random thoughts – Day 1,296 – (Wednesday) – lost time

The day began with a challenge. I couldn’t find my watch in any of the usual places – not on the dresser where it goes at night, or at my desk where it sometimes comes off during the day when it bugs me, or near the couch where I take it off it when it bugs me while using the living room laptop.

There was a frantic check of additional locations including the bathroom and my purse and my work bag, but with no luck. The whole time, I was trying to remember the last time I wore it, but came up empty. I definitely didn’t have it on Sunday and remember leaving for dance class and thinking that I hadn’t put on my ring and watch. Beyond that one timestamp of recognizing I wasn’t wearing it, I’ve got nothing. The ring was sitting on the dresser waiting for me when I next thought of it, but the watch is missing in action.

Fall color, finally.

It’s not the end of the world, and it will likely turn up somewhere. It just feels weird not wearing it after being used to wearing it for a few years, and troublesome not knowing where something I wear almost daily has gone. 

This afternoon, I went for a walk, and as I left the building, I looked at my wrist to check the time. There was no watch. Not a big deal, because I had my phone with me, which also is a clock, but mostly a camera. During the walk along the canal, I finally saw some fall colored leaves growing through the chain link fence. 

It’s more than likely the watch will show up somewhere, and when it does, it will be a "Doh!" palm slap moment, and then I’ll remember how and why it landed wherever it was found.

The other possibility is that it will never turn up, like other beloved objects that went permanently missing. I once had gorgeous earrings with pale blue stones set in white gold, made by a designer in Korea. X2 had returned to a market and searched to find the seller after I had admired them. One day they just disappeared. Poof. Gone. I was crushed. Still kind of am.

A few years later, there was the silver skull head ring with yellow citrine eyes, bought for myself after the divorce from X2. It was often admired by a boyfriend who would slip it onto his pinky finger and tell me I should give it to him and one day it disappeared. There was the amazing sweater with the dragon on the front that my grandmother knitted for me that disappeared from the laundry while living with the same ex who liked the skull ring. Poof. Gone. Never seen again.

There have been other missing items. So many beloved trinkets. And now my watch, the presently misplaced, hopefully not permanently missing time keeper. It’s not exactly beloved, and there is hope. It’s still in the moderately hopeful “it could still turn up somewhere” stage. Weirder things have happened.