

The average lifespan during the Victorian era was 40 to 45 years. Europe was in a near constant state of war, and cholera, typhoid, smallpox, and scarlet fever were common killers. Approximately one in three children died before the age of five, and epidemics sometimes brought that number to one in two.

Simply put, death was a constant companion in the Victorian era. Mourning jewelry brought a little solace to the survivors who had to cope with frequent losses.*

Without thinking about any of this, years ago I put some of Max’s hair into an old gold locket, and I wear it wherever I go, just to keep him with me. It was and remains “a little solace.” I’ve actually become superstitious about it…a whole other story.

So I began to feel upset about the procuring and flaunting of mourning jewelry. Yuliana was the worst of the worst, I felt. I looked at her stacked fingers and read her smug captions and decided to comment.

Naturally, she blocked me! I wish I could remember my exact comment, which was actually a stern lecture. It was something like, “Do you realize that each ring is a token of someone’s grief and loss?? Do you think the owners of those rings ever imagined that they would adorn the fingers of a stranger showing off on Istagram? I wear a piece of my son’s hair in a locket, and I’ll be damned if it ends up with a bunch of other lockets around the neck of a gloating stranger.

Oops, I pissed her off. Nobody likes a sore loser, I guess. Nobody likes real mourning, or real pain and bitterness. But when people are awful, I have to let them know. It’s my calling. That and hideous denim.

Yesterday, my sister and I visited our favorite jewelry shop, Nobel Jewelry in Santa Monica. From the outside it looks like a hole-in-the-wall kind of place, but inside it is a glittering wonderland of beautifully displayed antique jewels. You can get a chain repaired for a few bucks, or you can purchase an Art Deco diamond engagement ring for $20,000. You can also chat with the owners, Ken and Kia, a pair of charming guys who emigrated from Persia with their family when they were boys.

So my sister had some things that needed repairs, and I wanted to argue about rings, and as we prepared to leave, Ken asked if we wanted to see a diamond he’d just acquired. It was a ring he had to get from the window, a spectacular European cut diamond solitaire. He offered up his jeweler’s loupe so we could appreciate its unique properties.

I asked Ken if I could use the loupe to look at the splinter in my thumb, which has been driving me nuts. I got it from an attack by a potted cactus on my front porch, nearly a month ago. My husband  couldn’t extract it and neither could I. I had gone to my doctor to get it out, and she ended up saying, “I think I got it but maybe not all of it.”

She didn’t get “all of it”, as it was getting swollen and now I could barely use my thumb.

So Ken said, “You have a splinter? Let me see!” He seemed concerned. He looked at it and said, “That must hurt.” He looked through his loupe and exclaimed, “That’s been in there a long time!” Then he announced, “I’ll get it out for you.”

He disappeared into a back room and my sister looked at me with fear and wonder. She asked me if I was really going to proceed with this. Ken came back with some alcohol, a needle nose tweezers and a visor thing with goggles. He bent over my thumb and started to work.

It took a while. It hurt but I trusted him implicitly, such was his confident and gentle manner. While he was at it, a guy came to the shop’s locked iron gate and Ken called out, “I’ll be right with you.” I told him he could stop to let the customer in, but he was lost in his efforts. I told my sister, “Go engage that guy to keep him there! Ask him how his day is going!” But the guy was gone.

Finally, Ken got the splinter. He said triumphantly, “No wonder this hurt.” He lay the splinter on my thumb and told my sister to take a picture with her phone. We both said FUCK! appreciatively; it was a long sharp cactus thingy.

Ken got some antibiotic cream and covered the hole in my thumb. I got a band-aid from my purse and he wrapped it around my thumb. Now Ken and I were bonded forever. We were both elated. He revealed that he was all too familiar with splinters, it was part of his work as a jeweler.

We stood in the glow of our shared trust and gratitude, and I tried to remember a fable about a mouse who gets a splinter out of a lion’s paw. I couldn’t remember how it ended. I hoped the lion didn’t eat the mouse for his trouble.

I shook Ken’s hand with my good one, and wandered out of the store, my faith in humanity kindled like never before and knowing that even if I died from a flesh-eating bacteria, it would make a great story.

Big can be good but too big is TOO BIG and that’s where we are now.

