Fakey McFake

In May, I won an eBay auction for a pendant. I was poking around, looking for a red aventurine pendant. I came across a listing that was all, "oh! magical! amulet! powers!" Now, frankly, you know a "magic pendant" from eBay is going to be bullshit, but the pendant was red aventurine, looked pretty, and I thought if the seller was sweetly sincere about giving her articles happy magical vibes, so much the better.

Except when I received it, it was quite plainly not a red aventurine in a sterling setting. It was a hunk of composite resin in a junk metal setting. It didn't look like a stone, feel like a stone, or have the weight of a stone. If you have any interest WHATSOEVER in minerals or gemstones, you are not going to be fooled by this.

And that's what pissed me off. "Magic," sure, whatever. I did not expect it to shoot sparks or allow me to speak Parseltongue. But to send a fake junk pendant? What the hell? It's not even like aventurine is an expensive or rare stone. To fake that, you have to be one of two things: a total idiot or a moral bankrupt.

But I figured I'd give her the benefit of the doubt. So I emailed her. She was instantly hostile in her reply, claiming OF COURSE it was an aventurine and I had damaged it (true) so it wasn't returnable and that was that. (I did, in fact, scratch the back discreetly with a metal file just to prove to myself there was no way it was an aventurine. I naively offered this up as evidence to her that this was not the correct item.)

She didn't even try to pretend it was a mistake or play dumb or act as though maybe she'd gotten a bad pendant from her supplier, so I knew, at that point, what I was dealing with.

I took the pendant to a jeweler/gemologist down the street from me, who was totally dumbfounded that anyone would try to pass this thing off as a stone.

"At the very least, if you wanted to pretend it was something, coral would have been a better choice. I mean, it's orange and opaque."

She regretfully told me that if I wanted her to write this up officially, she'd have to charge me. I decided to wait on that, since I only paid $20 for this bubblegum machine crap, and a professional appraisal would cost more than that. And I opened a PayPal dispute.

And I explained the whole thing carefully, and offered to send an appraisal if it was considered necessary, and this morning, they closed the case and ruled in her favor. Um? I instantly sent a complaint, which (of course) has not been replied to yet.

This is a tidy little scam she has running. Sell one hundred $0.10 pendants a month at $20.00 a pop, then you're spending $10 (plus listing fees and postage) and making $2000. And yet, the things she are selling are cheap enough to have this whole scam fly right under the radar. Not many people are going to recognize a fake stone or care, or be willing to pay $50 to prove the $20 stone is fake. You know what I mean?

I should have paid attention to the small percentage of negative feedback. When I went back to actually READ it all, they said essentially the same thing: FAKE. But apparently, 98% of buyers don't care about that, as long as the piece of junk might eventually make fairies show up in your bedroom closet or summon a genie to do your bidding.

I guess at this point, I have to just let it go, and thank the experience for getting me interested in making my own jewelry. But man, the unrepentant scamming just rankles me. A magic scam -- okay, caveat emptor. Selling gemstones and sending plastic? Kind of illegal. But apparently no one at PayPal or eBay cares about such trifles, so ... I'm out $20. Boo hiss.

Pesty Pestiness

We have a fruit fly problem. When we went out of town, I think something got left out, or we didn't take out the trash, or something. When we came home, we had fruit flies. They are driving me INSANE. They're everywhere. I've done traps. I've been cleaning the drains. I think, however, they're reproducing in the garbage. Oh, my god. I make five meals a day. I don't WANT to, dammit, I have children! I clean up after five meals a day. Now I have to take out the effing trash and wash the dishes after EVERY SINGLE MEAL? Excuse me, when do I have time to go to the bathroom under this new regime?

I am feeling ... distressed lately about trying to keep up with the housekeeping and childcare. Very distressed. It can be done, but only if I never sit down and never, like, do anything fun. My aunt was right; this house is too big, too old, too in need of repair.

Oh, and speaking of pests ... I traumatized my five year old today. She loves bugs. She babysits grubs, for pete's sake. So when I saw The Monster Centipede from Hell in the basement today, I decided to let her in on it. The baby was napping, after all, so I thought she might get a kick out of it. This bitch was easily 1-2 inches longer than my middle finger. Not including all the legs.

I called her down, but in fairness, I did warn her what I wanted to show her before she made her appearance. She came down, stared at it for a few seconds, and burst into tears. I should have known better. For someone her size, it probably looked like a wharf rat. A wharf rat with tentacles. So I sent her upstairs while I squooshed it. I know you're not supposed to, but oh my god. It was big enough to carry off a cookie from the kitchen. I felt SO BAD. I mean, about traumatizing my daughter, not killing the centipede. That just made me feel ... oogy.

And of course, it begs the question ... what was it EATING down there that allowed it to grow that big?

Yeah.

