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The Everlasting Mystery Of Teaspoons

Related to the teaspoons, perhaps vacationing with them, I live alone and have a small kitchen. Over the past three months of isolation, I have lost my only serrated bread knife and the 1/4 tsp spoon of a four-spoon set, bright red plastic. There is only one utility stuff drawer. They're not there. So if anyone sees these in their spoon-holder, please advise.
As an update, both items have reappeared exactly where they should have been and where I originally looked for them. I do not believe that I have become that absent-minded; I emptied the drawer the first time around. So whoever needed them has returned them.
 
Warning: side bar musing about butter

In the US, I can’t find really good tasting butter made in the US. So, I buy butter made in Ireland which is imported at great expense to the US. 50 years ago, I could buy great domestic butter; not now, at least in the major grocery stores. I suspect the tasty Irish butter is because of the cows (Irish Kerry vs American Holstein), the feed, and the processing. Also, its wrapped in foil.

My teaspoons don’t disappear, but my socks do in the washing machine, even now in my own home's washer.

What is the universe trying to tell me?
 
Warning: side bar musing about butter

In the US, I can’t find really good tasting butter made in the US. So, I buy butter made in Ireland which is imported at great expense to the US. 50 years ago, I could buy great domestic butter; not now, at least in the major grocery stores. I suspect the tasty Irish butter is because of the cows (Irish Kerry vs American Holstein), the feed, and the processing. Also, its wrapped in foil.

My teaspoons don’t disappear, but my socks do in the washing machine, even now in my own home's washer.

What is the universe trying to tell me?

That you should wash your teaspoons in the washing machine?
 
I think the universe is trying to tell you that European butter is often fermented, giving it a tangy, slightly sour taste. These butters are often richer (more butterfat).... American butter is monitored and regulated by the USDA, which states that a butter must contain at least 80 percent butterfat to make the cut.
 
Warning: side bar musing about butter

In the US, I can’t find really good tasting butter made in the US. So, I buy butter made in Ireland which is imported at great expense to the US. 50 years ago, I could buy great domestic butter; not now, at least in the major grocery stores. I suspect the tasty Irish butter is because of the cows (Irish Kerry vs American Holstein), the feed, and the processing. Also, its wrapped in foil.
The story goes that Irish butter tastes so good because the grass is so lush and green over there.
The reason the grass is so lush and green (apart from the endless rain) is because all the Irish are over here standing on our grass.
 
I passed the College Refectory this morning - it's been shut since last March and it's been even longer since I last attended a Staff coffee morning - but the lights were on. Peering round the door, I saw the chief Teaching Technician and her colleague had somehow gained access to the cutlery drawers. 200 teaspoons were on the counter and they were scutinising each one until with a triumphant yell they found the missing one with the pertinent initials carved on it. That is impressive spoon devotion.
Wow! That beats me moving the microwave, by quite a margin!
 
A couple of years ago I bought (or, to be accurate was bought) a set of teaspoons. Six, basic, ordinary teaspoons to replace the bastards that have crept away over the years. Within moments, I was down to five teaspoons - one thrown out, fell down the back of a cupboard, who knows?
I laboured on with my five teaspoons, until a recent visit from my brother (not a known teaspoon supplier). After he'd left, I found I was back to six teaspoons. And no, he didn't see fit to buy me a spoon, nor did he leave one of his own spoons (I don't even think he does travel with spoons, but who knows?). These spoons match. The missing spoon returns, hooray!

As of today, I have seven teaspoons. I just went to the teaspoon pot, where they live on my window ledge, and another one has arrived. Again, it matches the rest, is clean and unstained, and nobody except me has been in the house for weeks. Either the dogs are secret teaspoon smugglers, or the buggers are breeding.
My brothers mother in law!!
 
