Surely I can't be the only one, can I?
It started at the Christmas party, getting a gift card for a garden center. (Yayyyy, somebody knows me!) After folks left and I was cleaning up, I wondered where it had gone in the chaos. At least this time it only took 20 minutes to rescue it from a stack of crumpled wrapping paper, tape, candy wrappers, etc. It was a narrow escape, so I made sure to put it in a safe place.
Do you have "safe places" like mine? I'm not so sure about crooks being able to find them, but I know they always tend to be safe... from me! About a month later I remembered the card. It's not that I was ready to use it yet. I had mentally designated it for the outside garden beds, and with the ground frozen for winter, it wouldn't be called on until, say, April. Like today! That place I stashed the gift card a month earlier turned out to be a collection depot for stray pens, paper clips, remotes, papers, writing pads that accumulate from mail where people are trying to sell me something, so whenever I scratch notes or a shopping list on one of them I am supposed to be reminded of the company and do business with them.
Sure, like that ever works! If they did the kind of business I needed to patronize, they'd already have me as a customer and no reminder would be necessary. Those people don't need to mail me writing pads. The pads I do get are collected in a single spot, and are used to make notes from phone calls on, write down my work schedule, or start/finish a grocery list or similar shopping reminders. Sometime in late January I ran across the card again among the writing pads and decided that was a stupid place to have put it. So I put it in a safe place, one I was sure I'd look for it in when I was ready to go to that garden center. Steve even watched me do it.
Remember that: Steve watched me do it.
As you must have noted from my previous post, the ground is thawing, the first bulbs are blossoming, things are greening up. As a side "benefit" the squirrels have reminded me of the damage they did to my plantings last fall, defeating every single thing I tried to keep them from eating my bulbs. How did they do it? By digging out some more of them now, of course! It was time to go to the garden center for replacement, though this time the bulbs will be started indoors, and only planted back in their designated locations once any remaining ones which got missed are up and growing so I can tell where replacements are needed.
Today was supposed to be nice, according to forecasts. But yesterday I called the garden center to see if they still carried lily bulbs, since they are typically planted in fall. Yes! They had lots of varieties! Better yet, there was a sale on them, mainly to clear them out and give the store more room for summer planting stock.
It was time to dig out my gift card from its safe place. Yep, time to find that safe place. I went through my pocketbook, since it was logical I'd have put that card with all my other cards needed for shopping, right? Except it wasn't there!
OK, how about the other side of my pocketbook? I have lots of cards there too, mainly the ones relating to my health. You know, insurance cards. Pacemaker identification cards with referral phone numbers. Appointments cards for future doctor visits. Some photos like my granddaughter when she was a kid instead of a grown mom herself. Other stuff nobody else needs to know about. Even some actual cash money! Not a lot since I mostly prefer plastic. And no coins at the moment since I've been spending them at the library to get copies printed out of the bazillion tax forms I need to finish figuring our filing status and how much we either pay or get refunded. Selling a house makes that extra complicated, but hey, ask me about capital gains now, eh? At any rate, I just got the latest forms I need to fill out in order to find out whether I need to fill them out - because I'm doing it myself and the state forms' instructions simply aren't online, except when they contradict each other and require a 50-minute hold on the phone. I offered to give the library folding green instead, but got waved away from that with their comment that my being three cents short in my pile of coins for the day's copies was not an issue.
This is the long way of describing the challenge of finding a gift card in the most logical place I might have placed it. Obviously I didn't find it there. Now the house search began. Had I misremembered taking it out of the spot where the writing pads had accumulated? Check again. Nope. It was gone.
I have some cutesy places in my room where I've been known to tuck things. No, I'm not telling you what those are! But the card wasn't in those either. I checked three times, twice yesterday and once this morning. You know, the way one does when frustration makes you doubt your own brain. Did I really check all of them? Might I have been stupid enough to ........ Never mind, I hadn't, at least not this time. There was a high location I didn't bother to check because of how it hurts my shoulder to lift something down, check inside, and replace it up high, and I'm not telling you what that is either, despite it being completely empty ever since it was unpacked months ago and is likely to remain so forever. I could change my mind, you know, and actually use it again because arthritic shoulders cure themselves, and mine might when I once again become as young as I was last time I used that location. We believe in silly miracles, don't we? Anyway, I didn't bother to check that place three separate times because each time I had the thought I dismissed it. Once I almost got my hand that high, but it hurt so I stopped. I filed the information away with a reminder that I hadn't actually checked that spot but wasn't desperate enough yet to try. There simply had to be better options left.
While having breakfast this morning Steve commented that he thought he'd seen me put the card in my pocketbook back when, just the way I thought I'd remembered, but where I couldn't find it. Had I checked absolutely EVERYWHERE? OK, time to go pocket by pocket, pull everything out before putting it back just to be absolutely sure. It turns out there were places I'd missed looking. One had store coupons over a year old from where we used to shop in Arizona. Badly expired, of course. Toss. There was a card for a free tow from a car insurance company I haven't used for several years. Toss. An old shopping list I'd saved because I couldn't find one thing on it at the time. Toss. I went front to back through every cranny and nook in the thing, did a thorough cleaning, and still didn't find the card. Oh well, I could spend cash at the store, right? I put my pocketbook away where I could grab it before I left.
Then... wait! I picked it up again and checked the one spot I just skipped because I knew I had just totally emptied it out the day before in the library, the coin pouch. I'd turned the thing upside down to shake out every last coin! Apparently the gift card in its little paper folder had enough friction to stick in its corner and not drop out along with the change!
OK, I was ready to head out to the garden center. I filled the tank on the way since it was almost a 100 mile round trip, made a phone call trying to see if somebody was open to a visit (but who wasn't answering), and mentally reviewed the map of its location that I reviewed the night before, since it had been a dozen years since I'd been to that one. Once there I had a great time picking out bulbs, and even a small oddball begonia for inside the house.
When I was checking out, I was informed yes, the sale was still on, but no, their computer system was down so I couldn't use my gift card today.
Sighhhhhh......
It's OK. I can go back another time. They've got really cool stuff!