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So I got home from work today and fixed dinner and went to salt dinner. (For the record, dinner was a small boiled potato, a smallish wedge of boiled cabbage, and two boiled carrots. It's quick and easy and I like it and it can basically cook itself on the stove while I do Other Things like light a damn fire to take the house from 50 to Liveable. But it is no good without butter and salt. That's why I was looking to salt dinner.) I could not find the salt shaker.



Now, typically not-being-able-to-find-things happens at my house. Sometimes, in an hour of need, I am unable to locate my hardcover copy of Small Gods so that I can have the author sign it or my field guide to Northeastern Damselflies or the EZpass that goes in my car or the RIGHT set of size 2 circular needles. My house is not, well, kept. Certainly there is not housekeeping of the sort where everything brings joy and has a place. I have more the sort of housekeeping where dirty laundry gets walked on (more-or-less in the laundry room) until laundry day. I do not have to please anyone but myself, and so I do not.

At any rate, let it be on the record that my house is not the sort of house where an errant salt shaker is IMMEDIATELY APPARENT. That is not the sort of house I have. I have the sort of house where... a chainsaw sharpening rig that I do not want or need has been sitting in the living room for the past two years. Where there's a survey tripod (with metal feet) from when I used it to stabilize my fancy camera w/zoom lens enough years ago that the handkerchief tying the pointy metal feet together is so occluded with dust that you can't see the pattern on it anymore. There are two English saddles, four cans of paint (quart size latex), a shop vac, two rubber boots, five plastic construction buckets (like drywall paste comes in), and a pair of loppers on the living room floor. Let us not be blind to the nature of the house not-keeping going on in these parts. So there's that.

But the salt shaker generally resides on the small area of countertop (all my areas of countertop, two in total, are "small") between the sink and the stove. That's where it goes. That's where it usually is. That's where I remember putting it after a super-fast dinner yesterday. That is not where it was this evening.

I cleaned off the countertop (mortar and pestle in black granite, white plastic cutting board, fancy olive oil, fancy balsamic, ziploc bag with half a nutmeg in it, empty box that used to contain ziplock bags, pepper shaker, bread knife, santoku knife, small less-preferred paring knife, two bar towels in need of washing, plastic spreader for tile grout, 3x5 recipe card for cilantro-cabbage-slaw (I do not keep recipes in a recipe card file, I keep them in my recipe journal), yesterday's dinner plate and fork, a flipper-of-burgers in need of a wash, two ink pens, my recipe journal, a small container of citric acid, a mostly-empty pint jar of honey that has crystallized, one of those thin, cheap plastic bag)s from the grocery that used to contain some produce, and a sharpie in purple. No salt shaker. (I itemize the list because people frequently say "My house is Such a Mess" in some sort of performative bullshit. My house actually IS a mess. I'm OK with that. When I say it, it is not performative bullshit. It's truth.)

Dinner, at this juncture is cooling rapidly. I table the issue of the salt shaker, fetch out the big round container of salt, tilt the little silver spout, and gently shake it in a side-to-side motion over my food. Because we are still in the time of LOW HUMIDITY, the salt trickles out in a very shaker-like amount and so there is appropriately salted dinner and consumption of same.

Following dinner, I resumed hunting the salt shaker. I felt like I should put it somewhere safe (last night) so that the kitten (She of the soft fur, previously called Soft Kitty but now encumbered as Kitiara from Dragonlance because Sam is a nerd of that stripe) didn't bat it about the house and spill salt all over the damn place not that I would notice because the floor is... not clean enough for grains of salt to stand out. Just... I didn't want that. So I figured possibly I put the salt shaker in possibly a 'safe' location that was not the usual location. And I commenced to search.

In the cupboards? No.

In the drawers? No.

In a pan sitting on the stove? No.

In the instant pot? No.

In the fridge? No. (Don't laugh. The big round container of salt goes in the fridge in the summer months. It's the only way it will pour in August.)

On the windowsill? No.

On top of the fridge? No.

So then I started to figure I was an idiot who put the salt shaker somewhere that was far-too-safe and, in fact, wrong. I had no idea what that place would be, but, y'know. Anything's possible.
So I looked in all sorts of wrong places.

Medicine cabinet in bathroom? No.

Box of knitting needles under coffee table? No.

Mantle of fireplace? No.

In crate holding spools of spun yarn where kitty can't get them? No.

In china cupboard holding china, canning jars, and registration papers of dead horses? No.

I did, eventually, locate the salt shaker. It was on the floor, about ten steps from the kitchen counter where it should be. Apparently wherever I put it, the kitten got to it and batted it around the floor for a while.

I am not an idiot. Also, salt shaker needs to be put in a better place than I put it yesterday that is also NOT STUPID. I've made an effort.
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