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Composting Is My Destiny

True story…and it relates to the importance of composting (among other things) in my life.

My wedding ring has always been a little too big for my finger. I guess it didn’t seem that way when we first purchased our rings, but for whatever reason, as soon as we were married it suddenly felt loose on my finger. My wife encouraged me to get it resized, but me being me, I always brushed it off as something that wasn’t really vitally important – after all, the ring stayed on my finger just fine. It was simply a little loose, that’s all.

You can probably see where this is going. 🙂

Of course, it did indeed eventually fall off without me realizing it – not once, but TWICE!

The first time was back in January. In a crazy stroke of luck, I saw it lying at the bottom end of my driveway the next morning (I still didn’t realize I had lost it)! Needless to say, I thanked my lucky stars and thought perhaps that it was a sign – of what, I wasn’t sure.

For some reason, I still resisted getting it resized – I guess I didn’t feel like spending the money until I was absolutely sure it was necessary. I also worried that it would end up being too tight. After all – it WAS winter. Surely my fingers would expand once the warm weather arrived again.

So I continued to tempt fate…

In February I managed to lose the ring AGAIN! This time the outlook was much more grim. I didn’t realize it was gone for quite some time, and when I finally did realize it, I had just arrived home from a series of errands all over town. Naturally, I assumed that it had fallen at some point along the way – I even thought I could remember hearing an odd sound just after mailing a letter. Kinda like the sound a ring would make as it slides down into a mailbox.
😯

I tried to retrace my steps to see if I could find it, but with no luck. I even phoned the post office to see if they could check the mail bag – unfortunately by that time it was on its way to a much larger postal depot. He said he would do what he could, but warned me the chances of recovering it were slim. I tried various other possibilities, including searching all over the house and property, but still no luck!

It was a major loss for me, and I was both saddened and embarassed (after all, my wife had asked me repeatedly to get it resized). A wedding ring is not just something you can go out and replace. It has major significance (to me, anyway), and a new ring just wouldn’t cut it (unless of course we renewed vows or something like that).

One last possibility was that it had fallen on the lawn as I was bringing in groceries (on that fateful errand day). We had a major snow storm soon afterwards, so I thought it might simply be buried under the snow. Weirder things have happened – I DID find it on my driveway the last time, after all.

Life continued on and I tried not to think about it too much. Part of me still held onto the hope that by some slim chance the ring had indeed fallen off on the lawn, and that I would find it once the snow melted away.

Once the warm weather finally arrived I started feeling somewhat excited, but also quite apprehensive – if the ring wasn’t on the lawn it likely meant that it was gone for good. When all the snow on the front lawn finally disappeared this week I started spending some time trying to find it, but without any luck.

Oh well – bad things sometimes happen to good people, right?
😆

Then…something I’d almost describe as ‘magical’ happened. I finally visited my winter compost bin! I even made it a family event, as mentioned in my last post.

Funny coincidence…I had not opened up the bin since mid February – around the same time the ring went missing.

There is a special pair of gloves that I always put on any time I’m going out to dig around in the composter. Yesterday was the first time I have put them on since February.

Hmmmm…

Whadya know – after feeling something strange in the bottom of one of the fingers I turned it upside down to try and shake it out, which of course resulted in me coming face to face with my long lost wedding ring, lying on the ground at my feet!

It’s safe to say this experience has taught me several valuable lessons. Clearly, I need to:
A) Listen to my wife more often, B) Be more careful and aware, and C) NEVER EVER neglect my compost bin AGAIN!!!!

😆

Written by Compost Guy on April 9th, 2008 with comments disabled.
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#1. April 20th, 2008, at 2:01 AM.

Any way I can tie marriage and compost together is a winning story in my book. Glad you got it back!