Losing My Mind..and Everything Else

Well, my blog is a little late this week because my family was in town, but boy, is my house clean!

When my husband and I set out to clean the house in preparation for the family’s visit, we thought the house was in pretty good shape. We had done our routine cleaning a week or so earlier.

Then it turned into one of those really serious cleanings.  You know, where you rearrange the furniture to allow for more seating, and you put things away that usually don’t go away, and you actually clean off the top of your dresser?  Honestly, we even made the bed two days in a row.

So in the process of a serious cleaning like this, you discover things in and about your house.  I found a long-lost pair of clip-on sunglasses underneath the nightstand in my bedroom.  I was so happy to see them I never even stopped to wonder how they ended up in the bedroom.  I never wear my sunglasses to bed, or even in the house.  Of course, my clip-on sunglasses (which, for some reason, you can now only find in chain drugstores) come and go.  The surest way to find the ones that I’ve misplaced is to buy a new pair.  So perhaps it was a game – maybe this pair purposely decided to hide in the bedroom (“Ha!  She’ll never find me under the nightstand…”).

Then I discovered that I had a screw loose.  No, no, not a figurative screw loose (that goes without saying), but literally there were screws loose on the toilet, making the toilet seat slide back and forth when in use.  I thought this might be a tad too exciting and adventurous for some of our older family members.  No problem, I thought.  I’ll just tighten the screws. 

How hard could that be?  Well, let me tell you.  I went to what I thought would be the logical place to find a screwdriver- the toolbox. None of our half dozen screwdrivers were in the toolbox.  I looked all over.  I looked in both miscellaneous-stuff drawers (hey, it’s not all junk in there), but there were no screwdrivers there.  I looked under the nightstand to see if they had joined the clip-on sunglasses.

I have come to accept the fact that socks disappear, one at a time, leaving just one sock behind to taunt its owner.  I will never understand where they go, or why I have a drawer full of mate-less socks that I can’t seem to part with.  Perhaps I am just a cockeyed optimist, thinking that the wayward socks will find their way home to join their mates and become a part of my functional wardrobe again.  However, I do understand that this is just one of the great mysteries of life, beyond the capabilities of mere mortals to comprehend.

But now the screwdrivers were disappearing.  I gave up on finding them.  However, ever resourceful, I located an extra-large paper clip and tightened the screws in the toilet.  Not a perfect solution by any means, but sufficient.  The toilet seat was tight enough.

Later, I found some screwdrivers sitting near the closet where we left them six months ago when we installed the panels in place of the closet doors. Then my husband found the rest of the screwdrivers on his dresser which is where he left them when he fixed his toilet.

Perhaps if we put things away after we used them we'd be able to find them, but maybe not.  The next day I couldn’t find my phone charger which I had put away for the first time the day before.  So it shouldn’t be such a big surprise that I can’t find a good ending for this blog.