lost & found: epilogue

a while ago, i wrote of the loss of my brother's dear ironman watch. i did not find it later, though i never returned to the place where i'm sure it departed me. instead i went to a tiny watch store and bought a new, junky digital watch. i insisted to the young woman vendor that it must have an alarm - there was only one that fit the bill. i reluctantly purchased it, knowing it was a piece of crap. there were no directions to set anything, and though i figured out how to set the time, i could not get it to cooperate concerning the alarm. which means i could have bought one of the cooler, sturdier looking kid's models all along. to top it all off, the name of the watch was 'osama.' mmm, osama around my wrist, binding me with time. sure enough, not even a week later, on my long hike into the jungle to arrive at the lodge, the watch broke. just couldn't take the rainforest humidity. i've decided after 2 watches that i don't need one on this trip, and i've been free-wristing it ever since.
 
while retiring for the evening last night, i discovered that i could not find my black notebook which serves as a journal, a datebook, an addressbook, and repository of important numbers for credit cards, passport and airline flights. looking under the bed and the nightstand, i remembered one of my favorite passages from 100 years of solitude (the book i raced). the matriach, ursula,  is blind, and the author is describing how she functions in her home without ever letting on to the family that she can't see at all. she even finds a wretched daughter in law's (or is it grand-daughter in law, or great-granddaughter in law?) precious ring. her methodology is this: she knows that people often lose things in the places that are an anomoly from their regular routine, yet they only look in the common places of their routine. so she thinks of what happened that was unusual the day the ring was lost. in the same way i considered my notebook. and so this morning, just now, i walked right into the post office, and the smiling woman kindly  took it from the top of the pile where it was waiting for its owner and handed it over. thanks, ursula