In an effort to cut down on the dust that seems always to coat every horizontal surface inside our house, I have quit using dryer sheets. This has made little, if any, difference. Instead, I now add liquid fabric softener to every load of clothes and keep two anti-static balls (guaranteed to soften and fluff and control static) in my clothes dryer. These balls are bright yellow and about the size of tennis balls. For over a week, one of the balls was missing. I searched high and low for it, knowing that there were a limited number of places it could hide. Finally, when I stripped the bed on Friday, I found the ball inside the pillow case of my husband’s pillow.   How did he manage to sleep for a week without discovering that there was a ball inside his pillow case and how did I put the pillow case onto the pillow without noticing the ball was inside it?

Here are a few more of life’s great mysteries:

• Why is it that when I open a bag of bread, I almost always lose the little plastic or wire twistee used to close the bag?       Honestly, how far and fast can those things travel?   The same question can be asked of lids off milk jugs, toothpaste tubes and shampoo bottles.
• Why is it that when I see an ink pen in a wastebasket, I have to scribble it across a piece of paper to make sure it is bad before I actually put it in the trash.
• How is it that I can open a can of cream of mushroom soup, turn to throw away the pull-off top, and turn back to find that the can of soup has vanished? How does one lose a can of soup?
• Why is it that when I need a paper clip, all I can find are rubber bands and when I need a rubber band, all I find are paper clips?
• Why does the bill from the landscape agency lie on my kitchen island and taunt me for a week but when I am finally ready to write a check and mail the bill, I can’t find it?
• How do I manage to lose one shoe?
• Why do those giant, dive-bomber houseflies never sit still on a surface where they can be swatted but instead perch on the rim of a glass or edge of a pie crust?
• Is there even such a thing as a wrinkle-free shirt?
• Why does a paper towel that, when wet, can hold a bowling ball in a T.V. commercial fall apart as I am carrying potato peels in it from my kitchen sink to the trash can?
• Why do I hang onto a single black sock with white hearts on it for months, finally throw it away, and the very next week find its mate stuck to a bath towel in the guest bathroom?
• Why does my computer freeze only when I am about to reach my highest score EVER in Word Mojo Gold?
• Why do seat belts in cars twist into positions out of which they can never be untwisted?
• Why is the TV remote control always lost?
• How is it that we have figured out how to put men on the moon, get cars to parallel park themselves, and make baking pans out of plastic but we can’t have public bathroom stall doors that stay shut?

Just this morning I noticed that one of my dryer balls is again missing. Hopefully someone will enlighten me if I am unknowingly wearing it inside my pants or blouse or even my sock. I think I’ll go back to using dryer sheets. I’m losing the war against dust anyway.