Zen & the Art of Blogging

The other night I was going to refill my salt shaker and I dropped the little rubber plug that goes on the bottom. I was about to catch it, but I still had some salt in the shaker that would have spilled all over if I moved that hand, and by the time I'd finished with those thoughts, the plug had landed. I set it down and started to crawl around on the freshly cleaned floor... there really wasn't anywhere for it to have gone, but I still haven't found it.

Which reminds me of a story...

I have a small nose ring that occasionally likes to fall out and can be a bit of an issue to find. When I first got it, it was actually a ring that looped through my nostril, causing my mom to yell things like "There's something hanging out of your nose!" and such over crowds of people. Just to make sure I knew she didn't like it. As soon as I could, I switched over to a little stud. This was less noticeable, and I just liked the accent of it, not a metallic statement or anything like that. You can't even see it in the photos from my sister's wedding. People aren't even aware of it half the time. I was in Thailand once, and was asked by a woman from India if I was from north India. She had guessed this because of the educated way in which I spoke and the nose ring, or at least that's what she told me later. I took it as a compliment.

It's sometimes a conversation starter too. The most common question is, of course, "How do you blow your nose with that in?" Um, you do. Yea, sometimes it gets caught on things and falls out, but not so often. That may happen when I'm - yes - blowing my nose, drying my face with a towel, and occasionally hugging someone, if my face happens to get in their sweater or something. It's rare, though.

Two summers ago, I was dating this guy that I was really super crazy about, so I stayed at his house all the time. One night, I was washing my face in his bathroom and... damn! There went the nose ring. It clattered on the floor and I spent enough time crawling around looking for it that my boyfriend started calling me from the bedroom. I went in there and said, "My nose ring fell out, but I can look for it in the morning."

Morning came and my boyfriend got up and wandered into the bathroom. Hardly anytime had passed at all when he came back with my little diamond stud in his hand. "How did you find that? I must have crawled around for fifteen minutes looking for that!" He just smiled and said, "You just have to know how things bounce."

There was another example of this about a month later which was even more impressive (to me, anyway). My nose ring fell out onto the floor of a dark, somewhat seedy bar and I figured I'd never see it again. But he just bent over, picked it up, gave me a smile and the jewelry which I took home for major disinfecting that night. That guy was always very zen about stuff anyway.

Sometimes you just have to know how things bounce.