Where did I put those keys?
Cowgirl Sass & Savvy

By Julie Carter

I laid down my pickup keys this week and they are still right there. Wherever that is.

That scenario seems to run in stages with me, I’ll go days where I can’t find anything that I’m sure I put somewhere. I also walk off and leave quite a few things that I need when I get where I’m going.

Living between two working offices, at home and at the newspaper office, is a recipe for a mental challenge at best. Add that to a job that is drawn to chaos, long, odd hours, piles and piles of paper and an assortment of technical pieces of equipment to keep up with, and my list-making personality goes into overdrive.

If I could just find that list, or remember which list it is that, I’m working on.

The search for whatever it is I can’t find often reveals more than the item I’m looking for.

I tore the pickup apart and found everything except the keys: an old (very old) French fry, an earring I thought was long gone, 14 pens, a grocery list, a sock, three gloves (none that match), a short piece of rope, a broken umbrella, two rain ponchos, two MREs (military Ready to Eat meals), a dead flashlight, a roll of duct tape, pliers and enough sunflower seeds to feed a family of squirrels for the winter, but no keys.

While I’m sure the contents of the pickup search and my manner of chaotic stress-induced forgetfulness could be psychoanalyzed, ad nauseum, I prefer to write it off as living in a fast spinning world that doesn’t allow for immaculate cleaning or organized anything.

As I vaguely recall, I am truly happier when things are a little tidier and in their place where I can find them. It has been quite some time since that experience.

Every ranch pickup I know has a personality built around the contents one would find in doing an inventory.

Gloves, sometimes one of each, right and left, are stuffed under the seat or on the dashboard. Other treasures would be a pair of broken sunglasses, a piece of inner tube, a flattened roll of toilet paper too dirty to use, an empty binocular case and a piece of paper with a phone number on it, but no name.

There is always mail and usually an old envelope from someone you had already chewed out because you “never got it.” It’s not unusual for the papers to be important things like the state land lease or the overdraft notice from the bank.

Usually you can find a gun or two and lots of ammunition lying around, but rarely the right ammo for those same guns. There are windmill leathers, preg testing gloves, enough loose change to put a kid through college and a bottle of 10-40 oil.

If a personality profile can be built around the contents of a ranch pickup, or mine, then it probably has a name I can’t spell. I prefer to think that, basically, we are prepared for almost anything.

Stop and smell the roses you say? That was exactly what I was doing when I laid down my keys.

Visit Julie’s Web site at www.julie-carter.com