My Personal & Fun Theory on Items Lost

What were THEY hunting for?

I'm not sure what it is exactly about my problems with finding things.  It's no exaggeration that I must spend about half my waking hours (which are many) looking for the most banal things one could imagine.  Yes, I understand that as we get older, we do tend to lose track of some things.  However, the concept of the "loss of things" which *I* experience is completely not understood even by moi.  After all, due to my CFIDS/ME/CFS and fibromyalgia I spend almost 24/7 in bed and don't need all that many things. Yet I must spend about five hours a day looking for just a few objects: my distance glasses, my reading glasses, my thyroid medications (the "old" meds belong to a "system" now so that's not a problem) plus the TV remote, Kindle, two iPads and my new (and sooo not understood) iPhone.  

Hubs, not to make him sound like a cruel fellow," finds it "hysterical."  You see, I get up to look for something, and within seconds forget whatever it was that I'm looking for.  Consequently, a twirling dance begins as I go in circles, much like a cat chasing its tale, trying to look for whatever's lost and hope I'll find it when I see it.  After a few moments of not finding it, I get back into bed but within a few minutes I pop back out again, repeating the routine.  Eventually hubs can't take it and asks me what it IS that I'm trying to find.  Half the time I can't remember!  Finally, I remember and he finds whatever it is or then spends time looking in such weird places that I want to strangle him!  It actually HURTS to see him being "ineffectual."  Just you wait, those of you who are relatively newly-married: this is what you get after 37 years! (Imagine the Smiley Face!)

But it all goes back to the question: how many times can a person misplace things?  A LOT, let me assure you!

But hang in there.  I need to give you a bit of a back story first and that might seem tedious, but I think you'll like this in the long-run.  And yes, we all know my posts are way too long, but let's admit it: you really do get some good stuff sometimes!  ("Sometimes"?  I think I better work on ALL the time.)  But back to topic...yes, yes, yes!

In a previous post I wrote about autopilot and muscle memory (see this link if you're curious) and in there I only touched upon the all-encompassing problem of mislaid objects.  It truly drives me crazy, especially because I "live" in a rather small area. However, there are a few complications:

• Our "new" bedroom is not completed - a negative for the "finding things" category because the "stuff" are in new places, other things not brought in (we've been taking turns being too sick!)  However, the room's rather clutter-free thus far - a negative in the "finding things" category as to "how the heck can THAT happen?
• I'm not used to the new bathroom which guilts me to no end due to it coming out looking like something out of a House Beautiful magazine of some sort, large, many cabinets and drawers, and rather organized... which for me means too easy for things to get lost!
• my little room, which we've dubbed my "office," is definitely a mixed-up cause!  I had to give up on my great strides once I got the cellulitis, knowing that my body was trying to tell me, "you don't want to rest?  Well, I'll SHOW you!" 
• Oh, and then there's the new closet which has definitely thrown me off balance, but again, it's not very cluttered since I gave away so many things on the principle that the more I give away, the fewer things I need to look through to find said object(s).  

The "funniest" thing is that I'm not alone!  After the "memory loss" post, several friends wrote to me that in reading that post they thought I was describing their own lives!  It turns out that you do not even need to have to be fibro-brain'ed to have this problem, though of course, fibro-brain makes it all that much more interesting; we often crawl around looking for said objects, get a migraine from all the scouting (don't even get me started on what all that up-and-down does to one's head) and are only exhausted if we are REALLY lucky.  The only good thing that I can say about hunting for lost things is that you inevitably find something you'd been looking for the day before, the week before, the month before: you get my drift! 

Back story again: I have a reader/friend (hi M!).  We communicate on my Facebook page because of some sort of glitch that I cannot begin to understand: she can read my posts but for some reason ever since Hurricane Sandy is not able to comment on my blog (not an unusual problem for some reason!).  Being ever resourceful, she discovered that she can comment on my Facebook page.  Ah!  Yet another reason to "like" my FB page!  Somehow, that's the ONLY way she can comment.  (Hint Hint! LIKE my FB page!) Wow!  That was about as subtle as hitting one over the head with a hammer?  No?  I'll then have to try harder, I suppose! ;)

At any rate, one thing led to another and it turns out that our reader had lost some treasures and had combed her own living areas as well.  Understandably, she was quite upset, knowing they had to be around but not being able to find them.  Exhaustion anyone?  I know it was wiping her out.  I wrote to her that her "adventure" would make for a very good post but it took me until today to finally "keep that promise."  I'm ashamed to say that the reason for doing so today is because I've been equally upset about MY problem for the last few days.  Desperate times and all...  But you'll also understand my hesitation when you realize how difficult this is to describe.

