lost and found

Now that we live in one house and are not bouncing from one state to another several times a year I don't misplace half the things I used to. "I guess we left the piano books behind in Maine, I'll have to get the neighbor to pick them up and mail them back to Virginia." I jettisoned many duplicate items that we didn't need, giving them to the thrift store. But we still live in a big house (my guess is about 3200 square feet) and there are 8 people living in it, most of whom tend to lose items on a daily basis. Apparently as Mommy, I am required to keep a mental inventory of every item within these 4 walls, no matter how small. I am asked, sometimes every hour, where a pair of earrings could be, where Geraldine the giraffe has been left behind, where a certain camping item would be found. The other trick I am supposed to have down pat is a running mental list of everyone's consumables, such as shampoo and soap and replenish them without any notification. I really hate being accused of running out of something the evening after I hit the commissary for my weekly shop. 

Most of the time I can easily find whatever a person is looking for as I keep the house pretty tidy, but this morning turned into complete chaos, not for the first time, when a child couldn't find a certain essential bit of their school uniform. Usually the children wear their fancier attire on Wednesday when they walk over to the church for Mass, but since today is a Holy Day of Obligation it was switched. At 6:30am Mary started screeching that her oxford cloth shirt was missing. We searched everywhere, including through the four closets, under the beds, and in pretty much every room of the house. No shirt and since we didn't have a duplicate, she wore Will's uniform dress shirt to school. (By the way, this level of freaking out NEVER happened during our years of homeschooling, in fact Mary often did her schoolwork in her pajamas) After the boys finished their studies this morning, I again started looking for the missing shirt, finally finding it stuffed in Charlie's dresser drawer. 

This must be the week for finding lost items, so far I have found a missing digital camera, a pair of $60 Felco pruners I thought had been lost in the woods for 2 years, and some pictures of the girls from last year's ballet recital. Now the only thing I have to worry about finding is my sanity if I am asked one more time today to hunt for something.