AWOL And Back Again

I can't tell you how many times my reading material disappears. Just POOF! it's gone. Most times, as with toys my girls have misplaced, my book or magazine will reappear soon enough. (Although the new magazine I bought three weeks ago and never once cracked the cover on is still MIA...)

Last evening I left the novel I'm currently reading, Time Lottery, sitting on the kitchen table. After baths and bedtime and the season premiere of The Office, I was ready to snatch it and find out what happens next.

Gone! Couldn't find it anywhere.

I searched high and low to no avail. I tried to think like a three-year-old, knowing my stinker of a daughter may well have hidden it somewhere. No luck in the kitchen cabinets or freezer. Didn't find it mixed with the clothes OR shoes in the laundry room, wedged beneath a booster seat, or placed upon a shelf. But it hadn't wandered away on its own, either.

Disappointed though I was, I picked up a non-fiction book I hadn't yet finished and read it instead...

It wasn't until the wee hours of the morning that I found the missing book, when my oldest awoke with an aching ear. I'd turned the ceiling light on (in the room the girls share) so I could see well enough to administer ear drops. Success. And then, after I'd tucked bigwrites in and as I knelt to kiss littlewrites before leaving the room, there it was. My book. Tucked between the edge of her bed and the wall, half-hidden by the billowy curtain.

Have you lost or misplaced reading materials before? How and when did you find them?