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This post is courtesy of one of my students who mentioned this during the last few days of school.

My classes were all watching The Last Unicorn. They didn’t have Chromebooks, testing was done, and where wasn’t a whole lot left to do after 8th grade promotion. So, let’s put on Sifling’s favorite childhood movie! I didn’t mind watching it five times in a row. Heaven knows I did that plenty as a kid. Here was the comment that spawned this post:

“Wow. The Unicorn is kind of mean.”

I was straightening up the room and not entirely paying attention to what part of the movie it was, but I think it may have been where the Schmendrick said ‘don’t worry about it’ in response to the Unicorn not being able to turn him into a real magician. In return, she said “I’m not.” I should preface this post by saying I’m talking about the movie, not necessarily the book (though it is a pretty faithful adaptation).

Yeah, now that I think about it, the Unicorn does come across as mean, at least in her interactions with people/things she can talk to. She’s a little less brusque with animals, though still demands respect from them (see interaction with the Butterfly, though in her defense, that one could drive anybody bonkers).  But her interactions with humans in particular…yikes. Even when she becomes human, she’s not the nicest person at the outset, though she does improve somewhat. I think after the third viewing I may have hit on the reason why.

The Unicorn isn’t a mean/malicious being in her deepest self, quite the opposite. I think it’s more that she doesn’t think the way a human does, and she’s also been fairly isolated for a good chunk of her life. Here’ the evidence I will present.

First, the Unicorn is immortal. It’s not directly stated in the book or movie how old she is, but it’s implied that she’s not exactly young even by the standards of her species. It’s also implied that she’s never left the lilac wood where she lives, meaning, she hasn’t had much chance for social interaction with, well, anyone. The Unicorns in that universe don’t seem to be gregarious, and while perhaps not shunning interactions with each other, they don’t seem to go out of their way for them, either. Maybe it was a ‘get together only to mate’ kind of thing. 

This would have made the Red Bull’s task of rounding the Unicorns up even easier. If they didn’t communicate with each other, they wouldn’t know something was wrong if their kind started disappearing (because they don’t seem to seek each other out). The first our Unicorn hears that something might be wrong is from two hunters that wander into her forest and speak of the lack of Unicorns in the world. King Haggard had been collecting Unicorns for years (how long, I don’t know, but it’s also stated in the book that he’s pretty old, so it’s safe to say this has probably been going on for decades). 

Second, the Unicorn doesn’t process emotions like we do. She states as much in that she can’t feel regret, but she does know what sorrow is. It’s interesting to me that she understands the difference, but either choses not to exercise it, or is unable to do so. That is the prime reason she comes across as unkind when she talks to people. It’s not that she is; she just doesn’t know how to talk to people, and never had the opportunity to learn. When Molly first confronts her in tears and anger, the Unicorn doesn’t know how to handle it. She tries to be nice, in her own way, but it seems stilted, like she’s trying to follow a script that she’s only seen once or twice. Maybe she was one of those Unicorns that went to maidens from time to time, but if that was the case, it’s been a while for her, and she only sort of remembers what she is supposed to do.  

Another line that struck me was when Molly accused the Unicorn (now Lady Amalthea) of being cruel to Prince Lear. Now, is Lear awkward in his courtship? Yes, largely because he as as much clue about how to go about doing so as the Lady Amalthea does at interacting with people. Bless the man, he tries, and he does everything he can think of to win a woman’s heart. And, if Amalthea were a real, human woman, it might well have worked. To Molly’s way of thinking, Amalthea is being cruel and unfeeling towards Lear, and she is. There might be a way Unicorns court each other, and if that’s Amalthea’s baseline for comparison, she might not understand what Lear is doing.

Molly does get frustrated with Amalthea for her treatment of Lear, and verbally lets her have it. However, Molly does not seem to understand until a bit later that the Unicorn doesn’t process her emotions like humans do. She has them, but makes much different use of them. Only when Amalthea starts to become more and more human does she start to reciprocate Lear’s attraction. Again, she is learning how to be human, and to an extent, un-learning how to be a Unicorn. 

