Of rings and things and the nature of love

Ring back where it belongs and all is well with the world

So there I was, lost in a dream, sleeping away the early morning hours and happy to be warmly adrift in my head and in my bed. Sadly, some cosmic force tapped me on the shoulder and I momentarily opened my eyes.

Big mistake.

It was early. The sun was just a vague smear of orange on the horizon, but I noticed that the light was on in the master bathroom and I could hear the lovely Miss Wendy rummaging about in a frantic fashion.

I don't recall if I called out, or if Wendy simply began speaking. I do recall the plaintive and anguished tone of her voice. Houston, I groggily thought, we have a problem.

And we did. Between heavy sighs, weighted down with equal measures of guilt and loss, Wendy shared this tale of woe.

As is her custom, Wendy was up early and off to the bathroom to wash up and prepare for the day ahead. Still wiping the sleep from her eyes, she was in the process of putting on her wedding band -- a magnificent ring of gold -- when it slipped from her grasp, tumbled into the sink and disappeared down the drain.

Yikes!

Wendy worked mightily at removing the metal stopper atop the drain, but alas, it wouldn't budge. The harder she pulled, the more certain she became that her precious ring was lost, buried deeply in the innards of our home's plumbing system.

Yech!

So she went in search of a solution. Google offered up a number of possibilities. All she need do to right this wrong is pull apart a few pipes and dig through the bits of nasty stuff that swirl about a bathroom sink. Right; that was never gonna happen!

Instead of jumping into plumbing mode, Wendy wrote  out a few cautionary notes to me, detailing the problem and the hope that I would somehow continue to love her despite the loss of the golden ring that has bound us together for nearly four decades now.

It was during this melancholy exercise that I joined the conversation. I listened and nodded, then listened some more. Then I unscrewed the stopper from the drain. The ring was resting comfortably atop a bit of plastic, strategically placed near the top of the drain to keep rings and other such things from tumbling into the darkness below.

Wendy retrieved her ring. I went back to sleep.