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| I guess I could've scratched the little bit of polish off my pinkie nail before I took this picture. |
Jim and I have actually been "soft engaged" since last weekend, when I informed him that I'd picked out my engagement ring. He proposed in the car, while we were on the way to buy groceries. It was very romantic. We announced the engagement at our Halloween party the next night, and although we swore everyone to secrecy, my friend Mark told his dad. THANKS MARK. >:(
I decided to go with a "diamond alternative" ring, for two reasons: 1) the exploitative diamond industry, and 2) the marketing ploy that normalized diamond engagement rings in the first place. Actually, there's a third reason: price. I know I'm not supposed to brag about how cheap my engagement ring was, but it was very affordable, which is important because we're adults and we have mouths to feed. Cat food isn't getting any cheaper.
At first, I wasn't really sure I wanted an engagement ring because, you know, it's an outdated and sexist tradition. I mean, engagement rings were originally meant as a kind of financial deposit on a woman's virginity, so that even if the man decided to break the engagement the jilted fiancée would still have some means of support even though she would now be spoiled, like old produce, and unable to find another man,since who wants a used vagina, right?
I explained all of this to one of my girlfriends, and she countered with, "But, sparkly!" which I found to be a cogent and convincing argument. Besides, it's not like anyone believed I was a virgin to begin with, anyway. To even things out, I offered to buy Jim a mangagement ring, but maybe I shouldn't have called it that, because he wasn't interested.
ANYWAY, I chose a moissanite ring, because they're supposed to be shinier than diamonds, and although I can't really speak to that because I don't have any diamonds to compare it to, I can say that it is pretty sparkly. Also, it comes from space! Moissanite is very rare in nature; it was discovered in 1893 by French chemist Henri Moissan, who found it in samples of a meteorite from Canyon Diablo, Arizona. It has also been found in upper mantle rock, and as inclusions in other minerals, including diamonds and less glamorous rocks, like kimberlite and lamproite.