So, the short version: The Unicorn’s not mean, just socially challenged and has a somewhat alien way of thinking, at least by human standards. 

Hilary

And here’s your moment of irrational annoyance, courtesy of someone who didn’t mean ill by it, but aggravated me anyway.

I’m always on the hunt for curio cabinets for my museum. Yes, I already have a bunch, but I particularly need ones that have doors on them (lockable being a bonus). The Junior Assistant Curator is starting to show interest in the fossils, and is just tall enough that he can reach some that are in a more open setting. The Assistant Curator is also interested, but knows to ask. I prefer to buy my cabinets secondhand, for a few reasons. 

First, good lord, have you seen the prices of new furniture nowadays? I saw one (very nice) cabinet for 1500 dollars. Um, no. Not when I can get something similar for 300 dollars or less.

Second, I’m helping someone directly by getting an unwanted item out of their home in exchange for some money. I’d rather support a person than a chain furniture store. Win-win.

Third, I’m no interested in all of them matching. A hodgepodge has a bit more character.

I’ve had the most luck on Facebook Marketplace, but I’ve also found a few at antique stores/flea markets. There used to be an upcycled furniture place near my house, but sadly, that business owner closed within a year, but not before I got three lovely cabinets and a haunted rocking chair from her. Yeah, story for another time on the chair. This last time, I’m at a flea market, and expressed interest in curio cabinets. I said the shelved needed to be very sturdy, as some of my items were pretty heavy, and I would prefer wood shelves to glass ones. I can work with glass, but I generally will put some kind of liner between it and the fossil to prevent damage to both. Here was the comment that made me bristle:

“Oh, got some heavier tchotchkes? This one should work for you.”

Now, I hadn’t mentioned that what I was needing to display was fossils. Part of me wanted to say something rather cranky in response, but I kept it in. I guess I didn’t like the assumption that the only thing a woman my age would collect is trinkets. I wanted to say something like ‘all but one of my ‘tchotchkes’ is over ten thousand years old, or is a replica of something that old. They also tend to weigh a couple of pounds each. But yeah, I just need a spot to store trinkets.’

Like I said, kind of irrational, but irksome nevertheless. It was also a turn-off in terms of me wanting to buy anything from this vendor. He had also made some racist comments (not directed at me, but I heard them) and overall seemed like a less-than-awesome person. I ended up not getting the cabinet. The price was right, but it was really banged up, with a cracked shelf and a LOT of damage to the wood (this wasn’t very obvious until I got a closer look at it…I would be dumping more money into prettying it up than I wanted). Oh well. I’ll find the right pieces at the right time, I guess.

Here’s the thing…I’m really proud of my collection. It’s taken me over a decade to put it together, and I’m not done. To have someone call it a bunch of trinkets, even unknowingly, was belittling. It would be like me calling someone’s baseball card collection a pile of paper. Everyone’s got their own thing. It’s just that my thing consists of 800+ rocks, most of which could be used as projectiles in a pinch. They’ve survived this long, right? What’s one more high-velocity impact?

Hilary

When one collects fossils like I do, it pays to know what you are looking at. It helps one not get ripped off. 

Here’s a really good example of this notion.

A few years back, I was browsing a certain website for fossils (because that’s what I do in my spare time when I’m not writing). I found one for about fifty bucks. It was listed as ‘small baby mammoth jaw.’ Not going to lie, something looked off about the piece, though I chalked it up at the time to there being only one rather crumby picture of the item. Still, fifty isn’t bad for mammoth/mastodon material, so I bought it. 

A few days later, a box comes. A big box. Now, the ‘baby mammoth jaw’ was the only thing I had outstanding at the time, so I knew this had to be it. Maybe the seller just over-packed…some of them do that out of an abundance of caution. It’s also very heavy, heavier than I would have expected from a ‘small’ fossil. So, I open up the box. A few things were noted immediately.

1st: This thing was not ‘small.’ It was dang near a foot long and about ten pounds.

2nd: It was in absolutely atrocious condition. Stabilization with a load of PaleoBond was in this thing’s very near future.

