I have such exciting news! You’ll never guess! Except that you already saw the post title!
Elizabeth and I were away at an all-day activity and I got a text from Paul saying he had found my lost wedding ring. He was trying to figure out why our bathroom sink was draining so slowly, and as part of this process he got the bucket out of the bathroom closet. He noticed after he removed the bucket from the closet how many bandaid wrappers and fallen q-tips were on the floor behind it, so he was scooping those up (this is proof that although you shouldn’t EXPECT people to change, they sometimes DO) and he noticed that something in the scoop was heavy and clanky instead of light and soft, and he looked down and IT WAS MY RING.
This is EXACTLY the kind of place I’d hoped/feared it would be: somewhere in the vast expanse of our house (nothing makes a house seem enormous like looking for something that takes up significantly less than a cubic inch of it), somewhere I’d only find it by going over the whole house carefully (and maybe not even then), somewhere I might not find it for YEARS if EVER. I mean, the floor of the bathroom closet? My HEIRS might have found it there, when they hired a cleaning company to get the house ready for sale.
And yet I can easily see how it got there: I would have dried my hands on the towel, and the ring would have been softly scraped off my finger. I wouldn’t have heard it fall, because William always kicks his clothes into that closet (it’s a doorless closet) when he takes a shower and then forgets to bring them to his laundry. When I nagged him about the clothes and he finally moved them, he wouldn’t have noticed/cared if picking up his clothes led to a clanking sound on the floor.
I’m SO GLAD to have it back. I hadn’t given up ALL hope, but most. I’d been pre-fretting that my plan of going back on a Significant Anniversary (20? 25?) trip (air travel would need to be involved) to the shop where we got it would fail because the proprietors would retire before then or something.
Well! So now, clearly, I need to get it re-sized. (It needs to be embiggened: at the time I lost it I was wearing it on my pinky finger after struggling mightily and at length to remove it from my ring finger.) When I lost the ring, I thought “WHY didn’t I get it RE-SIZED when I had the chance, when that would have been so EASY and WORTH IT???” Now that I have it back, I’ve RUSHED IMMEDIATELY to…put it in my jewelry box so I won’t lose it while I wait for myself to get around to having it re-sized.
Part of the issue is the usual Procrastination, plus Nervousness About Things I’ve Never Done Before At Places I’ve Never Been To. Right now there’s also the issue of kids home for the summer, though when I was despairing over the loss of the ring that would have seemed like nothing, NOTHING, who CARES if I had to bring children?
Another part of the issue is that I very much like the ring Paul made for me as a replacement. First he made one out of brass, which initially looked very much like gold but then quickly looked yellow-brown and dull. So then he bought a chunk of stainless steel and made the ring out of that and I think it looks GREAT. I can’t tell the difference between stainless steel and a more expensive metal, so it’s been fun trying out what it would have looked like if we’d gone with sterling silver or white gold instead of yellow gold. Also, the ring he made me is narrower than the rings we chose, and I’m enjoying the more delicate look. I DO want my wider gold ring back, I DON’T want to replace it with a narrower white gold band or anything, but what I mean is that I don’t feel the same urgency about it that I felt when I was wearing no ring, or a cheap Target fashion ring, or the brass ring that was leaving a greenish stain on my finger.
Oh HOORAY! What good news!
Would you feel comfortable resizing the ring to your other hand and wearing both rings?
I love this suggestion, if you would also be happy with it. Wearing both rings, and with a story about them, would be cool, I think.
I am so happy for you!
Sweet! This kind of story justifies why I almost never lose hope when I can’t find something. I like to say that I’ve misplaced my stuff, rather than that I’ve lost it because, usually, it is just somewhere unexpected in the house. And now you have the luxury of choosing which lovely wedding ring you want to wear!
Hooray for a lost ring found!!
Couldn’t you wear both after sizing? As in stacking rings. Which are quite popular right now in and of itself AND wedding bands/ engagement rings and some combo of are traditionally stacked. I don’t recall you mentioning you had an engagement ring so it seems reasonable that you could easily stack them and the differing metals would be attractive.
I have an engagement ring and band and wish for a duplicate band to sandwich my engagement ring for our tenth anniversary. My mother has a very thick wedding band, an engagement ring she received for her 20th aniversary AND a thin eternity band she got for her 35 anniversary. She wears all three stacked on her ring finger.
Oh, I’m so delighted! We found Husband’s ring in the back yard, under the doghouse, after it had been lost for three years so I completely understand your elation. Yay!
Under the doghouse! Wow!
Yay! I’m sure you were overjoyed to see it again. I do understand what you mean about feeling torn about wearing it. Although I love my diamond solitaire and gold wedding band, several years ago I bought two plain sterling bands and a yellow topaz solitaire (my husband’s birthstone) thinking I’d stack them with my daughters’ birthstone rings, but they didn’t all look right together. I tried wearing them on my ring finger and liked the look, and now I wear them as often as I wear my gold/diamond set. I felt weird about it at first, like they’re not my “official” wedding set. But here’s how I see it now: it’s hard enough to commit to a PERSON for the rest of your life; why should I have to commit to jewelry, too?! LOL
I’m so glad! I’m hoping for a similar resolution for my favorite sunglasses. They’re not quite on the scale of a lost wedding ring, but I really would like to get them back. My house seems to have swallowed them.
This is so thrilling! I absolutely LOVE closure/happy endings. So very satisfying. And I love that you can figure out basically how it ended up there, rather than having it turn up some baffling place that only brings up more questions. Whew.
I wear the band my hubby gave me every day and have a different set he gave me for our tenth anniversary that I wear when going out or want to be a little more dressy. Would that work for your situation? Where one most of the time and the other some of the time?