Look at this stupid safety-pin earring by Balenciaga. I’m going to guess it’s being marketed as a Statement piece. It’s only going to state, “Hi, I’m stupid, with too much money, go away.”

You may have seen the Kanye-approved it-brand Vetements and laughed, like I have, but the laugh will be on us if this trend doesn’t run its course in a hurry.

Here’s a Vetements shirt, $1,365.

Christ, really?

We get it. It’s big.

I haven’t seen a real person wearing the huge clothes I see on fashion sites, but I know somewhere people are walking around in this shit and feeling edgy and important.

Here’s some more hideous earrings by Balenciaga, another one of Kanye’s buddies.

Just shit, for $1,045!

Balenciaga hoop, as if.

Stop it!

Let’s pivot to medium, can we, Kanye?

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Look at this crazy ring! I love the concept of a ring that looks at itself. You can buy it here.

Now look at Kitty, Daisy and Lewis. They are siblings from England whose band includes their mom on bass. They don’t want to be pigeonholed as Rockabilly, so don’t use that word if you meet them. Their style is reminiscent of East L.A and the Ronettes. I can’t stop looking at them. They are flat-out gorgeous. Watch their latest video here.

Last night I realized that one of my favorite earrings is missing. It so happens that I only wear one of the earrings at a time, because Keith Richards is still my fashion muse. It’s a long safety pin earring and it would look stupid to wear one in each ear.

Nevertheless, I want that missing earring! Where did it go? Why is it missing? Who would take it, besides Keith Richards?

I’ve looked everywhere, and I mean everywhere. It’s not with my other jewelry and it’s not in that little tray in the bathroom where I sometimes put my earrings.   When I looked in the tray for the third or fourth time, I recalled the story in The Boy Who couldn’t stop Washing about a woman who slashed her couches in a manic search for a lost hairbrush or something. I don’t want to be her. But I feel the seeds.

Saint Anthony is the patron saint of lost things, but as we all know, he never helps. You can pray your ass off but he won’t return your lost thing. I can’t even count the socks he has failed to return.

Remember when I lost my gold watch? Still missing. I have a hunch that it was stolen by a crazy Chinese nurse, but that’s a whole story on its own. This is about the earring.

I remember buying the earrings at Macy’s, where my purchase was rung up by a tired elderly black woman who was missing a critical tooth and couldn’t calculate the 20% sale discount. I bought the earrings at full price rather than give her more stress.

If I practice The Secret, will my earring manifest itself? Does Saint Anthony know about The Secret?

When I chose the image above from a rudimentary google search, I was startled by its projected violence. Can everyone see that he’s about to throw that baby into a river or cut it in half on that table? It’s so obvious! Maybe god told him to sacrifice the baby a la Abraham and Isaac, or maybe Saint Anthony is just nuts.

Maybe he’s nuts because he can’t find the lost things and he finally snapped, like the hairbrush lady with OCD.

Questions or advice, anyone?

I continue writing this blog because it seems like something normal and productive to cling to, but I’m not sure if it’s doing me any good.   When I’m not at my computer, I am mostly catatonic or crying. I reject all talk of “getting over it.” I don’t want to hear that he “is with me.” He is not with me. That is the problem.   He is   gone. And I miss him so much.

My husband and my teenager need me to stick around. It would be too brutal for me to act on my yearning to go find Max. I guess I’m not at the level of desperation where you stop caring about the hearts you will break.

Meanwhile, life goes on around me at home, and our roof is leaking badly enough to cause the ceiling to crumble in the kitchen. It falls in chunks and finer particles that cover the countertops. The roof is around 30 years old now.

My Cyber-sisters Kate and Queens Marie and Michelle have teamed up with everyone’s favorite jewelry designer and raconteur Wendy Brandes to raise funds for a new roof. I am so humbled by their kindness that I feel I must get in the spirit of things by showing off the adorable logo that Michelle designed:

The picture links directly to Wendy’s order form.

A roof is a symbol of shelter and stability. It would be a positive undertaking for my family and maybe even for me.

I love that our little community can be a force for good. We are all elevated by acts of compassion! Thank you sweetie pies for wanting to help.

