Missing Irony

Go figure. I spent a lot of the trip in Europe panicking that I had lost something. First thing was I couldn't find my bag of pills I brought along. I searched everywhere I could think of multiple times, but I couldn't find them. They were just vitamins, so I was able to buy some more easily, but I couldn't figure out how the heck I had managed to not put them in my luggage. Then, about two thirds of the way through the trip, Jen was going to borrow my dental floss and when she rummaged through my toiletry kit, she found my vitamins. I had searched my toiletry kit three times while looking for the pills. How the heck had I missed them? Evidently they were hidden behind a wall of those EmergenC packets I'd brought along. Though I am glad I had not somehow managed to leave them at home, I was less than pleased about my inability to find a big bag of pills in a small toiletry kit.

This was to be a theme for the trip. I would freak out that I had lost something and then I would find it several days later. This included a flash drive of pictures that turned up later in a jacket pocket, 200 Czech kroners that I thought had been pickpocketed, my document pouch I feared I had left in airport security, and so on. Thankfully I didn't announce my freak outs, because then I would have double embarrassment when I found the missing item.

The irony is that on our very long trip home, I managed to lose two very important items and not even notice until a friendly employee from the Montrose, Colorado airport called me up to tell me I had left my library book on the plane along with my passport that I was using as a bookmark. This was even after I had unpacked my bag. Evidently that's where our plane from Calgary ended up. I can give myself some leeway for forgetting it, as I was in a very foggy mental state when we landed, but I am not overlooking the irony that everything I freaked out about losing was found and what would have been really awful to lose was not even missed.

So tomorrow my book and passport will be en route to me. I am grateful to be back where losing something doesn't mean returning to a foreign country or retracing steps through airport security. I'm also grateful that my head is attached to my body. Who knows where it would end up otherwise?