Entry #8
August 7, 2023 — 8:30 PM
Cool morning, the kind that sits on the floorboards. I made coffee on the camp stove in the dining room and walked it through the dust to the front parlor. Light off the east windows was flat and good for marking lines. I had left the sawhorses set last night with the usuals: square, chalk, knife, pencil, the 25’ tape clipped to the right edge so I’d grab it first. I remember the way it bit the plywood lip when I snapped it on. Muscle memory.
This morning the tape wasn’t there. Square, chalk, knife, pencil—lined up like I put them. Empty space where the tape should have been, and a faint rectangle of clean wood where it had kept the dust off. I checked my belt, the bucket, the tool bag, under the tarp. I kicked through the rolled-up runner in the hall in case it had skittered. Nothing.
I don’t lose things often. The order keeps me moving. I walked back through last night. Did I take it into the kitchen to figure the cabinet gap? I looked by the sink, under the drop cloth, on top of the fridge we slid into the doorway. I even checked the porch bench where I set my boots. Still nothing. I swore once. The house carried it back to me, thinner.
I used the old 16’ for the framing marks, the one with the bent hook that slips if I don’t pinch it. It slowed me down, but the studs went in. Around noon the sun slid around and put a stripe on the stair wall. I went up to check the landing for squeak before hauling sheet goods. On the narrow sill of the east window, set just so, was my 25’ tape. Blade out to three feet, sagging like it had been measuring the air. The brass hook was smudged with the chalk I used downstairs.
I didn’t put it there. I didn’t work upstairs last night. I haven’t measured anything on that sill since I moved in. But I must have carried it up without thinking when I checked the floor earlier in the week. Or set it down while I was counting treads in my head and left it. Fatigue. Distraction. It happens if you’re running measurements in your head while you walk.
I’m writing it down only because I dislike losing track of things. That’s all it is. A record so I don’t go repeating searches through every room when a handle-sized object goes missing. While I had the window open, I saw two shallow letters scratched into the paint on the inner jamb. Could be EB. Could be something else under the layers. Old houses have everyone’s little marks. I brushed at it and let it alone.
This evening, after sweeping, I put up the pegboard in the back room and mapped where the core tools live. I outlined the square, the chalk reel, the knife. I wrote TAPE — 25’ above the first hook, and tied a flag of orange marker tape through its belt clip. I sorted the bits, labeled the jars, moved the pencils all to one tin. Order is faster than hunting. Tomorrow I’d like not to waste time looking.
— Thomas Hale