Rubies, Emeralds, & Diamonds, Oh My! (Part 2)

When I walked into the store, I was home. Rubies, Emeralds, and Diamonds. Oh my! Gold statues. Case after case of sparkle after sparkle. My newly trained eye zoned in amongst all this stuff and saw: THE RING. It was gorgeous. It was magnificent. It had everything. Weight. Color. Sapphires. Diamonds. Rubies. Pure love, the first time I saw it. I had to have it, but I wanted to play it cool.

“Oh my God. I love that ring. I want it. It fits perfect. It’s beautiful.” My NGBF thought it looked great. We bartered for a while. All the jewelry was on sale because the store was closing. Everything was marked down so much, they must buy each piece for a quarter. The saleswoman gave it to me for a good price. She said she just needed to get rid of everything and was happy to sell it. I found out later, when having it appraised, that it was actually an amazing price.

The ring is worth $11,000. If you saw it you wouldn’t think that. It’s some famous designer. Yada Yada Yada. I happen to love it, but not because of it’s value. It’s because it signified the official end of the Jewelry Spree. Good times. Good times.

After I bought that ring, there was an intervention by one of my friends. She talked about my spending versus my earning and made some good points. She was right. It was fine with me. I had THE RING. What else would I need?

And then it got cold. Real cold. Windy with no sun cold. Some people might say it was a bad winter. I’d say it was an

un-fucking-believably-no-human-should-have-to-live-like-this bad winter. My NYC loyalty was being tested. And with no shopping or new sparkles to look forward to, all I could think about was how to survive winter.

I’d walk outside, and even though I was bundled beyond belief in a hat, scarf, gloves, earmuffs, and layer upon layer underneath a heavy jacket and looked like I’d just gained 100 pounds, the minute I was outside, I couldn’t feel my feet. My nose was about to fall off, and my eyes teared.

I started to think I could live in a nice, hot suburb. I’ll learn how to drive. I’ll shop at Costco. I don’t care. Just get me out of this crazy ass weather.

And then one day while talking to my NGBF and cursing the temperature, I said, “This would be a great time to move to California.” She totally agreed. I said, “If I had a job, I’d move there tomorrow. It’s just one of those things you say like, “I’d love to run a marathon.” Or “We should jump out of an airplane.” Or “I’d love to date a guy from France.” It’d be great, but it’s never really going to happen.

Two days later, I was flying out to California for a job interview. Crazy, I know. My NGBF had mentioned it to a higher up in her company who had met me, and then found out they had a position they needed to fill in California.

But there I was in California, sitting in one of San Diego’s finest hotel’s lobbies, in the middle of craziness. I was with the manager of the hotel, hotel security and the San Diego Police. I was with one of the guys who was interviewing me, The Suit, and he was upset. They had me drawing a sketch. Answering questions. Going over every move I had made. It was nuts. But suddenly, I wanted this job, and I wanted to move to California.

TO BE CONTINUED...