Big day

It's funny, what constitutes an exceptional, stupendous, out-of-this-world day around here.

For instance, when we found Lego Anakin. Now that was the most exciting day we've had in a while at our house.

Lego Anakin (that's Darth Vader, before he turned to the dark side, for those of you not up on your Star Wars trivia) was missing for months. Everybody had a story about when and where they last saw him. All clues led to the closet area of the office/workout/television/storage room. A lot of boxes come and go from the office/workout/television/storage room, which did not bode well for Anakin. Since we had looked and looked with no success, I figured he had fallen into an empty box and been shipped off to the recycling plant. Sorry, even the Force won't help you there, buddy.

But a few days ago I was digging around in the cracks of the dining room chairs (one of my favorite activities, I assure you) and I found not one, but two Lego light saber blades. Now, why I do cruel things to myself like purchase Lego Star Wars characters with tiny Lego weapons is another subject altogether, but the fact is, the mood was like Christmas! It turns out, they've been looking for the green light saber blade forever! And could I find the purple one? Because that one has been missing forever, too. And, now that we're looking for Lego Star Wars toys, what do you suppose ever became of Anakin?

Since I was kind of on a roll, I decided to go into the office/workout/television/storage room and try to get to the bottom of this mystery. That's when it hit me. The only unexplored terrain, the frontier, if you will, of this room: Inside the love seat.

The love seat is black leather, with one side that reclines (which I've never understood and only promotes jealousy in the person stuck with the non-reclining side--why, IKEA, why?) and inside there, under the reclining side, is a vast wasteland of whatever has slipped through the cracks.

Armed with only a flashlight and a small dust broom, I went where no man or woman had gone before, and here is what I found:

4 Lego bricks
2 forks
1 Star Wars gun
2 Pokemon cards
8 game pieces
3 puzzle pieces
5 crayons
4 marbles
$1.26 in change
Thousands of crumbs, Cheerios, scraps of paper, and various other trash

and...

Lego Anakin!

and...

the purple Lego light saber blade!

We shouted. We hugged. We cheered. We jumped up and down. It was a major celebration.

Stupendous.