Upon the Occasion of Finding Something

Why is something always in the last place you look?

I have (had) been looking for an item for over a month. About ten minutes ago I found it! I reached into a small travel bag which should have contained only paraphenalia of a certain genre, which is precisely why I had not inspected that container in detail before. I stuck in my hand way down to the bottom and pulled out my passport. Really? Thirty days of randomly focused searching and that's where it was? 

You see today I had become semi-desperate. I missed an appointment at the DMV last month because I couldn't locate all the necessary documents to prove that I was me. I need the California Seniors ID card for another endeavor. I don't have an original social security card, neither have I a birth certificate nor a live birth document. Clearly I shall never be president.

But wait you say - don't you have a "safe place" for such documents? Well of course I do! Unfortunately, no one put the passport there. When I searched the "important document" box this morning (for the third time) the passport still wasn't there. Imagine that. Apparently three times is not a charm.

Last night I emptied the final two boxes I had hauled down from the Sebastopol storage locker, you remember Sebastopol, I live there in my friend's hut back in the early months of 2009. Twas then I began my undomiciled period and therefore rented a small closet to dump my stuff in. Those few boxes were my best and last hope for finding the passport.

I was wrong. The elusive document was here all along. The logic behind placing it in that bag escapes me, just a Duh! moment I guess. During the search I did find my 1981 passport (Antarctica) and my 1996 passport (Bali); no they were not in the same place. Also found drivers licenses expiring in 1979 (Pinckney, MI.), in 1992 (Hermosa Beach); in 2005 (San Francisco); in 2006 (Ann Arbor) and a picture of Amy & me with a lion cub at the MGM (circa 2008).

So passport found. Two boxes of sorted & resorted stuff to be discarded or recycled and one more blog post about nothing in particular. Now where did I put that grenade pin?