blog entry

The day I lost my underwear

The week we moved from Pennsylvania to Virginia was a rough one. Besides the fact that I had a 7 year-old starting a new school in the middle of the year and a 3 year-old with no preschool prospects, we moved into the house on a Tuesday, had my husband’s company Christmas party that Friday night, and a bridal shower for my soon-to-be sister-in-law on Saturday afternoon (which happened to be two hours away).

In the meantime, the house was crawling with painters who didn’t speak a lick of English, fumes from our recently refinished hardwoods were turning our brains to mush, and I still hadn’t found the box that contained of all things my entire collection of underwear.

Like I said…rough. And just when I thought I had completely lost my ability to cope, we received an invitation to the neighborhood Christmas party on Sunday. Well, I needed to try and find another sitter and get my self dressed (in clothes I hadn’t unpacked) to attend yet another party like I needed a great big whole in my head.

So I called the hosts (hoping I’d get the answering machine - which I did…yes!) and left a nice message thanking them for the invitation but told them we probably wouldn’t be able to make it for some good reason or another and then hung up. One less thing on my list of things to do. Or so I thought.

Ten minutes later the phone rang. I picked it up (against my better judgment) hoping it was the moving company calling to let me know that they’d found my box of underwear.

It wasn’t. It was our neighbor - the one who was hosting the neighborhood Christmas party. He’d just gotten my message and wanted to see if he could talk us into coming. I know how you feel, he said, we moved into the neighborhood a year ago and with the holidays and everything we were stressed too, but it was really nice to meet all of the neighbors at once and everyone is looking forward to meeting you and you’d really be missed so can you please come.

Apparently I was drunk at the time (or those fumes from the hardwoods were starting to eat away at my brain stem) because the next thing I knew, I spit out, “I still haven’t found my underwear”.

It just flew right out. There wasn’t anything I could do about it.

As I waited for the inevitable, “don’t ever call here again”, what I got instead was a throaty laugh and, “Aw hell, you don’t have to wear underwear…I won’t tell.”

Thank God my neighbor had a sense of humor. My husband and I ended up going to the party (now affectionately referred to as BYOU…bring your own underwear), had a great time, and met all of our new neighbors.

The moral to this story is…well, there are several:

1. Don’t let movers pack your underwear drawer…they’ll end up using your unmentionables to wrap around picture frames and chotskies and the box with your picture frames and chotskies will be the last place you’ll look for your underwear and the last box you’ll unpack;
2. Never use “I can’t find my underwear” as an excuse not to attend a party or you’ll be forever known as “the lady who can’t find her underwear”; and,
3. When all else fails (and it usually will), never lose your sense of humor. Being able to laugh, especially at yourself, will get you through some of life’s biggest challenges with a little more grace than many of us (i.e. me) can muster on our own.