Tony, Tony look around! Something's lost and must be found!

Alright, I lose stuff.

It happens to everyone sometime, but it happens to me more often that I'd like to admit. Most of the time I've just misplaced something and forgotten where I moved it to. Sometimes I just forget things at home, or at the office, or at a friend's house...anywhere but where I am when I need it.

On Saturday, I lost my keys. Very frustrating, as I can't drive without them. (I should really learn how to hot-wire a car for emergencies.) I went out to the car to look for something else I had misplaced (stop laughing!) and decided that since I was just going to be leaving in a few minutes, I would leave the stuff I needed to take to the place I was going in the car, but I made sure to keep my keys in my hand so as not to lock them in the car (see, I sometimes learn from my forgetfulness).

I took the stuff out of my car that wasn't what I needed for the evening. It was leftover stuff from the previous weekend's activities that had never made it back inside, including a pair of jeans that I had turned the house upside down (in an exaggerated, non-literal way) looking for, going so far as to accuse my poor, innocent husband of stealing, hiding, eating or otherwise destroying or removing from this plane of existence all my jeans.

Anyway, I took that stuff in, with my keys in my hand.

I set that stuff down, looking though it to try to find the other thing I had misplaced. I didn't find it. I kept looking, including places I'd already looked in twice before, and eventually found the long-lost hair schmutz. Hooray! Now, to go pick up my friend and get on with the evening's festivities.

Now, where did I put my keys?


No clue.

I looked in all the places I had looked for my schmutz. No luck. I looked all the places I had been since--the kitchen (including inside the pantry & fridge), the bathroom (including the drawers), the computer room, the bedroom, back to the kitchen, the entryway, the living room, back to the bathroom, the computer room again, the sunshine room, which I actually hadn't been in, but maybe the dog carried my keys off to his nest to do nefarious chewing things with them, like he does to my shoes.... nope.

So, after 20 minutes of fruitless searching, I caved in and asked my friend to come get me because I was too stupid to operate a motor vehicle.  I mean, when you lose your phone, you can at least call it and listen for the ringing (or buzzing if you leave your phone on vibrate).  With keys, you're just out of luck!!

Now, as soon as I hung up from that phone call, I felt a surge of hope. See, this is how it happens usually--you give up, cry uncle, and the lost thing appears. So now that I'd asked my friend to get me, my keys would appear.

And they did... 10 minutes later after revisiting all the places I'd looked before. They turned up next to those jeans I thought my husband had somehow obliterated...