It’s a tough job but somebody has to do it.
What job? The job of Mouseholder, of course. Froggy, do you have Purple Mouse? Unh hunh.
We had a moment of panic this afternoon, or I did. Mouse came home today from her visit to The Commander’s cabin up on Fin Family Moominbeach. She and Froggy drove up just about when I got home from work and, after a good schlurping from the Froog, we walked over to the Plum Market subliminal advertising inserted here.
When we got back, Mouse realized that Purple Mouse was nowhere to be found. Purple Mouse who has survived a trip to Africa and a bunch of unknown adventures that resulted in her return to the landfill mailbox in the middle of the night a couple of months ago. Oh where, oh where, could our Purple Mouse be?
While I was outside trying not to panic as I retraced Mouse (and Froggy’s) steps from her vee-hickle out in the street up our driveway and into the house, I realized that I have been through this a few times before. Probably the most famous incident was on my birthday back in 1989. Some birthday. First, our brand-new Chrysler minivan lost almost all of its oil due to a defective part. Somehow we managed to get it to the dealer without burning up the engine. We got home and everything was fine and then the 2-year-old said, “Moom, I can’t find my Mouse!” This was true panic. We were in full-tilt boogie mode trying to find the Mouse that our Mouse may have been almost more closely bonded to than she was to her old tired crabby parents. I won’t describe our search, some of y’all know the drill. The GG was ready to get on to our old MacPlus and draft “missing mouse” flyers to post around the neighborhood. Printed on the old dot-matrix printer. I settled Mouse into bed with “New Mouse” that night. Yes, “New Mouse” was a duplicate and that’s a long story for another day. She decided that she could fall asleep with New Mouse but I could tell she was still very worried about her real mouse.
Tomorrow really can sometimes be another day. And that particular tomorrow was when Mouse remembered that she had stuffed her own real puffalump (not scurry) mouse into a beautiful purple lame drawstring bag that I had made. And she had shoved a whole bunch of markers on top of her mouse. Who knew? Hallelujah, in any case.
So I was walking around looking all over the driveway for Purple Mouse today. I was wondering whether the new neighbors moving into the Burke house (yes) would think I was crazy. I was cursing Froggy for being such an inattentive mouse-holder. I was wondering what the heck an old bag like me was doing wandering around outside looking for a very small stuffed animal that a frog puppet had lost for her 20-something daughter.
It was all okay in the end. Purple Mouse had somehow made it inside the house and was located in Mouse’s room. Froggy’s reputation as an excellent mouse-holder was restored.
I am nuts but this kind of stuff really is my life sometimes.
G’night
KW
July 29th, 2009 at 8:35 pm
Loss can knock the stuffing outta one. Seriously.
July 29th, 2009 at 10:52 pm
I was in a panic a few weeks ago when I couldn’t find our Care Bears. They had been packed away, and we needed them so they could watch the Care Bear Movie with Datura and I. Finally, after a couple of hours of searching, we found the bin in the basement where all 9 of them were hiding with the Cloudkeeper and Professor Cold Heart. We were so happy and we all enjoyed the Movie. I understand what you were going through!
July 30th, 2009 at 12:26 am
Those special animals are very important. We never did find Alison’s “birdie” but she bonded to her “fat duck” which we still have. She’s always liked birds. When she was little and we would take her to these really nice zoos, she would ignore all the “fancy” animals and shriek, “LOOK, A CROW!!” (and take all sorts of pictures of it) Ugh.