Lost and Found

Over the holidays, we packed up the family for an extended stay at my mom's, about a half hour down south from us.  These trips to our family property on the beach (I exaggerate) are really just cramped sleepovers, with me sandwiched between two kids (who magically appear while I'm sleeping) on a tiny full-sized bed.  Despite the unbearable sleeping conditions, we look forward to these visits, because at some point we're able to dump the kids with my mom and disappear for an hour or two (or sometimes five).

Being the less than organized adults that we are, we usually leave a few items behind with each visit.  A couple of toys, a pair of pants, perfume...minor things.  We don't  sweat it since, after all, they'll still be there next time we see her.  But this visit we forgot the medicine cooler.  On the importance scale, that little blue cooler falls right beneath my purse and above my kids.  Ok, maybe my kids come before the cooler, but it's debatable.  Between the necessary daily meds for the kids and the vitamins that keep my hair from falling out of my head, the contents of this cooler are an important part of our daily lives.

A quick call to Mom told us the cooler was nowhere to be found.  Over the next couple of days, we made several sweeps of the cars and the house, checking places that didn't even make sense, hoping to find that little blue box.  With each new day, we got farther away from the last time the kids had taken their doses.  Four days of skipped meds later, we broke down and refilled the kids' prescriptions, to the tune of about $400.

Coincidentally, I was on the brink of death with the worst case of stomach flu ever to reach California at the same time that the cooler went missing.  From my death bed, I brainstormed all the possible ways we could've lost that blue cooler.  I even had dreams about it.  But my subconscious did not reveal it's whereabouts.

Five days after losing the cooler and one day after refilling the prescriptions, I had recovered well enough to drag my sorry self to the grocery store.  As I backed out of the driveway, careful to do all my head checks, something catches my eye.  Is that....did I just see...are you KIDDING ME???

There it was, sitting right there, in my rear view mirror.  If it were possible for an inanimate object to do so, I'd say that cooler was mocking me.