Saint Anthony, Saint Anthony, please come around. I’ve lost my fill in the blank, and it cannot be found. If only I had a nickel for every time we had to play that game at my house. Saint Anthony has helped find soccer cleats, a missing military ID, a kid’s favorite stuffy, missing homework, you name it–there’s nothing that Saint Anthony can’t find.
If this is all foreign to you, where have you been? The Saint Anthony’s prayer finds missing items. I recently lost a set of keys, which, in my world, is quite distressing. Fortunately, I had just had a few closings, and had handed my keys over to the new buyers for each of these properties. But, my headphones are attached to them, my keys to the office – – not something I should lose sight of.
On Monday mornings, I usually do a really good reset of the house, a fresh start to the week, and I find it motivating and once I start, I usually work up to a speed that is pretty impressive. Sometimes I’ll have music on, I often listen to educational podcasts, other times I’m just in my own head. Well, this Monday, I decided I would really hit the mudroom. Unfortunately, it is a catch-all for everything coming and going. Well I’ll be darned, I went to take out a tire inflater out of a random box, and underneath the tire inflator was my set of keys. Score! I ran upstairs to tell Jay. “Look what I found in the last place I looked!” To which, Jay always responds, “f course it was the last place you looked, because you found it. You did not need to look further.” But in this case, I think it actually was the last place for me to look.
And what about this Saint Anthony? What is that about? Well, the internet says that Saint Anthony is the patron saint of missing items, and, I don’t know what to tell you, I’ve had success with it.
What are the things that you misplaced repeatedly? Car keys? Electronics chargers? That reminds me of the time where my son asked me if I had seen his phone charger. I replied. “What does it look like?” – – thinking he would tell me it was white or it was a genuine Apple product, or maybe that it had a pink cord. His answer? “It says DAD on the block”. Well then, maybe dad didn’t lose his charger – – maybe your charger was dad‘s charger.
I was feeling disorganized about my computer charger, my iPad charger, and phone chargers. There are two places in my home where I do my work – – I have a desk setup on the kitchen counter and a desk setup in my office. Then I have my actual office at 107 Main Street in Westminster, so I need a set of chargers there, too. I spent too much time looking for chargers, transporting chargers, and worse getting somewhere and being low on charge and then having no charger. A major treat to myself, I bought the three different types of chargers for all three locations, plus a bonus set to keep in my bag. I cannot even count the number of times that I have found myself in an unexpected place for a long time and fretting about my battery level on my computer, my iPad, or my phone. This is just a tiny thing I did, but it’s one thing I don’t have to worry about. Until someone steals my charger.
Car keys are another biggie for me. Jay used to live in New York City during part of the work week, and he would leave our house at 4:30 AM every Tuesday, to return Thursday night at 10 PM. We only had two big organizational mishaps when he was gone during the week over a three year period; one was that he forgot his phone. You feel quite helpless when your person has been gone for 15 or so minutes and then realizes that his phone was left behind. I would just call him and tell him to come back. Nope, that won’t work. The other mishap we had was the time where he took my car keys along with his. I was a stay at home mom of 6 and he was gone for three days at a time. Thanks to Facebook, I put a little desperate plea and Westminster’s then selectman Tom O’Toole, who I believe drove a lot for his work at the time, had the day off and volunteered to drive me to where Jay caught the train into New York, which was an hour away from here. I will never forget that small act of kindness. Otherwise, I would’ve lost my marbles home for three days with no vehicle.
Now, the real reason for my thought to write this story. Saint Anthony, Saint Anthony, please come around. I have lost my Invisalign retainer, and it cannot be found. I’ve had Invisalign trays for almost a year and a half. It was a series of 54 trays sets, so 108 invisible plastic trays. I never lost one. Until I got my permanent set of retainers (the expensive ones). One day I stupidly put them in my pocket, like a 14 year old would do, and I lost one. At least I didn’t have to worry about telling my parents I did something so stupid–because I had paid for them myself. And luckily Jay was willing to head over to my friend Bunny’s yard where I think I lost it–and spend a good 40 minutes staring at the ground, not finding the retainer. This one seems to have stumped even Saint Anthony.