*If you know anyone who would like to own one of these silver woolf necklaces, pass it on.

My friend Heidi is an artist who makes jewelry and lives in New Orleans. (She wrote about the BP oil catastrophe, here.) When she heard about my leaky roof and similar worries, she made this necklace specifically to help out. It is up for auction at her website here.

My first thought upon seeing it was:   SHIT! I WANT THAT! Her photos show this piece in spectacular detail.

Heidi is the best! If you know someone who would love this necklace, please send them the link.

I am working on a special Sister Wolf Memento Thing to send to all who have contributed to the SW Relief Fund. xoxo   I am trying to develop other ideas like T-shirts and I welcome all fund-raising ideas from everybody. Thanks & blessings.

Summer Adeline is a cool girl who I never met until she made me a necklace with a locket for Max’s hair.

I only knew her from her website and some blog comments but I had a feeling that she was The One.

She came to my house from across town and presented me with the locket, beaming with pleasure at my excitement. She didn’t want any money.   She let me cry when I told her about Max, and listened patiently to the long harrowing story. She even put the hair inside the locket for me.   A lock of hair that I cut myself while a red-faced bastard from the coroner’s office yelled at me in Max’s bedroom.

Summer is an angel, and she is appropriately beautiful for the role. She’s a girl who Max would have fallen for, without a doubt.

I don’t believe that “Things happen for a reason,” but sometimes good things happen just when you need a helping hand or a ray of light or an antidote to all the stupidity and indifference you encounter every day.

Cyberspace has brought me a plague of malevolent cretins but it has also brought me Summer. Love trumps hatred. How could we exist otherwise?

Thanks, Summer! xoxo

“The only antidote to mental suffering is physical pain.” Karl Marx

Many years ago, I got my nose pierced. I think I was going through a rough period, because I remember my husband barging into the tattoo parlor to finish an argument with me.

Just recently, I decided to change the gold stud for a hoop. I think I was hoping for a jolt of pain, and I was not disappointed. But the cheap steel nose ring I bought wasn’t very pretty. I wanted a gold one, to match my earrings.

After a few weeks, I found the gold nose ring that my brother gave me, back when he decided to stop wearing shit in his nose. I knew I’d have trouble changing the rings, so I went to a piercing place just down the street from my house. A nice young hipster changed the nose rings. He had the assured but delicate touch of a brain surgeon.

Naturally, my brother’s nose ring was much too big and looked stupid. It bothered me all the time. I cry so often that I’m constantly blowing my nose. So I found a cheap gold ring that I hoped would be the right size.

Today, craving more pain, I waked down the street to see the nice young piercer. I learned that he was out of town, but another piercer would help me. An older , battered looking guy with a million faded tattoos led me to the piercing station and told me to lay down on the table.

His hands hovered above my nose, shaking badly. He attempted to get hold of my nose ring. I tried to conceal my fear as I asked, “Why are your hands shaking?” The hands started shaking wildly as he made another swipe at my nose.

I said. “That’s it, stop!” He backed away as I sat up. I don’t know who was more embarrassed but I wasn’t going to let some fucker rip my nose. He looked at me with a resentful expression and announced: “Hypoglycemia.”

I walked out as fast as I could. I walked a few blocks to another tattoo parlor. I explained what had happened to a dwarfish young guy with gigantic holes in his earlobes. He led me to a chair and replaced the big ring with the smaller one, warning that I would feel some “pressure.” The pain was a solid nine on a scale of one to ten. Hours later, my nose still hurts.

Of course, the new ring is too small.

I’m obsessed with jewelry made from things that shouldn’t be jewelry, like this amazing piece I found at that pawn shop where they keep the Gimp in the back room.   The people there were SO cute and nice and really authentic like folk art! Isn’t it Gorgeous? Look at the detail!

Plus they’re not meanies like those psychos at Tetanus Jewelry, who sent me so many nasty and abusive comments last week and won’t allow even ONE negative comment on their own blog. Not even the words “Hahaha!” God, people are disappointing sometimes, aren’t they?!

In other exciting jewelry news, I took out my nose stud and put in a little ring or hoop or whatever it’s called. It looks a little stupid but change is supposed to be good, even though I’ve never believed this and still don’t.