A Sunday afternoon vent

I was just watching the Shopping Network (I know, I know, but it's pouring rain, I'm lacking motivation and we've already played four games of ping pong) so it's time for a little Sunday afternoon rant.

So Ivana-no-longer-Trump was on with her fabulous jewelry collection. Signature watches, sparkly cubic zirconia crosses, better-than-gold-plated-but-not-quite-as-good-as-real-gold necklaces and earrings. You name it, she's hocking it.

Aside from the fact that she's not kidding anyone (we know the only time she deigns to wear faux baubles of any kind, even ones from her own signature line, is when she's on television trying to get us to buy them) she just represents all the things that I'm growing to despise.

Now don't get me wrong, there's nothing, wrong with jewelry or wanting jewelry or getting it and being ecstatic. My neck rarely parts with the tiny square-cut diamond necklace My Beloved gave me on our first anniversary. I love it and I'm not ashamed to admit it. It's special because he picked it out himself and gave it to me on our first anniversary - a difficult one because I was recovering from my first miscarriage.

Jewelry is fine. I have nothing against it whatsoever.

It's just Ivana with her, "don't get just one, get two!", making us feel like we need to have more, more, MORE of those things - those shiny bits of gold, silver and crystal - that gets my goat. Her urgency implies that It's almost a matter of survival. It's as though she can single-handedly save our pathetically un-sparkling lives with her buckets of fake beads and almost-gold.

It's deceiving. Life is so pretty when she's sitting there holding strands of polished pearls and handfuls of swarovski crystal earrings on a glimmering TV sound set. But when you turn off the TV you find you're still in your own family room with your couch that sags in the middle, your grocery store carpet and your dusty Ikea bookshelves. Without halogen lights making everything bright and shiny, you're left with a dull Sunday afternoon, some dust and a dirty kitchen.

The thing is, there's nothing wrong with that (quite honestly, the fact that my couch knows my ass so well its made a permanent dip to accommodate it, is very comforting)!

Ivana is wrong.

I could buy a million of her peach jade necklaces and still not have a perfect life. They wouldn't bring my boy back, they wouldn't make my parents healthy, they wouldn't bring back lost friendships. They wouldn't make a mid-day phone call from My Beloved more special, they wouldn't make snuggling up to him at night more comforting and they wouldn't make the love I feel for him and my family stronger.

They're just things.

Now once again, don't get me wrong. I like pretty things. I am, after all, a girl. It's just that since Thomas died I've been able to see the true value of things in a way I wasn't able to before. I've reassessed what's really important and it isn't what I can carry with me in my arms. It's what I carry with me in my heart.

I had to turn the TV off when Ivana told us that she has upwards of 2000 pairs of reading glasses (some, she claims, are from her signature collection). She leaves one pair in every room of every house she owns, and takes pairs with her when she travels. Bejeweled with hundreds of tiny crystals, her glasses caught the light from every halogen bulb on the set as she told us how much she was envied by two stewardesses on her flight from New York City for having them.

2000 pairs of reading glasses when there are people out there working two and three jobs just to put food on their tables;when there are people dying because they can't afford to pay for adequate medical care; when children are dying of starvation.

It's just not right, and 2000 pairs of glasses can't seem to help her see that.

I wish it hadn't taken my child dying for me to see things the way I do now. I'm ashamed that it took something so horrific to open my eyes. But it has, and so I rant. Not because I'm by any means perfect, but because I can see imperfections (my own included) with such startling clarity.

From my vantage point the world has changed a lot in 10 and a half months.