November 12 – Treasure Hunting

This evening I was shuffling through a pile of stuff on top of a small chest of drawers, looking for a check my mother says she gave me in June, but it hasn’t cleared her checking account yet. I didn’t locate the check, but I did find two silver souvenir charms I bought on vacation – in summer 2008. There were also two small wood shadow boxes, my autumn metal leaf basket that I’d been looking for (apparently I never put it away last November), a bunch of thimbles that I’d bought on eBay to get one Halcyon thimble I really wanted, plus a few other scrappy odds and ends.

Because I’m so untidy, my life is a perpetual treasure hunt. Or rather, I discover treasure when I’m looking for something else. It’s always such a nice surprise. Naturally, I find forgotten money in pockets and wadded in the bottom of my purse. But  there are also the goodies I completely forgot about, like the silver charms.

What’s frustrating, though, is when I know I have something and can’t fathom where to even start looking for it. I’m not talking just about the check. There’s a whole raft of things I know I’ve purchased over the past six months and I can’t imagine what I did with them. Sometimes a small gift will go astray, or some crafting essential that I really needed to complete a project and I don’t know where it is.

The next couple of weeks should be interesting. I’m determined to get at least the living room in order, and God only knows what I’ll turn up. Especially promising and rich is my big dining table, absolutely buried beneath flotsam and jetsam and bric-a-brac. When I finally get things sorted out, I’ll post about the best treasures I uncovered. (I really AM going to tidy up. Really. If I can just locate that darn vacuum sweeper…)