Losing it

I am awed by my capacity to lose things.

Many mornings, this being one of them, I lose my bathrobe. Just have no idea where it is. When I get up I check all the usual places. The bathroom door. Nope, not there. The hook inside the cedar closet where it is supposed to be? No. No surprise there seeing that nothing is ever where it is supposed to be.

Is it in my office, draped over my chair? No.

Did I fling it over the banister and leave it there? No.

Is it hidden in the bedroom, in the ever-growing pile of clothes next to the bed? I dug through the pile and it was not.

Where is it?

Eventually it turns up. But what amazes me is, this is a large object to lose. This is the bathrobe I am always talking about that used to be Leonard Pennario's. It is voluminous and royal blue and big on me and my failure to keep tabs on it shows how abject my life is.

Another big thing I misplaced: a huge five-pound bag of cornmeal.

I bought it recently at Budwey's. I remember looking it at on the shelf, comparison-shopping between a couple of brands, settling on that nice stone-ground cornmeal by Hodgson Mills.

So. Last night I am making a chicken stew and I want to put cornmeal dumplings on top of it.

But is that cornmeal around anywhere? No!

It is nowhere!

What in the world? I deep-cleaned my kitchen, as I may have mentioned, and now the cupboards are pristine and everything is in neat, scrupulously closed containers. That is a word I love, scrupulously.

This big bag! Had I stuck it in the fridge?


No!

Still a big mystery.

Maybe I did not buy the cornmeal after all. Maybe I just thought I did. Cornmeal is not a good thing to have around anyway with me always on and off the South Beach Diet.

This is how my thoughts go. Round and round.

These are the wages of thinking too much about Tanglewood in the summer of 1949 and not enough about my house. Of thinking too much about someone else's life and not enough about my own.

Well, on the other hand, who am I kidding? My life was like this before I ever met Pennario. It has always been a mess.

Here is a question for people out there in Blog-O-Land. What is the most impressive large object you have ever lost? Little things like rings do not count.

Am I the only one losing it?