Take today, for example. Today a puzzle, unsolved for months, finally gets its pieces put together.
All summer long I am missing two pairs of glasses: blue reading glasses and brown sunglasses. I tell myself they'll turn up when I start reorganizing rooms, but after the furniture has been moved and, in some cases, broken down and given away, I still cannot find the two pairs of glasses.
I retrace my steps. I swear I had them early in the beach season. I start looking through various beach bags. I tear the car apart, including looking under the seats and inside the cubby near the spare tire. I check through old pocketbooks and school bags. I wonder if I took them on a lacrosse trip, though my sunglasses wouldn't be in a suitcase, but no matter. I look anyway.
Nothing makes sense.
Today I head out to a concert in Portland, ME. I'll probably have to walk around the center of the city for a short bit, so I need a coat better than my shoveling jacket. I wonder what I have. I don't really own a nice parka. Just in case a better idea strikes me, I head to the magic, double-stuffed closet in the spare room, anyway. There's nothing to lose.
I notice a coat with a large, fur-lined hood. Hmmm, that's funny. I could've sworn I got rid of that coat years ago when the zipper broke. I grab it anyway.
Oh. Surprise! It's not my crappy old coat; it's a Columbia parka, long with a huge, warm hood. I remember it now. My co-worker gave it to me last year when she didn't want it anymore. Still in brand-new condition, it became my lacrosse coat.
I put it on, so happy to have a decent parka to wear to the concert. I won't look like one of the city's homeless now. (Don't write me hate mail -- Portland has homeless people. We all do. Shut up and do something about it instead of pick on me.) The pockets are bulging, probably full of tissues and dead camera batteries leftover from my last collegiate sideline lacrosse camera-mom experience.
I reach into pocket #1: Driving gloves I totally forgot that I was missing. Score. I reach into pocket #2 and pull out ... blue glasses ... and ... brown sunglasses. I never thought to look in coat pockets. All this time I've assumed I lost them early in the summer when, in fact, it was late in the spring.
