it's the gnomes.....

We have been married for almost 8 years and we have had the same silverwear for about 10 years now. When we first shopped for silverwear we didn't have a big must be list. We just picked what we liked. It wasn't cheap but we were young and fairly responsiblity free. No house, no kids....just two people working and spending our money as we pleased. As a result we spent a fair amount on some nice silverwear. Nothing fancy but surely durable and not something that was overly trendy or too grandma-ish that we would hate it within a year. We decided to buy two sets of servings so we could have 16 place setting of silverwear. It was a wise move considering if just my family came to dinner we would need 7 and that didn't leave room for any future get togethers that included more people or significant others, spouses, kids or what have you. So 16 place setting it was and has been for all these years. But recently I've discovered something. I no longer have 16 small forks and 16 big forks. I seem to have 3 small forks and about 8 big forks. I still have all the spoons but forks I seem to be lacking. How IS that? My husband swears he has never taken them to work and forgotten them or accidentally left them in the sink to be snatched up by someone else. My kids swear they've never used any of them to fling rocks or launch army men with. I never find a wayward fork in the cupboard, bottom of the dishwasher or hiding under the cabinet on the floor. So where, I ask you, have all my forks gone? No one is taking them so it must be the gnomes. Those pesky little guys who come every night and make a mess in my house long after everyone has gone to bed. The same creatures who throw crumbs on my floor after I've swept for the night inviting in the ants. The same guys who throw one of the kids' socks behind the washer with each load I wash. The same ones who smudge dust on my TV, put fingerprints on my walls and smear toothpaste in my sink. I KNOW I clean these things up. I'm not all the way crazy yet and I haven't completely lost my mind. I haven't. Yet, still, these things keep happening and of all the things that baffle me the most, it's the forks. I keep coming back to the forks. I have looked in every lunch bag and every forgotten corners of cupboards. I've looked in closets and torn about toy buckets. I've even searched the garden to no avail. If it doesn't stop soon we will be eating with chopsticks for every meal. And while that may work for some, in my house with a 3 year old? Well let's just say that almost every piece of food he tries to spear on his chopstick flies across the table and generally lands in my lap. In all reality I don't mind the gnomes too much but I'd like to put a request out there to all visiting gnomes to my house......please feel free to fold the laundry on the couch, mop the floors and straighten the pictures on the wall. Don't be afraid to scrub the bathtub and wipe the floor around the toliet. I will not be sad if my coffee is clicking on when I wake in the morning and the dishes in the dishwasher have all been put away and the sink full have been reloaded. If you feel really industrious by all means you may start the prep work for the next nights dinner and put any wayward car or truck that has sneaked under the couch away. This is just a small sampling of the things I'd be glad to have you share. They are free for the doing and I ask nothing in return. Unless of course you care to put my forks back in my drawer........