Friday, January 06, 2006
A Symbol of Our Love. Most of the Time.
December was busy. And kind of lousy. Somewhat stressful, too. Very blogworthy.
We (husband, baby B and I) took a trip to see all sorts of relatives. The husband made a couple of long weekends, and baby and I managed 10 days in 2 states before returning home. So there was a lot of necessary preparation. Most of this (in the form of packing) was saved for the night before leaving on a 9am flight. Unfortunately, I was to have other plans that night. More urgent, painful, annoying and unexpected plans. Let me explain.
Baby B is now 8 months old (yay!). Near the end of my pregnancy with her, I was warned of swelling. People told me stories of feet, ankles, hands, fingers - all turning huge before anyone had a chance to realize what was going on. Some of the best of the frequent (unsolicited) advice I got was to take off those rings. A few people even said they had to have their rings cut off because the swelling was so bad. I am glad I took that advice, because I did swell...a lot. And then with an emergency C-section and all those fluids they pump into you (well, into me), I was huge.
Months passed and I assumed I'd get back to normal size. But after several months of me being half a shoe size larger, I was thinking the fingers might not be the first thing to slim down. I was also getting a little sick of feeling like a single mom without my wedding ring on my hand. After a few single mom jokes from my husband, I decided at the last minute to surprise him at Christmas with my rings back on my hand.
I went to the jeweler that sold us the engagement ring, and they sized me and said I could have the ring back the day before I was leaving. Yes! I also ended up having them do the wedding band (for $45) because the store that we purchased that ring at could not have it ready until after Christmas. When I returned to pick up the rings the night before the trip at 7pm, they were kind of a tricky fit. My knuckles are pretty big in comparison to my fingers.
Jeweler: "Oh, let me just spray some Windex on that. It'll slide right over."
This is when the red light should've gone off in my head. "Uh, ok."
Spray, spray, push, turn, push...there it is. Me: "Hmm, still feels kind of tight."
Jeweler: "Yea, well your fingers have swollen some from getting the rings over the knuckle. That's it. You're all set!"
Needless to say, by the time I got home, my left ring finger was a pretty sunset shade of purple. By the time my husband and I stopped messing with it, it was a scary shade of blue. The emergency room at my local hospital got a pretty good laugh that night. I did learn that if you're having a ring cut off, it's so much easier if it's not made of platinum (like mine). The doctor and nurse were pretty disgusted with the jewelry store. We are all in agreement that the jewelry store is at fault. It could have gone one of two ways. Either they determined my ring size incorrectly (their fault), or they resized the ring incorrectly (their fault). I've always had trouble getting rings past the knuckle, and trusted that they knew what they were doing enough that the ring would fit once it was in the right place.
I was home by midnight and then started to pack. Not a lot of sleep that night.
There will be a letter to the jewelry store requesting my $45 back and for them to cover the ring being repaired by another jeweler. I'm sure they'll offer to repair them for free, but I don't really trust them anymore. I'll let you know when I hear back from them.