Which DOES now bring us to the present, SORT of!  

Back in the mid-'70's, there was a VERY short-lived show which had its premise around a bunch of "blue men" who existed only to conform to the way time worked.  For every second or millisecond, they would replace the things in the rooms or areas you were to be found in.  Hang in there.  It's a weird explanation and a bit convoluted. 

This sci-fi series - yet another reason I've never cared for sci-fi but this was in the first year or so of our marriage so I had a LOT more patience with hubs!  I admit I was more of a "perfect wife."  How times have changed!  (Smile, dear: just joking!)

The premise!  The premise!  OK.  For some reason, the way time worked, if no one was to be in a room or a certain place, that space did not need to be set up with furniture, books, clothes, trees (for woods, obviously!) and so forth.  In a strange way it worked on the premise of "if a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it, did it really fall?"  This was, now that I think about it, quite a topic of discussion back in the day.  Thank heavens cable TV was finally invented!

So, if, for example, hubs and I were sitting in our living room watching "I Claudius," riveted by the BBC miniseries with no commercial interruptions, the little blue men didn't have to touch the kitchen and bedroom areas because we, hubs and I, were not moving off that sofa for the next however many minutes.  But in the living room they would have to keep changing from second to second or millisecond to millisecond.  

The problem would lie in the fact that the more cluttered the area, the more that had to be put in it's place from milisecond to milisecond and sometimes things were "forgotten."  After all, these "blue men" must have been overwhelmed by all they had to do and perhaps were even a bit resentful of all the "stuff" that people had.  (Did I mention that the blue men were invisible to the people who lived inside the TV?)

This show actually came around at a good time. Vatican 2 was still reverberating with all of us due to the sea-changes.  Lots of saints got knocked off the list.  I'm not sure if St. Anthony, the saint of lost things, was done away with but I never felt the right to pray for superficial things.  If I lost someone's love, for example, that would be "legit" in my book.  Finding the lost notebook with excellent notes for a particular course on the night before the exam would be a borderline request.  The soul-examination, in the end, was never worth calling in of a favor from that poor exhausted (and perhaps status-loss-now) saint.  I felt I should use him for really big stuff like a lost child, not a lost necklace (if I'd had a necklace in the first place!).  There was a little Russian ditty which I would use but that wasn't very effective. (Sigh!)

But the "blue men"?  Oh, we loved the silly show just because there we were able to conjure up a reason for why you couldn't find something, would look for something "forever" and finally find it in the spot you'd looked at a dozen times without it being there!  (And yes, part of the story line was the guilt that the blue men felt when they forgot something and we mortals were forced to look for them.)

The series only survived a few episodes but the concept has stayed in our family for the last 30 plus years!  

I'm now on a hunt for my new watch, my wedding band, my engagement ring and a special decorative ring.  This may not sound like much to you, but these are objects that I intend to will to my kids.  The kid who will get whichever is always changing.  Ever the practical woman, I keep changing my mind as to who will get what, IF AT ALL, according to how I am treated.  Yes, I may sound totally bonkers, but as we all know, there are times when you become totally sad because of the way you feel you're being handled by family or someone does something that totally outrages you and you can't do anything about it because you're stuck in bed, for heaven's sake!  Combine bored with feeling lousy and then add slights or even more than slights and you begin to hallucinate dream of somehow getting "even."  Soon, if I stay true to the Southern tradition, I might start putting color-coded stickers underneath all furniture and other "valuables" as to who gets what!   When you're someone with fibro and or CFIDS, you want to get SOME sort of control in one's world.

At any rate, I'm particularly annoyed by the "blue men" while all the time hoping that is IS the blue men and not a robbery - on the one day I chose to go to see whichever doctor it was that I went to see before my endocrinologist.

If I find my watch, etc., I'll be laughing again about those impish "blue men."  If I don't, I have NO idea what I'll do: my most sentimental "worldly goods" have been lost. 

On that cheerful note (though I do hope that this post was a bit of amusement for your world and will give you one more thing for the survival arsenal) I hope that all are feeling their very best, only better!  Ciao and paka!