My cell phone went missing Monday evening.  After a couple hours of fussing over “what-the-hell-will-I-do-if-I-can’t-find-my-phone” I decided it would turn up if I didn’t try so hard to look for it.  I stopped looking because I’m so very optimistic about expecting happy endings.

That didn’t work.

So I went to my office the following day, filled with absolute certainty that by the time I got home I would find it.  That didn’t happen either.  Rats!

I hate to admit being dependent on a cell phone but alas, I am.  Really.  Dependent.  My virtual universe is loaded on my iPhone.  Pictures, applications, maps, appointments … the works.  Of course I could get another cell phone if this one was truly MIA forever.  But what a hassle!

After muttering to myself when I returned home from work  (and creeping the cats out in general) I decided to try a different search method.  I started calling my phone, room by room, from my land line in the house.  Called the bedroom.  No answer.  Called the basement.  No answer.  Went to the garage and called the car.  No answer.  No ringing.  No nothing.

Finally, I went to the kitchen and called.  Nothing.  However, the stovetop fan was on because I was trying to make dinner, so it turned it off to listen.  Oh yeah, I was expecting some friends over for dinner to watch American Idol and was also rushing around cleaning up at the last minute.  I’m the queen of multi-tasking … dinner, vacuuming, table setting, and cell phone searching.

But I digress.

Finally, FINALLY, I hear a muffled “ring ring” (like the old fashioned phones) coming somewhere near (or under) the sink.  OMG!  It’s in the trash can!

The trash can that is filled with the most god-awful, gross food crap you could imagine.

I grab a new trash bag and start pulling junk out of the trash can and into the new bag.  One by one, I pulled out chicken bones, which really excited the cats.  They gathered ’round me sitting on the floor, as if they wanted to help search.  Cats are such fake-out artists. I knew they were only interested in potentially plundering some chicken parts.  There were multiple other gross things discovered in that icky bag, including some leftover cake batter, that I had to maneuver around.  It was tricky business, indeed.

And let me just say that when you are exploring the contents of a trash bag and if you happen to come upon a lot of  discarded red velvet cake batter in a hasty manner, your kitchen is poised to look like an episode of Dexter doing what he does best.

I did just that and it wasn’t pretty.  Unless you like to watch autopsies.

I was praying to the patron saint of kitchen cleanup to help me find this stupid phone and restore my kitchen to glistening cleanliness before my friends show up and find me splayed out on the floor digging in the trash, looking like I lost my mind.  Which I probably had at that point.

But to my horror, I STILL couldn’t find the phone.

Now I have 2 big trash bags half filled with crap. And no phone.

So I called my cell phone again.  This time I separated the bags so I could tell which one was ringing.  Did I mention that it is harder to locate missing cell phones in dark trash bags, as opposed to light colored trash bags?  And I’m not profiling anything here.  It’s just the plain truth.

Finally.  I find my phone, covered in butter, cake batter, indescribable fuzz, and a random chicken bone sticking out of the side of it like a fake antenna.

But Lordy, it was still ringing!

The cats left the kitchen, quite disappointed.  I hastily bagged up the second trash bag, washed the floor, cleaned up my iPhone and the case, set out the fruit plate and hummus, washed my hands, put on my pearl necklace and apron and was ready to great my company with no evidence of the insanity I just barely survived right before they knocked on my front door.

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Yep.  Tuesday night, nobody knew about the riotous cell phone incident.

Until they read this post, that is.