Now It's a Scavenger Hunt

Gotta hand it to Hick! His retirement makes my everyday life so much more interesting.

Wednesday night, I was washing up the day's dishes. In case you have long-term AND short-term memory loss, and poor reading comprehension, along with complete blindness...Val has no dishwasher, save hand left and hand right. Hick had already gone to look for a new auction, quite some distance away

Because he's a prince, Hick had declared a supper holiday for Val on Wednesday. "I'll be leaving around 4:30, so you don't have to make supper for me." Such a gift Hick was bestowing upon me! I usually get all caught up doing other things, and don't finish lunch until around 3:30. You can bet that I didn't want to rush upstairs to cook for the culinarily-challenged Hick so he could be done eating by 4:30.

Hick wasn't sure that he would even want a meal by then, but since it's not a good idea for him to skip one, and he wasn't likely to return from the auction until after 10:30 p.m., he decided to have a bite. He warmed up some leftover Walmart deli pasta. I think this one was chicken and penne and a white sauce, with mushroom and shredded parmesan that I'd added. I figured Hick was capable of preparing such sustenance for himself.

He came into the homestead around 3:30. I heard him stumping around upstairs. Heard the microwave beep. Did you know our built-in microwave had two drawer knobs for the handle? I'm pretty sure I mentioned that a couple dozen times. After Hick tried to repair the regular door with SuperGlue, and it broke off the first time he tried to open it. Anyhoo...drawer knobs are better than using pliers to open the microwave, like that lamp I had to turn off and on with them.

Hick came halfway down the basement stairs to sit on them and tell me about his storage unit sales. I kicked back in my OPC (Old People Chair) to listen. There's not much give-and-take with Hick. He's all about the give, and not too fond of the take. When he was done talking at me, he said it was time to leave for the auction.

Anyhoo...there I was, around 7:00, washing up the dishes. I was also preparing my own supper. I opened the drawer to get a little paring knife to cut my chicken into smaller pieces. I was mixing it in with a TV dinner of Sesame Chicken, which turned out to be quite delicious with the addition, and also some extra baby corns and water chestnuts.

WHERE was my knife? It's not like some teenage girl had stopped by, and dropped it into the wastebasket when she threw away her plate. I know how many paring knives I have. Four. Two were in the sink, one was on the counter, about to be immersed, and the other was missing. Sure, I could have dried one from the sink and used it. But I wanted to know where my knife went. Seriously! I looked in the drawer three times. I looked on the tray I use to take meals down to my dark basement lair. Elsewhere on the kitchen counter. The cutting block. No knife.

Wait a minute! The other night, Hick had used one to cut up the chicken in the first eating of that Walmart pasta. I bet he took one this night, and left it by the La-Z-Boy. Uh huh. Like my second-best old ex-teaching buddy Karen would say, "I know him like a book." I went to the living room and looked around the end table. No knife. This was not fun. Not like an Easter Egg hunt. More like a desperate search for a penitentiary escapee, but without the baying bloodhounds.

I'll bet I looked for that paring knife for 15 minutes. I finished up the dishes. Used one of the clean knives to get my food ready. Started for my lair, and FOUND THAT MISSING KNIFE!

Plus a bonus fork! I didn't even know a fork was gone! I guess Hick had set his La-Z-Boy eating paraphernalia on the back of the long couch when he came halfway downstairs to converse with me.

Life with Hick. Every day is an adventure.