Also, three months after our wedding my hubby lost his ring. We were college students and after tearing apart our tiny apartment and truck, we went to each class he had been in that day and looked, including a huge ballroom where he had country western dance class! No luck. Three days later as he was with the ROTC guys setting up a tent for a training exercise, he was surprised to see his ring in the middle of the tent floor! He had practiced setting up the tent the day he lost his ring
At first I thought this was going to be a story about the ring being found in the sink drain and I’m so glad it took a different turn, because I like to think about sink drains as little as possible.
Hooray for a serendipitous find! I think it’s romantic that it was Paul who found it for you.
Yay! So happy for you.
Yay yay!! I’m so glad the ring has been found! :-)
I have resized many rings so I’m just here to assure you that it’s a super non-threatening task once you do it. You go into a jewelry store and ask if they do repairs (or you could call but I find casually walking in to be less stressful). You only need to perform this step the number of times it takes to find a jeweler who does repairs. Costs are generally fairly standard (and most jewelers do repairs). You say you want your ring sized.
You produce the ring.
If you know what size you want you just tell them, or if not they have a keychain thing of those ring sizer thingies. They put your ring in a wee envelope and give you the flap of it and have your contact information and call you when it’s ready. For sizing up you have to also pay for adding more gold to the ring, just FYI.
This is QUITE reassuring.
So glad it’s been found! I concur with everything Jenny Grace said about resizing, and am happy that you now have 2 options for wedding-ring-wearing.
Woo-hoo!!! Go Team Thistle!!!
Yes I found it to be easy once I found someone to do it and I think I called a couple of places. Often if you are going to go in in person there is a sign in the window stating whether or not they do repairs/sizing etc.
I also had mine cleaned and the prongs holding the tiny diamond checked and replaced. The diamond is tiny all we could afford 34 years ago, but I am sentimentally attached to it so I would hate to lose it.
Hold on, Paul MADE you a ring? Out of a chunk of stainless steel? What kind of mad skill is that? Or have I just not cottoned to the fact that he’s a metalsmith in previous posts?
I think the only time I’ve mentioned his metal lathe hobby was in the post about losing the ring, and it was only a passing reference. It IS a pretty mad skill. Sometimes Paul will say, “Guess you’ll be pretty glad to have ME around if there’s an apocalypse!” (He always assumes we’ll both survive.)
And that there will be electricity available to run the lathe?
I am glad you found your ring. We just moved to a new house and have had several items that are JUST MISSING (e.g., in a box somewhere we hope), so I am craving some findings right now. (Well, we did find my husband’s neckties, a week AFTER the funeral we had to attend. In a box of kids’ saved school mementos/art. Go fig! Moving sucks!) Glad you found your ring, it made me feel better. :)
I too have “nervousness about things I’ve never done before at places I’ve never been to.” It’s hard to explain that to some people but I’m betting more people than we thinks suffer from the condition. weirdly I find those things easier with a baby in tow (new la leche meeting? why not? whereas if it were an adult or alone I’d be all….hhmmm….I don’t know….) I also have that thing that I believe you have about the telephone – do you have a thing about the telephone? We are definitely sympatico.
Yay about the ring. My aunt lost hers once putting on lotion in a moving tank of a station wagon in the 80s or very early 90s, slid right down into some crevice in the dash. It wasn’t insured (this was the diamond portion of the rings). Dashboards are evidently expensive to take apart so they waited until the car died and then got the ring back. it was still there. I believe it is now also insured although not as quickly as one would have thought originally, probably she suffers from the same new thing/new place syndrome.
YES, phone thing too! It’s the worst part of any new thing. The doctor said I should take Edward to an eye doctor (as opposed to the guy we’ve been going to who does the basic exam for glasses), and so now it’s “phone call” PLUS “thing I’ve never done at a place I’ve never been to.” Aiieeeeeee miserable Swistle.
I must admit a long distance fondness/preference for your new stainless steel ring. I LOVE the fact that he made it. So I say take all the time you need on resizing :) But still, I’m glad it’s FOUND so you don’t have to wonder and now you have options.
Yay yay yay about the ring! Finding something you thought might be lost forever is always a great feeling. Just yesterday I found one of my favorite t-shirts (a souvenir from a Broadway show that’s no longer running, so not exactly easily replaceable) that I’d been missing for MONTHS. It was in my laundry hamper, which is weird because I’ve done laundry many times since losing the shirt…I must have found it on the floor of my (very messy) closet and tossed it in without realizing what it was. I’d basically resigned myself to the fact that I’d probably brought it on a trip and left it behind or something, so it was a huge relief to find it. I couldn’t imagine losing something as import and special as a wedding ring, though, so I’m so glad you found it!
I am so glad you finally found it! I was randomly thinking about it the other day and wondering, but was sure you would have told us if you had found it. I lost my rings last year and got to the point where I thought they were gone for good, but then they happily turned up too. I was so nervous about losing them again that we got them insured. Now I still worry a bit because I would hate to lose MY rings, but at least there wouldn’t be the financial loss too. And if I were you I’d just wear the one Paul made on the right hand.
What Shawna said. Totally cool that he could just lathe you something up.
I’m so glad you found it!
I am so happy for you, that you found your ring. I found your blog post tonight as feeling a bit sad about my own loss. My beautiful engagement ring went missing Nov 1 2014 (how sad I know the exact date) I am still in the place where I think it ‘may’ turn up. But my daughter has alluded to it maybe being in the toilet and that she put it there although this was a suggestion by me that she is going along with now. I just got so desperate for answers I was willing to accept anything. I got married in March with no engagement ring and now have a wedding band only. Of course besides the monetary value which was a lot its the sentimental factor that I miss. And I really wanted the two rings, but we cant always get what we want :(