The Days of Lost And Found

Yesterday was a day of loss. It was oh so very sad. For me at least.

I started the day with my weekly home blessing hour, which for those of you don't know, is from the Flylady and is a series of chores that you do for ten minutes each. It helps me get my major cleaning done in relatively little time and with much less effort. Reagan always helps out and is wonderful.

So, as per the usual I asked him to take out the trash. He gets the little cans from the bathrooms and my bedroom and takes them to the rubbish chute. He's always very good about emptying them carefully and not throwing the cans down. So when he came back to the apartment empty-handed I was surprised. "Don't worry, Mom" he reassured me, "I must have left them outside the door." Well, nope, no he hadn't. Nor had he left them in the rubbish room. No, on this particular day my son was daydreaming about God only knows what and threw not one, but TWO trashcans down the rubbish chute. He was so deep in his daydream that he didn't realize what he'd done with the first one and so turned around and threw the other one down too. He was so far out on his personal rocket ship to space that he didn't even know he'd done it. I was at a complete loss. I had to laugh.

So, I'm out a couple of trashcans. Okay, I can live with it. I'm not happy, but I'll manage. I figured he needs help concentrating so we need to do without TV for a while. He was disappointed, but since he couldn't explain to me why it was unfair, the consequence stood. I'm actually a strange parent in that if my kid can convince me that the consequence doesn't fit the action, I will change it. I want them to think and learn to articulate their point of view, and while the world isn't fair, I will try to be.

In the evening I trusted him to go with friends and his 16 year-old babysitter to the park across the street. When he came home he calmly looked at me and said, "Mom, I lost the keys." Our keys?!? The only set of keys we have since Dominic lost his in California?!? OUR KEYS???? I was a bit annoyed. I left the girls with our neighbors and headed out in the dark with flashlights to go look for them.

There actually is a point that you're so mad you don't know how to be mad anymore. For me I usually dissolve into a puddle of tears and then laugh convincing most people that I will soon need a special jacket and a padded cell. I was like that last night. And we didn't find them. "They're coming to take me away, ha ha"

So this morning we headed out (all of us) back to the school to look for the missing keys. I found them almost immediately. They were sitting nicely on a step. When I found them he said, "Oh, I put them there so they wouldn't fall out of my pocket when I was on the tire swing." And I'm left thinking, with all the drama he couldn't have told me that LAST NIGHT? But what can you do? It was another trip to another planet apparently and he didn't remember until they were found. Then when I talked to my dad he told me that he'd found Dominic's keys in the glove box in his car. Well, it seemed to me that yesterday was a day of loss, and today is the day for finding things. All in all I like today better.

Please, if anyone knows how to make a six-year-old boy come back down to Earth instead of daydreaming all the time and driving his mother straight to the funny farm, I'd love to hear it.