Where did that come from?

I've been trying to post something at least weekly, but this week, our four year old granddaughter is staying with us.  Spongebob.  My Pretty Pony.  Or maybe it's My Little Pony.  I'm not sure, but she'll correct me when I get it wrong.  Rainbow Dash.  Paw Patrol.  Big girl bicycles.  Sidewalk chalk.  Bubbles.  Happy Meals.  Fuzzy pajamas.  Snuggles, cuddles, and hugs.  We're having a great week, but I think she might be one of those new super breeds of children who require so little sleep.  My kids napped up until the time they joined the Navy.  As I went to sleep last night, I was reacquainted with that totally exhausted feeling that I hadn't felt since my kids were that little.  You know, where you're just trying to stay awake long for bedtime.  I haven't had the urge to doze off in the recliner for eons. 

 

Anyway, here's an old, very old column from the archives of Off-Kelter, the column I wrote for ten years. 

 

***

 

I love a good mystery.  However, I would rather get my fill of suspense and intrigue by reading a book or watching a movie.  Instead, I play amateur detective on a daily basis.   

Objects disappear and reappear in the strangest places.  Case after mystifying case, I am constantly piecing together clues to try to figure out why these things happen.  I have yet to completely rule out a gremlin or poltergeist activity.  I will put something down, and five minutes later, it is missing.  Entire gallons of milk have disappeared from the refrigerator.  An axe that I’m not even sure was ours made a surprise appearance in the front yard.   

The bathroom is a haven for oddities.  I never know what I will find lurking in there.  Imagine my surprise when I opened the shower curtain to found two empty bottles of shampoo, a tube of oozing toothpaste, and a bicycle helmet in the tub.  Several days prior, I had found the helmet on the bathroom floor and tossed it into the toy box.   

Both boys had showered the night before.  While I had picked up wet towels and dirty clothes, I hadn’t peeked behind the curtain.  Befuddled, I pondered why the children were showering with toothpaste and protective headgear.  I was certain the shampoo bottles were nearly full, too.   

I have yet to solve that one.  I put the helmet away, and if it turns up in the bathtub again, then I will have to ask.   

The mystery of the junk drawer remains the biggest unsolved case in the kitchen.  Seven years ago, I started out with one junk drawer.  Its contents have now multiplied and migrated into two other drawers.  Things I didn’t even know I had seem to surface. 

I could be wrong, but it is my suspicion that the junk drawer is plotting to take over the entire kitchen.  I have found screwdrivers, nails, receipts, and hard candy mingling with the spoons and forks. 

Laundry seems to be a universal perplexity, and it is something I question more than anything else in this house.  I put clothes into the washer, transfer them to dryer, and as soon as I turn my back, the unexplainable happens. 

I was matching socks when I came across one that would fit a toddler.  How did it get in my basket?  The kids had cleaned out from under their bed earlier that week hauling four armloads of dirty clothes to the utility room.  I know it hadn’t been that long since they had last cleaned under their beds. 

Not only this tiny sock made me raise an eyebrow, though.  I found a pair of size 3T underwear in the wash.  It has been years and years since either child wore something so small.  Yet, there they were looking brand new.  The same day, my favorite black shirt came up missing and has yet to turn up anywhere.    

The greatest quandary without any explanation is missing objects that turn up months later in a desk drawer.  Although closely related to the junk drawer in the kitchen, the desk seems to be a refuge for things I need but cannot find.  Mysteriously, these items turn up later when I am scrounging for something else.   

Right now, the left desk drawer contains some strange things: a Christmas ornament my son made in 1998, a hairbrush that I’ve had since I was ten, three rocks, assorted batteries, and literature for a computer we used to have.   

Why these items reside in the right drawer is beyond me: blueprints for a garden shed, pain pills for a dog that is now dead, the leg of a broken plastic horse that is on the kitchen shelf, a sample bottle of Ortho Weed-B-Gon, dental floss, a baby spoon, fifteen pen lids, and a thermometer.   

I can bet anything when I need to take someone’s temperature, or we finally are ready to build that garden shed, both will vanish mysteriously. 

I’m not exactly Sherlock Holmes, but logic tells me I might just find them both in the bathtub months later. 

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