It’s the little things that make me realize I am losing my mind. I’d probably be a lot worse without my iPhone, but I figured out how to make it beep when there was important stuff I had to do. Regardless, I really do think I am losing my mind.
I know I bought a god damned container of mustard yesterday when I was at the grocery. I know because when I was walking the bags into the house before parking the car in the garage, the mustard fell out, I picked it up, put it in my pocket, dropped all the groceries in the kitchen, and I took the mustard out and put it on the counter.
I parked the car, came up from the basement, and began unbagging things, and with my elbow I knocked the mustard on to the floor, but it did not break, and I thought to myself “That could have really sucked.” I then picked the mustard up, put it in the fridge (breaking the unbagging protocol- all items get unbagged, then I put things away as such- frozens, then fridge stuff, then fresh veg that can stay out, then non-perishables I want to have cold when I use them- mustard, for example, then the shit I can just throw in whatever cabinet space I have left).
So tonight I want to use the mustard, open the fridge, and it ISN’T FUCKING THERE. I checked the cabinets to see if I misremembered everything and didn’t really put in the fridge. I pulled every damned item out of the fridge. No mustard. Oh, yeah. The kale and carrots and unsalted butter are there. The mustard- DENIED. Freezer? No mustard. I turned on every light in the garage and every car interior light and used my big ass long black flashlight to search the car. No mustard.
I don’t know if I am in fugue state, schizophrenic, or I’m really dead like the Sixth Sense or just dreaming shit like Newhart and Pleshette.
I’m this close to going to the garbage can and looking for a receipt to see whether I did by mustard or not.
Please tell me this has happened to you.
*** UPDATE ***
Adding to my misery, I realize now that I just may have blown my only chance to title a post “He got the Mustard Out” from the BTVS musical episode.
And the reason I want this mustard so bad is because WHEN I BOUGHT THE DAMNED MUSTARD I also bought a corned beef and cabbage and potatoes and carrots, dropped them off down the street at home and dad cooked them and they were DELICIOUS. And now I want some hot corned beef and cabbage leftovers with some tart and tangy stone ground mustard with just a touch of pepper and just enough vinegar and IT IS NOT THERE.
freemark
I’ve couldn’t find my glasses while wearing them before. As for the mustard you probably put it in a safe place that you wouldn’t forget.
gf120581
I’m afraid, Cole, that the Underpants Gnomes have finally realized there’s no profit in stealing briefs and have branched out to acquiring foodstuffs.
In my case, I think the bastards took one or two beers I’m sure I didn’t drink last night.
gogol's wife
Not this exact thing. But if I think of something to do when I’m on the second floor, when I get to the first floor I can’t remember it. I have to go back up to the second floor and then I remember it, and then I have to write it on a post-it note and take it back downstairs with me and then do whatever it is (consulting the post-it note to remind me what). So yes, age is no joy. (Not that you’re actually old.)
El Cid
Sorry, I meant to tell you — I borrowed your mustard.
Kirk
Yes, this has happened to me. I have had it (different items, not just mustard) reappear on the counter or in the refrigerator or somewhere it just should be up to a week later.
Comrade Carter
Not the same, but I walked out of the house with the stuff we needed in the backyard and tripped and the only thing I dropped was… the mustard!
Damn!
schrodinger's cat
Tunch is hiding the mustard. He wanted to be the only kitteh. Its his revenge. Tonight, you better sleep with one eye open.
Chris
@gogol’s wife:
Not sure it’s just age. I’m 25 and it happens to me all the time. Maybe I have ADD.
Mike N.
Happens all the time, John. You’ve been transported through a time-space fissure (probably when you opened the fridge) to our quantum universe, where you didn’t buy the mustard.
It’s much better here. Welcome.
wonkie
Well I haven’t had that exact experience…but this is what I did today:
I was doing research in the “morgue”, the attic where old office records go to die. My research involved moving heavy boxes around to get them out of my way so I could get to other heavy boxes.
So I lift up a heavy box, stagger across the attic and brain myself on a low ceiling beam.
“Ow” I say, after setting the box down. “That hurt!”
So, rubbing my head and thinkig about how much it hurt, I turn and head back and brain myself on the beam again.
And no I don’t think I have knocked any sense into myself yet.
freemark
@schrodinger’s cat: I think you may be right. Cole will wake up with the mustard dripping container, Godfather like, on the pillow next to him when he wakes up tomorrow.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Blame it on the guy laying out the rocks.
Andre Rieu
No, it’s just you.
Corner Stone
I don’t think it’s really the same thing, but I have had this happen to me more than once:
Go to the store with a small list, pick up the items and get the 1 main item I actually really wanted. Let’s say Korean BBQ sauce for a marinade.
Come home, grab the bag(s) and one item falls out and breaks all over the %$^$# floor. Yep, the 1 item I really needed.
Narcissus
You put the mustard in the freezer. It exploded.
You’re welcome.
serge
It will turn up. It always does when it gets hungry or it starts to rain.
RoonieRoo
This happens frequently to Grumpy Code Monkey and to me also. For us, it is sleep deprivation that scrambles our brains.
What happens to me is that I am literally looking right at the mustard or whatever and can’t see it for whatever reason. If you can, stop searching. Take a break and then go back and look again.
khead
Colonel Mustard.
Not in the kitchen.
Without a receipt.
joel hanes
This, in essence, happens to me often.
Using your mustard as example:
eventually it turns out that the mustard _is_ in the refrigerator, behind the box of baking soda. Or it was in the right place, in the second door shelf, and I looked right at it and couldn’t see it. Or fell unnoticed into the crisper drawer while I was putting heavy things on the top shelf.
It happens fo me a great deal more often when I drink.
max
The mustard- DENIED.