3rd: It was not mammoth. It was not elephant of any kind. 

What I had here, folks, was a sizable chunk of a lower jaw of an animal called a titanothere (see below). Superficially, they look a bit like rhinos, and they are distantly related to them. They were found all over the western North American continent and Asia. I already had some titanothere material in my collection, but nothing from the skull before this piece. You know how I paid about fifty bucks for the fossil? I’ve seen similar pieces going for ten times that, condition notwithstanding. So, yeah, kind of accidentally ripped the seller off.

How did I know this? The teeth were a dead (pardon the expression) giveaway. Elephants have very distinctive teeth, with mastodon being pointed and nipple shaped (hence the name) and mammoth teeth being flatter and corrugated-looking, for lack of a better term. The teeth on this specimen didn’t match either of those descriptions, and a quick consult of one of my reference books pointed me in the right direction. Once I ruled out elephants, titanothere became my prime suspect based on size alone, but the book confirmation helped. 

Here’s the second, bigger problem. A lot of titanothere material is found on Native American land, where collecting is illegal. I messaged the seller and asked where the fossil came from. If I got even the slightest hint that it was illegally obtained, it was going right back to the sender, or to the authorities. Turns out the seller didn’t know where it came from. It had been sitting up in an attic for decades. All he knew was that a relative acquired it sometime in the 1980’s or thereabouts. Based on the condition the fossil was in, I can buy that. Repeated exposure to temperature swings and moisture (commonly seen in attics) can play hell with fossil integrity. It took all of the stabilizer I had just to keep this thing in one piece. It’s not pretty and never will be, but at least it’s not crumbling anymore. It now lives with the rest of the titanothere fossils, but on a crochet cushion to prevent further deterioration. 

Without knowing exactly where it is from, I can’t make an exact genus identification with one hundred percent confidence. If the piece is from the White River Formation, which I suspect it is, the best guess would be Megacerops. It would fit the size and location of the specimen, and that is the only titanothere found in that formation. Again, my identification hinges on where I think the specimen is from…if it’s from further west, that would change my thinking.  Below is a picture of a typical titanothere.

Hilary

The school year…not writing. I’ll be at that until the day I die and get to go and make whatever supreme being out there utterly insane. You’ve been warned, whatever you are! 

I’m not going to say that I write as a survival mechanism, but this year, that was sort of the case. The writing, the stories, the creative stuff…that’s what kept me sane for the past ten months. I shouldn’t have been able to knock through a whole book in that space of time. When I look at the word counts for Moonstone Wish and the completion date of Lapis Blade, it does amount to a little over 100k words. That’s…a lot. Yes, I know, this is coming from someone who did a 50k word manuscript in three weeks. Shattered was the exception (I hope) to how I normally write. I don’t ever want to feel what seemed like a near-possession ever again. So, if there’s any other objects in my house thinking of doing that, don’t. Please. I’ve got enough on my plate (I’m looking at YOU, 2500 year old pendant. Don’t even think about it.) 

So what’s next on the docket after I finish Moonstone Wish, which might be in the next couple of weeks? Unless my brain throws a monkey wrench, I’d like to at least start Ruby Memory before the end of summer. Now, will that happen? Not sure. I’ve got a Gothic-horror-romance that’s been brewing in my brain for a while, as well as a memoir compilation of my years of teaching high school science. How forceful those two projects get remains to be seen. I have a feeling the memoir might take a back seat to the Gothic one, but I’ve been wrong before. Besides, if I wait a year or two with that one, I’ll have even more stories to add to it. Or I could just make it from my years in Linn. I’m not quite sure how to handle that one yet. 

If I do start Ruby Memory, I’m going to have to get through the diaries of the Romanov girls. I’ve gotten through a chunk of Anastasia’s, and am going to try to finish that one and Maria’s by the end of next week. At least with the younger ones, it is very interesting to see the sibling dynamic play out. Those four really did organize themselves into pairs…older and younger. This isn’t to say they weren’t close as a group. If anything, these four seemed tighter-knit than most sibling units I have seen. I think part of this can be ascribed to their personalities and their comparative isolation from other kids their age. I would have been interested to see how they would have developed friendships outside their close circle, because from their writings, they certainly would have been open to the idea. 

