June 07th, 2018

You see before you a sock. One single white sock. Just one.  It's entirely my fault, I jinxed myself.  A few months back I wrote in a blog about...something, I don't recall...but it was pertinent to the topic at hand that day, the fact that I had never lost a sock in a washer or dryer before. See?  My fault.   I taunted the laundry gods. This week, it finally happened.  After all these many years, after all those thousands of loads of laundry that I've done in those years, I lost a sock.

It was one of my favourite socks, naturally.

As you may recall, I walk a lot.  If I'm just walking to the library, or into town, or the post office, I just wear my sandals.  It's only a half mile walk. Literally a matter of a few blocks.  My feet can handle non-walking-specific shoes just fine for a brief sojurn.  But when I'm doing a bigger walk, say a couple of miles or longer, because I only will have one pair of feet in my lifetime and so I want to take proper care of them,  I wear sneakers.  Or tennis shoes.  Or athletic wear shoes. Or whatever you choose to call them.  And while it's fine to wear sneakers with no socks in Colorado, a very dry place, it's bad idea here in Florida, especially this time of year, when humidity rules the day. Friction plus moisture equals blisters.  Learned that pretty early on.  Solved easily by the wearing of socks.

Now a weird thing (surprise) about me and socks is that those cute little low cut sneaker socks slip off my heels when I'm walking. I hate that.  The heel droops lower and lower until ultimately it's under my heel and feels like I'm walking on rocks. So I have to stop and untie my shoe, snake a finger into my shoe, snag the back of the sock, haul it back up where it belongs, retie the shoe before continuing. Over and over, lather, rinse and repeat.

So up until recently I mostly wore ankle socks. Those babies aren't going anywhere.  But as far as looks, they score pretty high on the dork-0-meter. And I knew it.  But, the only other options open to me were slipping socks or blisters. Neither one is acceptable.  And then I unexpectedly found these other socks.  In the grocery store of all places!  These socks are low, like they are supposed to be, EXCEPT in the heel where they are just higher enough that they stay put when I'm walking!  Colour me happy!

So I've been wearing these new socks (they came in a pack of three, one white, one grey and one pink) exclusively when I'm walking. And now the washer or dryer, I'm not certain who the culprit is, has eaten one. The Colossal nerve!

How could this have happened?  Oh this sock is not just temporarily misplaced, it is absolutely gone.  That day I did all of the laundry. Every single basket of dirty clothes that day was washed, dried, folded, ironed, hung up and put away. So it's not as if one sock accidentally fell into the wrong basket and will turn up later with a load of towel or something!

Perhaps I should take a moment to explain my laundry basket thing.  And it's a thing.  I am particular about laundry but I don't bother with a hamper.  At the end of the day, when we get ready for bed, we throw our dirty clothes on the floor by the bureau.  The next morning, I scoop it all up and take it to the laundry room, separate the clothes and put them into their proper dirty clothes basket.  Whites, darks, delicates and then a general one for sheets, towels, dirty pot holders etc.  This works for me. I never ever shove things willy nilly into the washer.  Or the dryer for that matter. Some things don't go into the dryer.  They get hung up to dry and then for a few hours there are damp things draped over every chair in the house. Delicates get washed on the delicate cycle in cold water with special detergent specifically for delicates.  Whites get hot water and a little bleach. That's how they stay white.   And so forth.

 But ALL of the laundry was done that day.  Still one missing sock.

I looked behind the machines. No sock. I got a flashlight and lay down on my belly peering under the machines, no sock.  I went back to the point of origin and looked under the bureau and under the bed. No sock.  Just because I was already on the floor I looked under everything else in the bedroom. Still no sock.  I retraced my steps from bedroom to laundry room. Zero sock.

I have no idea where on earth it could be.  An alternate dimension perhaps?  I get the mystery now.  It is kind of frustrating. Everything is somewhere.  There must be a logical answer that I just haven't yet considered.  Maybe it will turn up in the refrigerator or something.  (when all logical solutions have failed, I must consider illogical ones, right)?

In the meantime, I will be heading back to the grocery store for another set of those nifty socks with the taller heel.  Missing sock be damned. I'm not going back to wearing ankle socks for anybody.  Maybe I'll buy two sets, just in case.