THE MUSTARD STANDS ALONE
IN THE KITCHEN
WITH THE COLONEL
I don’t know if I am in fugue state
Common forgetfulness is not fugue, promise. With a fugue, you would forget you had a house.
schizophrenic
In that instance, the mustard wouldn’t be lost – it would be taunting you for being too chickenshit to burn the house down.
or I’m really dead like the Sixth Sense
Naw. Your pants… those are dead.
or just dreaming shit like Newhart and Pleshette.
You put it in the fridge. You took it out later to use it and left it somewhere and forgot that part.
The alternative is that you dropped the mustard last time you came back from the grocery store and you used up the mustard and didn’t bring it in the house this time.
All of which points to you not paying fucking attention to what’s going on around you and voila – you don’t remember. No? What were you looking at at exactly 7:01 PM today?
max
[‘That short term shit gets dumped.’]
Corner Stone
The funny thing, to me, about grocery store receipts nowadays is they are like the WWII German encrypted code.
I’ll put all my junk away and start to just make sure of what it is I am paying for, and if it made it home with me.
The shorthand code is like needing a supercomputer to figure out wtf I actually bought. What the hell is GRNSYSFRM, and why did it cost me $3.99 ?
Hmmm….oh, it’s the package of sweet corn. Say what?
Mr Stagger Lee
Kentucky did not make the tournament, Maybe Mitch McConnell will demand an investigation and maybe take the wind out of the sails of the budding Ashley Judd candidacy. Of course he can cheer for Louisville, but isn’t that like cheering for Auburn to win it all in football in the state of Alabama? (and that just won’t do?)
karl
A person (or persons) unknown broke into your home and stole your mustard. This explains why some of my things go missing. Expect it to happen more often as the years progress.
Forkbeard
I actually did this yesterday with a stick of deodorant. I know I bought it. I know it was in the car. I brought it inside, but… it’s gone. Completely. I have done this with a pepper mill and some books in the past as well.
I think the cat took it all. Has Tunch been interrogated yet?
Suffern ACE
Yep. I misplaced chinese takeout one evening after work. I came in after work, set it down, went to hang up my coat and use the restroom, and in that two minutes, it disappeared. Took me 1/2 hour to find it and u knew it had to be within sux feet of the door.
joel hanes
@Mike N.:
Almost any brief explanation of chrono-synclastic infundibula is certain to be offensive to specialists in the field.
srv
I never lose things. Once a year, something does make me go nuts. Few weeks it was a t-shirt that I knew I’d washed, but as I carried it all up and started folding, it wasn’t there.
Tore the place apart. A couple of times. Think the ending of “The Conversation”
Couple days ago, pulled the pillow case off my pillow and there was the shirt. It had gotten inside the case during drying and…
So no, I’M FUCKING FINE AND FUCK YOU WORLD VERY MUCH.
That all said, as I get older, I’m less able to distinguish reality in my dreams. Not sure what’s up with that.
CaseyL
Two responses:
1. Maybe you put the mustard in a cabinet. Remind me to tell you about the time I was putting away groceries while talking on the phone, and wound up putting the dishwashing powder in the fridge and the milk in the undersink cabinet. (Fortunately realized my mistake before the milk spoiled.)
2. You are a man, and therefore cannot see what’s right in front of you. Back when I was living with Michael, he called me into the kitchen to complain about not being able to find the mustard (like you!), which he knew we had, having (like you!) just bought some. I opened the fridge. The mustard was absolutely literally right there on the top shelf, in front, big as life and twice as yellow. I didn’t interrupt Michael’s rant, just grinned and pointed. I think no one on Earth has ever looked as sheepish as he did.
scav
Has anyone considered sentient mustard with a wanderlust? Throwing itself off the cliff was it’s initial bid for freedom and the wide world.
Corner Stone
@srv:
What’s the difference?
Keith G
@Chris: Well young’un, age is certainly the cause of a variety of processes that aggravate such mental hiccups. I used to be able to do menial physical activities (laundry, cleaning, cooking) while having most of my thoughtfulness attending to some other thing(s).
Ooooh boy, not any longer. If I don’t devote nearly all of my processing to the immediate task at hand, strange shit can happen.
Corner Stone
@joel hanes:
There’s a field of specialists who study the phenomena of mustard slipping quantum dimensions?
scav
@scav: No, second, I forgot the parking lot into pocket jail episode.
freemark
@Corner Stone: My parents have often told me that if I get Alzheimer’s it will take a long time before anyone realizes it. The other day I wanted to make Alton Brown’s Mac and Cheese but needed macaroni. Went to the store, figured I’d also get some other things I needed while there. When I got home realized had $50 in groceries but not the elbow macaroni I actually went in for.
Comradde PhysioProffe
I just discovered today that I can’t find my motherfucken goddamn son of a fucken Yankees coffee thermos, so fucke you motherfucker!
Ted & Hellen
Poltergeist.
Elizabelle
When that’s happened to me, it turns out the mustard IS in the fridge, but its packaging is not what I remembered and I didn’t recognize it when searching. It hides in plain sight.
Much like a book you search and search for … and there it is, open on a table. You were looking for the cover, or the spine. You knew what it looked like, but …
You must tell us where the mustard eventually turns up.
If you remember to do so.
JCJ
Many years ago my wife and I drove home from the grocery in our little Honda CRX. One of the grocery bags fell over on the way home. We put everything back in the bag when we got home and went in the house. Everything was there except there was one tomato missing. I looked in the car and could not find it. My wife looked and found the tomato – it had rolled into an empty plastic cup that was tucked in a corner. We think it was scared and trying to hide!
Keith G
@Corner Stone: $3.99 for sweet corn?
Whole Foods or Randall’s?
Narcissus
You put the mustard on top of the fridge while you were putting stuff away and only thought you put it inside the fridge.
