CD18, IUI#1: Attention

It’s amazing what you don’t notice until you do.

Yesterday I lost my ever-loving mind–oh, and my wedding ring.

I didn’t notice until I was in the middle of my last home visit of the day–a visit I had arrived to 15 minutes late because, for some reason, it didn’t occur to me that to make it to a 3:45 visit, I actually have to leave the office before 3:45.  See?  Losing my mind.  I was all kinds of distracted yesterday, but when I finally noticed the ring was gone, leaving my left ring finger alarmingly bare, it was all I could think about.  I spent the rest of the visit wondering where I could have left it, when I took it off, or if it had ended up in one of the three other homes I had visited that day or–gasp!–a public restroom, never to be seen again.

I couldn’t remember taking it off, but I also couldn’t remember the last time I had seen it on my finger.  Its presence is something I take for granted.

I let the family know before I left that my ring had gone missing, and if they happened to see it lying around, please let me know.  Then I came home and tore my house apart.  Or, at least, the corner of the house where, if I had taken it off, the cats could have accessed and played with it until it was batted under the couch.

No luck.

Hubby assured me I would find it.  I had to be somewhere.  And if I didn’t find it, no big deal.  “It’s a symbol,” he said.  Didn’t matter.  I couldn’t concentrate the rest of the night, I couldn’t read blogs, and when I did sleep, I was plagued by dreams of clutter and a “how am I every going to find anything in this mess?” anxiety.

When I got to the office, the first thing I did was send an email out to everyone to ask them to keep their eyes peeled for a ring I may or may not have lost somewhere in the vicinity.  Then I called the other families I had seen yesterday.

I got down on hands and knees to look under and around my desk.  Then I went for the trash.  I checked the trash cans in the kitchen and my office.

Nothing.

I headed to the bathroom.  I couldn’t remember at what time of day I had used the bathroom the day before–probably late morning/early afternoon.  We have a cleaning service that comes to clean and empty the trash Tuesday and Friday evenings–so, thankfully, the trash in the bathroom was still full.  I pulled paper towels out one at a time, shaking each of them (gingerly, between my thumb and index finger, trying to come into contact with the smallest surface area possible).  At about the 11th towel, I saw a flash of gold.  I moved one more towel, and there it was.  My ring. Saved from being vacuumed up or thrown into a dumpster.

I put it on, washed my hands, and dried them very carefully.  And proceeded to check my left ring finger the rest of the day.

The good news, other than finding the ring–which I still consider nothing short of a miracle–is that the events of this week have kept my mind occupied enough to not obsess over the first four days of my current two-week wait.  This is the best chance we’ve had so far, but I’m still not hugely optimistic that it’s going to work.  I’m trying not to analyze every little thing.  For one, it’s too early.  And for two, I learned my lesson last cycle (I hope).  Ask me again a week from now.

Oh–and the most recent thing to steal my attention?  Hubby had a job interview today.  An actual interview for an actual job.  His first in over four years and countless applications.  So, yay!