Throw that away?

We've been having some memory-related problems around here the last couple of days, and in the interests of full disclosure and oversharing, I'm going to describe two here.

Last night, as I was making my children their almost completely unprocessed dinner (grapes! scrambled eggs! carrots! toast with local honey!), I got out some carrots. In the midst of this, I was also busy telling Mr. DMFP about my long day at a conference workshop in a room full of science writers of all shapes and sizes, mentally, Web 2.0-ly, and otherwise, learning all about the Web 2.0 world.

I seem to have gotten so caught up in my fascinating tales of the minutiae of tweeting, podcasting, blogging, and otherwise Web 2.0ing that I misplaced the carrots. We looked all over the kitchen. All over the dining room. We blamed the preschooler. We blamed each other. Then, finally retracing how my mind actually works, I looked in the trash can. There they sat, perfectly good carrots, bright orange against the black trash bag.

Reader, I washed those carrots and used them anyway. How's that for frugal? Please, don't tell the children. Pinkie swear, that trash can was otherwise totally empty, the bag brand new.

Today, I'm home with TH. He's almost never sick--which seems to be a trait for some autistic kids and not a trait for others--so when he says he feels bad (oh, and when he has a somewhat scary, productive cough)--I keep him home, even without fever. He had to go with me to take the others to school, so he was completely dressed. We returned home, where he happily if congestedly engaged with his Wii, where he stands, Wiimote in hand, playing Mario-something-or-other while repeatedly saying "Roger, roger" in high-pitched "robot" tones. That's a favorite for him. I think it's his "Clone Trooper" voice, one of a broad repertoire. We're not entirely sure what TH's actual voice sounds like.

As I went about my business in the kitchen (seems like these days, I'm either in the kitchen or in the car), I opened the trash can to toss in something and saw...a pair of perfectly good socks in there. Once again, the trash bag was almost empty except for these socks. I carefully extracted them and interrupted Mr. Roger-roger: "TH, are these your...socks?"

He looked at me blankly, and nodded. "Baby, they were in the trash. Why did you throw your socks in the trash?"

Clearly confused, he thought for a moment, then got that grin of dawning realization on his face. "Oh," he said, looking pretty sheepish. "I thought that was the laundry basket."

Have we finally solved the mystery of what happens to all of the socks around here? I guess we need to stop blaming the preschooler.