marriage – Page 2 – Lemon Drop Pie

The girls and I were just getting home from the movies on one of those cold, cold days we had last week. It was so cold that school was cancelled, and yet we still went out with our warm, reliable minivan to shop at Target and to see Annie. Ed was already home from work when we pulled into the garage, and he was looking around his car with a flashlight. I carelessly thought he must have lost a glove or his hat as the girls tumbled out of the van shouting their hellos to Daddy. As we walked in the house together, I casually asked, “Did you lose something?”

Ed gave me a stricken look and said, “Yes, my wedding ring.”

Oh.

I tried not to panic as he told me all the places it could be. The cold weather made his fingers shrink, and his ring must have just slipped off. He remembered taking off his gloves and twirling it around with his thumb while he was driving home from work. When he got home, he stopped at the curb to get the mail from the mailbox, and then once inside, he did a load of laundry. We concluded his ring was either in the snowbank or in his laundry hamper.

Ed looked through his hamper and shook out the clothes carefully. I took his laundry out of the washing machine and checked his wet clothes and the inside of the washer. Nothing. Ed traipsed outside several times in the snow to look for his ring, but that was hopeless. Even worse, we were getting 2 more inches of snow that evening.

I hugged Ed and told him the ring didn’t matter; either it would turn up or we would get him another one and either way it would be okay. But that night as I lay in bed and listened to the snow plows go by, I kept imagining that they were pushing his wedding ring farther and farther up the street from our house.

The next day, I checked Ed’s hamper again. I looked carefully on the garage floor to see if it possibly could have ended up there. I carefully shoveled the snow by the mailbox, looking for any glint of metal.

Nothing. Ed sent me an email simply titled, “I Need a Ring.” After work, he went to the gym as usual. When he got home, he joked that all the women were busy checking him out without a ring on his finger. Mmm-hmm. He started quoting the Britney Spears song the gym plays all the time: “All eyes on us. All eyes on us.” Yup, one of the reasons I married him is because he makes me laugh.

That evening, Ed decided he should finish doing his laundry. He had been a little distracted the night before, so it didn’t get finished. When one load was in the washer, I thought I heard a clicking noise and saw a flash against the window of the washing machine door. I opened the door and found…a zipper that was making that racket.

Just as I was thinking we’d never find it, Ed came down the stairs, wearing his wedding ring! He had been pulling laundry out of the hamper for the FOURTH time, and his ring fell out onto the bathroom floor!

We went to the jewelry store last Sunday, and had that ring tightened. I’m glad to say that Ed is still a happily married man.

Have you lost something recently? Have you found it?

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Ed and I joke about the house we’re going to retire in. It will be in the mountains, within driving distance to a beach and will be by a lake in the country. We especially talk about it when we’re driving west to Iowa and hit the rolling hills just east of the Mississippi River. It’s a beautiful area, and we would love to live there some day even though it’s not really mountains and not by a beach.

Some “must-haves” in our retirement house, aka our dream house, are below. We love the house we live in now, but it was built in the 60’s and there are quite a few improvements that still need to be done. Our dream house, of course, will be completely updated before we even move in!

My dream house will have a wrap around porch with rocking chairs so Ed and I can sit for hours and look at the lake. Which will be close by. There might even be loons on our lake, and there will definitely be deer in the woods. But they will not come and eat my garden.
The kitchen will have walk-in pantry, instead of a tall cabinet with no built-in shelves masquerading as a pantry.
There will be beautiful kitchen counter tops that have no seams and that don’t slant forward and drip water on the floor when I’m not paying attention.
I’ll have a wonderful laundry room–a clean, spacious laundry room on the first floor–not a dirty, cobwebby basement laundry room in the same space as the furnace and water heater and a sewer drain that backs up in bad storms.
The large master bathroom will have two sinks and a big, clean tub that I can soak in, unlike the pink bathtub we have now that never looks quite clean because the enamel is wearing off from years of use. Oh, yes, not having a pink toilet would also be lovely.
On the top floor, perhaps in an attic garret, will be my quaint writing space. It will have a window that I will be able to look out of and become inspired.
As a writer, I’ll also need to have a library so I can keep all my books in one place and never give them away because there’s no more room on the shelf!
I’d love to have a large stone patio with a built-in grill and fire pit with comfortable outdoor furniture and a covered area to sit when it rains. And why not…throw in a hot tub while we’re at it.
Since this is supposed to be our retirement home, I’ll throw in a workroom for Ed to do whatever he wants to do. Wood working, fixing things, putzing around…a retired man definitely needs a room to putz around in.
We’ll also need a barn. Technically this is not part of the dream house, but we need a place to put our riding lawnmower and other lawn implements for our large acreage. And we’ll also have barn cats and maybe a chicken or two!