OMG, I am getting myself so frustrated. I keep losing stuff. Now I can be as scatterbrained as the next guy, but things are disappearing in the weirdest ways. So… yesterday, I went to my new office for the first time. (I’ve been in the job for over a month.) We’re on a rotating schedule that just started, where there are certain days (essentially blocks of two out of six) where your group may come into the office if you want to. I’m in the blue group, and if every blue came into the office, our cubes would be surrounded by red and yellow people’s cubes, so effective social distancing. But no one was there yesterday except for me, the mailroom guy who gave me my building pass and showed me to my cube, and an IT guy who helped me install some software. Here’s my new cube:

It’s a perfectly normal cube, but it has high walls, not low (meaning if I want to put up a poster, I could). And it’s far better than the no-walled slice of desk I had in my last job.

See that duffle bag on the left? That’s a freebie I’d gotten in my last job. The two end compartments are almost each as big as the middle compartment, and if you unzip one, it unzips almost all the way around and the compartment flops open, spilling everything out – it’s a weird design and probably works much better as a gym bag than what I was using it for: desk tchotchkes. I had brought in my water glass, a mug, an office sweater, some framed pictures, a stapler, stuff like that. And (I swear to you) a paperweight and a bunch of little Star Wars robot toys. I remember putting them in the bag.

Here’s the deal: while this is definitely a bag where things fall out of it if it’s unzipped, when it’s zipped up, it works fine as a transportation device, as far as I can tell. And it was never unzipped between home and office. But my robot toys are now missing, and so is that paperweight, and who knows what else I don’t remember. If they’d fallen out, they would have done so in my home office (where they would be now, scattered on the floor) or in my new cube (likewise). So where are they? I guess I’ll check the (presumed empty) bag again next time I’m in the office, whenever that will be.

But it’s crazy-making. I discovered during the onboarding process that I can’t find my passport. The last time I know I had it was coming home from Spain last fall. It’s not a big deal to have it replaced. But that thing lives in our fireproof file box, and it’s not there now, and when it’s not there, it’s supposed to be in plain sight. I also have two watches that are supposed to go to the guy who replaces our watch batteries, and there’s a definite place they should be and they’re not there. Again, it would be fine if they were somewhere else, but I spent a large amount of my unemployed time thoroughly cleaning and organizing the office, so I pretty much know what’s where. So where is this stuff?

So frustrating. Knowing that I’m a dumbass, I instituted rules about my wedding ring as soon as I got one – if it’s not on my hand, it’s on top of my wallet, which is on a particular spot on my desk. If the wallet is on my person, so is the ring. I’ve managed to get through six years without losing it. So maybe I need ‘wedding ring rules’ for absolutely everything. Certainly my passport. And my driver’s license, which you’ll remember I lost a couple of months ago.

Is this normal aging? Is it pixies? ♫ or am I losing my mind?

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It’s been two weeks and I have lots more I should blog about, but this is fine for now.