I find the fact that we have lost several items in the house, and despite serious effort, annoyingly weird.
Back in March during her college spring break, our daughter slept in my wife’s office for reasons described on May 26.
I took out the landline phone, including the base, from the office so that it would not disturb my daughter’s sleep. As I realized later, I didn’t really need to move the base; the receiver would do the trick. Still, I figure I’d keep them together in a pile at the top of the stairs. Later when I wanted to put the phone back, I found the receiver but not the base until late July; it was in my wife’s office, on the floor, under a table.
Incidentally, one of the reasons we still have a landline is so that I can find my phone in the house about twice a month, not counting when it falls between the sofa sections, which is always the first place to look.
We have a coffee tin, filled with brown sugar because we don’t drink coffee. The lid has been MIA for months, and the canister is and is now covered by a piece of aluminum foil.
Most mysterious, though, is a box of shoes that we can’t find. In anticipation of my annual hearts party in early March, I gathered all of the extra shoes and put them in box -or a bag? – and stored them… somewhere.
Stop looking
Not that it’s been a fruitless search. My high school yearbook, which my sister wanted to borrow before her October 2022 high school reunion, was on a shelf in my office that I hadn’t looked at before.
Also, I came across some things I wasn’t even looking for. A couple of rarely used credit cards that had fallen down below the computer reemerged.
The reason I’m writing this, though, is strategic. I’ve discovered that when I have stopped looking for things is the very time they inexplicably show up. My working theory is that if I write about it, I can let them go. Somehow, they’ll just show up. We’ll see if the plan works.
