Missing: one gold ring

UPDATE: Ring found yet again. :-) but I'll leave the post for posterity. More tomorrow.

I'm trying to remember when Peggy got me the ring; at least 15 years ago I'd bet, as Robbie was only 5 or so one of the first times I lost it. That was a Patriot's Day, I think. Rob and I were playing catch in Peg's parents back yard, and it flew of my little finger into the mulch under the pines.

Rob sat on the stone steps totally bummed because I was totally bummed, but sparked up when I took him with me to find a metal detector. By the time we got back Peggy had found the ring. After that I left it on the window shelf in her mother's kitchen if we went out to play ball. Both Margaret and Robbie used to check my finger to make sure I had stowed it safely away.

Over the years I lost it several times more, the more notable times involving cats. I picked up our big old semi-Maine Coon, Speedy Tomato, one summer and was bitten by an ugly green bug hidden in his fur. I dropped Speeder like a, ah, hot tomato, and simultaneously flung the ring hallway across our lawn as I shook my hand in pain. Happily, Peg was again on the scene and saw where the ring fell.

Several years later we had adopted a cat abandoned at our vet, originally named Smokey Bacon but quickly renamed by me to Little Girl, who had several health issues due to diabetes, including more than occasionally losing control of her bladder and bowels. I came home from work one evening - this was still in the days where I was still coming home from work, - already in a foul mood, to discover that LG had completely fouled several rooms much more thoroughly. It took me over an hour to clean the house, and sometime the next day discovered that the ring was again missing. For some reason, I convinced myself that I had thrown the ring into a coin hopper on the New Hampshire turnpike, and Peg and I spent an evening fruitlessly cruising the toll booths looking for it.

As a last ditch effort I combed through the trash bag where I had deposited reams of cat diarrhea-soaked paper towels... and found a very shit-encrusted pinkie ring.

So, it's gone again, and this time neither of us have a clue where. I went for my watch this morning and the ring wasn't next to it. Bear would be the primary suspect, as his boondockers have swept the ring off counters in the past, but it's unlikely that he could have reached it this time, at least not without leaving some evidence behind. It's possible that it dropped off my finger sometime during our travels yesterday. We did everything from buying a new kichen table, to shopping at the hardware store, to picking up a hay bale at our local farm stand. My fingers shrink when the weather gets cold. It's possible it might have fallen off at some point. It wouldn't be the first time.

I'm holding out hope that it's still somewhere in the house. I'm so borderline OCD that it's hard for me to believe that I could put my watch away and not notice my ring missing, as I almost always take them off together.

I hope. But right now I feel like the kid who lost Hopkin, and have to resist wandering the streets of Merrimack, murmuring, "If I looking for ring..."

It's a signet ring, with an old Mexican gold 50 peso piece in it. Peggy had someone get it for her after I mentioned I had always wanted one. The gold has turned that creamy orange color that old gold takes. If you find it, please send it back to me.

There are a lot of memories locked in that gold.