Sunday, September 20, 2009

In which she admits defeat

I haven't seen my watch for over two weeks, maybe three, not even in the wake of a fairly major (for me) cleanup. It has a stretchy band, so it couldn't have come unclasped and fallen off unnoticed. No, I have taken it off and put it down somewhere.

But who can say when, or why, or where? I have retraced my steps; I have meditated, trying to dredge up a memory; I have moved furniture, thinking a cat might have batted it somewhere out of sight; I have had a Girl's Look every day since I realised it was missing. On the advice of a Facebook Friend I have even prayed to St Anthony, patron saint of lost objects, without result. It was a nice watch and it wasn't cheap and I had only had it for about six months.

But I can't manage without one any more, so in a minute I'm going into the city to see if I can find a new one that I like and can afford. And there is not a shadow of a doubt in my mind that if I do that, the old one will turn up before sunset.

18 comments:

Henry said...

It will be sitting on the bathroom window sill or, for some reason, amid the bowl of lemons in the kitchen.

I'm forever leaving the damned mobile phone somewhere, and I have to ring it (on the home phone) to make it call out to me.

Elisabeth said...

I lose my glasses, just as my mother lost hers repeatedly when we were children, but I refuse to wear them around my neck.

When you have two watches later today, you will be able to put them in strategic places, so as never to be without.

I do this with my several pairs of glasses. The worst is when all four of them go missing at once.

Kerryn Goldsworthy said...

Henry, yes, I ring my own mobile from the landline several times a week. If I can't hear it, I know it's in the car. I know the watch isn't on the bathroom windowsill because there isn't one, but I am now going to go and look in the bowl of lemons.

Elisabeth, I too lose my glasses, but agree absolutely about wearing them round one's neck -- you seem to be about the same age as me, and to me and apparently also to you there's just something about glasses-round-the-neck that screams 'No no, not yet!!'

(Yes I am aware that this is ridiculous.)

fifi said...

get a little diver's watch, then you never need to take it off and you can also wear it swimming.

Elisabeth said...

My mother turns 90 next month. She wears her glasses around her neck, but only uses them for reading. She thinks they make her look old.

We shopped yesterday for a new dress for her birthday and she insisted on three quarter sleeves in order to cover her wrinkly arms.

My sister and I tell her it's okay to be wrinkly at 90, but still she says, like you and me, No no not yet.

Deborah said...

I lost my prescription sunglasses a few years ago. I retraced my steps, went into several shops to ask if perchance I had left them there, even checked out the lost property collection the police station, but they didn't turn up. Eventually, about a year after I lost them, I decided that it was time to get contacts instead of more glasses, so that I could just buy cheap, and therefore much more losable, sunnies. Alas, I grabbed a pair that I don't really care for, and I haven't been able to lose them yet (three years later).

And then just after we moved to Australia, my brother-in-law's employee found my prescription glasses, hidden right under the driver's seat of the old car we had sold to him.

I frequently call my own mobile phone. I have also on occasion been known to go hunting for the glasses which were perched right where they belong, on my face. It's very sad when that happens.

Fred said...

Being a bloke, can someone please explain what a "Girl's Look" is?

Francis Xavier Holden said...

Go downtown - buy watch you like - say its for a present but friend who is getting present might have got others and can you bring it back etc.

Then - and you must be serious - on the way home believe truely believe that you are not going to find old one but are going to wear new one - just not till tomorrow.

Then old one will turn up,under bed, behind toilet, under plate on sink, up sleeve of coat, in pocket or under seat of car and bingo - return new one back to shoppe and get refund or credit on spiffy bracelet or discount on body piercing of your choice.

I just get 3 or 4 $2 ones sent back from over seas each year. Although a few months back I got a $4 one from Reject Shop and a $11 one from Rivers as a gift.

Kerryn Goldsworthy said...

