Wuvooh Mommy: October 2008

Erma Bombeck, a well-known humor columnist and my personal hero, wrote several articles revolving around the mystery of her missing socks. She would put a matching pair in the dryer, and only one would come out....every single time. She had several theories, of course, from alien abductions to "sock heaven," but none of them could be proven. I strongly suspect that, when she passed away over a decade ago, the mystery still plagued her.

In my household, socks are not the problem. We've got socks coming out of our ears. Dozens of them.

Some are ancient and so stretched out that they slide down your ankle and gather in the toes of your shoes as you walk. Others have holes so big you have to examine them carefully before you can figure out which end to put your foot into. And still others are new looking and in good shape....but neither Chris nor myself ever purchased them and we're certain no one gave them to us.

Of course, out of all the socks overflowing from our closets/hampers/couch cushions, we only have three pairs that actually match each other. But that's only a problem if you let it be.

Chris doesn't mind wearing mismatched socks.

"Who's going to see them?"

And he's right. No one will.

It's not like they're even a different color. We're a family of sock bigots, you see....only white socks are allowed to come through our front door. And among those that have spontaneously regenerated, white seems to be the preferred color as well.

So really, the differences in our socks are quite subtle. Some have gray soles, while others only have a gray patch at the heel and toes. Some are completely white, but have a thin gold band at the top. Some are identical, except for the color of the word "Hanes" across the bottom. And some are merely stitched differently.

This doesn't bother Chris at all. When he folds laundry, he doesn't even look twice at the pairs he's matching up...let alone when he's actually putting them on. But it drives me insane.

I refuse to fold a pair of mismatched socks, however minor the difference. I'll wear them, but I won't fold them.

I'm not sure how much of that is my mild O.C.D., and how much is my deep-seated (yet completely subconscious) hatred of folding laundry. But either way, as I said earlier, socks are not really the problem in my house.

Chris and I have been married for eight and a half years and, in that time, we've discovered a disturbing phenomenon. We have never purchased a set of bowls, knives, glasses, or silverware that didn't slowly disappear over time. We always have coffee mugs, of course...I suspect the caffeine makes them immortal.

But still, not a week goes by in which I don't end up scouring my cupboards for a mixing bowl that I swear I saw a few days earlier. Or, better still, I pour milk over my cereal and spend the next hour searching for a clean spoon...only to discover that we have four dirty ones in the sink.

FOUR!! Who has four spoons???

In this economy, many couples sit at their kitchen table and wonder where all the money went. Chris and I sit and wonder where our steak knives could possibly have gone.

Why must we suffer like this?

To be fair, the mixing bowls can probably be explained. We usually use them for leftovers and shove them to the back of the fridge. Then, six months to a year later, we need the room for groceries so we use a pair of salad tongs to remove the fogged up, foil-covered bowl.

Then we spend the next thirty minutes trying to remember what the heck we put in the bowl to begin with until, finally, one of us gathers enough courage to peek inside. Sometimes we can figure it out, sometimes we can't.

Sometimes it growls at us, but we can never seem to catch it on tape.

I usually tell Chris to put it on the back porch and run the hose in it for a good soaking, after which we completely forget about it until the water evaporates and the leftovers get sun-baked into the plastic. Then we throw it away.

On rare occasions, I deem it a lost cause and we throw it away immediately.

So I guess it's no wonder that we have a shortage of bowls. Even the glasses can be explained, given a large enough time period. Glasses break, after all.

But still, that doesn't explain the eating utensils!

I have never, ever sanctioned the disposal of silverware and it's not like a stainless steel spoon can break. And, with small kids in the house, we've kept an extremely close eye on our knives.

So where are they going? Utensil Heaven? Or maybe there's a black hole in the back of my dishwasher that magnetically pulls the silverware in and leaves all the coffee mugs behind. I find it hard to believe that a burglar would ignore the electronics in my house and quietly filch the cutlery instead.

And all of the dishes seem to be accounted for so there goes Mother Goose's theory.

Actually, I'm ashamed to say that I've long suspected Chris of smuggling them to work and losing them there, but he insists that he's innocent. I want to believe him, but what other explanation is there? I hardly leave the house anymore, let alone pack a lunch to bring...so I know it's not me. And I have yet to find any of them littered among the kid's toys.

I'm completely stumped and it's driving me crazy. Here I am, left to chew on this mystery until it's a bloated mass in my mouth and I can neither swallow it nor spit it out. How did Erma handle it for so many years?!

No way, I refuse to let this beat me! When I die someday, it's not going to be with the fear that Heaven is actually run by missing spoons and I'll get turned away at the gate.

No, I have what Erma didn't have. Technology.

Video surveillance is impractical, but GPS technology is advancing every year. It won't be long before I can attach something completely inconspicuous to the handle of my steak knife and be able to track it anywhere on the globe.

All I have to do is bide my time. Until then, I'm going to start looking for a way to put a digital lock on the silverware drawer.

And perhaps I can start storing the knife block upstairs in our gun safe...

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Friday, October 24, 2008

Oldest Trick in the Book

Sunday, October 19, 2008

And the Dish Ran Away With the Spoon

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