Sigh

This is what I want right now. My house gets messier and grosser every time I blink. I dream of a place that is just mine. A place where no one eats candy in bed, or runs in with sticky fingers, or throws little plastic beads all over the floor. A place with no crumbs. Oh and the sound of the ocean coming in through the window.

Saturday where are you?

Five non-matching laces of varying lengths. One pair of sneakers. The lace on top doesn't even count. No aglets. This afternoon I managed to seriously organize four drawers whilst searching for the mythical lost bag of shoelaces.

Or is it the mythical bag of lost shoelaces? Or the lost mythical bag of shoelaces? The lost bag of mythical shoelaces? Perhaps what I mean to say is this: The mythical bag of shoelaces is lost. The bag has not been located. The longer it takes to find it, the more I will worry that perhaps there never was a bag of shoelaces. That I only imagined this roving tangle of laces, turning up in one inappropriate place after another. They were never lost. They were just in the way.

Once I knew where things were. Really. I knew where everything was. I used to keep my belongings so organised that it really rattled me when I misplaced something. Because I was accustomed to finding things where I put them.

Now, there is an ongoing misplacement problem in my house. Persons who shall go unnamed regularly pick up things of mine, do whatever they please with them, and then leave them wherever. This type of object re-location is an issue unto itself. That is about indifference, carelessness, and a failure to respect boundaries.

But the mythical bag of shoelaces is my bag of cheese. Generally speaking, I think we tend to look for things in the sorts of places we are likely to have put them. I have various designated areas where I collect small miscellaneous items that are in limbo. So if I am looking for something small, I check those places first. This is logical. When I cannot locate objects moved by monkeys it is because said object is now somewhere I would never have left it. I don't look for scissors inside sneakers. I don't look for spoons on the bathroom floor. And if I were looking for my shoes I would not be looking under the kitchen table.

I regularly come across items that I don't want to leave shuffling around. Items that are important enough to want to get to them quickly. A camera. A flashlight. Extra headphones. A favorite bookmark. A nail clipper. A piece of paper with something important on it. So what do I do? I find places to stash things where they won't get lost in the traffic. The place is ideal. Except I no longer have any idea where that ideal place is. There are at least half a dozen missing things at any given time. I can recall putting it somewhere "specific", but that is all. I won't find the thing I am looking for until I am looking for something else I won't find.

The good news is that while I could have gone out and bought new shoelaces and been back in less time than I spent looking for that mythical bag, I did sort though and organise some pretty interesting stuff. Sweet things that made me feel all mushy right before Mother's Day. The discharge papers from the hospital. The receipt for parking between 5am and 5pm on July 10, 2005. The receipt from the restaurant we ate at on July 9th.