Did You Check In the Garage?*

I have been looking for something recently.  I checked in the kitchen because I often leave things there on the counter or on the table blocking the microwave door until Someone gets exasperated and asks why it's there, to which I sheepishly reply "Umm...I don't know?" before removing it to another surface where it will gather dust until I can't live without it and the hunt begins.

I have looked on the bathroom counter, collector of many things odd and un-bathroom-ish (like two Rolo candies, a pair of pliers, and a huge stack of National Geographic magazines)(although that latter of that lot may, in hindsight, actually be a bathroom ish thing after all), covered in dust and tiny splinters of beard and mustache hairs that defied gravity and flung themselves on tangential lines away from the sink only to languish on the counter until one of us can't stand it any more and finally gives the lot a wipe-down.

I searched the living room, but mostly what's to be found there is toy related, or dropped food that the cats spurned, or...what's that sticky stuff?  Never mind...what'd I do with the mop?  Sometimes there's laundry that WAS clean until Sprout decided it needed dragging up and down the hall and around the living room.  I usually leave the dust critters alone - they get a little testy when the weather turns and they want to hibernate until the open windows of spring coax them into the open once more.

I checked the dining room, but there's not really a lot going on in there right now - it's sort of a catch-all for everything we aren't doing today but may do later if we have the time, and didn't there used to be a table in there?

Bedroom?  Hmm...no.  No, there's nothing in there but dust, books, clothing, more dust, something I can't identify that has stained the floor and may or may not have been a green tomato one of the cats though made a dandy toy and dragged in from the kitchen only to let it rot until my foot found it and smooshed it in the middle of the night last spring and now it's turning into a new life form and who am I to disturb it?

This thing I'm looking for, I know I still have it...somewhere...

It's not in my pockets - those hold mostly lint, used tissues (we're having a sinus rich time at Casa de Crazy right now, with Sprout and I battling for the record use of tissues in a day)(I'm winning, but mostly because she doesn't care about tissue and simply wipes her nose on whatever's handy, usually my shirt)(yay), and occasionally a tiny hair elastic for when the girl child deigns to permit me the familiarity of pulling her hair up from her face (and out of the snot zone).

It's not in the sewing room.  I know this only because I haven't been down there in ages, not since the spring, really, except to deposit into (less often) or snag from (with greater frequency) the preps closet, and while it looks a fright down there it's not so bad that I don't mostly know what is where, and nothing new has been lurking in the corners or rolling around the piles of fabric and craft supplies, that I know of.

I used to carry it with me all the time, sharing it freely with anyone who wanted or needed any.  I had an endless supply and never minded giving it away, as there was always more to replace it.  Lately, though, I can't seem to find it anywhere.

I've tried to see if anyone else has any to spare, but it seems I'm not the only one coming up short these days.  There is a universal lack, and it concerns me.  The world, it seems, has a diminishing supply of something it needs, something vital for a thriving populace.

I am concerned that maybe...maybe...it is drying up, soon to be lost to us, or at best left in a few tiny dollops here and there, something to be stared and wondered at like the Australian Tiger, or mythical and scoffed at like the Sasquatch (Squatchy...had to say it...Squatchy...) or the purview of crackpots and fringe elements, like alien abductions.  Perhaps a little of it will wind up in museums, studied, a puzzlement to future generations who don't know what life is like with a rich supply of it.

I wonder, do you have any?  Because if you do, nurture it and feel free to plant its seeds here...compassion is such a beautiful thing...I sure do miss mine...



*When in doubt, check the garage - everything winds up in there eventually, except the actual vehicles it was meant to house...