Lost & Found

I don't lose things often. I have other short-comings that we won't go into at the moment but generally, I can pretty much keep track of things. There are however, 2 things I have lost in the past five years that have seriously bothered me. The first (don't laugh) is the purple Cariboo ball. For those of you without young children, Cariboo is a zany preschooler game and the purple ball is an essential piece. We all loved that game and searched our house from top to bottom on several occasions in desperate attempts to find the vanishing ball. There aren't many places a bright purple bouncy ball could hide in our little house so we joked that the same little gnome-thief that is rumored to steal single socks must have also needed one Cariboo ball to complete his collection.

When we knew for certain that we would be moving, we all (no exaggeration) eagerly looked forward to the possibility of finding that missing ball. And sure enough, about an hour into our move... EUREKA! We discovered it hiding in the inside corner of one of the kitchen hutch legs. Tricky Little Bugger. We are not ashamed to admit that there was much rejoicing and possibly even a victory dance.

The second item is a bit pricier, significant, and embarrassing. Andy and I had not even been married a full year when I lost my wedding band. (Probably not one of my more stellar wife-moments.) I thought I lost it gardening and I spent hours hunting through that garden on my hands and knees, ripping out all the flowers I had planted and even breaking out the in-law's metal detector. (Nothing like having to explain to your in-laws WHY you need to borrow the metal detector. Ugh.) All to no avail. I have to say, Andy took it all very well and even bought his careless wife a new wedding band. What a guy.

I believed it was lost forever but just as an afterthought, I mentioned to the people who bought our house the fact that I had lost it 4 years ago. AN HOUR LATER she showed up at our front door with it in her hand. No kidding. She had found it the night before in their gravel driveway. Our best guess was that I never lost it in the garden at all. It must have went through either the washer or dryer and got hung up and then shaken loose on the move.

I am not ashamed to admit that there was definitely a victory dance for the found ring. And it involved tears.