This week there was mischief afoot.  On Tuesday I lost my keys for good, as best I can tell. I remember using them last when I came into my house after walking with a friend and threw them in the little pink tray on the shelf above my desk.

But Wednesday morning the keys were not in the tray.  Nor were they in their second home in the junk drawer upstairs.  Or on the dresser or the table or the kitchen counter. They also weren’t under the couch cushions, behind the bed, in the bathroom vanity or the freezer drawer (don’t ask.)

After clearing all the clutter off the horizontal surfaces in our not so big house I decided maybe I’d used the keys a second time  when I’d gone out to pick up the mail from our key-locked mailbox. Maybe they’d been inadvertently tossed into the recycling along with some junk mail on my way back in.  So I spread a tarp onto the driveway and turned out the large recycling bin to sort before it was hauled away.  I found lots of newspapers and magazines and restaurant fliers and parking meter slips but NO keys. And so I’ve been carrying around the spare set feeling jangley ever since.

The same day I lost the keys I made a lovely pumpkin bread pudding and left out the sugar.  Today I showed up at the gym with mismatched running shoes.

My New Age friends say it’s all because Mercury is in retrograde and will be until Monday.  If that’s the case, hold onto your keys and double check your shoes before you leave the house. Oh, and please don’t forget the sugar!

Some other things worth paying attention to this week:

The holidays are upon us! Check out suggestions for holiday table decorations culled from DIFFA’s: Dining By Design in my latest BANG story.

Art in context makes sense.

This reflective journaling program sounds promising for a winter project.

OMGoodness!  Check out the Miss Universe Pageant country costumes here and here.

On a more serious note, the lengths Venezuelan women will go to to achieve one man’s beauty queen ideal are no joke.

Happy Weekend All!