"Hi, my name is Lori, and I am an addict"

Well, I have many addictions - if you have read this blog for awhile you would know. Addicted to photographing people taking pictures, addicted to photographing flowers, addicted to my pimped out, two monitored computer, I'm a Sonics Route 44 Diet Coke with cherry and lime addict ....

and I am a jewelry addict.

So ... my cleaning lady comes on Tuesdays. Here I am working on a website design and she has to kick me out of my office. There always comes a time when she actually needs to clean the room I am in most of my day. Off I go with my photography books - which I should be reading, but rather hoping that through osmosis I will absorb all the info and become a good photographer.

On to my bedroom - sitting in the sitting area reading, bored so I go to lay down and see a familiar site:

Hiding in the corner of my room, right next to my armoire is what I call my "Oriental Corner". Since the furniture in our house was all built by Gary and he has designed it all with a very Scandinavian flair - it is grossly out of place - thus the hiding in the corner part. The baseball bat? Is an extra - something Gary made for me for protection. (One really weird thing I know a lot about is crime - and statistically you are more likely to be killed with that knife you have in your room for protection than you are of actually using it on the perp. A baseball bat - you are willing to swing away. Read that somewhere, so Gary made me a baseball bat on his lathe).

Gary brought both of those lovely herb cupboards back from Korea - knowing that I would love them for my jewelry. Yeah - there are ... 29 drawers and a big cupboard that locks. On top of the cupboards is an adorable folding jewelry box (a real Korean jewelry box) and two other wood inlaid boxes. My moms jewelry? Fits in the folding box that we gave her as a gift and is exactly the same size as mine.

After my immune system decided to go elsewhere, leaving me with fewer options in life than before - one of the things I had to let go of was costume jewelry - infection is something I deal with every day - and infected ear lobes was easy to fix. So, embarrassing as it is - everything in every one of those drawers is either sterling silver or 14k - 24k gold.

And while in Norway, with an excess of funds to spend, I started my rather large collection of Swarovski crystal and Murano Glass - since the rule was I could only buy a product in the country it was make in - so Swarovski - bought my first stuff while in Austria, Murano Glass? Italy (Gary did this for me), Mont Blanc pen? Germany - just a silly self-imposed rule...

And I have not even mentioned the really weird part (you SO knew I would have a really disturbing weird part to this post, didn't you?). Every single solitary piece of jewelry I own is in its very own teeny, tiny (adorable) zip-loc bag. It protects it from tarnish, scratches and damage and makes me ... I don't know ... completely nuts? But I sleep better at night knowing that all my jewelry is safely ensconced, nestled with their neighbors and in a place where I know exactly where it is (I have a system ... and no - no excel spreadsheet or anything ... weird ...)

I'm thinking I should sell the stuff - I hardly wear it now. I wore, and collected some of it when I went back to work when the kids were in school - but I was already sick and it just made me sicker and sicker. I also had my Stage Three Lyme Disease disaster during my working at Shell - complete with my own surgically implanted IV line in my chest for my IV meds anaphylactic shock and many, many hospital stays. Had to 'retire' and really, really miss working.

So, sell? Or keep just for funsies? I do wear some, but putting jewelry on for Church on Sunday and that is about it - it would take me years to get through my collection if I wore something different each week.

Problem is: I LOVE my collection. I will go through the drawers and remind myself what is there. I see a piece and it reminds me where I got it, the fun I had selecting it, all good memories. I will take it out and polish the pieces that need polishing, or clean it in my totally cool ultrasonic jewelry cleaner. I make sure the colored items are in their proper assigned color drawer (those are below my solid gold and silver drawers).

Why I am confessing this in my blog, I have no clue ... just something to write. But I realize that it makes me look, well ... completely nuts!

But then again, who out there hasn't figured that out by now?