Found it!

We had a consistent joke in our house. Whenever we weren’t able to find something, we say that someone broke in and took it.

The first time was for the fire safe. We stored our savings bonds in it, and when I started college and needed to pay the remainder of room and board, I wanted a couple of mine. We looked and looked. Mom and Dad both remembered seeing it in different places – he downstairs, she in their bedroom closet.

After 30 minutes, I gave up, sure that Dad would find it. He’s like a bloodhound – never tiring, continuing to look until whatever was lost is now found.

He came into the living room, exasperated. “We need to be more careful with that, you know. It’s not just bonds – all our important documents are in there!”

Mom and I didn’t respond – it’s best to just let him talk as he continues his search. Our comments wouldn’t be welcome as we curled up on the blue armchairs and watched him standing in the doorway, hands on his hips.

“Someone probably broke in and took it.” He called as he went back down the hall. I couldn’t resist saying something then.

“Dad? Someone came in and left everything else? But took the fire safe? Without the key that we already found?”

He stomped back up the hall moments later, flushed from crawling under beds and moving boxes in closets.

“They could have! Burglars look for safes! And that one had a handle!”

With a glare, he headed back to the bedrooms to look.

Mom and I dissolved into giggles, our soft laughter stifled only when he returned. He was carrying the safe – found in Brother’s closet behind some of his hockey trophies.

“Dad! The burglars brought it back!” I cheered. He wasn’t amused.

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I keep telling them that someone broke in and took my power cord, asking the dog why she didn’t better protect the house. When I first moved, I had the cord – I remembered seeing it in my office. But I couldn’t find the external storage drive that matched it. After months of sporadic searching, I was triumphant in that quest. But then the cord was gone, and none of the other random electrical devices would fit.

So I took the 250GB drive to work, carefully stored it in a bin and wondered where the cord went. I looked – all over the office several times, in the boxes I’d stored in the attic, in the master closet, in all my hidden storage spots, in baskets, behind furniture – everywhere. Even knowing that there was somewhere I hadn’t yet checked, I couldn’t think of where it could possibly be.

So I priced one online. $30 seemed steep for something I already had in my possession and I decided it was worth it to continue my search. Then I asked around the department, hoping I could borrow someone’s and transfer the data and burn DVDs from my work computer. They suggested I buy one.

Resigned, I put it on my list for this weekend.

Friday night, my glasses fell under my bed. I have a king size mattress but no headboard. So when the remote or my glasses fall, they end up in the small section of floor between my bed and the wall. Peering down at them through squinted eyes, I decided I’d get the glasses later.

Last night, right before removing my contacts, I remembered I had to retrieve them. Stretching my arm toward the wire-rimmed lenses, I watched in dismay as the remote slipped off the mattress and bounced under it.

Grabbing my glasses, I tried to reach the remote but realized I’d have to climb under the bed to get it.

I moved the container that holds my extra sheets, but couldn’t see the remote because the power cord for my storage device was in the way. Pleased, I silently thanked the burglars for returning it. Only then did I remember trying to use it for my alarm clock, and not having it fit. Then it must have accidentally been shoved under the bed in one of my “cleaning” sprees.

Now it sits in my bag and I’m eager to bring it to work so that it can reunite with its device, happily providing power so I can finally access some of my old data and code.

I didn’t inherit Dad’s talent for finding things. Often giving up, moving on to other pursuits, only to be reminded that eventually I need to locate the missing object. But it’s often easier to wait – to find it on accident rather than through consistent effort and methodical searching. Instead, I wait until the remote bounces under the bed, then grin when I see my power cord unexpectedly.

I’m drafting my second IRB proposal. My problem with both studies I’ve designed in my post-doc so far? I’ve done this stuff already. Or slight variations thereof. I’m talking about using familiar techniques in popular problems. I’m questioning the ability to publish any of this pilot data and dreading the day when I finally discover the fatal flaw behind these studies. I was hired primarily for my experience - the ability to avoid the pitfalls of conducting studies of which I'm fond.

But the problem - that flaw - is always there. I’ve done nothing that hasn’t, at one time, made me look over my shoulder and force back tears. It’s frustrating to go through the same situations and understand you’re making progress, but also know that it’s coming too slowly.

So as much as I try, mulling over the study design, reading papers and gleefully pointing out where I could have better done the research, I know I’m missing something. Looking in all the wrong places, and not seeing the problem that each reviewer will note when I try to publish or attempt to get grants funded.

So I sigh, unhappy with the significant progress I’ve made this weekend. There’s something missing, if not wrong, in those words I’ve so carefully put together and referenced. Something missing in the control group, ill-advised in the timing of data acquisition, impossible within my plan for the processing and interpretation of results. And I just don’t see it. I'll find it, accidentally, when I'm trying to figure out results - too late to fix.

I bet someone broke in, read my work, and knows what it is. Smug in the knowledge that they know what will ruin all my projects – the small glitch I didn’t predict or the problem I thought I accounted for but didn’t. So I keep going over my plans, my lit searches, my hypotheses. I want to list all the possible problems and figure out ways around them – sketch outlines for the future papers so I understand how the work should flow.

I have the background, the resources, the education. But sometimes I wonder, faced with consenting hundreds of sick patients, some of them children, if I have the faith that any of this will ever do any good.

That makes me feel lost.