Library Books, Lost and Found

I know how notorious library books are at getting lost. I worked in a library for almost two decades, so I've experienced plenty of people who 

A) admitted to losing books and paid for a replacement right away

B) found the book right after they paid for a replacement 

B) claimed library books had been returned and demanded that we look for them on the shelves because we forgot to beep them in. Occasionally they were found on the shelf. Most of the time not, and the book or movie would show up a few days later in the outside dropbox. 

All the years I taught, I checked out hundreds of books for my classroom and never lost any. So I'm pretty good at keeping track of library books. 

Jaron has a stack from the library I keep in the living room on a particular shelf. So far I've been able to keep track of them pretty easily, but somehow in mid-February I lost three. Yes. Three. 

I distinctly remember putting my finished library book in the library bag along with two of Jaron's selections I was tired of reading. I also remember rushing to get out the door for a speaking engagement, remembering I needed books to entertain Jaron during class, and swapping the library books for books we owned. 

That's the last time I remember seeing them. 

I thought I had returned them, but I got a renewal notice. Wait, not returned?? I could see a librarian making a mistake and not checking one book back in, but three? Not likely. And thus my search began. 

At first it was looking in the most obvious places. Nothing. Then the unlikely places. Nada. This continued for about a month here and there until I finally got an overdue notice. Time for a serious search. 

I decided to search the entire house from wall to wall, top to bottom. I made a list of all the rooms in our house, the cars, even the garage, checking them off as I went. 

Jaron searched too. 

Oh wait, that was busy work while I searched. 😆

Every cupboard and shelf, inside closets, under beds and dressers. No library books. 

I kept coming back to the thought I'd returned them, but there being three missing made me question. 

I only had a few rooms left to search, and none of them seemed likely. I had to contemplate paying for the books. G recommended going to the library to look for them myself, but I wanted to finish the search at home first. 

This week I got a renewal notice for some other Jaron books. I noticed one of the missing books wasn't listed. After logging into my library account, I realized that one of the missing books was not on my account anymore! Could that mean I did return them?!

G actually searched the library shelves for me on Monday while I had a chiropractor appointment. And guess what. He found both! They were on the shelf where they belonged. 

Somehow all three missed getting beeped. 🤦‍♀️ All that searching and wracking my brain for nothing! But at least the lost have been found.