It’s been laughing at you the entire time.
Bonnie
Dontcha just hate that!
maya
Better invest in a Clapper, JC.
Corner Stone
Why would anyone put unopened mustard, especially stone ground, into the fridge?
This is disgraceful.
Shadow's Mom
A similar experience is making me feel deranged.
Watched two Netflix DVDs today. Placed them in their envelopes to send back and set them on the bed, one atop the other.
Decided to brush out the dog after his bath – on the bed, next to the DVDs.
He wiggled, and I heard but did not see something flip off the bed. After I was done, only 1 DVD on the bed.
Now, I cannot find the other DVD. Have gone through the bedding, pulled out the drawer under the bed’s platform (thinking it might have slipped down the crack between platform and foot of bed). No DVD under the bed.
Have absolutely no idea how it could simply vanish in a 3 square foot area. Happily no time limit on Netflix DVDs.
Yutsano
The mustard is a lie.
Corner Stone
@Comradde PhysioProffe:
Beyond the perverted Yankees obsession, I have to say I like your style.
Tom Levenson
Some future scholar of pre-comet North American culture is going to file this post under the heading Not Even First World Problems.
The mustard is behind the carbon-dated leftovers, btw. You moved those fogged plastic containers to the front, intending to haul ’em out to toss the incriminating remains, and then forgot, which you do, because you are aging at a rate of one day per day.
You’re welcome.
Corner Stone
@Keith G: Just an example. I’d never pay that for corn. Now, I have paid that for fresh asparagus a time or two. That shit’s like To The Manor Born these days.
Cathie from Canada
At one time, we had seven bottles of maple syrup in the house — every time I went to the store, I kept thinking “oh yes, and I’m out of maple syrup” and so I would buy another bottle.
And its not like we use maple syrup all that often anyway, maybe six times a year.
It took a long, long time to use up all those bottles, like maybe 15 years.
Then one day, when I went to get some maple syrup to pour on my pancakes…
Eric U.
I was moving stuff around on my desk looking for fingernail clippers. I finally gave up and got some from the bathroom. When I was done, I thought I should put them back, and there were two fingernail clippers at the edge of my desk.
Hawes
Best. Blog post. Ever.
Liquid
It ‘went to the pile’ as St. George Carlin once said.
Funkula
I’m reminded of the show Terriers, where one of the characters thought he was going senile due to things disappearing from the fridge, finding household objects in places he had no memory of leaving them, etc. It turned out he had a secret lodger hiding in his attic. So, y’know, check the nooks and crannies. The animals may have decided it was time to add another human to the household.
Corner Stone
@Cathie from Canada:
But didn’t you have plenty of maple syrup from those..times…when. Oh.
jurassicpork
American Zen‘s Mike Flannigan reports from CPAC. They’ve sent in the clowns and Mikey knows what to do with them.
Elizabelle
You sure you know where that iPhone is?
mike
you really need to get out more
CaseyL
@Cathie from Canada: I did that with popcorn a few months ago. Kept thinking I was out, kept buying more. I had, like, 6 boxes of microwave popcorn in the house. Still working my way through them…
srv
@Corner Stone: LoL, I asked for that.
But I’ve always been blessed with lucid dreaming, what I call “Hi-Fi” dreaming. People apparently make a lot of effort to have/control these dreams, but I don’t get that. I do get suspicious when my rent car is out racing a Shelby, pull over, open the hood and snort when there’s not a 383 Super Commando there.
So I don’t control it, but there’s an audit test in there somewhere when it gets ridiculous.
But lately, I don’t get the WTF moment until a few days later.
My bet: The mustard is in the bathroom cabinet.
PeakVT
Please tell me this has happened to you.
You’re seriously asking Juicers to not let you suffer?
Redleg
And the really sad part is that as trivial as your little tale is, my fucking weekend was even more dull.
Johannes
Tunch. Is. Laughing. At. The. “Superior. Intellect.”
Emma
What Tom said. We currently have three bottles of mayo in the fridge because we keep losing them. And then finding them. In a small fridge.
I blame the imp of the perverse.
SFAW
@Comradde PhysioProffe:
As the late, great, and very-much-missed Steve Gilliard would say: FTFY
Narcissus
You put in on the bed-side table where you keep the petroleum jelly
Hi-oh
Mike G
Careful, too many posts like this and you’ll turn into Andy Rooney.
Corner Stone
@Funkula:
This is never a mystery for me. Any time I can’t find something I know it’s because my sister has been over. Doesn’t matter if it’s pots, utensils, food, my son’s clothes, etc. I love that she spends so much time with my son doing fun things but it’s like going full tilt Indiana Jones to find the cheese grater the next couple days.
The real kicker is she leaves half the gear spread all over my kitchen surfaces and then the 2 or 3 things I use every week are NOWHERE to be found.
Spaghetti Lee
I’m actually in the process of trying to write a horror story for my creative writing class. I could add mustard-swiping poltergeists, but I think it might break the gravitas. (My stories all have gravitas out the ass, obviously.)
AnotherBruce
My thing is, if I ever leave my keys in the refrigerator, I’m going to check myself into Motel Rubber Walls.
schrodinger's cat
Not only does Tunch have the mustard, he is selling it online.
Roger Moore
How can we have gotten this far into the thread without somebody asking what kind of mustard? Because if it’s plain yellow mustard instead of stone ground or Dijon or something similar, we’re going to have to take away you snooty, effite liberal card.
Funkula
Oh, and on the subject of groceries hiding from you, we once found a thing of breakfast sausage (the big thick cylinder that you slice patties off of) that had escaped into the wilds of the trunk weeks before. It had used this warm vacation as an opportunity to become completely spherical, no doubt from decomposition inside. We disposed of that thing as carefully as a damn EOD team, because we had no idea how much internal pressure it was subject to.
