Sulk and Pepper.

In 2004, I wrote a great entry about the Summer Olympics and it was lost in the Great Hack-Job of 2004. So to recap, I love the Olympics. I have the television on every minute I’m home and when I’m at work I’m on the internet checking results. I find myself fascinated by sports that I’d never heard of a week ago — speed skating, who knew? Some these outfits though . . . they’re a little overwhelming. Call me old fashioned, but I like to leave a bit of mystery with regards to the genitalia of my favorite athletes.I’m devastated, guys. I lost my earring. No, don’t laugh, this is serious. This is the earring that I’ve been wearing for six years. I never, ever take it out except for shows, and even then if it would be reasonable for the character to wear the earring I leave it in. I was out with my friends the other night and when I was fixing my hair I accidentally pulled off the backing and I couldn’t find it — I wasn’t worried though because that’s happened before. I took the earring out and stashed it in my change purse for safe-keeping. The next day when I went to put it back in, it wasn’t there.

I’m really and truly devastated by this. There was a lot of symbolic meaning in that earring, even if it was just a cheap little trinket I picked up from the mall when I was 18. I’ve changed so much since then — I’ve always been somewhat of a drifter — and I’ve been through so many situations and so many people and that was the one symbolic thing that was constant. Things change, people change, places change — one thing stayed constant and it’s gone and I want it back.

I think I want to replace it. I think I want to find an identical earring and start anew, or maybe just pretend that it’s the same one that it’s always been. Trouble is though that since it was just a silly mall trinket from 2000, I doubt I’ll be able to find it again. It’s not a fancy earring, not by any means — just a little metal daisy stud. Daisies are my thing, you knew that from my name. They’re delicate and beautiful and no matter how many times you cut them down the next year they always grow back. It was just a simple metal daisy, not silver I don’t think because it wasn’t shiny enough. The outlines were raised and I was always having to clean gunk out of the indentations with a Q-tip. They look a little like these, but less shiny and no pink. That’s the closest I’ve been able to find, at least on the web – but it’s not what I want. It’s too fancy, too shiny. Too meaningless. I don’t just want an earring back, I want my earring back. I know it probably seems silly for me to be going on and on and on about this, but I place a lot of value on sentiment, much more than I do on actual monetary value. And when I lose something sentimental . . . it makes me sad. And right now, I’m sad.

So like I said in my last entry, I’ve been having this weird allergic reaction lately. It actually started a few months ago, but very, very mildly. At first it was just a mild itching on my back in the evenings and I didn’t think much of it. It got worse and worse though to the point where in the past three weeks I was having trouble breathing some nights. By Friday night I was so fed up with it that I said no — I’m not cooking, not trying to pinpoint ingredients, not this weekend. I made what I figured was a safe dinner of scrambled eggs and toast and sat down to watch the Opening Ceremonies when, you guessed it, anaphylaxis city. So that really got me thinking, because there are so few ingredients in that meal and I already knew that the reaction wasn’t coming from eggs or bread or butter. And then I realized the one ingredient that I hadn’t been writing down because I scarcely even considered it an ingredient: black pepper. That’s right, black freaking pepper. See, my mother never really uses pepper. She sometimes cooks with the powdery grey stuff, but that’s barely pepper, and so I never really used it in my cooking either. Six months ago though, I discovered the joys of fresh-cracked pepper, and I started using it in everything, which turned out to be a bad move. So no more pepper for me, but at least I’ve figured out what the culprit was and I don’t have to worry about choking to death in my sleep anymore. So yay for that!