Wednesday, September 12, 2012

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.

8 comments:

  1. This is my favorite line when Hubby is “helping” me find something.
    “Where were you when you used it last?”
    My standard answer: “If I could remember that I wouldn’t need to be looking for it, now would I?”

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  2. I snarfed a little bit of coffee when I got to the bit about your index card thingy being replaced by a book about playing darts. Darts! I will be giggling about that all day, I can assure you.

    "I didn't know you were looking for that!" How could he know? What with so many darts strategies to memorize and all.

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  3. Youngest Sister9/13/12, 2:00 PM

    I was afraid this might happen when I made the request. I can just see the two of you having this conversation. It's almost an "It's under here! . . . " sort of conversation. : ) Many thanks for the recipe, though. I had MOST of it on a faxed copy that must have gone to my first apartment with hubby 13 years ago. Somehow (you know, 13 years and 2 more houses later) I lost the last page with final three or four lines of instructions.

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  4. Oh, my gersh. This sounds exactly like a conversation in my house. Except it would take a small miracle for the object to actually be found.

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  5. It's that asterisk! It says everything about male-female relationships that drive me batty. All my logic and good sense, years of hard-won kitchen and parenting expertise, chalked up to crippling and capricious perfectionism with the shrug of a sturdy shoulder. You paint it so well, and it even makes me smile.

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  6. "I could have told you where that was..." ha. This made me laugh. (And, as one going on her 21st year of marriage, I completely agree about reading their thoughts. But, how long till they can read ours??)

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  7. Good question Jewels, 9 years in and it seems I have a long way to go!!!

    Why is it they could have told you where it was when you have foud it?!?!

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  8. They can always tell you where it was after you've found it. Just like I can always tell him where his whatchamacallit is if he'd just clearly told me what he was looking for. "my new hat"

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