As I started to brush my teeth this morning, I glanced down at my hand while squeezing the tube and noticed there was something missing off my finger… AGAIN.  Suddenly I panicked. Not again.  She is going to kill me.  OK, I ran yesterday in the dark, it was cold… I was sweaty.  Did it fall off and I didn’t notice?  Surely at some point I would have noticed?  Holy crap, she is going to kill me.

All of these thoughts ran through my head in a matter of about 12 seconds.  I ran over to my bed to see if it was laying on the mattress and had somehow slid off during the night.  I flipped the covers and quickly scanned, but came up empty.  Shit, she is going to kill me.

Then, a massive sigh of relief. My ring was sitting on my nightstand.  How it got there, I have no idea.  Perhaps, I took it off in a moment of discomfort while sleeping.  Perhaps, unconsciously in my dreams I was talking to Heidi Klum and needed to appear single.  Either way, I would live to see another day.  She wasn’t going to kill me. (for losing my ring at least)

Last month I went through a similar exercise…. however it was more guilt than fear of my wife wanting to kill me.  I had been doing yardwork which included mowing the grass and the first round of bagging leaves.  I finished up the final stretch of the backyard in the dark.  As I was dragging the last two bags to the curb, I noticed that my wedding ring had come off at some point in the process.  Ironically, earlier in the evening while I was dumping the grass bag into the larger leaf bag, I physcially saw and felt my ring slip off in the process as it sat right on top.  At that time I thought to myself what a disaster it would be to lose my ring out here.  Now an intelligent person probably would have stopped right there and taken off their ring and placed it somewhere safe in the house.

I have never claimed to be intelligent.

When I discovered that I was missing my ring, I was dissapointed, but also optomistic that it wasn’t “lost” – just momentarily misplaced.  I went inside, informed Anne of the current situation, grabbed a flashlight and headed back out thinking it had to be in the backyard.  I spent about 20 minutes roaming around in the dark while driving the dog crazy as he tried to following the glow from the light.  Unsuccessful, I grabbed the bags from the curb and dragged them into the garage.  I made up my mind that I was going to find my ring.

I started rummaging through grass and leaves by the handful, sifting through all the clippings that I had spent the last 2 hours cleaning. Bent over the bags, I realized that this was going to take a while.  I grabbed a chair and got comfortable.  I was sure that the ring had fallen off while in the back, so I made my way through those bags first, but struck out.  After almost two hours, I decided to call it a night and figured I would pick up where I left off the next day.

In the AM, I searched the backyard in the daylight for the first time.  Paying close attention to the areas where I had unloaded the grass bags.  I paced back and forth throughout the yard and along with Anne’s help we still remained confident that it would turn up.  After a half hour, and 3 full tours of the back yard, I had to go to work and hoped to resume the search when I got home.

Over the next day or so I continued to randomly search throughout the entire yard, and we sifted through the remaining bags, but still no ring.  So it was time to move onto Plan B.  I had posted on our neighborhood listserv in hopes of borrowing a metal detector… figuring one of the crotchety old men that post messages on there may have one that we could borrow.  Again, no such luck.

Anne actually had some free time during daylight hours, and unbeknownst to me went and rented a metal detector.  She was hoping to surprise me by finding it on her own while relieving me of my guilt.  Instead, I received a phone call where she stated that people who use metal detectors as a “hobby” are stupid. Clearly frustrated, she explained how many times the detector actually buzzed to have her then kneel down only to find nothing.  After going through the entire yard on multiple occasions, Anne had performed more squats in an afternoon than she had in the last 10 years… and was sore. Who knew there was so much metal in the ground that would just tease the sound of success?  She even ran the detector over the bags, but didnt hear a peep.

Ready to give up, and exhausted from her short lived “hobby”, she was eager to return the detector.  I suggested that we dump out all of the bags and try one last time.

So the next morning as I was at work, Anne took the first bag and dumped it onto the driveway.  Immediately she heard the sound of metal, turned and looked, and like a shimmering light in the middle of the desert, there it was.  After a week of looking for a tiny object off and on, hundreds of squats, and fingernails dirtier than our 2 year old boy… the ring had been found.

reunited and it feels so good

I was “proposed to” when I came home from work and felt an immediate sense of relief.  The guilt had been lifted off of my shoulders and the ring slipped back onto its rightful home.  I was then instructed that I would never allowed to perform yardwork again while wearing said ring.  There would be no discussion about it… it was now LAW.  I understood and also sensed that this may have been a one time pass – the next time the ring was lost … (see first paragraph)