And found

I bought toothpaste at the grocery store. I know I did. But I couldn’t find it anywhere. I looked in the bathroom, opening drawers and checking to see if it had fallen to the floor. I went downstairs to the kitchen and searched the counter where I unload the groceries.

I went back upstairs. The toothpaste had still not materialized. I came back down and searched again. I was beginning to feel a little crazy. Had I left a bag of groceries in the car? I remembered the time that I found a gallon of milk in my trunk, ten hot summer days after I bought it. That was pretty nasty.

I turned to the gang in the living room. “Has anyone seen some brand new boxes of toothpaste?”

Shaggy Hair Boy looked up from his computer, “I remember seeing them somewhere."

“Where?”

He shrugged, “I don’t know.”

I went upstairs again and burst into my daughter’s bedroom. She and Sailor Boy were deep in conversation, both intently looking at something on her computer.

“I can’t find the boxes of toothpaste I bought at the store,” I announced dramatically. “I KNOW I bought some."

Beautiful Smart Wonderful Daughter said, without hesitation: “Usually you set stuff like that on the stairs.”

The stairs? I’d run up and down the stairs about five times in my search. But I went back and looked anyhow.

Yep. There on the third step were two boxes of toothpaste.

It’s nice to have my daughter home.