This turned up in the cutlery draw a couple of weeks ago. No idea where it has come from, its very shallow and about 6" long

A spoon for tea, rather than a teaspoon?View attachment 23369
Look very much like a victorian fruit/berry spoon, the victorians had a bad habit of taking beautiful older spoons and embossing them with decoration, much to the horror of antique spoon collectors nowadays

293810.jpg
 
Their children certainly found the incident funny -- one of my nephews still laughs uproariously about it -- but I'm not so sure about my sister. I think she put the incident in the context of my brother-in-law's long-held aversion to new technology. As an example, for many years he used a manual lawn mower to cut the grass despite owning an electronic one because he claimed the physical exertion helped him keep fit. While there was some truth to that, it's likely that he could never work out how to turn on the electric one and simply opted for the manual one instead.
When we got our first microwave many moons ago, my old dad decided to cook some spaghetti in it, the result was a rather fine raffia looking place mat
 
My gran, when she was bad with dementia and in a home, would store teaspoons in her bedside cabinet, the staff would come in once a week to liberate the teaspoons, to which my gran would take great umbridge, and return them to the kitchen, at one point she had about 3 dozen of them in her draw, secreted over the space of a week, never any other cutlery, only teaspoons
 
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Look very much like a victorian fruit/berry spoon, the victorians had a bad habit of taking beautiful older spoons and embossing them with decoration, much to the horror of antique spoon collectors nowadays

View attachment 34641
There was also something i saw on antique road trip and they found a gold once collectable goblet that had been turned by Victorians into a horn to blow taking away the value. The dude in the shop still charged £80 for it and the BBC antiques dealer still bought it for 80.
 
As an update, both items have reappeared exactly where they should have been and where I originally looked for them. I do not believe that I have become that absent-minded; I emptied the drawer the first time around. So whoever needed them has returned them.
However in exchange they have apparently taken my one steak knife. Same drawer. I will ask.
 
A few years ago I bought a set of cheap steak knives.

I don't eat steak but Techy does and he's always hacking at the cheese with my good knives and chucking them in the sink. I thought he could use the cheapo ones instead. ;)

They disappeared one by one. Eventually Techy admitted breaking and sneakily binning them. :rolleyes:
 
A few years ago I bought a set of cheap steak knives.

I don't eat steak but Techy does and he's always hacking at the cheese with my good knives and chucking them in the sink. I thought he could use the cheapo ones instead. ;)

They disappeared one by one. Eventually Techy admitted breaking and sneakily binning them. :rolleyes:
Is he secretly messing with your teaspoons too?
 
My gran, when she was bad with dementia and in a home, would store teaspoons in her bedside cabinet, the staff would come in once a week to liberate the teaspoons, to which my gran would take great umbridge, and return them to the kitchen, at one point she had about 3 dozen of them in her draw, secreted over the space of a week, never any other cutlery, only teaspoons
What is it with dementia and teaspoons? My stepmother was only diagnosed with dementia in her 80s but we reckoned she'd had it at least since her 40s - one noticeable incident being when we walked through the door, had barely sat down, and she started going on about her teaspoons, hinting we'd stolen them...
 
What is it with dementia and teaspoons? My stepmother was only diagnosed with dementia in her 80s but we reckoned she'd had it at least since her 40s - one noticeable incident being when we walked through the door, had barely sat down, and she started going on about her teaspoons, hinting we'd stolen them...
Thst is what my gran would accuse the staff of doing at her care home, not sure what its about tbh, maybe its a security thing like a blanket for a baby, who knows?
 
Warning: side bar musing about butter

In the US, I can’t find really good tasting butter made in the US. So, I buy butter made in Ireland which is imported at great expense to the US. 50 years ago, I could buy great domestic butter; not now, at least in the major grocery stores. I suspect the tasty Irish butter is because of the cows (Irish Kerry vs American Holstein), the feed, and the processing. Also, its wrapped in foil.

My teaspoons don’t disappear, but my socks do in the washing machine, even now in my own home's washer.

What is the universe trying to tell me?

You will be pleased to hear that I have solved the mystery of teaspoons and socks and their entanglement at a quantum level in a post in this very forum. Please see post number 66 from 2018. I have tried to link it below.

Over many years I have become convinced that deep in their DNA, in their genome so to speak, both socks and tea spoons are inter-related at the quantum level.

It is a well known fact that if you put several pairs of socks in a confined space like a washing machine or a sock drawer for a period of time then one of the socks will vanish. I have a theory that your new teaspoons were in fact socks in a previous life and the vanishing socks are simply shape shifted in a separate quantum universe into tea spoons at which point they re-appear in this timeline but only when you are not looking.

