The Case of the Disappearing Printouts

 My life seems to be conspiring to get me to blog more regularly. 

About a week ago I had, very meticulously, taken printouts of some travel documents for the spouse. Before getting into my narration, let me share some details of the physical spaces we occupy in our apartment. The spouse uses the room closest to the front door as his study, what I call his man-cave. It is an interesting space, with a study table and office chair, two client chairs, a beautiful cabinet hand painted and decoupaged by our younger daughter, a wrought iron and glass trolley (which our TV used to occupy until we moved here), a book case, a small cabinet topped by a wooden temple, a big golf bag, a small golf bag, a Casio keyboard on a stand. There are two built-in  wardrobes, one of which is occupied by my bed cover and cushion cover collection, The other one has books in double rows, files, assorted documents. There is an attached bathroom. My helper 'cleans' the room insofar as it can be swept, mopped and dusted, if she can find clear space to dust. The spouse, his laptop, and his phone are often found there.

My desk, desktop, and printer occupy a corner of our bedroom. We also have a sideboard like structure with three large central drawers flanked by small cabinets on either side. Household documents are mostly in my domain. I try to be organised, but not always with great success.

And so, back to my story. The spouse wanted to check the time on his ticket, to book transport at the other end. I had my hands full, literally, carting ironed bed-covers to the study, so told him to look in the top drawer of the bedroom sideboard. He couldn't find the folder. I looked. I couldn't find the folder either. We also had to go out for various jobs, and I am absolutely useless when flustered. Anyway, I wasted several precious minutes looking in various unlikely places, creating more chaos, and gave up. He checked the ticket on his laptop and made his booking. I thought that I would come home and take fresh printouts. We went out, did our various jobs, and came home, wondering intermittently where that folder had disappeared to. If it had managed to reach the study by some mysterious means, it was permanently out of my purview. In my head, the study is a document eating black hole. Looking for important papers is, for me, the stuff of nightmares.

Anyway, post lunch, post nap, post an annoying phone call from our bank, I pulled out a file from the top drawer to enter the details of the person who would hopefully sort out our pending issue with the bank. And there, exactly where it should be, was the folder with the travel printouts. It hadn't dematerialized after all: it was in disguise. I had used an old plastic folder on which was printed Dental Record. In the fluster of the morning rush, neither of us had seen the Vistara logo clearly through the plastic. Phew. 

The spouse promptly issued me a clear plastic folder from his study!