Lost

We have the tradition of carving our jack o'lanterns the day before Halloween. We can't do it any earlier because they'll get all mushy and gross thanks to the lovely Houston humidity. So Thursday afternoon, I pulled out our carving paraphernalia and began to prep our pumpkin.

I must tell you at this point that I have the habit of putting my wedding and engagement rings in my pocket when I'm in the kitchen. I'm afraid that if I leave them on, they'll get all gunky with whatever I'm working with and I'm afraid they'll fall down the sink drain if I leave them on the counter. So into my pocket they go. It's not the best solution, but up until last Thursday, it worked for me.

So my rings went in my pocket and I began to work on the pumpkin. To avoid having pumpkin guts flung all over the kitchen, I carried it out to the back porch where Sydney and I gutted it while the boys looked on. This basically means Sydney complained about the sliminess, Liam transferred pumpkin seeds into an old dirt lined planter, Evan fussed and I did the actual gutting.

Once the poor pumpkin was sufficiently emptied of its innards, we all hosed down and went back inside. I left the prepped pumpkin on the counter so that Ryan could do the actual carving later and got to work on dinner.

It wasn't until about an hour later when we were filling and rolling our spring roll dinner that I noticed my wedding ring had gone missing. My engagement ring was still in my pocket but my wedding ring was gone. I panicked. I dug through the garbage. I ran outside and dug around the leaves on the back porch. I peered between the slats on the deck thinking that maybe it had fallen out of my pocket while gutting the pumpkin. I crawled around on the floor thinking that maybe it rolled under a cabinet. And the whole time I cried.

Ryan hugged me and said it was OK. He said we could pull up the boards on the deck and look for it. I cried even harder. All I could think was, "What kind of idiot loses their wedding ring?" I was so mad at myself that I would have hit myself if that were possible.

Defeated, I sat down to eat dinner. And then a light bulb went off inside my head. I ran, and I mean ran to our blue recliner. I lifted it up, reclined the back, and ran my hand along the seat. And there it was between the seat and the armrest. Whew! I'd forgotten that I'd sat there to feed Evan in between the pumpkin and dinner prep.

So the ring has been found and all is well. I celebrated by having a glass of wine with dinner and vowed to never leave my rings in my pocket again.

But now I'm trying to figure out what to do with them when I'm in the kitchen (at night they go in my jewelry box). What do you do with your rings? Do you wear them all the time or do you have a special spot for them when you know your hands are going to get dirty?