Treasure Hunt

It's all in how you look at it.  That's a piece of possibly good advice that I have never liked hearing.  Recently, though, my daughter, Eleanor, found a way of expressing it that got to me.  If you can't change it, change the way you look at it.

That fit in very well with an issue that had arisen for me.  Most of my worldly goods, other than the things I had in my car as I traveled, are now in a storage room.  Getting all of my things into storage with a closing deadline coming up when I sold the farm wasn't easy.  I attempted to organize it by numbering the boxes and keeping a list of the box numbers and contents on my iPhone.  Let's just say that the first few boxes list almost every individual item, but at the end the descriptions got more and more general.  Sometimes I listed the closet or room, sometimes a general category like pots and pans or towels and such.  That's the first part of the issue.

The second part is that I envisioned neat rows of cardboard boxes in more or less numerical order.  Wrong.  Since I spent most of my time packing, I did not get to see the storage room much until after we had fitted in the two rugs I sent out for cleaning at the last minute.  I say "fitted in" because by the time the rugs got there, there was just about enough room to shoehorn them in.  When I opened the storage room door, there was almost no room to stand inside the room.  So much for making a nice list of the boxes I wanted to get to first because they contained things I could use as I settled into Amagansett.

I was so frustrated.  Then the advice finally got through.  I could continue to be frustrated because I couldn't locate or get to what I wanted or I could regard the whole thing as a treasure hunt.  I would simply take out boxes as I could reach them and see what I found inside.  A treasure hunt.  And that's what it has turned out to be.  I'm finding things I almost forgot I had, let alone that I had packed them.

My favorite item surfaced when a friend delivered a chest of drawers that was somehow accessible for removal and would help out a lot at the Amagansett house (I hate the idea of buying something when I know I have it somewhere already).  As it was moved out of the bed of the pickup truck that had transported it,  he looked down and asked if I had dropped my watch.  No, it was still on my wrist.  Wonder what this is.  I looked.  It was a watch I had bought a few years ago.  Not very expensive but it was a shape and design I liked and seldom saw.  Also it was purchased on a girls weekend trip with my daughters and a dear friend.  I was so sure that I had packed it in things I took with me on my road trip, that I had turned all my bags and boxes upside down more than once in a search for it, but to no avail.  Now suddenly here it was again.  I have no idea how it failed to get taken out of the drawer or how it stayed in there despite all the moving around, but here it is now.  Now that's what I call a treasure hunt.