It’s uncanny how your mind can wander when you’re feeling blah and unable to get out.  Your thoughts tend to roam hither and thither, stopping at memories best forgotten or silly things that can make your head spin–you know, phenomenal events that  occur daily in  anyone’s home.

Coat hangers are an example. Before we moved into our house, we made sure all the wire coat hangers were left behind or recycled. There were no wire coat-hangers in our new home–that’s nada, zilch, zippo–no wire coat hangers, none. It was like some evil-genie who made sure these wire hangers kept popping up in various closets. It was like an epidemic of mass proportions. One wire hanger morphed into four hangers and the next time we opened a closet door, there were eight!

Paper clips must be the mini-cousin to coat hangers. I swear there were only a few paper-clips in my desk drawer. Suddenly paper clips popped out of file folders, notepads, reference texts, my pen-pot and I even found two more cohabiting in my coat pocket.

Buttons are another example. I find it very useful when the manufacturer tacks a “spare” button on the underside of cardigans and blouses. These “spares” are usually tucked away in my sewing box in the event a button is lost,  there is an identical button ready. Somehow, this never works at my house. The spare buttons have been zapped somewhere into the stratosphere as there seems to be lots of alien ones I’ve never seen before.

And one final thought. I am extremely careful in using my supply of straight pins to shorten a hemline or pair of pants. But no matter how careful I am, straight pins will be sucked up by my vacuum for the next six months. The proportion of straight pins sucked up is always proportionately greater than the straight pins actually used.  Straight pins are definitely another cousin to paper clips and wire hangers. They were invented to drive sane humans into a tizzy.

As I said at the beginning, it’s uncanny how your mind can wander and wonder over inconsequential things when you’re house-bound.