there is more rejoicing in the kingdom of heaven . . . (recycling division)

There is more rejoicing in the kingdom of heaven over one lamb that was lost and then found than over the ninety-nine who were never lost.

And I just took out the recycling - one bag of smelly horrible gross wet organic stuff, two bags of garbage garbage (here they call it "Restmüll" - i.e. the rest of the garbage - everything that doesn't fit the compost group or one of the recycling groups), one bag of plastics and packaging, and my lime green big over-the-shoulder bag my mother-in-law gave me years ago (hi, Irene, if you're reading this!) that here in Berlin has been perfect for our paper recycling (went nicely with my pale green and pale pink leaves-and-stems-patterned baby-doll vintage dress from Cactus Flower in Bloomington) - I trailed a path of papery things that fell out behind me as I went (yes, I picked them all up on my way home).

ANYway - I put all the other bags down and emptied the paper stuff first. And since the bin was pretty full I had to spread my stuff out and smush it down a little to fit. And in doing so I happened on some paper that was not a Kleenex box, not a shopping list (though it seemed to be next to some), not printer paper or any of the other stuff that is usually in there, but rather . . . two bills, one a hundred euros and one fifty euros.

Hooray! I took them out of the bank about two weeks ago on a Saturday afternoon, hurrying home from a writing group meeting that was less than satisfactory (I was the only person there) - I ran to the bank between getting off the S-Bahn train and hopping on the bus home and then I was putting my stuff away and getting on the bus and reading a book and talking to hubby on the phone and pulling out my bus pass (actually, that day, I think I was without the bus pass too because I had lost mine so it was a two-hour pass) all at once, and by the time I got home I couldn't find the hundred and fifty euros anywhere.

I should say that all winter I wore an over-the-shoulder little black wallet purse and now I've gone over to a fanny pack my little sister-in-law gave me decades ago (it didn't go around my waist then but it does now because I am littler!), and somehow I am constantly shifting things around. And yes, I read while walking and riding the bus, and use my bus pass as a bookmark sometimes, and somehow or other I had mislaid the bus pass. And maybe that day I was borrowing hubby's, not sure. I didn't mention the hundred and fifty mislaid euros because it would have only made him tremendously unhappy and I honestly couldn't see a good, productive purpose in mentioning it then (before he reads this Felix and I will have told him; he's on his way back from the airport, from Paris, as we write). Then he loaned me his own bus pass for a while (actually, we just shared it back and forth), and at one point I even mislaid his. That was fortunately short-lived.

Anyway, this month is almost over and in the new month we can all get our own new bus passes, but the hundred and fifty euros are safely back home with us (Felix thinks I should give them to him).