Wanted: Search Party Volunteers

The ideal candidate will be patient, intelligent, creative, and more than a little fiber-inclined. The quarry? Ms. Knitingale's writing muse who, as has been previously noted, is more than a little bit of a bitch. She is, as my mother would have said, a brass-plated four-door bitch (I'm not sure what that is, but it rolls off the tongue) unless she has inspired me to write something really funny or touching or profound, in which case she is a glorious being and should have chocolate and wool laid at her feet (not together).

At the moment, she is the first one. The brass plated one. She is demonstrating that by remaining stubbornly hidden, in spite of all the tortured staring I have done at the computer (which is not nearly as helpful or productive as it ought to be). I have also tried tortured pacing, tortured gazing out the window, and tortured sleeplessness. She is apparently nowhere near Torture, USA. Go figure.

Even worse, she has taken with her my sense of humor (I'm suddenly not the least bit funny) and even my sense of the absurd. Well, okay, maybe not that. I live in America, after all, with a man as president who bears a striking resemblance to a monkey but is less capable of independent thought. I'd have to be dead not to have a sense of the absurd.

So I'm looking for some help locating the wily bitch and then sending her unceremoniously home. The sense of humor will, I think, find her way back on her own. I suspect she's just fallen in with bad company. And Missy Muse is definitely bad company...even when she's feeling generous she has a fondness for offering up that generousity at 3:00 am and then yanking it away if I dare to suggest a later hour: "Okay, if you don't want it....."

Obviously, I have no starting point for you--if I knew where she was, I'd have found her. But I can tell you where she isn't:

• She is not at the bottom of the bag of gummi bears I found stashed in the cupboard (I know--I looked really hard)
• She is not at any of the local yarn stores (I looked at some of them twice, just to be sure)
• She is not at the Bath And Bodyworks store, checking out the current sale
• I tried unravelling some thrift store sweaters...she wasn't in any of them, either. I checked several.
• She is not in the hot tub, and hasn't been any night this week (I'll keep looking, of course--I'm no quitter)
• She is not on the Knitpicks website, or the WEBS website, or the Little Knits website, or even Etsy or Woolgirl.
• She could well be in the middle of my ironing pile--so could Jimmy Hoffa, the lost Dutchman, and Amelia Earhart. I recommend a guide and some sort of signalling device to anyone wishing to look there.
• She could not be found anywhere on Ed's furry little bod, although I did nuzzle his wonderfully spotted tummy quite carefully so as not to miss her.
• She is not at Starbucks--either in the espresso machine or the blender they use for Frappacinos.
• She is not in any of the brightly colored catalogues sent to me by vicious uniform houses who should KNOW that I am a weak willed scrub whore and yet still insist on telling me what I can buy for the low, low price of just $12.99 plus shipping.
• She could be in the back of my closet, under the couch, or in the kitchen junk drawer. Sad, if true, because I will likely be 107 before I locate her. My only consolation is that she'll be just as old as I am...and still a bitch.

If you see her, drop me a line. I'll come get her once I start missing her enough to forget what a miserable cow she really is. A favorite poet of mine once described her muse as being the one good eye she had to see things with. Fair enough. If you see my good eye, smack her one for me. Then keep her safe until I can get there. It should take me about 60 seconds. I hate her like you wouldn't believe...but I sure do love her.