Household Archeology

I feel like I'm on an archeological dig.  Every day, I am unearthing some new artifact in my house, all of which relate to my grandchildren's latest visit.  The kids went home three weeks ago.  If I were a better housekeeper or less disabled, these discoveries would have been taken care of by now. Unfortunately, I'm slow, so the treasures just keep on appearing.

I've already written about the black sock that Ryan left behind just under the couch in the living room.  Then there was the pair of underwear that I told Ryan to pack at least twice, but after he had gone, it was still on the floor of his room.  (One look told me why he didn't pack it.  The reason has to do with bathroom hygiene...and I'll leave it at that.)  I THOUGHT I had found everything, but noooo...

Wednesday morning of this week, I glanced into Robin's room, which I had already done several times since the kids were here.  She had left her bed somewhat unmade.  Her bedclothes are white, but my eye fell on something draped over one of the posts of the footboard of her bed--something I had believed was just a sheet but actually looked more beige than white.  When I picked it up, it turned out to be one of the four precious t-shirts that I had taken her to buy at Hot Topic when she was here.  These t-shirts all had names of her favorite bands on them, and she was quite eager to get them home to wear to school--but here was one of them, left behind at Grandma's house.  Did she even miss it?  Nothing about it had been mentioned.  I grabbed a small box and shipped it up to her mother's house so she could have it this weekend when she got there.  Turns out she knew she couldn't find the t-shirt but hadn't realized that she had left it here.

I thought surely I was done with the discoveries of buried treasure.  Au contraire!  This morning, while picking up some trash that had found its way out of the wastebasket next to my computer "nest", I found what was left of an open bag of butterscotch chips--right under the chair where Robin always sits.  That bag had been in the refrigerator for quite awhile, but here it was, quite unceremoniously stashed where Grandma wouldn't see it quickly.  Needless to say, the chips have now gone the way of the rest of the trash in the house.  It's a wonder I didn't get bugs!!

It seems that the household archeology works both ways.  The children leave things here, but they apparently also take things from here.  Just yesterday, my daughter sent me an Instant Message saying she had found a beige bath towel in her laundry and wondered if it could be mine.  I described it, then counted what I have (I only own six bath towels), and sure enough, it's mine.  I think that towel had been in Ryan's bedroom here after his shower, and he just packed it, thinking it was a beach towel.  (Who knows?)  Then, too, she had found two beach towels that she didn't recognize and wondered if those, too, were mine...but no, the kids came with those from their other home.  It gets complicated.

There are other perils of travel.  There was the time that I was leaving my daughter's and couldn't find the bag that stores my sleeping bag.  I finally just crammed the sleeping bag into a garbage bag and asked Meg to save the missing bag for me when she found it.  I asked about it several times.  The last time I asked, she said, "I brought it to you when we were there last time."  Uh...no.  Didn't happen.  I had just about resigned myself to having to purchase some kind of a duffel to put the sleeping bag in since the carrying bag had been missing for months and months.  And then, on my last trip up to her house, we were going through a box, and there it was!  Likewise, Meg lost a pair of support hose that she wears in the car for her trips here.  She swore they were at my house, somewhere, but I looked and looked to no avail.  Finally, they were found--also months later--at the very bottom of a pocket of her suitcase.  Eureka!

I'm hoping that there won't be any more remnants of the grandchildren's last visit that will remind me of my slowness, but I haven't finished cleaning yet.  Who knows what could still lie buried in this house?  How far down will I have to dig before I hit the ruins of the ancient civilization that used to be my home???