Wedding Ring. Lost and Found.
So yesterday was one of those days. Okay, it was a Monday. And among other things for me that means shopping and chores - grocery, drugstore, pet stuff. And it was time to clean up around here. Top on the list: cleaning the guinea pig cage. This is a once a week project (sometimes more) and basically involves sweeping out from under the (raised, large) cage, emptying the 4″ deep x 4′ long x 24″ deep bottom tray, dumping the newspapers and pine shavings (and guinea pig poop) into a garbage bag, cleaning the whole thing, replacing the (etc - except for the poop - Tommy supplies that), giving Tommy (the guinea pig) carrots for a treat, making sure his water is fresh, etc.
All this work is done under the direct supervision of Willy and Zini (our Quaker Parrot and Sun Conure), whose cage is directly alongside and who treat the top of Tommy’s cage (a solid surface, two feet above the bottom of the cage) as their personal playground. Zini especially has been known to climb down from her cage and walk around and step into the middle of things, just to keep an eye on things.
I’m through with the first step - emptying all the mess including newspaper pages, pine shavings and poop, into a garbage bag - when I realize my wedding ring has fallen off. Somewhere. I assume i would’ve noticed if it happened very long before that - so chances are good that it’s IN the garbage bag full of, well, you know.
I was very methodical. I was not upset. I was very careful. I couldn’t find it. I was so SLOW in searching that an hour later my DH came home and saw what i was doing and took over the (yucky) job. He couldn’t find it either. He decided to use the scientific method and dumped all the messy bits (not the newspaper) into a large bucket, took it outside, filled it with water, and began to sift and pan for Gold. Hey, it worked in 1849….
He didn’t find it. And it was COLD outside.
Meanwhile I”m inside telling myself that I am NOT such a dork that my ring would fall off and I wouldn’t notice. Could I be? So: be logical. Where else was I this afternoon, exactly, and where else could it be? I was beginning to get just a teensy bit upset.
– and the logic (ha!) worked. (Helped by a suggestion from DH, but you can’t have everything). I took out all the shopping bags from my grocery shopping - yes, I’m sorry, I use the plastic ones sometimes (we bag up cat litter in them) — and there it was, sitting in one of the grocery bags.
At least I found it. And my DH was terrific about it. He hardly rubbed it in at all. (He did add that I owed him ten …. um, I think I’ll leave that part out) - and he was right.
But I found it. And have since made my own sort of “ring guard” out of gold-filled wire (don’t carry the karat stuff usually) so it fits just a wee bit more snuggly.
I’m sure there’s a moral in there. Somewhere.