Hilary

Why is it always me that gets to remove rogue critters from a school? Or gets brought animals (salamanders, scorpions, dead black widows, kittens) and asked to care for them? Oh, wait…it’s because everyone who worked with me knows that I did four and a half years as an emergency veterinary technician aide. 

Anyhow…picture this:

I’m about twenty weeks pregnant with Beren (the one who decided swallowing a Band-Aid a few months ago was a good idea). I’m bigger, but still reasonably mobile. I hear screaming from the hallway outside my classroom. Now, this is unusual. Generally, if there was shouting going on, it was almost always coming from my room in the response to some lab/demo/something going sideways. Not this time. Now, am I somewhat curious? Sure. Have I learned over time to take the ‘not my circus, not my monkeys’ approach to outside pandemonium? Also yes. The smarter option is almost always to shut the door. 

Too bad I didn’t get the option this time. 

One of the paraprofessionals pokes her head in, and said the FACS teacher needs rescuing from some manner of serpent. Now, before the question arises, animals getting into the school wasn’t common, but not rare either. Most of the classrooms on that side of the building had exterior doors (mine included) and stuff would sometimes sneak in under the doorframe or when we had it open to let some air in.  No big…I’ve done this kind of thing before. I’m not bothered by snakes, though I can speak from experience that being bitten by one isn’t exactly fun. I grab an empty storage tub and head out into the hallway, after telling my Chemistry class to keep working on their wave-particle duality practice. I was lucky…that crew was trustworthy enough that I could leave them unsupervised for a hot minute (though I would never dream of doing so with my freshmen). 

Hoo boy.

It’s not just any snake. It’s a baby copperhead, though I know better than to say as much in front of the already panicking FACS teacher and very nervous para. This changes things a bit. Getting bit by a nonvenomous snake hurts, but isn’t super harmful unless the holes get infected. A venomous snake is a different beast, especially a baby. Fun fact…if a baby venomous snake bites you, it’s almost a guarantee that they are going to inject venom. They lack the muscular control to inflict a dry bite. This is why I would rather get bitten by an adult snake-they are more likely and able to deliver a warning shot as opposed to the whole venom payload. I was originally planning on just scooping the snake into the container with my hands, but that’s not happening now. 

I asked the para to grab some kind of thin cardboard or poster board while I place the container over the (very scared) baby copperhead. It was striking, but luckily it’s range was only a couple inches. She returns with the only thing she could find…some student’s presentation project. It would have to do. I hollered for one of my Chemistry students to bring me the actual lid the the container, and she did so. I slid the poster between the floor and snake, carefully flipped the container over, and very quickly placed the lid. Critter contained, I told Chemistry we were taking an unscheduled field trip to the tree line outside the school. They trooped out behind me, I released the snake, and it practically flew off into the woods. Poor thing. 

I made sure that the student who’s project I used as a lid was given an A in recompense for me using their poster as a lid.  Yes, my doctor called me an idiot when she found out what I did, and deservedly so. This wasn’t quite on par with me playing matball in velvet flats and an ankle length dress during my first pregnancy, but close (but boy howdy, my students found out that day that their Ren-faire pixie of a science teacher can still hit a line drive fit to take a few years off your life). Yes, I fell and busted my ankle-knee-hips. Yes, I got called an idiot for that one too. 

You may be detecting a pattern here….

Hilary

P.S.-since these little friends are very common in my area, here’s a tip. If you are walking around near trees, leaf litter, anything like that and all of a sudden smell cucumbers, you are within spitting distance of an upset copperhead…that’s their alarm chemical. Stop, scan the ground/trees/everything near you. The snake is more scared of you than you are of it, but always take precautions. They see you as a predator, not a prey. If you leave it alone, it will leave you alone.

