If you thought my mind was a scary place, you should see my pot holder drawer

When I was growing up, my mom used to have a drawer where she threw dead batteries. "Just in case," she used to say. My sister and I made fun of her all the time; did she think they were going to spontaneously start working? Would she keep her dog if that died, you know, just in case?

Twenty years later I only wish I had a drawer full of dead batteries.

I read somewhere that everybody is entitled to one junk drawer. I have one in my desk. It looks like this:

If you look closely you can see my spare rubber chicken.(1)

All the other drawers in my house have a designated purpose. This drawer for example is my pot holder and petty cash drawer (2) It looks like this:

Make perfect sense too, cause you always need a pot holder to unload the dishwasher

And sure enough, if you clean out this drawer, like I do exactly once every eight and a half years you find pot holders. Eight of them to be exact.

Maybe because I have eight hands.

Ah, but that's not all Bob ! Tell them what else they'll find in the pot holder and petty cash drawer! That's right ! Two boo-boo bunnies (3) and five packs of sour ice-breakers.

Boo-boo bunny declined to be photographed for this article

Wait ! There's more ! A large zip-lock bag of combs I stole at school picture day, two unidentified screws and a small bag full of used pacifiers.

True story. Last month we were having dinner with some really cool friends at their house. Eli starts freaking out around 9pm because he's so tired. Rather than send PCS-guy home(4) for a pacifier to try to get him to sack out on the couch, we accept an old paci that our friends' daughter used. She's sixteen now. We gave Eli a FIFTEEN -year-old used pacifier rather than drag our sorry asses away from grown-up conversation and a bottle of red wine. And then Eli says, and I am not making this up, "Me get new pink paci. It must be me birthday."

Obviously my kids are going to have way bigger issues when they grow up than the contents of my pot holder drawer.

Next in the drawer: like a million packs of gum. And a pot holder that was trying to escape, bringing our total there to nine. It's like the Twelve Days of Christmas in there, because I swear, a turtle dove would not surprise me in the least at this point.

A pack for each maid a milking !

Now it starts to get scary. Yes, now. The instructions to a phone we no longer own, in a language we never spoke. (5) A dinosaur tattoo, THREE pairs of nail clippers, a tangle of safety pins and a customer loyalty card to Noodles & Co. We got 8 out of 9 punches. Not even sure they're still in business.

Ooh, so close !

Hang with me, we're almost to the bottom. A picture of my nephew taken in 2003. An unopened pack of Yu-i-oh cards. Three more combs trying to get the hell out of my kitchen (6) $1.02 in Canadian change. A plastic heart filled with puppy tattoos. Two hair bands, a lipstick, two random electrical thingees and Noa's library card.



You know what I never did find though? Petty cash.

1)Seriously, it's my spare. In case something happens to my everyday rubber chicken.
2)And by petty cash I do mean petty, like "tip the pizza" petty. So not worth pissing off the big dog, stalker-friends.
3) Boo-boo bunnies that have long since lost their ice pack and which no self-respecting 7 or 9 year-old would use. And of which the 2-year-old is terrified.
4)And it's like less than a mile.
5) Spanish
6) At this point I'd like to join them.