It's not just bird feeders that mysteriously go missing around here. (Cf. my recent "Weekend" post.) Yesterday, when I was going to the hospital for my scan, I couldn't find my wristwatch. I only wear the watch when I go out; but especially when I'm going somewhere by bus, and/or have appointments to keep, I really miss it if I'm not wearing it. (My phone usually rests in my handbag except when I'm using it to take photos.) When I get home, I normally (automatically, by habit) take it off and put it on top of the chest of drawers in the hall. And if it's not there, I will usually find it either on the kitchen table, my bedside table, the coffee table next to my TVchair, or the desk in my study...
Yesterday, it was not to be found in any of those places, so I had to leave home and manage my bus travels and hospital appointment without it (frequently checking the time on my phone instead).
When I got back home, I resumed my search. Besides the most likely places, I also looked for it in a lot of extremely unlikely ones - but to no avail.
I also could not remember when it was that I had last worn it. Sunday, I did not go out all day. Monday, I was only out for a very short walk. I might have worn the watch then - but not necessarily. Tuesday was laundry day. I probably did not wear the watch then as I had the phone with me down to the laundry room. And last week I did not walk any further than the cemetery either, and might or might not have worn the watch... But if I did, could perhaps the wristband have broken so that I had dropped it somewhere outdoors...? It did not seem very likely, but then neither did it seem likely that I had managed to "lose" the watch within my own flat!
After another indoors search this morning, I gave up, and decided that I had better just buy a new one. My "lost" one was very far from new anyway, and of no great value. It was another sunny day without snow and ice, so a good day for errands. I went for a walk into town, to a watch shop there, and bought myself a new, cheapish, rather similar one.
After that purchase, I took a bus to the shopping centre "across town" for some other errands (more about that in some other post); and from there another bus back to the railway station, and then another 15 min walk back home from there.
Later in the afternoon, I was going to take out some garbage to the bins at the corner of the building. I opened a drawer in the hall bureau and grabbed my set of "basement" keys - which includes the keys to the laundry room and my basement storage rooms, and is on a neck strap.
As I picked them up, something came loose from the knuckled up neck strap... Guess what?
Mystery solved. Obviously, on Tuesday - laundry day - my watch had been lying in its usual place on top of the chest of drawers in the hall. Coming up from my last turn to the laundry room, I had put down the key-strap on top of it, and then when I put the keys back in the drawer, the watch had got entangled in the strap and went down in the drawer with those keys... Just a look in the drawer during my serach was not enough to detect it; and when going out yesterday and today, I used another set of keys that I keep in my handbag.
So now I have two...! (Old one, left. New one, right.)
I had to laugh, because I even said to the girl who sold me the new watch in the shop, that "if nothing else, buying a new one is probably the best way to get the old one to turn up"...
