Sometime's he's not the sharpest knife in the drawer

A few weeks ago Zeke had some friends over and after that my beloved Cutco French chef's knife went missing.

I've had that knife for over 27 years and it is my favorite. I use it every day. I've never used a knife that feels as good in my hand or that is so perfectly balanced.

When I was in law school, my roommate and I had some friends over for dinner. The guys were in the kitchen while I cooked and started futzing around with the knife. I yelled at them, not because I was worried they would cut themselves, but because I didn't want them messing with my expensive knife.

So a few weeks ago, I was cooking something and getting ready to cut some vegetables. I opened my knife drawer and reached for the French chef's knife - it lives in the far right slot of this knife tray - only to realize it wasn't there.

"Huh," I muttered to myself.

I went and looked in the sink. Not there. I looked in the dishwasher. Not there.

At that point I had exhausted the list of possible locations where it could be. I am not a meticulously neat person -- except when it comes to my kitchen. Everything has its specific spot. Everything always gets put away in that specific spot, every single time. Always always always.

I asked the kids where my knife was. They professed ignorance.

I looked all through the kitchen. Every drawer, every cupboard, in the fridge, in the freezer. Everywhere. I did this multiple times.

I asked Zeke if he and his friends had been playing with the knife. He denied it, but he's a shameless liar, so who knows.

I looked throughout the house, under beds, on shelves, on tables and desks, in bookshelves. I did this multiple times.

I became increasingly irate. I told the kids that everyone was grounded until my knife was found. They started to cry, so I backed off and offered a reward of $25 to anyone who found it or provided information leading to its discovery.

My friends on Facebook made a number of suggestions, my answers to which were as follows, in no particular order:

I don't carry my 15-inch-long knife in my purse. It's not in the kids' backpacks because I don't make their lunches. I don't take the knife with me anywhere outside the kitchen. I would never loan it out.

People kept saying, "it'll turn up, things like this happen...

Actually, they don't. Knives don't just up and waltz themselves out of the kitchen.

The only thing I could think of was that Zeke and his friends had taken it. Nothing else made sense, especially with those particular friends. One is a sneaky little shit and I'm convinced the other is going to end up murdering his parents in his sleep. Possibly with my knife.

The next day I got a call from Zeke.

"Hey, mom! I think I found your knife?"

"Is that so? Where?"

"On the top shelf of Josie's closet!"

The ceilings in my house are very high. Getting to the top shelf of Josie's closet would be quite an undertaking.

"Really. That's very interesting. What were you doing poking around the top shelf of Josie's closet?"

"Oh, uh... I wanted to look at the box that has the fire escape ladder...."

"Uh huh."

"No really!"

"Whatever."

He texted me a bit later.

The kid's got balls, I'll give him that.

Needless to say, he and I had another long talk about how I can't stand it when people lie to me, especially when they're so fucking bad at it. I always know. Always. ALWAYS.

Nobody got the $25.

It costs money because it saves money

For someone who lives in a place that is highly affected by the weather, I tend to be largely oblivious to it before it happens. Every morning I say, "Alexa, what's the weather today?" so I know what I can or should wear to work, but I'm always surprised by the answer.

I mean, not surprised as in "shocked." She doesn't tell me the day's high and low temperatures only to have me go bug-eyed and say, "WHAAAT???" But I don't pay enough attention to the forecast that I'll have a general sense of what she's going to say before she says it. I'm more reactive than proactive.

"Oh, it's snowing in the mountains? Sweet, I'll go ski tomorrow!"

Saturday I was having a lazy day, just kind of dicking around doing laundry and watching sports. I looked out the window at one point in the afternoon only to realize that there were 3 inches of snow on the ground and it was supposed to continue through the night.

"Huh," I though. "I guess I'll go shovel the sidewalk."

That's when I realized how cold it was. A good day to shovel and then go back inside to chill out.

It stayed really cold.  And then this morning when I got up to go to work, I went to brush my teeth and when I turned on the water nothing came out.

"Hmm," I thought.

I checked to make sure I hadn't forgotten to pay my bill. Nope - no problem there.

I went down into the cellar to see if there was flooding or anything overt. Nothing looked unusual.

So I called a plumber.

"Do you think my pipes are frozen?" I asked.

"Could be. Why don't we come out and take a look."

"I need to go to work. Could you do an afternoon appointment? Is it ok to leave? The house isn't going to blow up, is it?"

I have no idea why I asked that. I'm really not a ditz when it comes to home repairs.

"You should be fine. Leave one of the faucets on - maybe they will thaw out if it gets sunny later."

So I left a faucet on, and figured that if I needed to, I could stay in a hotel if I didn't have water for a couple of days.

I was talking to my mom about it as I drove to work.

"Ugh, the house is so old, I figured something like this would happen eventually. It'll probably cost me thousands of dollars."

"Well, I hope it's not that much," she said.

"Remember Moonstruck? Plumbing costs $10,000." 

Everything I know about plumbing I learned from Moonstruck.

"But do you have copper pipes?" she asked.

"In fact, I do. I checked!"

I got to work and went about my day. I spent many hours in meetings where people yelled, sometimes at me. I went to truancy court. I tried not to think about getting home to burst pipes and water everywhere.

Some people at work said that a lot of times when pipes freeze, it's no big deal. You just have to wait for them to thaw. I actually felt very zen about it.

But then I got home and turned on the faucet. And water came out!! And the faucet that I had left on upstairs was running. Huzzah! It was a huge relief.

And I'm convinced it worked out because I had copper pipes, just like Cosmo said I should.