Amaryllis sillyramA

Months ago my mother took the girls out and got them easter dresses. Very pretty ones — and pink patent leather shoes to match. We brought them home and little M, the four year old, insisted on wearing her dress to bed, and I did what I usually do with objects that are causing strife. I hid it from her. What I didn’t realize at the time was that I also hid it from myself.

And I have been looking for it for weeks. And easter is on Sunday. And I can’t go to my mom and tell her I lost the dress in my own house.

I do remember putting it behind (or under?) something soft. I have been racking my brains, trying to remember where I was when I did that. What room I was in, what the soft thing was, anything. I can’t come up with it.

Places I’ve been looking:

linen cabinet
hall closet
guest room closet
corner of office
office closet
mound of clothes next to my dresser
top of big M’s dresser
top of big M’s bedroom shelf
mound of clothes next to my bed (yes, I do need better storage for my
clothes)
top of cedar chest
little M’s closet (used to be my closet) (we need more closets) (we’re working on that)
basement
laundry room

I’ve looked in all these places and more, multiple times, all the time feeling more and more frantic and ashamed. Yesterday I realized it was getting to me so much that I was taking it out on everybody around me. I mentioned to big M that I’d figured out what was bothering me, and bless his heart, he said, we’ll find it tonight. So after the girls were alseep we started looking together. And we looked all those places again. And we did not find it.

I dreamed all night about looking for that dress — and sometimes dreamed of finding it. It was not a restful sleep. But the finding dreams were very happy ones.

When I woke up, I decided to start by emptying my dresser, thinking it must be in there somewhere. So after making coffee and toasting a bagel, and dinking around for a little while, I set the girls up with an episode of Zoboomafoo and got started.

And I found it!
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transcript of chat with big M right after I found it:

me:
so, I woke up with a plan to empty my dresser, and the project is underway, but it has just been derailed

him:
doh?

me:
by which I mean, my incentive has gone away

by which I mean,

him:
you found it!

me:
:) :) :) :)

him:
where was it?

me:
I am crying with relief. I had dreams of finding it ALL NIGHT

in the dresser drawer, not buried too far down actually :)

him:
ah nice

me:
so relieved.

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…and I remain so so so relieved. I wonder if one of the places I found it in my dreams was in the dresser. I think it must be so. Yay dreams! Yay brain! Brain has redeemed itself. (LUCKY FOR IT.)

Little M pulled these letters out of a bowl and put them all up on the little fridge all by herself, undeterred by the two missing letters or the lack of space.

Ha, I suppose the title ought to have been Alphabe!

HAIL! We’ve had hail a bunch of times this week and last week. I love it! And I love the sunny then pouring then sunny then hailing then sunny then windy days we’ve been getting. If only it were warmer, it would be like spring! I can’t wait for spring!

Then there was the snow last weekend up in the mountains. It was really fun to get up there and play out in the snow.

Our place butts up against National Forest land. Seems like the neighborhood is less likely to get logged? Maybe? Anyway, neat sign.

PROPERTY BOUNDARY National Forest Land behind this sign

After our walk, Big M and Little M built a snowman family. No pictures of the finished project, alas. They had carrot noses, and excellent stick arms. The snow mommy had a pretty nice rack (or as the, ahem, bra area is known in our family, milkies).

Meanwhile, inside the cabin, little C was trying on daddy’s mittens.

And walking around all cute like.

Next time: Escape from Snowy Mudhole!

One day recently I ran across a couple of interesting bumpers. This first one is a bit blurry, I just barely managed to get the picture before it got away. But I could not resist trying to get a picture. In addition to the Darwin fish, they have one sticker that says I’M KILLING THE EARTH! and one that says RESPECT CERTAIN ELDERS and I just thought both of those were great. (As always, click to embiggen.)

Then there’s the sign in the background that says 15TH AVE BRIDGE PROJECT BRIDGE CLOSED. This sign is in our neighborhood. The closed bridge is in our neighborhood. The bridge was closed last May for some kind of super complicated safety upgrade. We wish the bridge would be closed forever! Even though it’s not very convenient to have to find an alternate route if we’re going north. See, the street we live on used to be a busy thoroughfare , and now it’s more like a cul de sac. We’ve been joking about hiring a saboteur so we can keep our peaceful street. But the sign, oh, the sign. Who did up this sign? It would have been so simple to make it make sense. 15TH AVE BRIDGE CLOSED. Simple as that.

Ah well, too late anyway. The bridge is supposed to open up again in April, which is [gasp!] next month. So sad for us. (Pssssst! Know any reliable saboteurs?)
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Next! This one was parked in my neighborhood the same day. I actually drove around the block to come back and take a picture of this one, because, wtf?

I even googled “jesus fish elephant” and did not get any significant results. Maybe my google fu needs work, or maybe my imagination needs censoring. Whatever. I’ve been drinking.