Missing Pieces

Around about a month ago, my friends at The Crazy Hip Bloggers suggested the writing topic, "Missing Pieces." Specifically, they said, "We all have missing pieces in our lives. Things we have lost. Things we have yet to gain. Frames of mind we have yet to set! We want to hear all about YOUR missing pieces!"

Well, I have to say that the first thing I was missing was the topic for this article. I wasn't looking on the right place in the website, and I thought we didn't have a topic, so I freelanced. I could make some snarky remark about how the upcoming post topics might best serve their purpose if they are in the sidebar labeled, "Upcoming Topics," but I won't. (You may think I just did, but I didn't.) You see, I wouldn't say such a thing because 1 - I don't want to lose my membership title as a "Crazy Hip Blogger" and 2 - I know the people managing the site have small children, and more than one of them. Under those circumstances, they have fulfilled their obligations to get the topics up in a timely manner, regardless of where on the website they may be. The rest of the responsibility most emphatically belongs to the bloggers, because, as you will see in the rest of this post, I could do no better and probably would do a whole lot worse.

For me, missing pieces is a very literal topic. I'm missing the mates to a lot of socks, a few mittens/gloves, and lots of toys. I have outgrown toys hiding in my room, waiting to be moved to the attic, but they have been lingering there for a few months hoping to be reunited with their missing pieces.

For Christmas, Santa Claus brought Toddler a matching game with 66 pieces. I think I know where 64 are, after diligently counting them every time I put them away. I don't even want to talk about the crazy relative that sent the puzzle. (Thank you, by the way.) The toy car playset for three-year olds comes with removable pieces less than an inch tall. Actually, "removable" is really not accurate. "Hard to put in and easy to fall out" would be a better description. One of them was a little, teeny, tiny, very small, smaller than my pinky, stick figure of "Toodles" from the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. "Toodles" is Toddler's new favorite character. He asks me for it daily. My answer, sadly, is,"Toodles is wherever you dropped him last month when we first lost him. I haven't found that place yet."

We also have one of those "busy gears" toys, with all the different color gears to put on, and take off, and stack up ... and lose. All I have to say about the gear toy is this: Thank you to whichever parent donated your collection of mis-mated gears to the local thriftshop. I needed them.

Letter toys -- why yes, my alphabet is regularly missing letters like, "Z"and "U". I think we might find them when we move. Maybe not. Too bad the letters didn't come with a storage box -- preferably one that is attached to the rest of the toys.

Generally, I would have to say the biggest missing pieces we have around this house is the other half of the tupperware and the other half of pairs of socks (as I mentioned above), but to my utter astonishment, every sock I put into this weeks laundry came out the other end to be with its mate. They socks didn't necessarily come out with the same load they went in with, but nonetheless they all appeared at the end of the day. I am so astounded by this fact that I am wondering what my long-standing nemesis Entropy and Chaos are doing. I think this might be more to the "Perfect Storm" I think is brewing.