#MicroblogMondays: This diamond ring(s)

I recently took my anniversary ring (which I got for our 25th wedding anniversary) to the local outlet of the jewelry chain where we'd purchased it for the semi-annual cleaning & inspection required by the insurance policy we bought along with the ring. While I was there, I screwed up my courage and asked for a quote on getting my engagement & wedding rings (a matching set) resized.

For the past year (maybe two, maybe longer), I've been wearing my rings on the little finger of my left hand, because I could no longer wedge them onto my ring finger. (Well, maybe I could, but I stopped trying after getting them uncomfortably stuck one too many times.) I've added a couple of dress/pant sizes since I got married almost (gulp) 35 years ago;  I guess it stands to reason that my ring size has increased as well. (Sigh.)

I knew it was the logical thing to do. But handing the rings over to the clerk and watching her put them into a little plastic bag to send away was an emotional moment. And even though I haven't been wearing my rings around the house as much since I started having trouble putting them on, my left hand felt weirdly bare and lightweight after I left them at the store and walked away.

I posted about this on Facebook & got mostly sympathetic replies -- although one (divorced) friend/former coworker wisecracked, "Feeling single?  LOL." (I did not respond.)

Anyway -- I was told it would take two to three weeks for the work to be done, but I got a call after one week and one day that the rings were ready for pickup. We went to the mall the next day and the rings are now happily back on the proper finger of my left hand, where they belong. The bands are a little wider than they used to be at the back, but they fit perfectly now, and I don't think they've looked this shiny and bright and sparkling since the day we bought them in the spring of 1985 (at a long-gone independent jewelry store in downtown Winnipeg).

Ours was not the classic down-on-one-knee proposal, let alone the staged and photographed social media event that proposals these days seem to have become -- it was almost more of a mutual agreement than a question that we'd get married, once we'd both finished school.  I told my dh-to-be that I didn't care if I got an engagement ring the night before the wedding -- but I did want a ring, lol.  He was in Toronto and I was in Manitoba for most of the year leading up to our wedding -- so I wound up going on a solo ring-scouting mission, and we went to get the one I liked when he came, a few months before our wedding, for the weekend marriage prep course required by the minister who was marrying us. I had a lot of fun looking and trying on prospective rings -- much to the bemusement of the store clerks who asked if I had a groom to go with the ring. We weren't sure the store would accept an out-of-province personal cheque, and the limit on dh's student credit card was nowhere near high enough to cover the cost -- he didn't want to be carrying around that much cash -- and there were no debit cards back then, of course -- so he wound up paying for the rings (as well as a gold wedding band for himself) with travellers cheques, lol.

I'm glad to have them back where they belong. :)

You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here.