A few weeks ago, I was in the bathroom getting ready for work. Still half asleep and probably a little hung-over, I was pretty sloppy about it all. As I groggily reached into my medicine cabinet for my deodorant, I heard something fall out and hit the sink. I looked into the sink to see nothing but the huge black hole in the bottom, then I looked into my medicine cabinet only to find that one of my rings was missing. A ring that has been in my family for 3 generations. And I had just let it fall down the sink.
 
I grabbed the sink with both hands and screamed at the bowl. No, no, noooo!!! But it was too late. I grabbed a flashlight, but I couldn't see anything. My eyes welled up like rain clouds and I cried hard. Like a child. Like I had just lost a loved one. Like I did when my dog died.
 
Blurry eyed, I texted my boyfriend. He told me not to turn on the water. He'd fix it. He always fixes it. I felt a little better, wiped my eyes and finished getting ready for work.
 
After a few days of brushing my teeth at the kitchen sink, he came over to see what kind of magic he could work in my bathroom. He tore the sink apart. Every piece of it, every crack, every split and cradle. Nothing. He scoured under the floor boards, and even inside my little wall heater. Still nothing. I was back to feeling like a child, my hope crushed and my eyes welling. He was downright frustrated. After 3 hours of work, and putting it all back together, the sink started leaking. So then he had to fix that as well. A weeping sink and a weeping girlfriend. Poor guy.
 
I chalked it up to a loss. I called my mom, who had given me the ring, and broke the news. She wasn't upset for the ring, more upset for me. But I am my mother's child. She told me a story of when she was younger, in the shower shampooing her hair, and a ring her grandmother had given her slipped right off her finger and also down the drain. I guess clumsiness is in my genes. Still, I missed my ring. It was my prized possession.
 
A few days later, I'm back in the bathroom getting ready for an evening out. As I'm sifting through my make up bag for my copper-sassy eyeliner, something catches my eye. Something silver. I think I stopped breathing for a minute or so. It was my ring. I cried again, for the 3rd time that week, over the same ring. And I slipped it on my finger.
 
I was on my way to see my boyfriend. Our relationship is still pretty new at this stage. So sometimes, reactions can be hard to predict. I wasn't sure if he would be happy that I found the ring, or pissed that he had taken my entire bathroom to pieces for nothing.
 
It was a little of both. After his initial, "Goddammit!" he hugged me and we told his room mate the story and all laughed about it. He was glad I had found it, despite the 3 hours digging through my hair in the water pipes...