I like to cook. I’ve liked to cook since I was a kid. I collect recipe books and look forward to using them this summer. I particularly like to make/bake sweets, though increasingly I enjoy making them more than I like eating them. My first brush with dessert-making was when I was in elementary school, and hoo boy, what an intro. 

The recipe in question was called “Puffy Pebble Pie.” This abomination came from a recipe book I got in my school library. If my memory is correct, it was called The Kid’s Microwave Cookbook. I have scoured the internet for this title, because for some deranged reason I want to make this sugary horror again. I have not been able to locate one. I did find a different book with the same title, but it was a different collection of recipes. I don’t think this cookbook was indie published (which wasn’t really a thing when I was that young, and I doubt my school library would have stocked the cookbook if it wasn’t traditionally published). My brain is wanting to say it was a Betty Crocker publication, but I could be wrong. If anyone finds this thing, please send it, or a link, my way. 

Now, why do I call this recipe an abomination? Draw your own conclusions from the ingredients list (again, from memory):

40 large marshmallows

Butter

Chocolate Ovaltine

2 cups of malted milk balls (1 cup crushed, 1 cup intact)

Pie crust 

Microwave the marshmallows, butter, and Ovaltine until melted (I used a nonstick pan with my mom’s supervision). Mix in the crushed malted milk balls. Pour into pie crust. Dot with intact malted milk balls. Place in refrigerator until firm. Slice, eat, and witness your blood glucose level reach levels that will cofound even a hospital grade glucometer. 

Yeah.

It was amazing. 

I want to find it again.

Who wants to live forever, anyway?

Back in college, my folks decided that I couldn’t stay in the dorms anymore. There were a multitude of reasons, not least of which was when the guy next door to use tried to get into our room with a credit card and then peed on our door. Long story for another time, but before you ask, yes, drugs were involved. 

We ended up looking at something like twenty houses. My only real criteria was that it had to be in decent shape, and it also had to be under twenty minutes from the MU Campus. I worked at the veterinary teaching hospital at the time, and if we got an emergency page, we had to get there within twenty minutes. A little bit of land around it would be a bonus. 

One house we looked at seemed to fit the bill. It was about ten minutes from campus, had several acres around it, and the house itself was in good shape. On paper, it seemed pretty perfect, and the price was certainly right, about 50k below market value (in hindsight, this should have been red flag number one). 

I felt something off when we pulled up on the property. There was nothing there. No birds, squirrels, nothing. It was also creepily silent. Red flag number two.

The interior of the house was strange. There was no furniture, and it looked like it had been vacant for a while. The appliances were decent enough, and the carpet was okay, if a bit worn. One feature that struck me was that the bathrooms were carpeted, and with shag carpet, no less. Not a red flag in itself, but still weird. 

The whole place had an overall creepy feel. Normally, that kind of thing doesn’t bother me too much, but I was getting uncomfortable. So were my mom and the realtor, from how they were behaving. Both of them wanted to get out of the house. Oh, it gets worse. I felt like I was being drawn to one of the back rooms that was down a short hallway (maybe a bedroom?). It was very much a ‘come hither’ feeling, and in my experience, that sort of call is never, ever good. We bailed out of there a few minutes later, and crossed it off our list with prejudice.

Fast forward a few years. We did get a house, and I was talking to a friend about our home search a few years prior. She’s lived in the area for about thirty years, so she knows most of the spots around town. I mentioned the creepy house and the street it was on. Talk about coincidences…this friend lived very close to that particular property, and knew instantly the house I was talking about. She was able to fill me in on some details about the house, which made me even more grateful that we gave the place a pass. 

Turns out there was a suspicious death on the property, maybe in the 1980’s to the best of her knowledge. The police didn’t outright call it murder, but reading between the lines, that’s sure what it sounded like. My friend said you will never see animals on the property, and even birds seem to shy away. Deer tend to skirt the tree line, but rarely cross onto the property. She also said that house goes off and on the market very frequently, sometimes twice a year. We couldn’t find any officially documented paranormal stories associated with the property, but the feeling was undeniable. Something was, and very likely is, still in that house, and it’s decidedly unpleasant. 

