Can you find my mind too?

"Are you going to write about the pearls?" David asks. "Because it makes you sound crazy." Well... I could be a whole lot crazier, as he well knows. And, as my buddy Bill says, "It just might be a lunatic you're looking for." (He also says, "You got a nice white dress and a party on your Confirmation!" and that's pretty much true, although it was just a family thing with a whipped cream cake from Mozzicato's...)

Anyway, before we left for Cape Cod, like a crazy squirrel, I hid my pearl necklace. It might be the most expensive thing in the house, although I couldn't say for sure. I do have a very nice emerald ring and a fancy stove. (But who's going to steal a stove?!) Anyway, it's not just the money. I could buy a new necklace -- if I ate beans for the rest of 2007. It's that my mother and grandmother bought this one -- a single pearl at a time!! -- over a span of two decades, using money my grandmother earned on the midnight shift at the factory, for God's sake, and finally presented me with the whole, beautiful thing on my college graduation.

Plus, I already lost a bracelet that Nan got for me when this mean family posed as potential home-buyers for our house in Florida and then distracted me with their dirty baby (sad, but true) and swiped it off the top of my bedroom dresser. Oh, bad people!!! Your child is going to end up in prison!!

Anyhoo, figuring that I was going to be gone for a whole month, which is a lot of opportunity for more light-fingered visitors, I decided to hide the pearls away in a place that NOBODY WOULD EVER FIND IT. Can you see where this story is going??! Yes, I'm sure you can...

I was in a panic! My mother called me at work on Monday and says, "So, how are the girls?" And I said, "I can't find my pearl necklace! I hid it before we went up to the Cape and it's not where I thought I put it!" (Which was Lucy's underwear drawer. Not a very original place... which is why, of course, I moved it to the much better, completely mysterious location.) My mother is not concerned: "You need to ask Nan where it is," she says.

Now I am not above asking my dead grandmother for stuff -- but I think jewelry is a little shallow, no? Make sure the babies don't die. That's the kind of thing I save for her. But I went home, checked a few more super-secret Harriet the Spy kind of places, and still couldn't find it. So later, while I was sitting with Josephine in her rocker, I said, "Nan? Ma says I should ask you where my pearl necklace is... Um, what do you think? Do you know?" And then I sat for a few more minutes, while my little bunny finished her milk, and then I thought, "Oh, I should check in (BEST HIDING PLACE EVER!)"

And people, there it was.