Where is My Purse?

SUMMARY: In which we get a tour, of sorts, of the Taj MuttHall house.

No, this isn't a repeat of the Facebook meme from the beginning of the month ("I like it on..."), for which I posted in my status, "I'm not sure whether I like it there, but it often ends up being in the pile of dog hair in the hallway."

This is real, and it is making me nuts. As in, It Has To Be Here Somewhere Because Nothing Else Makes Sense--But Then How Come I Can't Find It? nuts.

So--Saturday morning, I had it in my office to charge the USDAA Nationals live webcast to my credit card. That was the last non-automatic thing charged to my card. Then I packed up and went to the movies with a friend. ("Red." Liked it; light, entertaining action fare.) While there, had a large popcorn that I ate only part of. Had a chicken walnut salad that I ate only part of.

After the movie, when stopped in at Cold Stone Creamery. I was carrying my purse, a popcorn bag, and a salad container. I hung the purse on the chair because it was a little tiny table and we needed the room for my other stuff and our ice cream. We sat and ate (I had raspberry sorbet mixed with chocolate chips and crumbled heath bar--ooooooohhh yeah!), I collected my stuff, we walked to our cars which were parked side by side, I drove home, put the salad in the fridge, and sat and watched the USDAA Nationals through most of saturday afternoon and evening and Sunday morning and early afternoon. Then I did quite a few billable hours here at my computer the rest of Sunday.

Monday, I worked an 11-hour day here, with breaks only for a walk over to the park with the dogs.

Tuesday, I also worked pretty solidly through, finally getting ready to go out to the theater with another friend, and I checked to be sure my purse was in the car.

It wasn't.

Not under the front seat where it usually is.

Not anywhere around the front seats (although the popcorn bag was still there, and THREE baseball caps for wearing at dog agility, plus a blue leopard-spotted plush slip lead for dog agility).  No purse.

It wasn't in the back. I even looked IN the dog crates, although given my schedule since Saturday, there's no reason it would have been there. Just being thorough.

I looked in the garage on either side of the car in case, somehow, it had fallen out and I hadn't noticed it. Didn't seem likely, but I looked anyway. No purse.

And it wasn't in the house in any of the two or three possible places. Like in the pile of dog hair in the hallway, next to the table where I keep my car keys, which is where I usually drop it when I occasionally take it into the house.

I couldn't remember when I had been in my sister's car to go out to dinner with them so I called them; turns out, it was Friday night, but they checked anyway; no purse in their car.

Fortunately, I hadn't yet put the theater tickets into my wallet, so I drove downtown, enjoyed the show immensely ("Secret Order," exploring ethics and altruism versus money and glory in scientific research, go see it if you have a chance), borrowed 3 bucks from my friend to get my car out of parking hock and drove home.

When I got home, I looked everywhere where I might usually put my purse when I (very rarely) take it into the house. At the kitchen table, where I work on my bill paying and budgets. Nope.

At my desk, where I buy things online.

I even got on my hands and knees and looked under the desk and behind the things under the desk. Nope. Although there was something very cute there for a while.

Then I figured it had to be at Cold Stone Creamery, since I couldn't actually remember picking it up and taking it to the car. But odd that no one would've tried to contact me.  They didn't open until 11:00 this morning, but I called first thing.  They called the people who worked there Saturday. Nope, they hadn't seen anything.

So then I started looking in all the places that it made no sense for the purse to be.  Did I stop and grab a soda from the soda shelves on my way into the house and set the purse there? Not likely, and sure enough: Nothing.

Did I rush home and go into that room where, sometimes, you know, you have to rush to after you've been out and about for a few hours? Well,  nope. Dog toys, reading material, dragon seat cover, the usual.

But if you ever get a chance to read the cover article in this issue of Time, it's quite interesting!

 Way back when I first moved here, 9 years ago, I sometimes hung it from the handle of the coat closet in the front hall. Haven't done so in many years. But looked anyway.

I even peeked into the Official Dining Room, which tends to be the Official Project Spot. No purse. I couldn't remember having gone in there for a week, anyway, to check something in the Yellow Pages.

I checked next to the phone in the kitchen in case, for some reason, I had wanted to use the phone list from my purse, which incidentally is identical to the phone list by the phone, so it didn't seem likely, but it's gotta be SOMEwhere, right?

I didn't even go into the Living Room, which I haven't been able to get into for weeks because I've been working on a photo project involving dog agility ribbons. I did peer around the parts I could get to, though, in case the purse had fallen in there. (From out of thin air? Dunno where it could have fallen FROM. But it HAS to be here SOMEwhere, right????)

I even looked here.

I also called the shopping center where Cold Stone Creamery lives, and they checked, and they'd had nothing turned in.

I called my friend with whom I saw the movie and had ice cream. She remembers that I hung my purse on the chair because she decided to drop her purse on the floor. But she doesn't remember one way or the other whether I took the purse with me along with my popcorn and salad when we walked back to the car.

I even tried calling my cell phone (which incidentally has about $200 worth of unused prepaid calling on it), but I usually have it turned off, and sure enough, I just got my voice mail.

So here are the options as I see it:

• I left it on the chair at Cold Stone Creamery, and someone with ill intent took it, removed everything of value, and dumped the rest in the trash, where I'll never see it again. In which case  my discount card for the theaters that I just paid $60 for is gone, and so it my point-and-shoot digital camera, my driver's license, all my credit cards, my check register, my cash (fortunately only maybe $20 at the moment), my Weight Watchers membership/history book, all my store membership cards--you know the routine--are gone. And, oh yeah, my cell phone. And in which case right now I need to start making phone calls and visits to banks and DMVs and things like that, which considering that I have a tight deadline this week at work and really need to be putting in long hours, that doesn't sit so well.
• I took it away from Cold Stone Creamery, so it was in my car, and someone walked through the gate into my back yard, into the side garage door, opened the car, took my purse (and nothing else from anywhere) and left again. This assumes that they'd have a reason for trying this, and I can't think of any reason and this doesn't seem likely.
• It's GOT TO BE HERE SOMEWHERE. But where? I can think of nowhere else it could be. I swear I've looked everywhere that it could remotely possibly be, and I've not had that "ah ha!" moment where I remember that I did something odd. I thought that maybe by taking pictures of all the weird places, maybe it would get me looking in more oddball places and I'd find it. But no. Really, I can't think of any reason why I'd have taken it out of my car after Saturday's trip out.

Or could this be some odd karma from May of 2009, remember when everything was stolen from my car except that, through a weird and unlikely series of unusual events, my wallet wasn't taken? And I was SO relieved that, although I had to be screwed by my insurance company and spend a year gradually finding replacements for everything large and small that was taken, I at least didn't have to go through cancelling and replacing everything in my wallet?

Meanwhile--out of groceries, low on gas, all that.  I think I updated my list of "what's in my wallet" sometime within the last year, but that doesn't make it easier to get everything done. Very scary. I think I'd better start making some phone calls, because, in fact, I do NOT think It's Got To Be Here Somewhere any more.

Eventually continued here: What It Costs for a Purse to Go Missing