To reference the reality of this concept you may be interested in researching the double slit experiment, here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment which proves that by simply observing something you can change its fundamental properties. This is why you will never actually see the tea spoons re-appear when you are looking as by looking you have changed the tea spoon's quantum reality into something else that is not capable of appearing until you cease looking.

The next time your teaspoon count changes I would immediately go and count your socks where I suspect you will find an opposing discrepancy in the sock drawer.

I once read a story about a single Roman chain mail sock that was found in a field and the article didn't mention tea spoons once which I took as proof of my hypothesis allowing me to promote it to "theory" status.

Whatever you do though don't put any tea spoons in your sock drawer as it has the potential to cause an imbalance in the fabric of the space/time continuum leaving you with an infinite number of tea spoons and no socks.
 
You will be pleased to hear that I have solved the mystery of teaspoons and socks and their entanglement at a quantum level in a post in this very forum. Please see post number 66 from 2018. I have tried to link it below.
Nice work XBergmann .. now can you solve the riddle of why people only ever lose one glove please? ... I think it's because they don't tuck their pair of gloves into each other but that doesn't explain why you never see a pair of gloves tucked into each other on the pavement instead.
 
Nice work XBergmann .. now can you solve the riddle of why people only ever lose one glove please? ... I think it's because they don't tuck their pair of gloves into each other but that doesn't explain why you never see a pair of gloves tucked into each other on the pavement instead.

It is minus 23C right now and both my gloves disappeared yesterday.

You must be from a different timeline as right now somewhere in Kyiv someone will have found my 2 gloves and be wondering why they never find single ones.
 
It is minus 23C right now and both my gloves disappeared yesterday.

You must be from a different timeline as right now somewhere in Kyiv someone will have found my 2 gloves and be wondering why they never find single ones.
Hopefully that person in Kyiv who finds your gloves is also a spoon salesman.
 
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@XBergMann

Gosh! You DID solve it, and I missed it. Apologies. In musing on your comprehensive theory – now proved correct by multiple confirmatory “experiments”around the world and accepted in this international peer-reviewed online journal – I wonder if you could please expand your theory to explain why sliced meat for sandwiches always runs out before the bread, in households in which men reside? It seems quite fortean to me.

I shall, of course, nominate you for a Nobel Prize. I just haven’t figured out what the best category will be. I will write in to the committee to propose adding another category: Godel Incompleteness. This ties in nicely with my personal research into the unified field theory of ontology.

Ps – I will now watch my washing machine closely for signs of quantum activity. It is starting to make more noises in the spin cycle.
 
@XBergMann

Gosh! You DID solve it, and I missed it. Apologies. In musing on your comprehensive theory – now proved correct by multiple confirmatory “experiments”around the world and accepted in this international peer-reviewed online journal – I wonder if you could please expand your theory to explain why sliced meat for sandwiches always runs out before the bread, in households in which men reside? It seems quite fortean to me.

I shall, of course, nominate you for a Nobel Prize. I just haven’t figured out what the best category will be. I will write in to the committee to propose adding another category: Godel Incompleteness. This ties in nicely with my personal research into the unified field theory of ontology.

Ps – I will now watch my washing machine closely for signs of quantum activity. It is starting to make more noises in the spin cycle.

In future buy twice as much sliced ham.

That way your problem will be solved with the bread running out before the ham.

Then you can come back here and ask why is it that the bread always runs out before the sliced meat.

If you can't get the balance right after a few weeks maybe you should consider employing a quantity surveyor on your household's staff.
 
In future buy twice as much sliced ham.

That way your problem will be solved with the bread running out before the ham.

Then you can come back here and ask why is it that the bread always runs out before the sliced meat.

If you can't get the balance right after a few weeks maybe you should consider employing a quantity surveyor on your household's staff.

There is some Fortean paradox regarding the meat to bread ratio: no matter how much meat I buy, it still is consumed faster than the bread. I started out with a 1:1 meat to bread ratio decades ago, and slowly worked up to 4:1 meat to bread ratio. It still goes faster than the bread. The only sandwich meat which does not do this is liverwurst, leading me to the inescapable conclusion that liverwurst is Fortean in its intrinsic qualities. The rather plebian suggestions that I needed to buy different, more palatable bread are, of course, ridiculous.
 
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