About lost things

Last week I filled out one of those 25-things lists on Facebook but instead of 25 things about me it was 25 things I dislike.

And I forgot to put one of the things that I dislike the most: losing things.

I hate losing little things that don't really matter and are easily replaced--like , say, cheap sunglasses. And I hate losing, or perhaps I should say misplacing, things that I really need, say, like a birth certificate or an immunization record. And I really hate losing something that is hard to replace, like a cell phone.

One reason I hate to lose things is because I can't give up looking for them. Because I'm a pretty good finder, I have a lot of motivation to look. And a certain competitiveness with the lost-ness, and a certain tenaciousness about the search. I HATE giving up.

I also hate looking for something I suspect I might have given away--certain purses, for example. In occasional fits of tidiness and clarity, when a housekeeping mood comes on, I get rid of things that I later regret. That must be what happened to that red purse I bought in 2002....

I lost a pedometer last week, I'm missing a sock, I can't find an immunization record for a MMR I think Tony should have gotten in the late '80s (but, kudos to me, I found Angela's).

I'm still missing the lip gloss I lost last February in the Ft. Wayne airport while waiting to catch a flight to NYC. Sephora, cinnamon, tube, if anyone finds it....

Which leads me to what got lost today. 

Play-doh. 

Four (read, 4!) tubs of it. Mixed together. In a big pile. Shaped into something resembling a pizza. 

A light pink ... a dark pink ... a blue ... and a purple....

Missing.

Mind: I did not lose the Play-doh. No, indeed, the blame lies on the little girls, who spent most of the afternoon sitting at the kitchen table, playing with the 'doh, rolling it, cutting out circles, rolling it, bringing it in to us and trying to give us pieces of the pie.

And now ... it's gone. Gone!

Well, now, it's not gone. I know it's here ... somewhere. 

But where the HELL where!?

I've looked everywhere. I looked all around the kitchen table and under it. I looked in the toy area. I looked in the TV room. I looked in the bathroom.

I looked downstairs in the playroom. And in the game room. And the storage room.

I looked upstairs, in the extra bedroom (but not in the bedclothes ... mmmmm), in the books, in the bathrooms (two), in the exercise room, in my bedroom. 

No Play-doh.

Somewhere, in this house, a pile of multi-colored Play-doh is slowly hardening. It's been missing long enough I think it's beyond saving, for play purposes. If it's gone long enough, it will harden into what I like to think of pre-adolescent art; I might have to save it forever to preserve the episode.

But until I find it, I will be on the lookout for stepping unawares in it, or for plunging my hand into it. 

Or I may go to bed tonight and find myself getting way too close to it.

But until I find it, I'll be obsessed by it--the thought of that blue-green muddle will hound me.

(And I really hope that it's no where that a GUEST might come across it....)

I hate lost things.