Vanishing Act in the Village

It's been just over a week since summer vacation started for kids here in Greendale.  In that short span of time, the black hole that is normally contained in my clothes dryer seems to have escaped and is threatening to overtake my whole house.

I have to admit that perhaps I am not the most organized mom, which is apparently one of those genetic traits that has passed on to my children. However, with four kids in a multitude of activities, I think I have a bit of an excuse. My husband on the other hand is very organized - with his own things that is -  but alas the kids didn't get any of those genes.

Anyway, in the nine days since school ended, at least that many things have mysteriously disappeared in this house. It started with the television remote. Now that may not come as any surprise to you, as I hear this is a common phenomenon in many households, and in fact, it happens around here every so often. This time, however, the amazing thing was how long it was missing. With the number of people using it on a regular basis, you can imagine it is in high demand and generally when it vanishes, a mass search effort goes into effect.

Finally it showed up after about five days, deep in the crack of the sofa, where my son swore he had looked repeatedly. This was about the time my mom came to visit from out of town and asked to use the telephone. She was shocked when I led her into the kitchen and handed her the receiver... ATTACHED TO A CORD. She looked at me in disbelief and said, "Even your father and I have a cordless phone, honey."

I told her we did at one time too, until it went missing once too often. When it finally broke, probably from getting lodged in the sofa once too often, it was replaced with the "old-fashioned" kind, as my kids put it. I have to say one good thing about the cordless phone, unlike the TV remote, was that it had one of those tracers on it so you knew if you followed the beeping and dug deep enough into the couch cushions, past all the pennies and stale popcorn pieces, you would find it.

I wonder why no one has invented such a system yet for TV remotes? I have decided I am going to attach a cord... a really long one... to it.

The next thing that went missing was my son's baseball shoe. Naturally this was ten minutes before he had to be at one of his games. It showed up just in time, in the most natural place one would think to look.... in a room on the opposite side of the house from the first shoe.

A day or so later, I noticed the cap was missing from the jug of milk in the fridge. No one seemed to have a clue where it was, so we got by for a day or so with a piece of plastic wrap and a rubber band until the milk was gone. Just today, the cap showed up as I was pulling a load of clean towels out of the dryer. Apparently our home's original black hole was trying to get that along with a few socks?

And the list goes on, but I won't bore you with the rest of the details. You probably have your own black hole to deal with?

Maybe the reason things seem so crazy around here this week is that I've not only been busy getting the kids settled into a new summer schedule, I've been filling in as the Patch editor while my boss, Viviana, is away at a business conference. Talk about the pressure! From constantly checking my email to coordinating freelancers to worrying about the safety of to interview wildlife, I swear I am dreaming about Google Alerts in my sleep!

Fortunately, Viv will be back soon and I can go back to my regular columnist duties here at the Patch.  In the meantime, I will try to get a handle on the quantum mechanics at our place before the problem spreads to the neighbors. After all I don't want to be the one responsbile if our next-door chihuahua, Harley, disappears one day.