Losing Lunch

How on earth does anyone misplace a potato?  There must be a rabbit hole that collects car keys and shoes, now transitioning to potatoes.  Baked.  A baked potato meant to be lunch.  It's been missing for three days and I'm not sure what happens to an unwrapped tater--maybe it mummifies, hopefully; I do not want blue moldy hair running rampant through the school papers in the briefcase.  But I know it was put in with either the papers or into my purse; for to me it doesn't make sense to use a whole gaflunking lunchbox for one mid-size potato, I have enough to carry as it is.

I had zapped the potato the night before, tossing it into the fridge for next day lunch; when morning came, zoom zoom feed cats, zoom zoom get boots on, zoom zoom get keys, throw potato into purse, (yes, unwrapped, not even a paper towel; I'm in a crazy hurry to pick up Friend). Might have been in the briefcase, I forgot which, obviously because when lunchtime came and I looked, hoping for an intact potato not smooshed into the cell phone, there was nothing.  Nada.  No potato.  What?

Searched the briefcase, thrashing papers about; where has my lunch gone?  A room temp, plain baked potato is convenient, illicitly full of carbs, and is, well, a potato.  But it's a bit odd to carry a cooked potato that isn't contained, for it's now a loose criminal tuber and apparently on the lam.  Can I tell you how many times I checked each place, as if during the third investigation, the escaped potato would magically appear?  I knew I had brought it along, I knew I had launched it from five feet away into the open satchel.  But where the hell could it be?  I lost a potato.

Of course it worried me; I checked the car to see if it had rolled out, looked back in the fridge since maybe I imagined packing it for lunch; did it get buried in papers on my desk, did one of my kids think of the cool sound it would make when impacting a fourth grader's head?  How big are the cockroaches this year?  No potato was to be found.  Fwip.  Gone.  Poof.

Next day, I grabbed an apple to take and placed it into the briefcase; come lunchtime, it had disappeared as well.  I couldn't find the apple, and felt as if I were floating, one with the intra-dimensional universe where all molecules flow one into another and this apple had ascended into my being; I was already one with a Gala from Lynoaken Farms.  It made me dizzy to wonder where the hell it went, was the briefcase hungry?  Did the apple run off with the potato?  I did find a cough drop in the bottom of the case.

Now for the denouement.  After saving up lucky points with the class book club, I was able to get a small cube refrigerator which sits on the floor behind my desk, convenient for small things.  After three days, it occurred that maybe I should look and begorrah, there it was, sitting on a rack towards the back.  I hate when I put things where they should go, because that is when they are lost the most, and I prefer my food not cold so it didn't seem likely that it would be put into the fridge.   Fridge: 01, Susan: 00.  I ate the resurrected potato after thanking the lord that I wasn't quite off my rocker, yet.

The apple is still hiding out, but to cheer me up in the parking lot there were a dime, a penny, and then a folded up dollar like a mini-lottery.

Losing things makes me feel like an idiot; finding them creates an immense sigh of relief and a New Outlook.  Strangest items I have found: the corner of a $100 bill, a dead monkey, the shed skin of a tiny newt in a cold rivulet, completely perfect, completely inside out.  I dragged home the spine of a mostly rotted deer carcass to see how it fit together; it was just lying there by the road, I think I used rubber gloves and a hefty bag, boiled it clean in a banged up pot, museum-style.  Ice tongs, an empty grenade (that was found in school), a bottle that said "Mother's Only Rival" in raised glass, the skull of a woodchuck who suffered badly as it sometimes happens because their teeth continually grow and have to be worn down; if for some reason that doesn't happen, the tooth can eventually curl up through the roof of the mouth.   There was a Monarch butterfly who couldn't fly and so came home with us to be fed sugar water from a cotton ball the rest of the summer.  He lasted well over a month.  Finally, there was a neatly folded dollar bill on the pavement; upon opening there was a sugary white powder revealed inside, I am guessing cocaine?  Dunno; sprinkled it into the grass, wiped the bill on my jeans, and put it into my pocket.  I think I've told you enough about me.  Really. How about you?

No cloud cover tonight, the blackness of nighttime seems abyssal in spite of the lighted buildings of the city.  Before electricity changed our lives after sunset, it seems that people slept twice a night; first sleep lasted about 3 hours, there was a period of wakefulness, and finally, second sleep.  The whole night was closer to eleven hours long, compared to our accepted eight.  I rarely post links in this blog, but if you want further history, http://www.history.vt.edu/Ekirch/sleepcommentary.html.  I will not post any woodchuck skulls with curling teeth, you can look that up if you so desire.

Good night, good night; get to bed earlier than usual and see what it does for your day tomorrow.  If you wake mid-night, pick up a book, write down notes, get up and check on that Ben and Jerry's in the fridge.  Maybe you'll find my apple which is still in hiding, at least until I notice the hint of applesauce.  Take sleep seriously under piles of blankets, it is a good thing to do for yourself.  I shall be out on the path with my lamp, watching; two o'clock and all's well.