My ring finger is lonely

It's been naked for nearly three weeks. It's at the jeweler's, having a wedding band made to match it. That's only 4.8% of my engagement, but it feels like such a long time.

See, Mr. Fried Rice picked the ring out of a catalog. It has some lovely swooping curves that mean a plain wedding band can't be just crammed up against it. For some reason, the ring in the catalog does not come with corresponding wedding band, so one needs to be custom made.

When I first got the engagement ring it seemed so huge and unnatural. Driving was dangerous. You'd turn a corner and there it was at the top of the steering wheel, a big old distracting diamond, sparkling in the sunshine. I'd look down during a meeting at work and there it was, sparkling away in the conference room light. Punching in my PIN while getting gas and wow, look how good it looks in gas station light.

I wasn't used to sleeping with jewelry on, and always took my other rings off. One of the first few nights at Mr. Fried Rice's after getting engaged, I took off the ring and put it in a safe spot on the dresser next to his bed.

"Oh," he said, in a disappointed tone. "Aren't you going to sleep with it on?"

Well, I guess I could try, I thought, seriously thinking I'd make an effort, he'd see it wouldn't work and I'd go back to putting the ring on the dresser.

Fast forward a year and I'm sleeping with the ring on. The only time it leaves my finger is when I'm in the shower and even then my finger feels naked. The ring is so comfortable on now sometimes I can't tell the ring is there, and I have to grab the diamond between thumb and forefinger just to make sure.

You can imagine how hard it was to hand it over to the sympathetic jeweler. We chatted a while after he put it in the little brown envelope. He suddenly said, "hey," and pointed at my hand. "You just reached for your ring finger, and you didn't even notice."

I did reach. And I didn't notice. But now my finger is lonely and I notice it a lot. I called the jeweler today and he said it should be ready by Wednesday of next week. 6% of my engagement.