A couple weeks ago, I was ready to make some chocolate chip cookies. It was a cold day and we needed some good old-fashioned home cooking to warm us up.

So I got out all the necessary items – flour, sugar, chips, mixer, beater blade. Oops! No beater blade. You know what I’m talking about right? The beater with the rubber on one side that scrapes the bowl as it turns. Yeah, that one. It wasn’t in the mixer bowl, where it always is.

I looked in the dishwasher, in every drawer, every cupboard, in the pantry, the stove, the refrigerator. Not there. So, I branched out to other rooms – the dining room, the living room, the office. It could be there! Well, it had to be somewhere! I could not find it!

I looked in the trash. Yuck! I even checked in the car. I know! It was nowhere. I mean gone.

OK, so I went on Amazon, ordered a new one and made the cookies with the old mixer. Harder but got the job done.

Now yesterday, I came home from an appointment, walked into the kitchen and there is the beater laying on the counter. It is dirty but otherwise okay.

Gramps is smiling and says, “You’ll never guess where I found it!”

(He’s right. I’ll never guess.) “So where was it?” I ask.

“Outside in the garden,” he cheerily answers.

Well, that’s the one place I didn’t look, so it seems somewhat plausible. But how in the world did it get there?

We finally figured it must have accidentally gotten thrown out in the garden with some of the composting material from the kitchen. Problem solved!

Just then I noticed a package sitting on the counter. Yup!! You guessed it!! The new blade had just arrived!!

And now we have two that we can lose.