Morzer
Could you have put your mustard into your coat pocket again? Alternatively, check drawers, top of spice rack – anywhere you might have put it as a “safe place” or with other spices/condiments.
Personally I suspect the Dolphins signed your mustard to a 5 year 60 million dollar contract to add punch to their offense.
Take your flashlight to South Beach, Mr Cole!
Chris
@Keith G:
Oh, age makes it worse for sure. I’m just saying the process he’s describing happens to lots of people even before that becomes a factor.
Cathie from Canada
@CaseyL: Yes, and then one day you will go to make yourself some popcorn and realize that you don’t have any because you’re out.
And so, the next time you go to the store, you’ll think “oh, yes, and I’m out of popcorn”
And so the cycle of life continues…..
Yutsano
@CaseyL: Watch more CPAC. You’ll get through it in no time. :)
@Cathie from Canada: And bit by bit we make the grocery chains in our respective countries richer.
SFAW
See, John, if Ian Richardson were in the neighborhood, we could send him ’round to your place, and you could satisfy both your mustard AND your “House of Cards” cravings.
But he ain’t, and we can’t/won’t, so stop whinging, get a grip, and make hash outta the corned beef.
Oh, right, hash isn’t “gormay” enough for you.
Steeplejack
Almost had this happen to me last night. Went to the grocery on the way home from dinner out, bought a a bunch of stuff. Put everything away and then later suddenly thought, “Hey, where’s that two-pack of paper towels?” Couldn’t find it anywhere in the kitchen. WTF? Mental retracing of path from store to car, car to home. Nothing. Amazingly strong, visceral feeling of loss, almost panic, over such a trivial thing. Plus the meta: am I losing it?
Then I found it in a corner of the living room, and then the memory came back: I had been really loaded down, trying to save another trip back to the car, and I had had the paper towels wedged between my arm and side. As soon as I got into my place I let them drop, then kept going with the bags to the kitchen. The paper towels had bounced out of the main traffic path, so they weren’t sitting obviously in the middle of the floor, but they weren’t hiding either.
The amazing thing is how in retracing the events in my mind I could remember with such (seeming) clarity everything except the paper towels. The mind, it plays tricks.
Maude
I have done this kind of thing and it is frustrating.
You broke the usual routine. It’ll turn up.
I somehow want to blame Zsa Zsa.
Comrade Mary
I took the lid off one of my round storage containers on Friday, turned around, and the lid was GONE. Completely GONE.
I still haven’t found it, but if some mustard I never saw before shows up, I’ll drop you a line.
(BTW, it must have been part of your unpacking-interruptus. Have you checked the top of the fridge, all surfaces in the living room, and the loo?)
Roger Moore
Also, too, this makes me extra glad that there’s a supermarket on the next block. I don’t seem to have this problem, but at least I won’t burn up too much gas dealing with it when I do.
SFAW
@Mike G:
“Didja ever notice how mustard seems to disappear, just like socks in a dryer, at the most inopportune time?”
Jethro Troll
Your mustard is missing.
THANKS, OBAMA.
Cathie from Canada
@Funkula: We did that once, too.
But it was a four-litre container of milk that got pushed to the back and forgotten.
Oh, dear.
Once we finally realized where that awful smell was coming from, it took several weeks to get the trunk aired out.
MattR
@Maude:
If history is any indication, its either Rosie or Tunch, maybe both.
srv
Grey Poupon Lost Footage, in case you missed it.
Culture of Truth
The same thing happened to me the other day.
It was some kind of condiment or spice; I can’t recall what it was or whether I eventually found it.
KBS
Wow, nobody mentioned the brilliant short story, “Yesterday Was Monday” by Theodore Sturgeon? Growing up, that was how we explained all such incidents.
SFAW
@Comrade Mary:
Yeah, I remember a friend of mine losing a lid, right before a party. Of course, in those days, it was only about $20/oz, so no big deal.
TaMara (BHF)
Dammit John, if you’re going to get a song stuck in my head, at least add a youtube link.
Buffy!!!
srv
I Lost My Baby Now – Mustard Men
You know, with all these unemployed creative people, we should do a Kickstarter for a cartoon based on John’s life.
What would we call it?
Elizabelle
@Jethro Troll:
I love your nym.
Culture of Truth
Although today I also misplaced something; turned out it was right in front of me.
Corner Stone
You know who would be great doing a voice narration of this story?
Leslie Nielsen.
Yes, I know he’s passed but if we have the technology to quantum transport mustard to other dimensions I have to conclude we could ask him to do this.
dance around in your bones
Situational awareness, man! Do you have it?!
(Courtesy of the late lamented B.O.B.)
eta:Everyone else has already made the Colonel Mustard jokes.
Steeplejack
@Roger Moore:
Cole mentioned “tart and tangy stone ground mustard” in his update.
Keith G
@srv:
Kathy.
Culture of Truth
I bet this never happens to Obama.
Bush, yes.
Culture of Truth
Youtube:
“Hitler Reacts to Losing his Mustard”
gogol's wife
@Culture of Truth:
I can see Bruno Ganz now!
God, I love that clip. But as often as I’ve laughed at it, when you watch it with the actual subtitles, it’s truly terrifying.
mainmati
You meant to buy the mustard and FSM knows for a damn good St Paddy’s Day reason too but because it was so front brain it was imagined intensely but for some reason not realized. It happens. The mustard, like Colonel Mustard never happened.
hells littlest angel
Look around for a slip of paper printed with the words, “jar of mustard.”
Culture of Truth
@gogol’s wife: I just saw one called “Hitler Reacts to cancellation of Google Reader.” Which apparently just happened. I don’t use Reader but it was still hilarious.
