Waldo

When we moved from Connecticut to Colorado several years ago one of our children received a stuffed “Waldo” from the “Where’s Waldo” books.  It is a small, skinny doll, about a foot long and a very good likeness of the character.  He was packed in a random box and forgotten.  One morning, two years later, my oldest daughter ran into the kitchen screaming, “I found Waldo!”  Since then he has been lost and re-found many times in our increasingly cluttered house.  Our whole family participates in the cluttering.  My husband never passes a garage sale without finding some treasure.  Used furniture actually finds him.  He has helped friends in need furnish whole apartments with items from our basement. He also has a soft spot for old luggage. Of course I am at fault as well.  I have been known to bring home the occasional armload of truly amazing used books.  Neither my husband or I are very organized about housekeeping either.  Other stuff is more important, or becomes more important.  So, things do tend to pile up.  There is a perpetual pile of socks in front of the DVD player with the idea that when we watch a movie we can pair up some socks at the same time.  We always mean to, but the pile remains.  Most mornings at least half the family will dig for socks some time before breakfast.  We are friends with a many comedians, jugglers and street performers, so we have a lot of guests, which we enjoy very much.  When we have guests, the boy’s room turns into the guest room and we make up a bed for the boys in our big bedroom closet (it makes a great hide out J).  The pillows and blankets never quite all get put back and they have been accumulating in pile at the foot of our bed over the fall and winter.  Yesterday my husband, having some unnatural fit of spring-cleaning fever, cleared up the pile of spare pillows and blankets.  It took me a full five minutes to realize why our bedroom felt so unnaturally empty.  As I was falling asleep last night I couldn’t get comfortable with my pillow, perhaps my husband had switched it out for one of the ones in the pile?  It felt all lumpy.  I put my hand under the pillow and…there was Waldo!  I opened my husband’s sock drawer and put one sock on each of Waldo’s legs (the socks did not match) and closed the drawer.  This evening I came home and Waldo was sitting on my side of the bed, leaning back comfortably on my pillow reading one of his books.  Hmm…where should Waldo travel to next?