Have you ever spent minutes, hours, days or weeks searching for something that was sitting in plain sight or was right where it was supposed to be?  I do it all the time.  Here are a few of my experiences with invisible things.

I’ve lost my brain again.  This is actually my smart phone because it has a working memory and my actual brain does not.  I looked in my head-board taking everything off and out.  I dumped out my purse.  I back tracked everything I did since I last saw it.  I looked in the car: under the seats, between the seats, in the seats, in all the pockets and compartments.  I looked in all the locations around the house.  My mother suggests I try calling it.  Doh!  So I called my phone.  I could hear it ringing!  It was in my pocket.

Mom bought toilet cleaner at the store.  She told me it was on the kitchen counter as she and my dad ran away for the weekend.  I looked for it all Friday and all Saturday.  Just as I was turning out the lights to go to bed I spotted it.  It was sitting right in the middle of the counter.

My mother couldn’t find her glasses.  She had set them down in the bathroom as she was getting ready for church.  She remembered picking them up and didn’t know what she had done with them.  She searched her bathroom top to bottom.  She came and asked us for help.  We let her know that they were on her face.

It is time to leave for church and we cannot find the baby’s shoes.  The eight of us older siblings are frantically searching everywhere for them.  Finally, in frustration, my mother tells us all to get in the car.  My sister will go to church without her shoes.  We are now home and it’s time for lunch.  My mother opens the refrigerator to get out the baby’s bottle.  There are the missing shoes.  Sitting on the shelf next to the bottle.

I’m leaving the apartment and check to make sure I have my keys.  I always keep them in the side pocket of the diaper bag.  They are not there.  I dump out the diaper bag, check all the pockets and turn everything inside out.  I looked everywhere.  I spent almost a month looking for the keys and wondering what my toddler had done with them.  One day I asked my husband to get something out of the diaper bag for me.  He reached into the wrong pocket and pulled out my keys.  Right where they are always kept.

In our house we say, “If it were a snake it would have bit me.”  We are very grateful that these are not snakes because we would get bit.  All the time.  Of course we would have built up quite the immunity if they were poisonous snakes.

I have noticed over the years that there are more and more of these “snakes” in our home.  They also seem to be getting bigger.  I’m mean really.  I couldn’t find a bright blue box that was 5 x 5 x 14″ sitting right next to my hand?  I’ve even spent 10 minutes looking for my smart phone only to realize that I’m holding it in my hand.  I don’t know.  Maybe it would be better if they really were snakes.  I would definitely be more observant not wanting to actually get bit.

This has, on many occasions, enhanced the stress in my life and that of my family.  I’m learned to just smile and remember to be grateful it is not a snake.