JWL
Just spit-balling here, Cole, but could it be you maybe drink a bit too much?
(I’ll go look in a mirror now).
Nellie in NZ
Damn, sometimes I miss living in America.
donnah
Pardon me, do you have any Grey Poupon?
Once on the way home from the grocery, I had a small bag of food fall over in the back seat. I was sure I had gotten everything and carried it inside to put it away.
A few weeks later, I found a quarter pound of cheddar cheese on the floor under the front seat. Fortunately it was tightly shrink-wrapped, because it had gone blue. ugh.
cbear
@SFAW:
So you were one of those rookies paying $20 an oz.?
Thanks for putting me through college.
Narcissus
Colonel Angus in the kitchen with the mustard
pokeyblow
Poor Cindy McCain. She has to smile as her incontinent, incoherent, spongebrained husband tells her exactly the same story, day after day, every day of her life.
Keith
I had that happen with some taco shells recently. They were the first thing I put in the basket, and I did self-checkout. But the next day, when I went to look for the shells, they were gone. No idea where they went, and I had to go back to the store to buy more.
And on the subject of mustard, I keep multiple varieties – course grain, smooth Dijon, yellow, spicy yellow, but I ran out of smooth Dijon, so I went to the store to buy a new bottle. I used a little and was walking to the fridge, and it just fell out of my hand, decorating my floor. Seems like I’ve dropped a few things lately to the point where I have to keep a finger under glasses etc just in case.
Gary
This is not an unusual phenomenon. Fairies are real and they receive great pleasure in hiding things from us mortals. I was once working a my beloved VW Vanagon. I was on my knees in the cargo area working on something that required WD40 to loosen a bolt. I sat the WD40 on the floor right in front of me, messed with the bolt, then reached down to get the WD40 for another squirt. The WD40 was gone. I never moved out of the van nor was I distracted by anything else. In less than 30 seconds it was just gone. I looked everywhere around for at least a full minute. I thought I was going crazy. I got out of the van, went into the house to get my wife and when we came back to the van it was in exactly the spot where I left it. So take a deep breath, relax and the mustard will reappear.
Anne Laurie
Both Spousal Unit and I have ADD, but thank goddess I also have the Sockhunter Gene (which is actually an excellent eidetic memory). Every successful household needs a sockhunter, the person who can answer the plantive lament I can’t find my socks! — either by recalling where the socks were left, or by leading through a list of possible answers (did you take them out of the dryer? did you leave the basket of dry socks on the stair landing? is the full basket sitting behind the closet door waiting to be emptied?) until the sock-seeker succeeds.
And when the sockhunter fails (not very often) it’s probably the godsdamned pets’ fault anyways. Check under Rosie’s favorite hiding-stuff chair, and then under the bed in Zsa Zsa’s guestroom.
seaboogie
Blame it on pixies, John. You obviously have a low-level pixie infestation and they are jonesing for mustard every bit as much as you are on St. Paddy’s Day. Probably wouldn’t take more than three or four of them to spirit away the precious yellow sauce.
Culture of Truth
“your mustard is nice… for me to poupon!!!”
seaboogie
@Culture of Truth: FTW!
Culture of Truth
Clearly, you need to live-blog as you put your groceries away.
pokeyblow
Reagan used to tell a story like yours about the “football.”
Yutsano
@Keith: Plastic bottles are my saviour. I’m not interested in food snobbery. I’m interested in my purchases surviving my klutzy hands.
Original Lee
Welcome to getting older, John. I had something similar happen with a bottle of bleu cheese salad dressing. We were going to a potluck and had to bring the green salad and two dressings. I went to the grocery store the morning of the event, did that shopping plus some other shopping, very carefully put everything that needed to go to the potluck into the same bag, and went my merry way. I brought the bag inside and stuck the whole thing in the bar fridge. I did not otherwise touch this bag, or do anything else to it. I unpacked and put away the rest of the groceries, did some other stuff, and got ready to leave for the potluck. I grabbed the bag out of the bar fridge, put it in the trunk of the car, drove to the potluck, took the bag out of the car and into the hall where the potluck was, and unpacked the bag. No bleu cheese dressing. I went back out to the car. No bleu cheese dressing anywhere (and it was a subcompact, too). I drove back home and looked all over the house, including unlikely places, such as the cabinet under the sink and the video cupboard. Bupkis. So I stop at the Quik-Mart on the way back to the hall, pick up a bottle of Thousand Island dressing, and bring it in to the potluck.
Months pass. No sign anywhere of the bleu cheese dressing. I have the car detailed, even, and no bleu cheese dressing. Last week, I was getting some reusable bags out of the trunk, and voila! there was the bleu cheese dressing. *Sigh.*
Nicole
I think it’s hiding from you.
Mean Mr. Mustard.
Loneoak
I blame it on ED Kain. /moko loko
Hal
Sigh…I miss Buffy.
Librarian
@Culture of Truth: Either that or “Hitler is Informed That the Bunker is Out of Mustard.”
cmorenc
I just went through this same agony about a really nice, expensive pair of Oakley sunglasses my daughters gave me for Christmas a couple of years ago. They weren’t in either of the two places I was absolutely sure I’d left them when I last used them several weeks ago: either on a certain bookcase shelf in my study or in the bottom of my daypack. I was wondering whether I had actually left them down at our vacation house at the beach on a certain bookshelf there back in January, since that trip was the last occasion I’d actually worn them, but if they didn’t turn up there when I go down over Easter…I’ll sooner or later have to either admit to my daughters that I spaced out the expensive pair of sunglasses they save up and pooled together to give me as an especially nice present, or else I’ll have to bite the bullet and splurge for an identical pair.