Almost Vegan; But Will Kill Deer for Tomatoes

No matter how much I feel the need to recoil from wasting time online, I shouldn't stop blogging. At least, for myself. I have tried paper journaling again, and while it might be good for some things too embarrassing to disclose publically -- like my superstitions, or whom I have a grugde against -- my paper journaling is awful. I don't know whether to blame my handwriting, or what, but things don't flow as well, and they can't be easily expunged and rewritten. Somehow, just writing in a paper journal, with my handwriting, makes me feel (and sound) a whiny angsty 13 years old.

(Don't say it.)

So, what has been going on with me? I'm almost vegan. I would say, "I'm vegan," except as a new vegan, there are plenty of slip ups and adjustments. I'm not forcing my family to go vegan; they're still having their organic dairy, though I keep introducing new foods to see if there are any substitutions we can all agree on. So far, Annika is not appeased by any dairy substitutes, but Celyn will happily eat soy or coconut milk ice cream (oh, Turtle Mountain, how I love thee) and coconut milk yogurt. I'm also trying to be quite conscientious with my substitutions or replacements, trying to avoid highly processed stuff and a ton of soy (except for the odd treat like the "non dairy frozen desserts") so it's been quite an adventure. I'm not being sarcastic there, by the way.

The change is helping me use up my CSA share creatively, as well. At the least, it's not more difficult. I'm not entirely happy with my CSA, but that's another post for another time.

My garden isn't faring very well, and I blame myself. I didn't amend the soil from last year, and didn't add fertilizer until it was very late in the season. My lettuce did well, as did my collards, but in the square foot box, that was IT. I planted four tomato plants in the SQG box, and three in my Earth Box, and the Earth Box tomatoes are huge and full of tomatoes, and my SFG box tomatoes are spindly and short and only one has a tomato on it. Lesson learned.

But! Once again, something is eating green tomatoes, whole and entire, off my Earth Box plants. This happened last year, too, and whatever it was managed to eat ALL my green tomatoes in one night. Then, in a horrible coincidence, all the plants died within the week. (Or maybe it wasn't a coincidence, maybe a blighting demon ate all my tomatoes.) Anyway, either it's a demon or it's a deer. Small difference. We're not allowed to shoot guns within the village or the town, so I've been thinking about investing in a crossbow and taking a few out. Maybe not now, but soon ... and ... for the rest of my life?

Seeing as that's not a terribly practical solution, I sprayed my plants liberally with Deer and Rabbit Repellent. Oh, my GOD, it's horrifically repellent. It smells like rotting eggs ... stuffed inside a corpse. Which has been peed on. I bought it ages ago, but was hesitant to actually spray such foul stuff on my beautiful tomato plants unless there was a clear need. Well, seeing as I lost four tomatoes last night, there is now a clear and present need.

There is some sort of crazy irony in the fact that we (not the Royal We) use so many resources producing beef and pork and chicken, when there are approximately 80 kajillion deer and Canada geese running amok, completely unchecked. Am I the only one who sees a paradox here?

So lately, I've been obsessed with vegan food blogs -- of which there are many with stupendous recipes -- Maine, and yurts. I know, I didn't say anything about Maine or yurts in this entry. Don't rush me!

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I went out of town. Not sure if I mentioned that. But just before that, my laptop decided to spiral into crappiness in several different directions.

So I didn't use it at all while we were gone, though we brought it, and haven't used it much since we got home. And perhaps not oddly, I feel happier for it.

So if writing is sparse, that's why. I'm only checking email maybe once per day, and other sites with extreme randomness. I don't know if my laptop is fixable without like, actually sending it away for repairs, and right now, I'm not really feeling the urge to get on that right away.

FYI.

De Feet, Cont.

The doctor wants me to abstain from weight bearing exercise and "cross-train" for 1-2 weeks. Unfortunately, the non-weight bearing cross training exercises he mentions, like biking or swimming, I don't have access to.

It is to cry. I have stripe testing on the 14th! I was really making progress on my kata!

Sob.

The Agony of De Feet

Oh, what have I done to my feet? Alas, alack. Five measly workouts of mostly walking, and a really tiny bit of running, in the Vibrams, and after nearly a week with none of that, my feet and ankles are still messed up. I only went to karate twice last week, to try to baby my left ankle, only to have it swell after Thursday's class, and swell again last night.

This really sucks. I should go to the doctor, but when? I have no car today, and tomorrow is the last day before we go out of town. I've been resting and icing and a little compressing, but it's not like I get much time to put it up and laze around. I have two kids and a house with six levels. You do the math.

I know it doesn't help anything to be annoyed, but I am Really Annoyed. It strikes me as unbelievably ironic. The running was supposed to be an extra, a little added fillip ... it wasn't supposed to completely derail me off ALL of my activity. And the barefoot thing was supposed to reduce the risk of injury. It's just ... hilarious. My frustration must be quite comic to the universe.