Land of the Lost

So, I spent the first real morning of my vacation in my basement, looking for my bike lock. Monday was the official start of my vacation, but I didn't finish my quarterly proofreading project til yesterday afternoon, so those first two days didn't really count.

My basement is not a pretty place. It's not finished, for one thing, and it gets wet when it rains, so everything down there has to be up off the ground. And there are a lot of things down there. Before I moved here, I lived for seven years in an attic apartment with a massive amount of storage space. Because I am so bad at moving, and because I didn't take any time off from work before I moved, so I was doing all my packing evenings and weekends, I ended up moving a number of boxes directly from the storage space in my old apartment to the basement. And then my parents decided that once I had a basement of my own, that meant that all of the boxes of my stuff sitting in their basement could be transferred. So, there are a lot of boxes.

Two summers ago, my first summer off, I made an effort to tackle the basement and made a bit of progress. Last summer, not so much. This summer, it's on the list. But it wasn't my plan to tackle it today.

But I can't find my bike lock. My bike is in the garage, there is a bike lock key on my key chain, but there is no lock. I am perplexed. So, the basement is the logical place for it to be. I am not always a regular bike rider, but with the $4 gas and all, and given that I live across the street from the bike path, it seemed like it would be nice to be able to do at least my local errands on my bike. So, I was thinking this morning that I could ride my bike into town and get the paper. I can still do that without the lock, but I can't then go to the library or the grocery store. Hence the search.

I am sad to report that though there are many, many things in my basement, there is no bike lock. (Or if there is, it's well hidden.) I know, though, that the minute I buy a new one, the old one will turn up because that's just the way that these things go.

Now, the stranger thing than the bike lock that's lost is my bread knife. It has vanished. I am sure I used it on Saturday night to cut the end of a corn cob off. But Sunday morning, when my brother and nieces came to visit, and I was looking for the knife to cut the loaf of bread I'd just baked, it was nowhere to be found. Usually when I can't find a kitchen implement, it turns up in a drawer or a cabinet, or perhaps underneath the stove, if it's something the cats can bat around. But it is now Wednesday, and my bread knife has not reappeared. I looked in the compost, to see if somehow, I'd thrown it out with the corn husks. I looked in the trash (though, really, how can you throw a large heavy bread knife out without noticing?). I am really puzzled.

In the found category, however, is a pair of gym shorts with pockets that might come in handy, and this t-shirt, a former favorite, languishing in a drawer down there for years.

It's from 1986, the 10th anniversary of coeducation at my oh-so-enlightened college. They didn't exactly show much leadership in this particular arena. In the photos from the day of the trustees meeting in 1976 when they officially voted to go co-ed, there's a photo of all of the women faculty (maybe 5 of them) wearing these t-shirts. They were re-printed for the 10th anniversary in 1986, and I wore mine diligently for years. I think I might have to put it back into my sleeping t-shirt rotation, just for old time's sake.