It's about freaking time.

Well, I was somewhat productive over the weekend. I took care of something that has been years overdue. About six years ago, my husband gave me a pair of diamond stud earrings for Mother's Day. I've always wanted diamond stud earrings and I really like the pair he gave me; however, I almost never wear them because I am afraid I'll lose them. I don't wear much jewelry and the jewelry I do wear, I put on and leave on. I don't take off my earrings when I go to bed or take a shower or anything like that. The only time I really change jewelry is if I'm getting dressed up for something or if I figure it's time to change from the gold hoops I've been wearing for a year to a pair of gold studs. Anyway, I wear a pair of cubic zirconia studs because I don't worry about losing those, but I'd really rather wear the diamonds. Now, sitting in my mother's underwear drawer for the past fifteen years has been a diamond ring I received from an ex-boyfriend when I was in college. I haven't known what to do with it. I didn't want to trade it in for something else because, as I've mentioned, I don't really wear jewelry. I did try to hawk it to get money for spring break my senior year of college, but they weren't willing to give me nearly enough to make it worth my time. I offered it to my brother to take in and use as a trade-in for the ring he was planning on getting his fiancee, but he decided he didn't want to do that. While I was home over Christmas, all of a sudden, the idea struck me: I'd trade in the ring to have my diamond studs reset in a setting with a screw-back so I can put them in and not worry about them falling out. And that's what I did this past weekend. I took the ring and earrings into a local jewelry store and it ended up being a perfect trade--the ring for the work on the earrings. I feel very satisfied knowing that I will finally be able to wear my diamond studs all the time, and that the diamond ring has finally been liberated from my mom's panty drawer.

The other interesting thing about the weekend's errands is that it got me to thinking about ex-boyfriends in general, and there's one in particular I often wonder about just because it's like he dropped off the face of the planet. His name is Andy Dutson and I dated him for about a month the summer before my senior year of high school. He dumped me, quite unexpectedly. I know. The thought that a guy could have all this and a bag of chips and not hold on to it is mind-boggling, but he did dump me. However, I've never had a really good explanation for why. Of course, we were teenagers and that's probably all the answer there is, but everything seemed fine until this one day I dropped into the music store where he worked and he was there talking to some girl who'd I'd never seen before and they seemed very chummy. Anyway, he kind of blew me off and left for lunch with that girl and I was like, "What the fuck?" Anyway, I tried calling him later to find out what the deal was and he said we'd talk about it at this place in the canyon where kids would go to hang-out and drink, but when I got there, he wasn't there and we never had the talk and he never called back. And that was the end. There are several things I am grateful for, though, despite that my feelings were hurt. I am glad he ended it like the coward he obviously was because I was getting pretty close to having sex with him, which really means I was getting pretty close to losing my virginity to him. The only rule I ever had about sex for myself was that I wasn't going to do it until I was at least 18. I was 17 at the time I dated this boy, so I was pretty close to breaking my own rule and I am sooooooo happy I held out long enough for him to dump me because if I would have had sex with him, I would have been really, really pissed off. The kind of pissed off where I probably would have tracked him down and slashed his tires and kicked him so hard in the nads that he'd sing soprano for the rest of his life. Because he knew my rule, he knew I wasn't going to have sex until I turned 18, which was still approximately nine months away, but he kept trying and my resolve was weakening with each try. So really, he was trying to get me to throw my own convictions out the window for his own selfish pleasure. Oooh, thank you lord for small miracles. At least I got a Talk Talk tape out of it. He left it in my glovebox and I didn't find it until after he dumped me. I was going to return it, but my dad said, "Hell no. He broke up with you, you don't owe him anything." Anyway, I do wonder what happened to him.

Through bits of information here and there, I think what happened is that the girl he was talking to that day was a girl he'd gotten pregnant. I don't know if they ever got married or anything. I don't know if that was even the girl. All I know is that toward the end of senior year, someone told me he had just had a kid.