Diploma Emergency

My husband graduated with his Masters in 2006. In 2006, we lived in Indiana, lived off of student loan reimbursement checks, and ate rice and beans for dinner. Needless to say, we didn't spring for a cherry wood frame for his million dollar degree right out of grad school.

And so the diploma sat, in it's USPS card stock mailer, on a bookshelf in my dining room from 2006 until January 2009. There are many reasons it sat in that envelope on the bookshelf - his first office didn't have real walls, his second office was in the pool, and truthfully, I just couldn't justify the $200 price tag. So it sat. And then in January 2009, we moved out of our apartment into a townhouse. In the jumble of packing during the holidays, trying to downsize our shit-ton of crap into a more manageable pile of crap, and the post-wedding newlywed glow, I packed up that diploma - along with the rest of our 900 sq.ft apartment - and we moved into our first real grown-up two-floor house.

It is now April 2010 and I have NO IDEA where his damn diploma is. Like a good wife, I had all intentions of surprising him with a nice frame (the expensive kind) on his first day of work, since his new office has real walls and will be humidity-free (and I figured at this point I am running out of excused to purchase said frame).

I tore this house upside down yesterday morning. I looked everywhere. That damn thing is just gone. Feeling defeated (and slightly panicked), I called the Records Office at his grad school. A sweet old lady answered the phone and just about choked on her tongue from laughter when I told her what a terrible wife I was for losing my husband's diploma. After she caught her breath, she said it wasn't anything $10 couldn't fix.

Thank GOD.

So we'll have a very nice cherry wood frame with a gold University seal within the next 2 weeks..... and the diploma (from 2006) should be arriving shortley thereafter.