Out of curiosity, I looked up what I think is the address. It’s not currently on the market, but was about a year ago. We will see if it comes up for sale again.

Hilary

This was one of those historical mysteries that still flummoxes people today.  For those not in the know, the Beast was an animal or animals that went on a multi-year rampage in south-central France from 1764-1767. It, or they, racked up quite a body count, and seemed to preferentially target women and children. Eventually, the animals were killed, and the deaths stopped. So, what exactly was this critter, or critters? Here are some of the ideas that have been presented over the years.

A lion-not super plausible in my opinion. The attack patterns did not match up well to a lion, or any big cat, for that matter. Descriptions of the Beast varied considerably, but nearly all agreed that the Beast was canine in appearance.

A hyaena-this one’s a little more believable, but still would not be my pick. While looking superficially canine, hyaenas are actually closer to cats in the tree of life. They also don’t act as the Beast did. Now, did some goofballs keep these things as pets back in the day? Supposedly yes. Do pets sometimes escape? Sure, but it still isn’t a great match in terms of behavior or looks.

Wolf-now we are getting warmer. A big wolf, or wolf pack, is more than capable of doing the damage described in the historical record. Here’s the issue…wolves weill usually avoid people. Unprovoked, hunting style attacks on humans are super rare, yet that seems to be exactly what the Beast was doing.

Wolf dog-ding ding! I think we have a winner! Here’s why.

A wolf dog has the potential to combine the worst traits of the parents. You have the size and power of a wolf, and a lack of fear of humans from the dog. This is a really, REALLY bad combo. I have been around wolf dogs, several of which would be considered ‘high content,’ meaning more wolf in them than dog. Can they be fantastically loyal and protective? Most definitely. Do they have the potential to be extremely dangerous? Also yes. There’s a reason these animals are illegal to own in a lot of places. 

The second bit of evidence is this. These animals looked wolf-like, but different enough for people to notice that they didn’t look like complete wolves. Descriptions from the time include shorter muzzles, brindled fur, unusual tails, and extra toes. Now, for me, the extra toes is the giveaway. A lot of the bigger herding breeds such as Great Pyrenees have the polydactyl trait pop up in their bloodlines, meaning, they have extra toes. It’s not super visible from a distance, but up close, a polydactyl paw looks very different from a normal paw.

Here’s what I think happened. One or more of these large livestock guarding dogs managed to mate with some of the local wolves. Given the range and supposed number of animals, as well as their varied appearance, I would have a hard time believing that there was just one breeding event. There may well have been several over a period of a year or so before the Beasts started attacking people. If one has ever been up close to some of these bigger breeds, they can easily top one hundred pounds, and they tend to be blocky and muscular. They can also be very aggressive when defending livestock, a trait which they may have translated to their hybrid offspring.

Here’s the other piece of the puzzle. Though wolf dogs tend to be more aggressive than their parent counterparts, the sheer number of attacks makes me think something else was going on. As a former veterinary technician/student, I am thinking there was some disease outbreak around the time the attacks started. My background has me looking very closely at rabies. Rabies was, and still is, an ugly disease. There’s no cure, and it is fatal. Even the prevention is no joke (I had the rabies vaccine in veterinary school, and it’s a rough, three course series of shots). Rabies causes extreme behavior changes, one of which is heightened aggression in the ‘raging’ form, which is what is more likely to present in dogs. The ‘dumb’ form is more likely to present in livestock. The animal becomes insensitive and unresponsive, and will just stand and stare blankly. I’ve seen both forms in a veterinary setting, and I still couldn’t tell you which one is worse. 

So, there’s my hypothesis. The Beast(s) of Gevaudan were wolf-dog hybrids, possibly high content wolf-dogs, and were met with the perfect storm of an outbreak of rabies. That would explain the variety of canine appearances and odd behaviors. I would LOVE to see the remains of the last one that was shot. According to some records, the carcass was buried somewhere on the Versailles palace grounds. A look at the mouth and tooth structure would tell me what I need to know.

