For a long time, hubby has been saying that things in our house are disappearing at an alarming rate. He would often reach for Teriyaki sauce to cook dinner only to find it gone, vanished into thin air. Similar story with the ketchup and mustard…they, too join the Teriyaki sauce in the upper hemisphere. Because I am not a user of condiments, I have commiserated with him, but have not felt the full effect of such loss. Until yesterday…

I grabbed a bowl of Lucky Charms for a quick breakfast while watching my favorite soap opera, CNN. In the midst of breaking news about immigration and my first spoonful of cereal, it was noticed that there were no “charms” in my cereal, only the basic oat shapes. If I wanted to eat basic oat shapes I would have chosen Cheerios! Alas, my bowl was charmless and not as tasty as would have been preferred. Who could have possibly picked all of the charms out of the cereal? (Aha! My granddaughter slept over Friday night.)

Disappointed in breakfast, I grabbed a bag of grapes and a yogurt for lunch. At lunchtime, while playing games on my phone, I pulled the grapes out and sat them on a paper towel. The bunch was extremely light, and it was immediately evident that someone had attacked the grapes before me. Instead of a bunch of grapes, there sat the deciduous woody vines with only a few grapes attached here and there, reminiscent of trees in the fall when most of their leaves had fallen to the ground. Annoyed that someone had eaten them in such a haphazard and inconsiderate manner, I plucked each one off and ate them with an attitude. Aha! Marie loves grapes and may have eaten them in such a haphazard manner while chatting on her video phone with friends. Known for taking more food than she can eat, the result of a young childhood of poverty and hunger, it would be just like her to take the whole bunch and return the leftovers when she was full.

At home later on that day, I sat at the computer to read e-mails and surf the web. There had been a huge pile of change on the desk, the result of one of my children giving me $10 in change in exchange for a $10 bill. The day before, it had been noticed that most of the quarters had been taken from the pile, and, on this day, the dimes and the nickels had been removed, leaving only 21 cents in pennies. It was as though the coins vanished into thin air with the mustard and ketchup. (It was far more reasonable that they vanished at the gas station when used by one of my sons to put a minute amount of gas in his tank.)

The final straw came when I went to bed last night. Hubby and I love big, fluffy pillows, and use two each but there were only three pillows on the bed. What? Who would dare take one of our pillows? Hubby and I could have fought over who would get two pillows and who would get one, but, being romantic fools, we decided to each take one pillow and share the other, nose to nose, We spent a lovely night cuddling because of necessity, but it was lovely none- the-less. The pillow loss might be one thing I wouldn’t complain about. If I didn’t know Hubby better, I would have thought he possibly hid it. Alas, in the morning at the foot of Marie’s bed I found Steven’s dog sleeping on the pillow. Because Steven worked late that night, Marie had taken her from his apartment downstairs and let her sleep in her room, but needed something soft for her to sleep on other than her bed. My choice now is whether to take back the smelly dog pillow back, or continue sharing the one pillow with hubby. The answer was obvious.