Lost Keys

I found my keys.

I stared at the carpet under the dining room table

The bastards went missing on Saturday. I had them on Friday. I walked the damned dogs on Friday. I wouldn’t have made it back into the apartment without them. Then on Saturday I didn’t see them as we were rushing out the door and I shrugged it off.

Saturday night we were out of the city, and I was driving, so I had those keys, but not the house keys. When Sunday rolled around and I began to wonder.

As soon as I began to wonder, the panic set in.

I checked all the jacket pockets. I went through the tangle of scarves in the coat closet and folded them and put them away for summer. I checked all my purses, even the ones I haven’t carried in months. I crawled around the apartment on my belly, looking under furniture. I stared at the carpet under the dining room table. I took the cushions off the couch and checked there. Twice.

I complained to Twitter. Repeatedly, and often.

I got sympathy from friends and the sort-of-strangers who respond to my random-ass tweets.

I accused people I live with.

I ran through the sequence of the weekend over and over.

I remembered that I had eaten at City Hall (a TriBeCa restaurant, not Mike Bloomberg’s office). We sat in a booth. I am a clutz: maybe I left my keys in the booth. I called. They are closed on Sundays.

I stewed and fretted some more. I tweeted about it. I blamed my children, my husband, and the cat.

Monday rolled around. Oh, no! I thought. No keys! I did Monday things, like going to PT, remembering a lunch date, returning the birthday camera that arrived broken. I used that last set of spares I could find. (Understand: I have three children, so I keep plenty of spare keys normally.) I crafted a note for the letter carrier, in the hopes of enticing her to ring the bell and let me fetch my mail from the locked mailbox. 

But where were the keys?

I called City Hall. The woman who answered hadn’t had any keys turned in, but you never knew. She thought I should check back when the night manager arrived, around 3 pm.

I went to PT, ate Japanese with my friend (she’s set a date!), stood in line at B&H. On my way home I stopped by City Hall and asked if perhaps they’d found my keys. The night manager had a set of keys in the drawer, but alas they were someone else’s.  He was so disappointed for me that he offered me a glass of wine at the bar. This is a restaurant that fired up generators and fed the neighborhood before the power was back for everyone else after Hurricane Sandy (or Superstorm Sandy, or Huge-Pain-In-The-Sandy-Ass or Frankenstorm Sandypants or whatever you want to call it). I like City Hall.

I did not have a glass of wine.

I did walk the dogs. Tweeted some more about my lost keys, soliciting the sympathy of strangers.

On Twitter they told me to check the fridge, the couch cushions, and the fish tank. My children suggested I check the pockets of my jackets.

I searched some more.

Tuesday I had Pilates. I made some jokes about lost keys and about trying to use my shoulders to straighten my knees. After Pilates, I made the long and lovely drive to the barn to ride. But first, I checked my car. Maybe I had dropped them there. 

I hadn’t.

At the barn I half-heartedly checked my tack trunk (I had been there on Saturday, but I didn’t recall having those keys in the barn on Saturday). 

I had a fun ride, and a surprisingly easy drive home. We had a nice dinner at Sarabeth’s, and I started to accept that I was not going to find my keys.

Today I woke up before I had to, and had a full 45 minutes to have snugs with the cat. This is a very important part of his day, probably second most important to him, right behind that bowl of breakfast kibble he demands from the Bacon Provider.  After that, I had too much green tea, which is how I like to start my day now that I’ve given up coffee. I checked my email, did a little laundry.

Something in the laundry made me think again about Saturday, when we went riding and then had dinner in Rhinebeck and then went and saw Mahler’s 2^nd at the Fisher Center at Bard. I looked at the bag I carried that day, with last weekend’s riding clothes still inside it (Yes, dirty. Don’t judge. You’re the one reading an essay about lost keys, after all.). There was a vest I had briefly worn, but took off because it was too warm.

I knew as soon as I lifted it, but the uneven heft of the garment: I had found my keys.