Car Keys

"Where are the keys?"....It's one of life's daily mysteries, at least at my house. It falls right in line with a few other puzzlers, like where on earth the one missing sock from every load of laundry ends up, or how hangers grow legs at night and form a mass exodus out of the closet. The sock thing is especially perplexing. If one sock is lost from each load of laundry washed, then shouldn't there, in theory, at some point in time, be an even number of socks? I stink at math, but this makes sense to me. Yet, somehow, there, at the top of the basket or drawer, is the perpetual lone sock. (Is there a Seinfeld episode about this? If not, there should be.) And the hangers.....I used to think they only escaped at night, but this is not the case. I can take my jacket off the hanger to put it on when I leave the house in the morning, without having removed the hanger from the closet, and when I return that same afternoon and attempt to rehang my jacket........no hanger.........I really need to find the Twilight Zone theme song online and cue it to play at certain spots in my posts. So, where do all the vanished socks and hangers go? Are they all together somewhere, in some sort of domestic Bermuda Triangle? I would really like to know, because I think that must be where my car keys are right now. Over the years, I have locked my keys in the car. I have locked them in the house. I have scoured the entire house for three hours, before finally finding them in the bottom of the purse I originally looked in. But never, until today, have my car keys completely vanished. All I can figure is that they have journeyed to the land of socks and hangers. Although, while the disappearances of the socks and hangers remain a complete mystery, I do have suspicions about what may have happened to the car keys: pregnancy brain. That's right. There have been studies conducted that have proven that women actually loose brain cells while pregnant. And the part of our brain that normally remembers things gets all scrambled up. This is what causes us to put the full carton of milk in the cupboard instead of the fridge, or the trash in the laundry hamper, or the car keys in the....... trash? Yes. Due to pregnancy brain, I think I may have inadvertently thrown my car keys in the garbage. Yesterday was a particularly hectic day. I came home with a trunk full of groceries. I am currently driving the "blue beast" (Dirk's car), because our van is in the shop being fixed. (we don't want a litter of mini Dodge Caravans running around after all- okay- maybe repaired would have been a better word, but I will not backspace!- the real story is long, and you don't want to hear it, trust me- so now that I have officially created the longest run-on sentence inside of a set of parenthesis, I will continue) The garage door opener happens to still be in the van, which is in the shop. So, when I came home with a trunk full of groceries, it was pouring rain, as it had been all day (we apparently now live in Seattle) and I was unable to park in the garage. So, I was running (or waddling quickly) back and forth from trunk to house with armfuls of groceries while trying not to get soaked. This morning, as I was frantically searching every corner, drawer, nook, and cranny of our house in attempt to find the elusive keys and get to my doctor's appointment on time, I retraced my steps from yesterday, and realized the only other place they could possibly be was in the trunk of the blue beast. So, I called my dear husband in a pregnant panic ( which, believe me when I tell you, is much worse than a regular panic) and told him my predicament. Within minutes, he was in the rental car on his way from Blackfoot to unlock the trunk. When my knight in shining armor arrived and laid bare the belly of the beast....... no keys (Twilight Zone). He took his key off the ring and I raced to my appointment, which I ended up being only ten minutes late for. The only other place that the keys could have possibly ended up is in the trash. I think I must have placed them in the top of one of the grocery bags to free up my hands after opening the trunk, and somehow left them in there when I threw the bags away. I would be digging through our trashcan at this very moment, but as Murphy would have it, today is trash day, and about two minutes after the trashcan possibility occurred to me, the dump truck showed up at our curb.

Given the recent natural disasters around the world, it wasn't too hard to find a little perspective about losing my keys. They are, after all, just a set of keys. I can have them recut. At least my entire home is not covered in water, or dashed into a million pieces by a tornado's fury. I'm not saying it wasn't frustrating/aggravating/perplexing....... but it is certainly not life-altering. We all have our "lost car key" days, whether we have literally lost our car keys, or just our marbles....... It's these days when we often receive the rare gift of seeing first hand who is really there for us, whether it's a husband who leaves work and drives 30 minutes home to unlock the trunk, or a grandma who offers to pick you up and take you to your appointment, or a mom who takes you to a nice lunch and makes you laugh until you forget what you were ever frazzled about. I can name several other people who had no idea of my predicament who would have been there in a heartbeat if I needed their help. It is comforting and humbling to know that there are so many people in my life who would drop everything important in their day for such a little thing. There is no doubt in my mind that they would do the same if something truly terrible happened. So, in a strange way, I'm glad I lost my keys. Sometimes it takes losing a little something to realize how much you truly have. A day that began with a minor misfortune is ending with a profound sense of gratitude. I was also reminded today of God's sense of humor (and trust me, He does have one). After turning my house upside down while waiting for Dirk this morning, I went out and searched for the keys in the back seat of the beast. I thought perhaps they had fallen back there somewhere while I was getting Hyrum out of the car after shopping. I reached my hand back behind the seat and picked up something that jingled and felt strangely like a set of keys. It was indeed a set of keys....bright red, yellow and blue plastic ones. They must have been there from Hyrum's baby days, when I still drove the blue beast. Yes, God definitely has a sense of humor. But, just maybe, it was also a subtle reminder of what I really need to be focusing on right now. The world around me may be spinning out of control, but soon I will have a tiny person completely depending on me who will have no idea what's going on in the outside world. So, maybe a lost set of keys and a dose of pregnancy brain is exactly what I needed today!