Saturday afternoon started with the search for one set of keys and a spare. It’s a real show of how put together we are at my house. We didn’t even know the spare key was missing until a whole set of keys was lost.

But we got serious and made a concerted effort to find the missing keys.

This turned into an interesting adventure full of discovery and disgust.

First, I headed off to our race gear to figure out if our spare key was somewhere in all of that. First I went through the box that has band-aids, sunscreen, shot bloks and the like. No key.

Then I moved on to our luggage since our last race of the year was in Nashville. First I opened mine. I didn’t find the key but I did, embarrassingly, find a pair of socks and underwear. I know, I am not a very good unpacker. That lack of skill is likely only rivaled by my unfortunate packing talents.

This discovery of misplaced goods that I didn’t know were lost led to me to next inspect my husband’s suitcase.

First find: a moon pie. Yes, you read that correctly. A moon pie that had been in his suitcase since November! And he claims that I can’t throw it away because he’s going to eat it. Yuck.
Then I found a brand new bottle of deodorant. Another find that we didn’t know was lost.

Then I tracked back to two duffle bags we used a month before our Nashville race. Jackpot!! I found the spare key on none other than a Hello Kitty key ring. If I’d know this key was on an HK key ring it would have been a toss up about which I’d been more upset about losing.

Meanwhile, my husband was doing the unthinkable in search of his keys. He was cleaning the garage. It’s an area that collects a lot of nonsense, boxes, recycling, bags of things that are awaiting their arrival at Goodwill or Volunteers of America. Our garage is a holding area or a procrastination post. Anyway, soon he announces that he’s found something. No not the keys but in an already discarded box from Amazon he found a still-wrapped bottle of herbs that never made it out of the box.

Yes, it’s a real crack team here at Chet Barton.

All these finds, but still no key ring, led us to where most things in our house are stored by my husband. You know, the sofa!! We pulled all the cushions off and began reaching somewhat cautiously into the inner recesses.

We didn’t find the keys BUT we did find:
27 pony tail holders
A petrified twizzler and pretzel
A pencil
A pen
And quite a lot of food crumbs. We’re a classy bunch and we do eat sitting on the sofa.

This key search continued on to a rather likely place: the key ring holder.

We soon realized we had no less than 20 keys that between the two of us we had no idea what they belonged to. So our load was a little lighter in the key department but still no sign of John’s missing set of keys.

Goes to show some things lost are never found. And some things found we didn’t know we lost. Except for that Twizzler and pretzel, those could’ve stayed lost.

Sunshine & Sarcasm,

Lowi & G