Lord of the Ring

I've been married nearly 10 and a half years to the lovely Mrs. Blogger. Our wedding followed a 22 month engagement which followed about a six and a half year courtship. You could say I don't rush into things.

We had recently moved into our first home together, a little two bedroom condominium we bought together. The payments were tight at first but we were doing ok. At the same time, I was saving and saving to purchase an engagement ring for her for Christmas. Yet, I still had to borrow $1500 from my brother so I didn't have to finance any of it (which I paid back promptly).

Mrs. Blogger and I had already discussed marriage and since she had a custom ring in mind - a solitary special cut diamond with two smaller jade stones on each side - this was not a huge surprise for her. But she was excited nonetheless. I didn't spend a fortune. It only seemed like it at the time.

We had difficulties with the stone not being the quality/cut promised and went back twice to get it right - once because the cut was wrong and another time because carbon was visible inside. "Art" the salesman and I had a number of discussions before they finally got it right. It was all kind of upsetting to Mrs. B. (for obvious reasons) but eventually everything was fine. Christmas eve morning came and I proudly gave her the ring. All was good in our world!

Shortly after Christmas, Mrs. B either took the ring off to put lotion on her hands or it came off as she lotioned (perhaps I'll remember to ask her). Somehow, it tumbled across our newly purchased kitchen floor to places unknown. We looked and looked and couldn't find it. Mrs. B. became upset and I became pissed. Not pissed at her, just pissed we couldn't find it. Plus, we were late to be somewhere. After about thirty expletives fired out of my mouth, Mrs. B. (then Miss B I should say, huh?) said, "why don't we just go and we can look for it later?"

Ummm....that wasn't an option. My reply was, "If we lost thousands of dollars and were looking for it, we wouldn't be leaving for dinner with friends, would we?" She saw my point.

After employing every flashlight we could get our hands on and messing up our "going out" clothes crawling around the floor, we decided it must have gone under the refrigerator. We had a cat too. Not a pretty site under there as you cat owners can attest, I'm sure.

We couldn't see much through the "dust" and dark, so as I gingerly rolled the fridge out so she could try to better spot it with the flashlight. Surely the jade would at least show up in the light.

No such luck. Rolled it a bit further. Nothing. A bit further. Still nothing. A bit furth......"CRUNCH!!". And a jade, sans mount, shot across the floor. "Fuck, fuck, fuckety, fucking fucker fuck! What the fuck are the odds?!?!?!" I'm pretty sure that's the exact quote. And you should have heard what I said! LOL -- just kidding.

The back wheels of the fridge mangled the mount and spit out one of the two jades and the diamond. Now, the diamond is going to be fine, right? Hardest substance and all that stuff. I wasn't too worried as long as we could find it. Which we did. But the jade is very, very soft. We got lucky. We found both jade stones as well and they were in good shape.

About $200 and one week later the jewelers had it all newly mounted (original band) and looking pretty. Mrs. B. still wears it to this day and it really is a pretty, if not modest, ring (btw...jade is nearly as expensive as diamond).

And her hands are still baby soft. I don't know how she does it.