Stuff

Somehow, this town is hard on stuff. Even my dental floss dispenser has kicked the bucket. Makes it a bit difficult to get the floss out of the container, but since I'm such a devoted flosser, I'm going to have to persevere and I will get the floss out. Every day. Like I'm supposed to.

But it's not all bad news on the "stuff" front. Yesterday afternoon, as I was puttering around and getting ready for our friends' visit, I found the most amazing thing on the table - the straw to the Rubbermaid water bottle that I lost months ago! I think I blogged about it, as it was such a traumatic event - I brought this lovely blue water bottle from Canada to sit on my bedside so I could have my drinks in the middle of the night without sloshing water everywhere - and then, a few weeks later, the straw was gone and the bottle was pretty much useless.

When the straw went missing, I asked the woman who helps to keep our house tidy and organized if she had seen it, and she seemed to say that she had thrown it away, thinking it was trash. Of course, the language barrier was a bit much, I mean, how do you say, "the plastic straw to my Rubbermaid bottle, which is really hard to describe because it's really unlike anything you've ever seen before"? But she must have figured out what I was talking about when a new bottle appeared (twice the size, brought to me by some visiting consultants from the US), and she saw the straw part.

Anyways, I really have no clue where this straw appeared from, and in some ways I don't want to know where this straw appeared from! I did give it quite a good bath and a little sanitizing before I started using it again. But it's not every day that something which has been lost in Jb actually resurfaces and returns from the land of the "stuff that grew legs and walked away". It gives me renewed hope that my Dutch Blitz cards might return from that land someday, too.

Stuff. It's so necessary sometimes. And yet, it bothers me that I spend so much time thinking about it. And it causes me a bit of undue grumpiness when it disappears or falls apart (as most things do here, given the heat, the dust and the communal living that we do with rats and other people).

But it's just so nice to have a decent water bottle that works again, one that I can drink water or iced tea out of in a bouncing car or laying in my bed without spilling all over myself. Is it a necessity? Of course not. But that little bit of "stuff" sure is nice to have. Maybe my dental floss holder will fix itself, too, 'cause that kinda IS a necessity (at least, if you ask a dental hygienist, that's what she'd say!).

If any of you have seen my Dutch Blitz cards, please let me know...