I could barely see the mark, even with my readers on, but it's there.

But you sometimes can find treasures, as evidenced by the gold bracelet I found. You just never know.

The bead bags I bought a couple weeks ago were kind of equivalent to a jewelry jar, I suppose. In fact, I'm fairly certain the beads they contained were probably upcycled from jewelery.

They were $6 apiece, and I got way more than $6 worth of beads out of each of them, compared to what I would have paid at a craft store.

Most of the time when I buy jewelry for the purpose of harvesting the beads, I buy individual pieces. My favorite thrift store in town sells necklaces for $1.50 apiece. I've gotten huge strings of quality (ceramic, glass, metal), unique beads for that price.

Ok, it might just be time for me to go buy a lottery ticket.

This is from the same tub, and it's 18 karat.

This has been a super fun experience. I'm going to give the bracelet back to Café Mom. I'm 100% sure she didn't know either of those were gold. I'm going to keep the ring.

(The lottery ticket comment was firmly a joke. I personally am deeply against gambling.)

Upon further research, it looks like it's gold plated. It's definitely stamped 18k, and HGE (maker's mark?). The similar rings I've seen online are plated.

Still really cool.

I've got a little nervous system trick that I've been using recently that really seems to help, so I thought I would share it.

I have a curated playlist that I originally created for my cabin trips. It's mostly instrumental (with the exception of a couple songs by Air, both of which are very soft).

I listen to it over and over on my cabin trips. While I'm reading. While I'm preparing my meals. While I'm relaxing in the hot tub. So now I have positive associations with this particular music.

I've started listening to it around the house too when I'm doing peaceful things. When I was making jewelery over the weekend I was listening to it. Even when I'm doing chores, which I'm suddenly finding a great deal of pleasure in doing. Same playlist. Just softness. Calm.

This morning when I arrived at work my tire pressure monitoring system popped up an alert that my tire is underpressured. I know that doesn't sound like a big deal, and it shouldn't be, but the amount of drama that I've had to put up with about tires on this car has caused me a great deal of stress, particularly in the last couple of years. I've already been to the tire place twice in just the last month alone. I've got shit to do this week, and a 3 hour drive on Friday. I don't have time for this!

So I sit down at my desk. I've got stuff I need to do, but my nervous system is ‼️‼️‼️.

I pop on my peaceful playlist, and I start to relax. I'm getting work done.

I'll still need to deal with the tire, but for the moment I'm ok.

OK, update on the gold bracelet. This is super special.

I gave it back to Café Mom today. I thought she had gotten the tub of jewelery from a thrift store, but apparently she got it from a family member? I'm not sure I totally understand the whole chain of events.

Anyway, it turns out she'd bought the gold bracelet for her granddaughter when she was just a baby, and at some point it went missing. She'd wanted her granddaughter to have one piece of real gold. She thought she (Café Mom) had lost it somehow years ago.

So anyway, it turned up in the tub she gave me. She had no idea it was there.

When she opened it, she cried a little. I'm so glad I decided to give it back to her.

Her granddaughter's birthday is in October, and she's going to gift it back to her.

I did double check with her about the ring to make sure she was ok parting with it, and she said I could keep it.

That just made my whole day.