Glad you found your AK, Matt. I remember you mentioning in passing that you had misplaced it. You didn't seem concerned, so I wasn't either. Who knew it had become B's newest plaything?

But now you have your watch back and a cool story to go with it.

When I was a toddler, I got ahold of my mom's Mikomotos. I played with them until the strand broke, and then decided to hide the proof of my crime by flushing them down the toilet. One at a time. Thank God. Drop. Flush. Drop. Flush. Mom caught me after the first flush so only one pearl went missing.

She gave the strand to me a few years ago and I wear it often. It's a graduated strand and the large center pearl isn't quite. Centered that is. My mom still teases me about it. It makes the strand somehow more special. Even though my pearls aren't quite symmetrical, I find that life, in this one instance anyway, somehow is.

When B is old enough, give her the watch for her own and tell her the story.

Jeanne