Well, today I was emptying out the daypack from a recent trip I took, and realized that what I thought was the bottom of the pack was actually a shirt of similar color stuffed in the bottom, and lo and behold, the sunglasses were there in their case underneath the shirt. DESPITE the fact that I’d looked in there a dozen times already desperately looking for those sunglasses and failing to notice the gray bottom was a shirt, not the gray bottom of the backpack. DUH! At least I don’t have to go out and spend $150 on a pair of new sunglasses to keep from losing face with my daughters (I’d never have spent that much purely picking out sunglasses for myself).
JaneE
You are not really losing your mind until:
You hunt for something you know you have, and after searching the house and garage and shed not once but twice, give it up and go buy it again. Then when you put it away in a spot you will remember and find easily, you open the cupboard and find not one but two of the same item, in the same almost unused state as the one you are putting away. Been there, done that. (will not say how many times, but never found more than three)
Petorado
This is a message from the universe John …
“Pink Himalayan Salt is the only condiment worth having.”
If you listen closely, you can hear McMegan laughing her evil little laugh, “Bwaahahaha!”
p.s.-it’s behind the Thermomix, right where you left it.
Culture of Truth
Obama: “Donald Trump is looking into it. What happened at Roswell? Where are Biggie and Tupac? and where is John Cole’s mustard?!?”
JScott
Wormholes, man. Fucking. Wormholes. Everywhere.
You gotta wrap your condiments in tin foil. You gotta do that.
SFAW
@cbear:
You must have gone to one of those colleges where literacy was optional.
Did I say that it was mine? Or even that I ever bought any?
And the Dot Purple that they got was on a whole different level of … something or other.
Yutsano
@JScott:
I declare this WIN!!
Randy P
In our house I call this “looking with husband eyes”. I no longer bother counting how many times this happens, that I look EVERYWHERE in the damned refrigerator for something that I know should be there but it isn’t. And then my wife can go to the fridge, open it up, reach in and pull out the missing item in two seconds. Yet I would swear I looked at every item on every shelf.
This is especially annoying to both of us when it’s something she asked me to get for her, and then she has to end up getting it herself because I can’t find it.
There’s some sort of seeing without seeing that is going on. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know if it’s really gender-linked. But it’s too damned repeatable to pretend it doesn’t happen.
You need another human in your household, Cole. Tunch probably sees it but isn’t telling you.
TS
I don’t think losing the mustard is indicative of losing ones mind – but writing a blog entry about it – definitely a cause for concern
SFAW
@JScott:
Can’t. He’s already using all he has on his head.
gwangung
@TS: I dunno. I think it just reminds us of how adorable John is.
I am not sure that is a good thing, however.
SFAW
@Randy P:
As Roseanne Barr used to say, back in her stand-up days: “The uterus is a tracking device.”
Nutella
@seaboogie:
That would be a leprechaun infestation, then.
Yutsano
@Randy P:
Tunch’s only concern is that the hairless ape keeps supplying the finest sushi-grade ahi. All else is mere amusement for him.
Mac from Oregon
Very funny story, especially about the corned beef… 15 years ago My wife and kids and I had cooked a corned beef, set it on the counter, may have even been for St Patty’s day, but as we drove out of the garage we saw the front door standing open. My wife jumped out and closed the door and we went to the store. Unbeknownst to us, in the minute, no more, that the door was open, a very large husky pup had wandered inside, and my wife had trapped it in the house. Five minutes after I left, my brother and family stopped by for a quick howdy and on opening the door the husky bolted out the door. My brother wondered when we got the new dog and he and his family chased down the dog two blocks and wrangled him back to my house, trapping him inside again. This time he ate the corned beef. We drove up the drive way and sitting in the front bay window was a very happy and well fed husky puppy. We could not figure out how the dog got there. And it was a mystery until my brother called and asked when we had gotten the new dog… I think we had gone to the store for mustard…
Odie Hugh Manatee
Late at night, if you hear Tunch saying…
It rubs the mustard on its skin so the eating can begin.
RUN!
Juju
If the mustard was unopened, why would you put it in the refrigerator?
Nutella
Wait a minute, I see the problem!
The protocol must not be broken.
Corner Stone
@Randy P:
She is completely fucking with you man.
Culture of Truth
Don’t be too hard on yourself John.
Bush is still looking for those weapons of mass destruction.
Gilmore
“and then there were the strawberries”
scav
Just remembered the time I lost all my keys for a solid day and a half, two days, and they were in the pocket of the coat I was wearing the whole time.
If only my heart had beat a little harder during my panic, I would have heard them jingle.
Culture of Truth
@Mac from Oregon: that’s very ironic because dogs don’t even like mustard.
Felonius Monk
Well that certainly sucks — been there, done that. However, I am enjoying my delicious corned beef on marble rye with Russian dressing.
Improvise, Cole —- jeesh!
The Moar You Know
I never have this problem. I always hear the missing glass-jarred food item in question sliding off the roof of my car, there to burst in a spectacular fashion all over the street, as I drive off to work the next morning.
SFAW
@The Moar You Know:
Yeah, Mitt has problems like that, too. Sort of.
Well, except for the “work” part, of course.
Dee Loralei
This thread is full of win.
Mnemosyne
@Randy P:
I think Nora Ephron wrote a routine about you.
The prophet Nostradumbass
Mustard? You should be using HP Sauce.
wasabi gasp
Wonder this time where she’s gone
Wonder if she’s gone to stay
Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone
And this house just ain’t no home
Anytime she goes away.
koalaholik
I would just like to thank John and all the BJers for making me laugh out loud tonight while reading the blog and responses. I can always count on you to add a certain spice to the day. Thanks bunches.
koalaholik
I would just like to thank John and all the BJers for making me laugh out loud tonight while reading the blog and responses. I can always count on you to add a certain spice to the day. Thanks bunches.
dance around in your bones
@donnah:
When that commercial was current, we used to roll down our windows at stop signs and parrot that line at whoever was unfortunate enough the be stopped next to us, then speed off cackling like jackals.
