Today at the zoo, i bought myself a sparkly polar bear mood ring -- and I just want you to know that my inner child is so ecstatic about it that I don't even care how green it will discolor my finger... It's a mood ring, shaped like a polar bear, full of glittery stars!!!!  And my heart is so happy and I just start grinning at it every time I glance down at my hand, lol. So far today I've seen it black, green, pink, and blue. 

The sparkly glitter like stars in it are even more obvious in real life than the pictures capture. 

I also spent like half an hour visiting with Berit and Borealis (our live polar bears at our zoo -- the Henry Vilas Zoo in Madison is completely free, funded solely by donations/endowments/giftshop purchases. Our zoo has always had polar bears and grizzlies (and lions and tigers) except for the short span of time when they were redesigning and expanding the Arctic exploration area including the bear habitats. The new habitat also includes the polar cafe area so you can eat your lunch with a wall of windows into the polar bear enclosure including one part of their swimming area. So all my life, as long as I can get a ride or want to drive over, I can literally go visit polar bears for free any damn day I want between 9:30am and 5pm. Any damn day I please, lol.)  Anyway, Bo and Berit have just the sweetest most intense immediate bond ever... Nuniq never bonded like this with Berit.  Bo just follows her around wherever she is like a little puppy dog and has no concept of personal space or his size. He just is such a happy sweet personality!  

When we first got there, he was on the other side of her, and then tried to sneak behind her/the glass by backing up/sitting on her until she moved and then he sat down on her far side to use her as a pillow while they waited to be let back inside for dinner.  But ever since she woke up form her winter denning and came out to meet him, they're pretty much inseparable. And even if one wants to nap while the other plays, they stay nearby and/or line of sight. And like, he's only been here since the fall. Some polar bears live together for decades and never get this snuggly, let alone this constantly PDA snuggly. Also though, Bo is an absolute flirt with Lady Polar Bears and was quite happy to talk to me through the window and would get annoyed when I'd give some space for other zoo patrons to come over to see them and take pictures, lol.

Pretty sure that's when I told him he could take a short snoozle on Berit if he was that tired and she'd wake him up to go inside when the door opened for dinner. Which she did.

But anyway. Some days, what a girl really needs to make her illogically happy is a color changing polar bear mood ring that has glitter in it so it looks like it's full of stars....Even when she's a grown ass woman in her 30s, sometimes that's still just all you need to make you grin every time you see it. It's kitschy af and it makes no sense, but it's still true.It's the randomest stupidest thing and it's literally a $5 ring that the nickel in it will turn my finger green within the week -- but it makes me so intensely happy!

Also. Not related to bears or mood rings that glitter like they're full of stars. But because it's St. Patrick's Day and you might never have known or you just forgot.... My forever and ever and ever favorite Irish ballad is Red is The Rose.  It's been my favorite since I was a small child and I first heard a female sung version of it that I've never been able to track down. (sometimes the love as lass, sometimes as lad, depending on the gendering choices of the singer. I've also heard it sung quite beautifully as duet, which then makes it seem like they're singing the same song for each other though parted.)  There's just something about that opening verse that just catches my heart makes me hold perfectly still so as not to break the magic in that calling....  

But anyway, in case you were wondering, that's my favorite traditional Irish ballad. It's right up there with Billy Joel songs in my favorites. I did tell you I have a thing for sappy love songs....  In the last almost a decade, the completely a capella harmonies focused version from The High Kings is my favorite recorded version I know of the song. But every version of it just tugs at my heart strings stops me in my tracks while something inside me screams, "LISTEN! THIS IS IMPORTANT! YOU NEED TO LISTEN AND PAY ATTENTION NOW!" It's affected me that way since the first time i heard it as a child in some Irish pub we were having dinner at.

And there's some damn fool stubborn part in me that insists, absolutely INSISTS that the traditional version ends too early, that there's another verse that comes AFTER the yearning and loyalty and enduring faithful sorrow -- that somewhere beyond deaths and beyond emigration and beyond stupid choices there's reunion if you just stay clear sighted stubborn enough. I've never heard it with any other verses than those 3 traditional ones nor have I ever found any written tradition of it longer -- but something in me INSISTS that there belongs another verse that's missing. And even when I was like 7 or 8, the first time I hear it, after the song ended I turned to my parents bewildered and asked them, "But where is the LAST verse of the song?! Why didn't they sing the last verse?!" and they had no idea what I was talking about or where I got the idea of it and I baffled quite a lot of Irish musicians as a child asking them for the last verse of Red Is the Rose and then after they sang the third one I'd get impatient and say, "Not the 3rd one, the last last one that comes after it!" and they'd all tell me there is no last verse, those are all the verses to it they've ever known, and I'd just get upset with them even thought it was the truth.

I don't know if it's my over-developed sense of justice or a half remembered past life fragment -- but there's something in me that just holds perfectly still so as not to break the beauty of it every time I hear it and then at the end cries out, "But where is the last verse?! Where is the part on the other side of sorrow where the stubborn loyalty is rewarded?! Why do they never sing the last verse?! Why do they end it in the depths of the longing and sorrow?!"

I love the song. But I get so fucking frustrated at the end of it over that "missing" verse that has apparently never existed as far as anyone currently alive in the Irish music community knows. And it's such an irrational thing to get so intensely upset about, and yet I do get so upset that the song ends without the last verse that my heart/soul INSISTS belongs there -- that it never ends in the sorrows even if entire lifetimes are stuck there, still stubborn fidelity in love never ENDS there. And there's something in me that is so INSISTENT that there's a missing verse in the way the ballad has come down the centuries..... And damnit, but I want that missing verse back to complete the story!

But I still really intensely love and adore the song. Every time I hear it. Even with my "missing verse" frustration over the song as it's now known.