Lost and Found

I'm kind of gaining a reputation for misplacing things. Now I know everybody loses things or forgets things, but I guess it happens often enough with me that Terence has almost come to expect it. If I think about it, it's nothing new though. Having a purse was the bane of my existence starting in my early teenage years. I cannot tell you how often I went through the drama of realizing that I had left my purse somewhere. As an adult I have lost my purse less often mostly because I don't carry a purse much anymore. Ever since M was born I have stashed my wallet and keys and such in the baby bag or backpack that I was toting around. Since I've had at least one child in diapers without a break for almost ten years now, I've actually managed to hold on to my purse for a decade. A miracle.

Not my wallet though. See, since often I would decide to go in somewhere without the baby bag, I got in the habit of just grabbing out my wallet, keys and cellphone and either shoving them into pockets or carrying them straight out. Which means that I have lost my wallet several times now. I'm actually on my third or fourth driver's license since I moved to AZ. Kind of pathetic, right? I lose my cellphone quite often too, but fortunately, we can call it and usually I track it down before the battery dies.

But nothing compares with how often I lose my keys. Sometimes I sincerely wish that my keys had a GPS locator attached to them. Part of the reason I lose them so frequently is that I have no good habits for what I do with them. I toss them on the counter, on the bed, on the dryer, leave them in a jacket pocket, and once or twice I've even left them inside the car. (Smooth, Heidi.) We have nice little key nails high out of the reach of the kids, and Terence is good about keeping keys there, but do I ever remember? Not often enough. Nine times out of ten I have laid my keys down with whatever other random stuff I was carrying out of the car and then have to frantically tear apart the house the next time I need to go somewhere.

The tenth time though is the worst. See, I also have young kids, and you know how much toddlers love to play with keys. It has been a problem for me in the past. In fact, last spring I lost a set of keys that were almost certainly picked up by K and taken who knows where. We know they are somewhere in the house-- after all, I had driven home but been unable to find the keys the next day when I needed to leave. We checked all the trash cans before any trash was emptied, and how else would the keys have gotten out of the house? So they must be here somewhere right?

I waited almost a whole two months for those keys to turn up before I finally conceded defeat.

After that I tried to be better about hanging up my keys, but let's face it, nothing's really changed. So today when I found my keys in the hallway on the floor, it should have been a wake up call, a reminder that K is playing with my keys again and I should hang them up. But did I?

Of course not. Instead, I absentmindedly brought them back to the computer desk with me and proceeded to diligently work on our taxes. Twenty minutes later I realized I needed something from the van and went to pick up my keys. They were already gone. At some point I had been concentrating so hard that I didn't even notice the toddler take the keys from right in front of me! For the next five hours (I kid you not), Terence and I ransacked the whole house, anywhere we thought it could be. We found all kinds of things (including two missing library books) but not my keys. I was ready to give up in despair. Terence was just laughing at me. He has given up on being annoyed about it and just finds it entertaining every time I lose something for the millionth time.

Finally, late this afternoon I went to K and pleaded with him. "Please help me find Mommy's keys," I begged shamelessly. "Where are Mommy's keys?" To my surprise he just gave me his furrowed brow look and headed straight for the door to the garage. I opened it for him and trailed him through the narrow passage between the van and all the bikes, exercise equipment, non-working computers and other clutter. He seemed to know exactly where he was going. He wound his way around back to an area that I couldn't reach. Then he stood there repeating "Mama" several times. I carefully climbed onto of Terence's exercise bench and peered down into the area K was hanging out in. And there, in the midst of a pile of soda cans filling a grass seeder, were my keys.

Go figure. Good thing K remembered where he had stuck them because it probably would have been years before I ever found them on my own. So now that I've learned my lesson, are my keys hanging on the nail where they belong? Um, no . . . they're sitting on the computer desk in front of me. Right where they were when all this started.