Our silverware is disappearing.
Over the last year, I've noticed that our silverware drawer is dwindling. We came to this house with a multitude of flatware, but as of this moment there are only four proper forks in my entire kitchen. I got up and counted just now.
"That's weird. Maybe you can use the salad forks instead?"
I am. That count of four included the salad forks. There are two dinner forks and two salad forks. (Some friends at this point might ask me if I really have actual real salad forks, and the answer is 'yes' because my flatware was gifted to me by my mother when I moved into my first apartment, because she had something like 37 full complete table settings of this fancy silverware, because she purchased one full table setting each month from Oneida when she was footloose and fancy free, building up her household over time in a frugal and reasonable manner. In the end she turned out not to need 37 full table settings for her household.)
"That's... really weird. Did you check to see if little hands stashed them somewhere?"
We've checked under all the furniture and all the cushions. We've checked all of our late-night-snacking crash points. We've checked under the refrigerator and under the stove. We've even surreptitiously checked the silverware drawer in the in-law apartment to see if Calvin has been bringing and abandoning forks at my parents' home (they use the other 20 table settings, so an extra fork wouldn't be noticed) and they have fewer forks too. It's very peculiar.
"So... how do you ... eat.... food?"
The full table settings happened to include seafood forks, which I call dessert forks, because I like to eat desserts with them with a tiny fork, partly because it makes the dessert last longer so I can savor it, and partly (okay, mostly) because it makes me feel very fancy. I don't particularly mind using shrimp forks to eat the occasional meal. It's getting really old, though, to eat every meal with them in order to give Calvin and Liam a full sized fork to eat with.
"So.... buy more forks?"
But then they won't match all my current flatware (which I really like, it's heavy but not too heavy, and it's so nice looking and it's really nice quality), and I can't just go buy new forks from the manufacturer because Oneida discontinued this pattern and I'm not willing to spend $10/fork on eBay*, and now it's turning into buying a whole new flatware set which is really not a justifiable expense right now.
Although now that I think about it, I notice that we have significantly fewer dessert spoons, and an extra soup spoon with a different handle pattern.
And our plates and cups have all broken enough pieces that we've got a weird mismatched set of everything, so we would not be amiss to purchase a new set of dishes.
And honestly our dining set is getting a bit creaky, because it was purchased when we were young and couldn't afford something that would last for decades.
Do they make "you've been together 10 years and need to upgrade all your stuff to Grown Up Stuff" registries?
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*one day let's talk about how I got banned from eBay