Hilary

No, seriously…have you seen the playground gear my generation had? And that was at the start of the ‘safety conscious’ era. Most of my classmates and I were still using the old stuff.  Like these things:

I don’t remember if my friends and I had a specific name for this device on the left, but the moniker ‘steel-ribbed kid slinger’ is perfectly appropriate. We tried to make ourselves into textbook demonstrations of the concept of centripetal force by spinning that thing as fast as we could and hanging off the bars for dear life. Yes, were were near horizontal to the ground some of the time. Yes, we got hurt. Yes, it was worth every second of terror.

Edit…apparently you can still get these things. They are plastic coated metal now, and don’t go quite as fast, but still there.

How many here got their rears burned by the beauty in the middle? Hot summer day + shorts = second degree burns on your backside. It was jeans or nothing on those slides, especially if it was above eighty degrees. 

Any guesses as to how many bones I broke on these? Zero. I have no idea how I managed THAT statistic…anyone who spends a few minutes in my company knows I’m a total klutz. Case in point was when I bounced down a flight of stairs on my butt because I refused to make two trips to carry four bowls of dog food.

But that’s a story for another time.

The one on the right? Heaven help you if you lost your grip. You were going to connect with at least one of those bars on the way down, and it was going to freaking hurt. And they got just as hot on summer days. Bruises and burns…the ultimate two-for-one! How many of us tried to do a flip in elementary or middle school and landed flat on our backs, winded, and questioning life choices? I refuse to believe I was the only one.

Hilary

Teachers wear a lot of hats. On any given day, we might be a teacher, surrogate parent, referee, counselor, sounding board, you name it.

In my case, I’m also a repairwoman.

I used to make jewelry as a side business, and while that hustle went the way of the dodo, I still make stuff for myself on occasion. This also means I can fix the jewelry that my kids break. Just Friday, I restrung two bracelets. One had already broken, and it was the first bracelet this kiddo ever made. Easy job…I just put it on memory wire. It’s nice and sturdy, easily removable, and can fit any size wrist. I added some freshwater pearls to the ends, though. The beads were those softish plastic discs, and I wasn’t sure how well they would stand up to being flush against a sharp wire. The next hour I fixed a strand of pearls that this girl was inches from losing. It was originally strung on that multistring, clear filament. I hate that junk. Yes, it’s nice and stretchy, but once it starts to fray. that’s it. It looks awful, and there’s no fixing it once it starts to unravel, short of restringing the whole shooting match. The student was shocked that I got all of the pearls restrung within five minutes. Restringing is easy…it’s crafting a whole new pattern that might take a while.

So, what items have I fixed over the years? Here’s the ones I can think of all the top of my head:

Glasses (several)

Ceramic pendant (busted in half, then busted again. I defy it to crack a third time).

Too many necklace chains with broken/missing jump rings to count. That was the most common issue…a link breaks, the jump ring opens up, stuff like that). Easy fixes.

A backpack. Yes, I actually sewed the whole bottom of a student’s backpack so she could get a little more use out of it. That one took two hours.

Jeans. Yup .Nice big split right along the pocket. Luckily she had her gym shorts to change into until I fixed her pants.

A pin. That one was interesting. The pin part got bent (maybe stepped on), but I was able to warm the metal and bend it back into place.

Weirdest of all was a copper plated horse. A student found it in the ground on his property. This thing was covered (and filled) with dirt. Lord only knows how long that sucker had been buried. Enough metal was exposed that I could see it was copper, or copper plated. Several rounds of cleaning and polishing later, and it looked really nice. It was missing one of the legs, which looked like it had broken off at some point, and the bridle chain, which I replaced with a remnant from another jewelry project. We couldn’t figure out what this thing was until a rather intense Google search revealed its surprising origins.

This object was an old carnival prize. Best guess is that it was from the 1940’s or 1950’s. Not going to lie…it’s pretty cool to see how this kind of thing has changed over the years. Now, you get stuffed animals or other cheap junk as prizes (assuming you are skilled enough to win in the first place). File this one under ‘they don’t make them like they used to.’ Below is an image of a similar item from around the same time. I’m still pretty proud that I got that horse looking as good as I did.