We went camping this past weekend at Alta Lake State Park, and had a blast. We went with my brother and his family, and my parents, and some other friends of my brother, some of which I knew, others I didn’t. He has a boat, and generally, attached to this boat, are various and sundry tubes upon which you lay, sit, or stand while being dragged around this lake at high speed. Great fun. Two years ago, we did the same thing, and no amount of prodding would get me to plant my ass on said tube. Why? Because I felt like a boat and was generally out of shape and uninterested in doing anything athletic because I would tire quickly.

Two years later, after six months of exercise and eating right, I was arguably the fittest male among our group (I say arguably because my brother would likely argue 😉 ), and I was certainly in far better shape than I was two years ago. And damn if tubing isn’t fun!

Until you lose your wedding ring in the lake because it’s terribly loose on your finger because you’ve lost so much weight.

Three days later, I’m still upset about it. I didn’t realize how much emotion and devotion was tied up in that ring until it was gone. It was the ring my wife put on my finger when we got married, and though we’ll replace it in some sort of meaningful fashion, the new one will never have the same set of memories attached to it. It was just an $800 hunk of metal, but it was an $800 hunk of metal imbued with my memories and quite a bit of magic. I still have the memories, but now, they’ll also be associated with that loss.

However, when I asked Wendy how she felt about it, she said that my health and the things it allowed me to do (like tubing) were completely worth the loss of the ring. So we’ll go do a ring search, and I’ll find a couple rings I like, and then she’ll go back and pick it out and present it to me in some sort of tiny little ceremony that we like to do (probably similar to the one we do every year on our Anniversary), and it will be special, and it will be a symbol of the new “Us”. And it will always serve to remind me to take my ring off before going tubing!