Inexplicably Missing Phone

[aggienaut]

   Well maybe writing about it will help. Maybe it will jog some memory loose or I'll find at the end of some sentence the hidden answer that has thus far eluded me.

   I can't find my old phone, the one with my US sim card in it. I still need it some itmes becaues there's a few things such as the bank that insist on sending a one time pin code via text to access certain things and insist on only doing so to a US phone number. Super obnoxious. So I have my ancient phnoe just for that. Or I should have my ancient phone for that. My ancient phone should be nowhere other than right here on my desk, and it is not here. There is absolutely no reason it should be anywhere else. I have no reason to move it anywhere else in the house and really no reason to ever take it out of the house. It is not here where it should be. I feel like a computer tha is having a critical error that causes it to restart a process that inevitably leads to the same critical error. I frantically search around and then think, no, there is no reason it should be anywhere other than by my desk. It's charging cable is here by the desk, it only lasts about half an hour away from this cable, that is how useless it is. It is not here.
   I have spent this entire evening looking everywhere in the house for it, even the most implausible places. Even in the garage and the car. I feel like I'm going insane. In a normal evening I spend some time reading, I study spanish, I make dinner, I read some LJs, no I have spent all evening looking for this phone.
   In the past some times after exhausting all possible search options I have thought to myslf "ah well, it will turn up some time." But my $70 external phone battery never did turn back up and I had to buy a new one. My wax molds haven't turned up, and that book I was reading haven't turned up. I am feeling rather that it isn't that things will just turn up again so much as if I don't find it immediately it will definitely make its disappearance permanent. So when I reach the point I can't think of another even implausible but theoretically just maybe possible place to search, and feel like giving up, I think to myself, no, then it will be gone forever! And I return to the area around my desk and the end of the charging cable where it should be, and it is not here, and I want to pull my hair out. I'd almost think someone came in and took it but it is probably the most useless absurd thing to take from this house.
   I don't think I've used it for a month, which leaves a bit of time to try to carefully try to think of any time I might have cleaned or rearranged things in its vicinity which may have caused it to be moved. But I've checked every drawer, shelf, or box where it could possibly possibly have been put and it's not there. I feel like I'm going insane. Why is it not here? ::goes insane::

   Anyway, I think I can just barely scrape together the energy to cut paste the next section of the memoir here to keep that going:

---

Day 4 - Training
February 16th, 2012 – “Let’s start with the most basics and build from there to the more complex,” I tell the assembled beekeepers. We’re under a corrugated metal awning by the side of the local government headquarters, me sitting behind a table with Dayo beside me, and thirty of them facing me on folded chairs. About three quarters of them are men, they wear mostly patterned traditional clothing, though a few wear articles of western clothing. The men often have smoothly shaved scalps, and some wear brimless hats. The women all wear the Muslim headscarf that leaves their face entirely exposed, and one of them is nursing a baby.
    I’d been told the plan for the project is that I would lecture about bees every day, and going out to the actual bee sites to do hands-on training was “not in the budget.” The daunting task of talking about bees for hours every day for two weeks stretches out before me, seeming impossible. How will I talk about bees for eleven days straight? This is going to end in a shameful disaster for me!
   “So there’s three types of bees in a hive” I explain to the thirty pairs of eyes watching me expectantly. “We’ll talk about them each more in more detail later. The first type is the queen, there will be one queen, she lays the eggs.” Is my audience looking unsettled? “Second there’s workers, they’re female and make up ninety-nine percent of the colony, they do all the work.” My audience is definitely shifting and murmuring restlessly, and I’m only two sentences in! “And finally, there are the drones, they don’t do any work and their purpose is just to mate with queens…” I trail off as it looks like I have a mutiny on my hands. One of the trainees raises his hand and then says something to Dayo in pidgin, and there’s a clamor of agreement.
   “They can’t understand you.” he tells me. Hmm okay. I try speaking very slowly with careful enunciation. The audience is still mutinous. I want to die. I see two weeks of marinating in shame ahead of me.
   “What if you translate for me?” I ask Dayo.
   “Sure”
   I repeat the introduction to the three castes of bees, and Dayo code-switches it into Nigerian pidgin English, which I can mostly understand but almost every word is pronounced slightly differently. As best I can understand what he says it goes like this:
   “There are three types of bees der, the first one are the queen, wipita capitapata for the bee colony. The second type they be the workers -- the workers, them be female and they tend to do all the work for the bee colony andeplasdatoo about ninety-nine percent of them. The third type is the drones, the drones dem the male and they not they do any work. The only work with them they do is just to sleep with the queen andteshakedey fertilized.”
   This seems to work well actually and so we proceed, with me talking in English and Dayo translating my English to their English. The trainees also write questions on notes and pass them up, which I read while Dayo is giving his translation and use them to guide the discussion.
   By and by, I have made it to lunch time! Half a day done, 10.5 to go! Half the group goes to a mosque around the corner to pray, the other half are Christian it seems. A local staple, amala, which is a doughy ball of yam and flour, served in a very spicy soup with a bit of meat, is passed out. Everyone else eats it the traditional way, pulling off a piece of the amala with their fingers, dipping it in the saucey soup, and popping it in their mouth -- and I try this but don’t quite like the pasty way it feels to get my fingers so covered in it, so when someone brings me a spoon I eagerly use it. Amala will be our lunch every day, with variations between beef, chicken, and goat for the meat.
   After lunch, the lecture continues. I can easily talk about the basic behavior of the respective castes of bees, and how it practically relates to beekeeping, and how these behaviors relate to important hive-level activity such as reproduction of new colonies. I think it’s important to know what the bees would naturally do and how a beekeeping activity works with the bees to accomplish something for mutual benefit. There’s a natural flow of topics dovetailing into one another through the lifecycle of bees that touches on all aspects of beekeeping. Though some of the trainees know a fair bit, they seem to appreciate this comprehensive discussion. I can fill at least two days like this! I think to myself with the fragile relief of a fate merely postponed.

---

   I had resolved to eliminate my transliteration of what Dayo said but I really can't make myself do any editing on this right now I am out of my mind about this missing phone right now. It's not even that it's _that_ important it's the sheer paradox of it not being here that is driving me mad. How/why could/can it be anywhere but where it's supposed to be????

Comments

[ravenfeather.livejournal.com]

Either mice have your old phone, or it sprouted legs and walked off on its own.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Indeed! Those mice certainly have been getting a bit cheeky!!

[livejournal.livejournal.com]

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[wpadmirer.livejournal.com]

You either have a very sneaky poltergeist, or you're living somewhere with a hole into another dimension. Either way, that sounds like things disappear and just don't ever turn back up.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

I've been beginning to suspect that. The phone of course did later turn up but more recently the log book in which I record everything about my beekeeping has disappeared. Without it I know nothing about my hives. I literally don't even know how many I have! I've had a good look in the two vehicles it's likely to be in and even drove back to the last bee yard I was at (which involved going through four gates to get there and of course back through them to get out. each involving stopping, getting out, opening it, driving through, stopping getting out, closing it ....) thinking maybe I'd left it on top of a hive there but alas it wasn't there ):

[wpadmirer.livejournal.com]

Seriously, you've got a ghost who thinks it's funny. (grin)