Fred, a Girl's Look is thorough, systematic and calm. It is the look you have when you work your way through every possible place, room by room, lifting things up and looking under them, or moving things and looking behind them, and thinking logically about where the missing item might be, starting with the possibility that either (a) it is where it usually lives, or (b) it is in the same place someone found it the last time it was lost. That's as distinct from either waffling helplessly about saying 'Has anyone seen my [insert name of lost object here]?', or throwing handfuls of stuff on the floor and shouting. Which is not to say that girls don't sometimes do this too, mind.

I was married for only four years and I was very young, but after a year or two of wedded bliss I'd got to the stage where I'd say 'They're on the fridge' before the child husband had actually asked me where his keys were. If he was within sight, I could recognise the signs.

skepticlawyer said...

Enjoy having two watches, PC. It's the universal law of sod, alas.

Bernice said...

I still quietly mourn the petite gold dress watch an Aunt gave me when about nine or so. Lost it within weeks; and some years later, after innumerable Girl Looks, realised I had left it in a motel room. Probably best for the watch, as I have the habit of banging the faces against anything larger than a matchbox, smashing the glass in the process. Ergo I roam watchless.

Zoe said...

I was given a lovely Seiko watch when I was about 10, which I lost to my parents' horror. Stretchy band, too.

I found it many months later when I was standing in the loungeroom doorway, watching the last minutes of something on telly on my way to bed. I'd slid my arm down the back of a fabric wall hanging (as you do) and there it was.

I don't wear a watch since my last one died, and use the phone instead. Of course that means I have to ring from the landline to find it ;)

db: pnerkitt

Casey said...

I feel your pain. You may not feel mine after you read this, but I am a bit neurotic - that's alright. I recently lost my $700 Deleuze and Guattari (okay okay - Dolce and Gabbana) reading glasses. After I did a girl's search, retraced my steps, and started asking random strangers in the street if they'd happened to see them, you know, just lying around anywhere, I started rocking in the corner of the lounge room. Who knew you could get attached to D&G bling. And I hate labels, as a rule. You know, those big bags that say CHANEL and stuff. But my glasses were subtle. You could only slightly see the DG in diamontes on the sides. And you know, you can pretend or just outright lie and say that it stands for anything you want, like, say "Dead in the Gutter" Anyway, St Anthony - what a waste of space. May as well have prayed to a whistling kettle. It's St Christopher, patron saint of time travellers you need as you will be doing some journeying to look for them, ask for them and finally, replace them. Like me. I finally did find them again. At OPSM at a discount. Only $625.00 this time. No the originals never did show up again. Never.

So now, I don't use them natch. The replacement ones I mean. I just zip them into a bag which gets zipped in my bag. I then zip the top of my bag. I like to put my hand in the bag and feel them occasionally. Just to see they are still there. But I never take them out. Just in case I lose them. I am pretty sure Dolce and Gabbana gave me reading glasses related OCD. Never mind. There are worse disorders to have.

Kerryn Goldsworthy said...

Casey, if you have Deleuze and Guattari glasses, does that make you able to read their stuff quickly without making any effort? That would have been worth $700 to me, back in the day.

Zoe, the question remains, how on earth did your watch find its way behind a fabric wall hanging? I fear a sibling may have been trying to get you into trouble.

Zoe said...

Nah, it was the mindless tapestry fondling what had got it there in the first place, on some other night when I didn't want to go to bed ;)

Casey said...

"Casey, if you have Deleuze and Guattari glasses, does that make you able to read their stuff quickly without making any effort?"

No, surprisingly not. You would think that would be the case wouldn't you? But D&G glasses or not, the striated space between my ears inhibit such readings.

Ann ODyne said...

All the dumb things bloggers have described above, have been done at my house also.
SLWiCat, you were in the garden, with dirt on your hands; you decided to rinse them under the outdoor tap and hung watch on a nail or a branch near the tap ... and then forgot.
2. on a rung of the ladder in the shed. 3. you took it off wherever you were about to plunge hands into watch-unfriendly territory - the peg basket in the laundry?
Replacement watch of good quality at low price, LOW price, can be found at Cash Convertors stores. don't laugh.

Ampersand Duck said...

In our household a 'girl's look' is called 'looking with a mother's eye'. The description is the same, and is a very good one, thanks.