The Gnome Has It.

For years I use to keep people's addresses in random notebooks or, worse, scraps of paper that I would tuck into notebooks. Or worse yet, I would shove old envelopes into a shoe box and when I would need an address I would shuffle through it hoping that the person sent me something first. This is not conducive to a Life of Elegant Leisure. You can't expect to keep up your correspondence with the aid of a shoebox. It's vulgar, is what it is.

So I bought an address book - a cute pink one! - and it has been vary handy for several years now.

Or it was handy up until a few months ago when it vanished. I say vanished because that is the only plausible explanation. It was spirited away by gnomes or something. Because I don't generally lose things. I have a pretty good grasp of where everything is. I'm not the most organized gal but I like it when things have assigned places. Brooches go in the center drawer of my jewelry box. Ribbon is in the top right drawer of my crafting desk. Let's say I want my Aragorn bookmark that Rac sent to me years ago, I know that it's on the lower shelf of the book cupboard, because that's where bookmarks go. So you can imagine my dismay when I wrote a note to someone a while ago and went to grab my address book from the lower cubby on my desk - the place where it belongs, right next to my dictionary - and it wasn't there. I checked in all the other cubbies and drawers, not there. I checked under the pile of filing I have to do, not there. I checked on the floor around my desk, in the box under the desk, under my bed, in the living room, amongst the shoes in my closet, all around the dining room table. Anywhere an address book could possibly be I looked and came up empty handed. It's a real mystery, my friends.

It's been missing for a couple of months now and I'm ashamed to say that I'm ridiculously stubborn about these sorts of things. I know that as much as I want to believe that it was spirited away by gnomes it wasn't and that it has to be around somewhere and I don't want to buy a new address book and go through the work of getting every one's address and filling them all in again because I know that as soon as I do it will magically appear.

Except that I need addresses. Christmas is coming and I have cards to send out. And several birthdays have come and gone and I have signed and sealed cards that are embarrassingly late now.

So, can you be a pal and email me your address? racheknecht at gmail dot com. You don't have to if you don't want to. I mean, maybe we're not friends and you feel weird sending it to me. Really, how do you know I won't send you bad poetry written in highlighter on strips of toilet paper every week? You don't know. And the truth is, I actually have sent bad poetry written in highlighter on a strip of toilet paper to someone. So you're probably wise in not passing on that info to me. But if we are friends and you think that I may need your address for such things as thank you notes or birthday cards or invitations to lavish galas I occasionally throw then you know what to do. And while your at it send me your birthday and phone number because I keep that stuff in there too.

And if you get an invitation to a lavish gala thrown by a gnome, tell him I want my cute pink address book back.