Watching 2001: A Space Odyssey for the first time in a bazillion years – just to get to the “Open the pod bay doors, Hal!…I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that” bit. Yes, my life is boring nowadays.
The monkeys are just discovering the monolith. Everything goes to hell from this point.
Irving
I can’t believe I just scrolled through a blogospheric search party of folks more or less trampling through John’s house hunting for his mustard. I wanted to see if John had found it. The suspense was killing me.
? Martin
@The prophet Nostradumbass: That shit is hard to get in the US. At least here on the west coast. Silkies, durians, no problem. Stuff from the UK – damn…
Bob In Portland
A jar of mustard was seen debarking a bus in Wilkes-Barre in the company of a lone argyle sock.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@? Martin: I found it in my local grocery store, here in the Bay Area.
Death Panel Truck
Wow. That be some serious OCD. Do you stack your canned goods with the labels facing forward, like Will Truman?
dance around in your bones
My son-in-law just walked into my bedroom to find me laughing like a loon all by myself – I said Balloon Juice, doncha know. It happens rather frequently.
Debbie(aussie)
John, are ou sure you didn’t take the mustard with all the trimmings over to your parents place? If not, just another case of male blindness:)
slag
@Cathie from Canada: I did that recently…with mustard. Seriously, I have four jars of mustard sitting in my cabinet right now. Mocking John with their Mustard essence.
And John-If you didn’t have so many hidden stash compartments in your house, things like this wouldn’t keep happening to you.
bago
I think something fell out of my pocket. I’ll just leave it here.
http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/independent/silvercircle/
dance around in your bones
Just switched over to Pulp Fiction once again, 2001 too long and mostly boring.
Also, I too remember buying beer IN A GLASS at movie theatres in A’dam. They even had holders on the side of your seat to put the glasses in.
different-church-lady
The mind is like an overstuffed closet: it’s all still there, but there’s so much stuff in front of it that you just can’t get at what you need when you need it without unpacking the entire closet. And the older we get, the more stuff we have in the closet.
One lousy tip I have that helps me stay sane in these situations — because with me it’s not mustard, it’s that thing I need to get my job done, a spare battery that runs my rig and either I find it or the entire set shuts down. I remember what they say about a fumble in football. You see the ball loose and your instinct is to speed up and grab the ball, but if you do all that happens it the ball bounces off your flailing hands. Instead you need to slow down. I do that and instead of a panic flail through the bag, I actually look into it and there’s the battery hiding in the corner.
scav
@different-church-lady: Similarly, I think there’s some research that if you keep repeating out loud what you’re looking for, you’re more likely not to overlook it. The brain’s somehow primed for the object named. This is not just inspired by the desire to see John wandering through the house yelling “Mustard! Mustard!” late at night.
Violet
Did John find the mustard?
TooManyJens
@Death Panel Truck:
How do you stack your canned goods, you animal?
BGinCHI
OK, so the mustard represents women, right? I’m trying to follow this.
Cole’s libidinal economy is crazy complicated. I’m worried about my final grade in this course.
TooManyJens
@BGinCHI: Wait, that’s it! Cole left his mustard in Austin.
…that sounds surprisingly dirty.
Louis
Weed. Get stoned, creatively stash weed in a nice safe memorable place. Next week.
Er duh?
Go on call me a stoner, I can remember a weeks worth of busy diary, four different door codes, my bank account number, my PIN, my wife’s birthday, three kids birthdays, my wedding anniversary, my Internet bank login, the precise content of a year old affidavit, but the fact my stash is in the electric meter box?
BGinCHI
@TooManyJens: No. Cole wishes he left his mustard in Austin.
This is the source of his break with reality.
It’s also possible that he put his mustard in Austin and wants now to remember that feeling and so is recreating it.
A mind is a terrible thing.
cckids
@Cathie from Canada: Me, too. A pound block of sharp Cheddar, slid from the bag under the seat of the van. 2 days in July, in Vegas. Thank FSM for that sealed plastic packaging, it was quite rank even through that.
g
Try horseradish instead, John.
Thymezone
Just get a live-in attendant. Everything will be alright.
NotMax
@Cathie from Canada
Probably was 1967.
Mother (recently divorced) complaining about a odor in her car. Not having time readily available to do anything about it (she used the car to commute), eventually got around to taking it to a mechanic.
He slid into the driver’s seat, started it up, sniffed, took the keys from the ignition, walked around the back, opened the trunk…
…and promptly puked into it.
Package of pork chops had leaped from the grocery bags 3 weeks prior and snuggled on the far side of the spare tire.
Then there was the time in 1968 when the same car wouldn’t start. But that’s a cute story I’ll save for another occasion.
Yutsano
@NotMax: I’m certain my mom (raised 4 boys basically by herself, parents still married after 44 years come September, now you know how I was born on Oahu!) has a few stories like that. But it was hard to tell sometimes with all four of us in the van. We weren’t messy kids per se, but four boys attract dirt and interesting odours like no tomorrow. I’ll have to ask her.
NotMax
Why I currently have 3 bottles of mustard in the pantry plus 1 in the refrigerator:
Wanted some mustard for something, and discovered I was out.
Next time went marketing, picked some up. The following 3 times went food shopping, remembered only being out of mustard but completely spaced out that I had already bought some.
NotMax
@Yutsano
Cool.
Tell her someone on a blog is poised on tenterhooks to savor any such tales.
Quicksand
This is just to say
I have eaten
the mustard
that was in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for leftovers
Forgive me
it was delicious
so tart
and so tangy
Nutella
@? Martin:
You can get your HP sauce shipped.
