You're not going to like this...

A few days before Christmas, as I was getting ready for one of my last days of work at the preschool, I received a text from Ben somewhere around 8:30am that said,

"You're going to be mad at me."

I rarely hear from Ben first thing in the morning. If I do get a text or call, its usually because he forgot to lock the front door, or to ask me to do something that he forgot to do before he left.

As I pondered which of the handful of things it could be that he'd done that would make me mad...which really there are only about three or four things that immediately come to mind and even those would only cause me to be upset for a day at most, I texted him back and asked what happened.

His response was one of the things I hadn't thought of.

"I lost my wedding ring."

Now Ben has, on several occasions, forgotten his wedding ring at work. It does actually upset me when it happens, because I am always afraid it will be sitting out somewhere and that someone will take it. And I am pretty sentimental about it being the ring we said our vows with.

But it is made of a particular type of metal that we had heard was impossible to cut through, so Ben was in the habit of taking it off and putting it in his toolbox while he worked, to avoid getting his finger caught in some remote part of the car engine and having to have it removed...his finger that is. This was fine by me, as I'd much rather not have him lose a finger.

I asked what happened and Ben proceeded to explain that the night before, he had finished working and put the ring back on, but as he was getting ready to leave for the night, they asked him to do one more quick job. After he finished the job, he went to wash his hands and placed his ring in the pocket of his work pants. He then, without thinking about it, changed out of his work pants, into the pants he'd worn to work that day.

Now he'd also done this on a couple of occasions and gone back the next day to find the ring still in his pocket, as the guys are assigned specific pants that have their names on them and no one else would put them on. However, what he didn't realize until that morning was that the night before had been the night the uniforms were picked up and shipped off for laundering.

He had called the guy who picks them up, explained the situation and asked him to call back if the ring was found.

Piece of cake! I figured, one guy doing laundry, keeping an eye out for the ring...should be back the next day. What I didn't find out until a day or two later was that the guy ships the uniforms to Novato and from there, they go to Oakland before making their journey back.

We thought that MAYBE the ring would stay in the pocket and that it would be in one of the pairs of pants when they came back to Ben. But realistically, I knew the ring wasn't coming back.
Sure enough, when the pants returned, the ring was gone.

I never did get mad at Ben, but I was sad...being my sentimental self, that the ring I placed on his finger during our wedding was now lost forever.

We did end up getting a replacement ring. We found one just after Christmas that Ben really loves and that fits a little more snuggly on his finger, although it wasn't exactly in our budget to do. And we found out that while the metal on this particular ring can't be cut, it can be broken (don't ask me the difference). So, I made Ben promise that he will either leave it at home or wear it all the time.

It hasn't come off since!