If I were to calculate the cost of my lost time looking for misplaced items, the amount would near a million dollars. I’m sure of it.

In early September, I misplaced my cell phone. Perhaps it’s an internal message to “slow down” or “pay attention,” but my angst in looking for it makes my concentration worse, not better.

Based on my history of finding lost items, I searched in my shoes, in the refrigerator and scoured my car. I suspected my pup Petey, but he took the fifth. I even raised the bed linens, careful not to disturb Mosie the cat, but did not see it.

My friends generously offered suggestions, most of which I had already examined. Nada. At 30 days, I surrendered and shopped for a new cell phone.

“I’d like one just like the one I lost,” I told the sale representative.

The roll of her eyes communicated her disdain while, with great effort of politeness, she explained how outdated my old one was. This concerned me because that first smart phone was a great technological improvement from the flip phone I had used for years.

Side story: I lost that flip phone while hiking along Upper Imnaha. Ten months later, a representative texted me on my new (at the time) phone asking if I had lost a cell phone.

“Yes.”

“I have it here in Pasco.”

“How’d you get it?”

“A lady found it last summer while hiking and just turned it in.”

And that was it. No effort to return it to me. No further explanation … I am left baffled at the odd things that happen.

So, this past October, I purchased another smart phone. (Smart phone is a misnomer, for they leave me feeling anything but.)

The next day while changing the sheets (I had to make Mosie move), there was the missing phone. She had been resting on it all the time. My friends who know Mosie agreed that was just like her to do that- watch me fret over such a thing and not say a word to help. So cat.

My new phone anticipates what I’m going to say and literally inserts words into my communication that are not intended.

I was texting a mutual friend that I would not be attending a pot luck at Vickey’s. Just as I hit send, I noticed, “Can’t make it to Bucket’s.” Immediately I sent a second text with correction trying to explain what the phone was doing.

“Phone toes for me.” Another quick fix. “Talks not toes.”

In preparing for the Veterans Day chili feed, I was texting a friend about sponsors who donated food and saw the phone interjected “good” donations. Exasperated, I sent off the correction, “Food not good.”

“Why are you telling me the food is not good?” she responded.

This led to an audio phone call to clarify, which was difficult because I was laughing so hard.

Right now, two tin cans with a string connecting them looks quite appealing.

Katherine Stickroth is a freelance writer who blogs at awallowagal.com.