Tonight I couldn’t find my book. Could not. This distressed me for several reasons, the chief among them not the potential cost of rebuying a book or of trying to find my place again.

Most of what frustrated me about not being able to locate the key piece of entertainment and escape in my day is that there aren’t very many places the damned thing could be.

Computer bag is the most likely place. Nope.

Desk? Nope.

Ah…hiding under the covers? Nuh-uh.

In the kitchen, next to either the stove or microwave, the two places I’m often putting down a book so I can attend to the whistling tea kettle? No.

On the dining room table where it often naps because of that space’s central location in our house and lives? No.

On the boys’ bookcase where I placed it when I traded my reading material for family time? No.

On the floor by my bed? By the LEGO staging site near the couch? In the car?

No, no, no.

I gave up. My phone was down to 20% charge and it was time to get on the train for a talk downtown, so I couldn’t get enough battery power to listen to a book. I grabbed a magazine and stuffed it in my bag, then stomped up the stairs, musing that I had actually been meaning to read The Atlantic article on midlife crises so this wouldn’t be a total loss.

I stopped in the bathroom and saw the magazine I skimmed three nights ago while the boys took their baths.

And right underneath, I remembered, was my book.

I like that my life revolves around family and food, LEGO, my briefcase, and a whistling tea kettle.

I just wish my memory could save me some damned time already. Or that I read frequently enough to remember where my book is.

Priorities, people.