So there was a period of about an hour this morning in which I believed that my oldest nephew, helping me in my pre-Thanksgiving cleaning frenzy, took several boxes to the trash. It was only this morning as I was preparing to start my writing weekend, that I realized I was missing a black tote with a couple of my notebooks in it.

So of course I recreated the mess we’d cleaned up in an effort to find said tote bag, only to have a sinking feeling that it had been a casualty of the make-house-look-nice-for-guests mandate. These two notebooks contain the beginnings of the sequel to Dream of Shadows and my third entry for the Vegas Bites trilogy anthology, both of which need to be worked on this weekend. Because they’re both due at the beginning of the year.

So thinking that these notebooks were currently being incinerated, needless to say, filled me with a certain panic. Sure I know how each story is supposed to progress, but sometimes it hard to get back the way the words were written, the momentum back.

And I know some of you are thinking, “why didn’t she just work on her computer? This wouldn’t have happened.” Well, computers crash (check), jump drives can break or get wonky (double-check) or you can crack your laptop monitor (triple-check win the t-shirt). Besides, te paper notebooks are great for taking to the coffeeshop and maximizing my lunch break at work. And when I’m facing writer’s block or deadlines or creative slumps, putting pen to paper and unchaining my mind is very freeing.

So you see why I needed those notebooks back.

After an hour of going through the coat closet, the sunroom closet, the office closet, the linen closet, and the two closets in my bedroom, I finally found the tote bag in a storage crate at the back of the second closet. I hugged that tote bag like a long lost lover. Then I ran downstairs to put a little Irish in my coffee.

So I apologize to my nephew for thinking he’d tossed my tote bag. And I think the moral of this story is to let sleeping piles lie. After all, it’s only when I clean up that I can’t find anything.