rachel@home

The Case of the Missing Lid

On Thursday night, I asked Abby to get dinner started before I got home. It was a rare sort of Thursday, because there wasn't a softball game that started way too early and got over way too late. Softball games do tend to eat up time on Tuesday and Thursday nights, and while the other mothers at the games talk about how they don't have time to do anything after the softball games, I guiltily keep to myself how late MY children end up going to bed on game nights.

So dinner was going to be chicken enchiladas, and Abby wanted to be really sure that she knew how to make them, so I told her every single tiny step about three times. Everyone who was in my office at the time now also knows how to make chicken enchiladas. I'm sure they're grateful.

Part of the process of making chicken enchiladas is the particular pans that have to be used. There's one frying pan and one lid that will work, and there are no substitutes. I explained the pan qualifications to Abby, and I was confident that she knew which pans had to be used.

But.

A little bit later she called and said she couldn't find the lid. I listed every place I could think of that the lid might be, and she looked, then called me back and said that she still couldn't find it.

I told her to just wait, and I'd do it when I got home. I admit, I was a little annoyed. It's a big lid, and a small kitchen. How many places could it be?

I was expecting to waltz in, find the lid with my eyes closed, and hand it to her triumphantly.

She was expecting the same thing, and as soon as I walked in the door, she told me all the places she'd looked, and that she'd checked everywhere again, because she didn't want me to come home and find it.

I looked all the places it might be, and came up empty. I looked in all the places that I could never imagine putting the lid, and also came up empty. I asked Katrina where she would put the lid away, in case she had some creative place I'd never think of. But even that didn't lead to the lid.

Completely stumped, I started randomly wandering around the kitchen, and I opened the fridge. And there it was. Sitting on top of a pot of soup that, quite honestly, should have been thrown out a while back. I grabbed it and announced to Abby that I had, finally, found the lid.

She thought about it for a minute, and then said, "So it's a draw?"

I had to agree.

Posted by Rachel at May 7, 2005 11:39 PM