Mood Ring
I recently bought a mood ring from the Santa Barbara Mission gift shop. It put me out $2.95, officially the cheapest thing available to purchase in California. I bought it to replace the mood ring that I bought from the same store in 2012. I lost it, or at least I think I lost it. I haven't seen it in years, despite periodically checking my stash of sentimental but rejected jewelry that sit bitterly together in various drawers. The ring hovered in a reliable state of dark blue, sometimes with hints of pinks and purples. This in turn meant that I, too, hovered reliably in a state of calm and relaxed, sometimes with hints of love, romance, and ‘very happy’. So it was shocking, on the morning of our wedding anniversary, to look down and notice that it had turned a putrid, leftover avocado greenish-gray. It seemed to have taken quite the long journey. Befuddled, I pulled up the picture I had taken of the all-important mood ring chart. Green suggests being nervous. Gray isn’t