lost + pound

It's The Beloved's birthday, so it is inevitable that I'll reflect on the prospect of growing old together. Last week I found my car-key [again!] before I'd lost it. I must have been overloaded getting the groceries off the back seat of the car and allowed  the lanyard  to slip through my arthritic fingers. It showed up a lot better in the grass since I changed the colour. Looking for the other key-loss event showed up a disconcertingly numerous number of recent examples of lost & found. Those marbles must be quietly slip slipping away.

Anyway, it's not only me. The Beloved is principal carer and power of attorney for her redoubtable father Pat the Salt. A few weeks ago was on watch with him and had to nip up town to get something. With the approach of pension day, the pension and credit union bag  was on the kitchen table - in full view of any burglar who had climbed over the gate (or indeed 2 m of box-hedge), sneaked past the dog and walked round the back of the house. That would never do, so she put the bag in a safe place. >!poof!< it disappeared. Finding it wasn't helped by having two houses, both alike in dignity and 70km apart, where it might be. I won't reveal where the bag turned up [but it did!] because I know some of you may [inadvertently] share the information with your sketchy cousin who is desperate to service their drug habit. 

At least the bag turned up in a time frame nearer to 13 days than the 13 years it took for a carrot to find this Canadian lady's diamond ring. Ring seeking carrots are, apparently A Thing: Sweden. I read a Quora story of a woman who put her pearl necklace in a safe-place and didn't see it for 30 years when she was widowed and downsizing and the necklace appeared hooked on the back of the marital bed's head-board.

Hearing the lost and found story, a good friend of ours said it was better to leave everything valuable in a reasonably accessible place OR in a concrete bunker at the bottom of the garden. Burglars will literally turn your house over, quickly and efficiently, until they find what they assume to be present in your empty/sleeping home. And they don't have time to clear up the mess afterwards. And getting ritualistic about always hanging the car keys on the same hook in the kitchen only works until it doesn't. But, for sure, the more stuff we have the easier it is to having things hidden in plain sight.