Last night, I spent close to an hour looking for something that was exactly where it was supposed to be. It was on the correct shelf, right in front. Nothing was hiding it. It wasn’t behind something or turned the wrong way.

I looked there — twice — and I couldn’t see it. So I looked in all the other places I might possibly have put an unopened package of medication. There’s a cupboard in the kitchen where some stuff is stored. There’s a rack in the bathroom where other supplies are kept. Otherwise, it’s either my medicine cabinet or the cabinet over the john.

I searched the kitchen thoroughly, in the process finding and tossing out several bottles and tubes of prehistoric stuff that had to be at least a decade old and which I didn’t know I still had. But, I didn’t find what I was looking for.

Finally, I began to question if the container for which I was looking existed at all. I thought I’d bought two bottles of this stuff. It’s not expensive, so I would normally buy a couple of them at a time and stash the spare in my cupboard. But maybe I only thought I’d bought a spare. Maybe there was only one.

Before tucking myself into bed, I made a final pass at the cabinet over the toilet, my default location for storing non-prescriptions medications and cosmetics. There it was. Right in the middle. Where I had looked at least three times during the past hour.,

Despite my tendency to blame it on the dogs or on supernatural wee people, I suspected my eyes had been blind to the container. In a bright yellow box.

In bed, I told Garry I had just spent nearly an hour looking for something that was where it was supposed to be and where I had looked multiple times.

He was sympathetic. “Yes,” he said, “It happens.” So. Is it my eyes refusing to see what’s obviously there? Or is my brain unable (temporarily) to register information?

Or maybe … it really is those pesky, wee brownies, fairies, and pixies messing with me.