That Darn Blankie

We had an interesting night around here last night. I got home from the volleyball game around 6:30 or so and Steve and I talked and played with the boys in their room for awhile until bedtime. If you recall, I blogged about a week ago about how their room looked like a Toys R' Us explosion, and it still looked like that last night. So we all went to work cleaning it up and putting away clean clothes that had been sitting in there in the laundry basket for about 3 weeks now and got their room look'n spic-n-span. Well, bedtime rolls around and we can't find Owen's blankie. Blankie is very special....he's had it since he popped from my womb...a gift from grandma and grandpa Teis.

He has had this thing with him EVERYWHERE...Blankie has been peed on, pooped on, spit up on, vomited on, had food spilled on it, been drug through the dirt, traveled through about 13 states, been dropped in the toilet, the street, and a pool, been loved and rubbed threadbare. There is no 2nd copy - this is The One and Only blanket. It used to be that a substitue of similar fabric would do in a pinch, but no more. When Owen is sleepy, sick, or ready for bed it must be Blankie and no other....He folds over the corner and rub rub rubs the tip of it over his fingers, face, feet, whatever until he falls asleep. Just recently has he started to grow away from it.

ANYWAY...
8:00 p.m. Jammies are on, kids are in bed, and Steve and I have been searching for Blankie to no avail for about 30 minutes. Owen asked for it several times, but he was so exhausted yesterday he didn't put up much of a fuss for it. We do our bedtime routine, and he fell asleep in about 3 minutes - much to my relief and surprise.

8:34 Both boys are asleep. The search continues.

8:59 We have systematically searched every room of the house in every nook and cranny. I've checked the kitchen cupboards, the dishwasher, the fridge, under all the furniture in the living room, behind all the doors. Steve has looked out back in the kiddie pool, up in the attic, under the boys mattresses, in the closets. I have dug through a disgusting pile of dirty laundry that's piled up about 4 feet high in the mudroom. Twice.
Steve never left the house with the boys since it had been raining all day, and he KNOWS he saw Owen with it that afternoon, so it MUST be somewhere around the house. *I* am starting to feel anxiety over the loss of Blankie.

9:05 p.m. We realize that we have combed every inch of the house and decide to take a gander in the trash. Steve took a big bag of trash outside to the trash can earlier in the day and we're left to think it's weird, but not outside the realm of possible that one of them stuck it in the trash. Steve takes a flashlight and heads outside to the curb.

9:06 p.m Steve comes back in the house demanding that I help him because there are MAGGOTS all over the trash can.

9:07 p.m. There are indeed maggots crawling all over the trash can.

What the heck are maggots anyway? And they must be nocturnal, because I've never seen them in the day before. And if your skin is crawling with the idea of a swarm of maggots and the idea that we're about to dive into them, you're right on - because it was absolutely REVOLTING. In an attempt to see if this was a common nocturnal occurance or if we were simply disgusting people with disgusting things in our trash that attracted maggots, I nonchalantly walked over to the neighbors. Yup, they have 'em too. Good, we're not nasty.
Steve blasts them with the Clorox Bleach spray but they are hardy buggers and only a few fall off.

10:00 p.m. Steve is grossed out, so being the brave Searcher of Blankie that I am, I flip the lid of the trash open and we look inside. Yup. They're in there too. We strategize our next move.
I'm not sure how, but somehow it's determined that *I* will be the one to reach my hands inside the garbage and pull out the big black trash bag.

10:01 p.m. I grab the drawstring of the trash and yank it. It gets stuck and I have to pull and twist it out of the can until it lands with a plop on the street. A maggot flies off it onto Steve's leg at which point he does this crazy jig/hop making a noise like, "EEEeeee! Eeeeee! Eeeeeh!"

I am secretly smug.


10:03 p.m. We tear open the top and begin to dig around inside looking for any glimpse of blankie. I am muttering about how ridiculous this is over a blasted blanket, but I know that if we don't look in here and the trash guys take it away tomorrow that I would always wonder if blankie was in there...rotting away in some landfill --this precious heirloom of Owen's 3 years on this earth.
As we dig, cautious of the errant wiggly maggot, Steve comments, "Fear is not a factor for us."
Hear dat.

10:05 Blankie is NOT in the trash can. We go inside and scrub our hands. Wishing we had a power washer at this point in time, because I would blast all the skin off my fingers and palms.

10:37 Steve has given up and is checking his email and sports scores on the internet. Not to be deterred, I've been valiantly looking in the meantime and am completely bewildered. Where the HECK has that blanket gone?? Too tired to look anymore, I vow to tear the house apart the next morning to find it and we go to bed. I worry and fret about the blanket as I drift to sleep. I mourn the page in his scrapbook that I intend to do at some distant point in the future with a piece of Blankie attached - a testament to his first love, her sweet blue fleece a comfort to him.
I feel the void of Blankie's absence profoundly.

Morning comes....I refuse to get my lazy carcass out of bed, so Steve gets up and makes the boys breakfast. He comes in to get me when I've got about 20 minutes left to get ready for church so I get up and get in the shower. When I get out, he says to me, "tammi - come look."

And there...in the middle of the living room floor, crumpled in a heap, is Blankie.

On the way to church I turn to Owen and ask him,"Owen, where did you find your blankie this morning?"
He says, "oh, it's at home."
"Yes, I know it's at home NOW, but remember it was lost? And we couldn't find it last night? And then you found this morning. Where did you find it?"
He says, "no, it not lost. It was righ here"
"Right where?"
"Righ here"



I guess we'll never know.