That’s where I get my tea bags.
Suzanne
Once when I was pregnant, I went to work and put my purse in the fridge and my lunch in my desk. that was disappointing.
I have a visual memory, so this stuff doesn’t happen to me often, but names, numbers, and anything told to me verbally is just….gone.
The Other Chuck
Arriving at work one morning, I swiped a danish at the card reader instead of my security badge. Weeks later, I had a dream where I did the same thing … and it beeped and let me in.
Yutsano
@Nutella: Their price for a 32 oz tin of golden syrup is quite reasonable. May have to bookmark for later consumption…
ETA: might show to my old British boss too.
Comrade Mary
I can’t sleep. Has John found his mustard yet?
YellowJournalism
@Comrade Mary: Can’t sleep, either. I really need to know where John’s food went.
When I was living alone during college, I lost the remote. (Wasn’t the first time, and it wasn’t the last.) I tore the place apart and could not find it, so I went to bed. Next morning, I went to unload the dishwasher I ran the night before, and there was the damned thing sticking out of the top rack. It was clean as a whistle, and damned unit didn’t work after a day of drying out! My parents still have the TV the remote went to, and that remote is still working just fine, although something inside rattles around from time to time. My family, including my husband, still give me shit for it to this very day.
I also lost my keys in the freezer once, but that’s a story for another time John loses his groceries.
Linkmeister
@KBS: That Sturgeon story is brilliant, and it’s online!
Jay S
@joel hanes: Yep, that happens a lot. The usual trigger for finding the
lostmisplaced item is to buy a new one, or have a second person look in the same place. The refrigerator has a number of in plain site hiding places.OTOH I misplaced a timer switch for a bathroom fan over ten years ago and it has yet to materialize, of course I didn’t replace it with a timer, just a standard switch on the assumption the other one would show up eventually.
TS
@Culture of Truth:
Probably stored at the back of Saddam Hussein’s fridge. No-one thought to look there.
black_onion
I hope there is an update to this. I am seriously going to have a hard time sleeping, wondering what happened to the mustard.
I am being totally serious here.
seaboogie
@Nutella: Aye, ’tis that it be, then….
Fred
You are thinking of the wrong movie. It’s POLTRGEIST. Six months from now you will open the fridge for milk and the damned mustard will be right where you put it. And some disicorporated spirit will be laughing his non-existant ass off while you turn three shades of purple and throw the jar at the wall.
Princess Leia
@Quicksand:Oh, that is just beautiful!!!!
danielx
Awright, inquiring minds want to know – did he find the damned mustard?
Actually, if he didn’t eat hot corned beef and cabbage with mustard late at night, it’s probably something less than a tragedy, however delicious it may be. Talk about staying awake…
Luci
Yup… did the mustard turn up?? And, the reason I want to know is that, of course, I’ve done stuff like this… all the damn time, and I get invested in the outcome. ;) And, it’s only getting worse as I get older too. I dread to think how bad it will get. :) Actually, I think it’s mostly because as we get older, we have more and more things on our minds, and small things… like mustard… tend to get lost in the shuffle. At least I HOPE that’s what it is.
R-Jud
@Quicksand: COL (Cackle Out Loud).
Freemark
@Randy P: I’m with you on this Randy P. I think whatever we are looking for actually isn’t there. The other person, mostly a female of our species for some reason, hides this item for their magic trick. They then wait for you to need it, if that takes too long they will ask you to get it. Of course when you can’t find it, after looking from 3 to a zillion times, they will pull it out from where you just looked. My mother and a number of girlfriends have done this to me and I still have not figured out how they get the stuff back into the cupboard/fridge without my seeing them do it. Are these magical skills taught in special classes, or passed down along maternal lines? I wish someone would write a tell all book. Because there is no way I just didn’t ‘see’ it.
Ronzoni Rigatoni
“All your mustard belong to us.”
gogol's wife
@Gilmore:
The mess boys ate the strawberries!
I know this thread is over but I can’t stop reading it.
marshall
Well, did you find it? Don’t leave us dangling.
joel hanes
@BGinCHI:
A mind is a terrible thing
O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne’er hung there. Nor does long our small
Durance deal with that steep or deep. …
PNW_WarriorWoman
Did this with a cup of coffee a few years ago. Swore I put it on the counter. It disappeared. Immediately accused those around me of taking it, drinking it or dumping it. Husband doesn’t drink coffee. Kids were little. Husband found it sitting on the shelf in pantry closet. Boy did I have to apologize. I identify with your frustration.
Arachnae
Check by the stove.
spoot
I think when you knocked the mustard off the counter and had a brief vision of the jar breaking and thought, “that would have sucked”, your mind automatically decided the mustard was ruined and you picked it up and threw it in the garbage.
But you had a wish fulfillment fantasy of putting it in the refrigerator.
Original Lee
@joel hanes: Oh, if only Spenser had written about mustard.
andy
This often happens to me. I wonder if it isn’t just a past memory of mustard-putting-away unrelated to the latest incident of mustard-putting-away. Shit always trips me up. It helps to do the same stuff the same way.
Denali
This happens to me about twice a day, usually with my glasses.
The trick is to somehow lose something else, totally unrelated, so that, in the course of looking for that something else, the first lost thing magically appears. And in the joy of reunion, all consciousness of the the second lost thing is lost. Of course, there is a slight problem if the second lost thing happens to be the car keys or your most used charge card. Off-putting smells are really relatively trivial events in the great scheme of things.
weasle
Have you checked your drawers or cabinets? I have this happen to me all the time, & it’s either the TBI or my ADD… the weirdest i’ve done so far is toilet paper in the fridge.
am
@Shadow’s Mom: It’s in the little crack between the bed rails and the box spring or the head board and the mattress. You can thank me later.