There's nothing like posting your procrastination on a blog to give you that needed nudge. Today, I sold what I referred to recenly as my post-divorce jewelry — the gifts that Jake gave me over the course of our marriage.

The thing about the Internet, it really leaves us no excuses. There's no use pleading, "But I don't know where to go!" Logging on to yelp.com makes it difficult to get away with that kind of thing.

I dumped my wares before the jeweler: a necklace, earrings, and anklet set in amethyst and gold. The giant gold pendant that won the My Husband Gives Me Uglier Gifts Than Your Husband contests for years. A dozen pearls I never got around to stringing. And my wedding ring.

Much of it the jeweler didn't want. Pearls, he said, he's seeing "by the buckets." No one wants pearls these days, he said. The amethyst set he didn't want either, but gave me the card of a place that might. The pendant he took. And the ring he took.

I hadn't initially thought to bring the wedding ring. All that other jewelry, I never wore. I had never liked any of it. I kept it all in a box and never thought about it. Strangely, I had never thrown the ring into that box. I grabbed it last minute, an afterthought, as I left the apartment.

Seeing it there on the counter, waiting to be weighed — it was a strange feeling. As the jeweler and I filled out the surprising amount of paperwork involved in the transition, it just sat there, looking at me. And I had a pang. I'm not sure why. I've hardly looked at it since the day I put it away. That whole last year, I found excuses not to wear it. I'd been glad to take it off permanently.

But, now, there it was — something so familiar, something that had just been a given, a part of me for almost 10 years — sitting on a pawn shop counter.  It was more difficult than I thought it would be.

My receipt reads "scrap gold." That pangs, too.