Well bugger… again… Soooo you know when lose something. There is a standard process that you experience. I think it’s the 7 or 8 steps for handling loss. Yes, 7 or 8, the eighth step may or may not happen. It’s always a toss up really. It just turns out that in my case, this time, I did get to experience all 8 steps.

The process breaks down as such:

• Vague unsettling: This feeling is initial feeling that something isn’t quite right, but you can’t exactly put your finger on what it is.
• Subtle realization: This step is when you begin realizing that what something you had seen a few days ago might not be where you thought it was.
• Specific local searching: This step is when you perform a very thorough search in the area you last thought you saw the missing item.
• Panicked searching: This step involves rampant random searching where you stop looking where you know the missing item was a day or so ago and begin searching in irrational and random locations. Locations like under the car seat, then in the bathroom, then under your bed, and then in your freezer. And between each new odd search spot you go back to the original location you remember the item being and search that entire room again, you know, just in case. My “just in case” rationale was that my notebook entered a time warp and if I kept going back at random intervals it might suddenly reappear.
• Grumpy pouting: This is when you realize what losing the item means to you, both emotionally and, in my case, literaturally. Long fits of profanity, both loud and whispered are commonly associated with this step.
• Slow paced random searching: This is after the panic passes and then for the next day or so you still randomly look around and keep your eyes open for the missing item, but it’s not going to disrupt your day or cause you to miss sitting down and enjoying an episode of The Big Bang Theory or The IT Crowd. Note: The time warp ideology still applies so you do still continue to look where you last saw in it, you know… just in case.
• Acceptance: This is the step where you blog to everyone that you lost your notebook, but it’s ok because such is life and on a groovy note, you get to go shopping for a new notebook.

And then in my case (yes, you nailed it Cathy) there is the one more step:

• I call it the “What the… SonofaBi… YEAH! Hehe, opps… Just kidding everyone.” step.

It was in my backpack the whole time! And I looked there at least five… teen times. You know that Pac-man book hiding fluke that happens to humans all over the world on a regular basis so it’s really not that much of a fluke, but we all call it a fluke anyway? Yeah, that’s what happened. I have a green notebook in backpack that is slightly larger than the Pillsbury Doughboy notebook. Well, the Pillsbury notebook got flipped around and ended up sliding up into the green notebook. So every time I looked in the backpack I could only see the green notebook. I never pulled the green notebook out of my backpack, but this was because there was not second notebook to be seen on either side of it.

Yeah, so opps. I guess I could feel a little silly for dedicating Friday’s post to the loss of my little notebook, but I really see no point. It just makes me laugh more than anything. Besides I take comfort knowing that it’s something that everyone has done. It’s one of those random common experiences that bring us together as a species that no one really thinks about as an experience that brings us all together. Or to put it a little more plainly it’s one of those, “Hey look! I’m just like you.” experiences.

So thanks for the support you gave when I had lost my notebook forever. And thanks for laughing at… I mean with me now that it has been returned. (I’m still not ruling out that some random time warp had something to do with it though.)

Any of you care to share your “It’s lost forever… opps… found it!” story?

Image Sources:
Google Images, key words: lost and found.