Search Party

Youngest Sister asked me earlier today for a recipe I had scribbled nearly twenty years ago in a spiral-bound notebook with index card pages. Tonight when I went to look for my little spiral-bound index card recipe thingy, which usually sits (appropriately, I think) on the cookbook stand in the dining room (behind a prettier cookbook), I found instead Hubby's book on playing darts. I had to ask Hubby where he had moved my recipe book thingy to. For the purposes of this post, it's important to know that this is the only spiral-bound index card notebook in our household. The conversation went like this:

Me: Do you know where my spiral-bound index card recipe thingy is? It was on the cookbook stand.

Hubby: I stuck the cookbooks in the drawer of the hutch.

Me, after rifling through both drawers of the hutch in vain: I don't see it.

Hubby, coming in from the living room: What did you say it looked like?

Me: It's spiral-bound, 4"x6" index cards? With recipes on them?

Hubby: Why do you sound grouchy?

Me: I'm confused as to why it seemed like a good idea to move the cookbooks off the cookbook stand and instead put a book about darts on the cookbook stand.

Hubby: Uh, there wasn't room for everything.

I do not see the point of arguing with that logic. He continues digging through the various drawers and cabinets on the hutch and I sit down in a dining room chair to watch. From one drawer he pulls out a shiny, black 9"x12" folder, which is also full of recipes and he holds it up to me, questioningly.

Me, sighing: It's a 4"x6" spiral-bound index card notebook thingy.

He puts the folder back, but seems to think* my refusal to accept a 9"x12" folder when I'm looking for a 4"x6" spiral-bound index card thingy is pure stubbornness and a moral failing on my part. The fact that the folder is full of entirely different recipes than the index card notebook is, of course, irrelevant.

Next, he finds a packet of individual index cards and holds them up to me. They are all blank.

Hubby: Were you using these?

Me: It's a--

Hubby, proverbial light bulb just this side of literally visible above his head: But this doesn't have a spiral...

He puts them back. I stand up at this point and wander toward the kitchen, where the spiral binding of the actual 4"x6" index card notebook thingy jumps out at me from a shelf in the kitchen. I pull it out and hold it up for Hubby to see.

He says, "Oh that? I could've told you where that was...I didn't know you were looking for that."

*He doesn't say any of this. He doesn't have to. We've been married for twenty-five years and counting. I can not only read his thoughts, I'm pretty sure my testimony as to their content would be admissable in a court of law.