I had a taste for chicken salad yesterday so I stopped in the deli section at the grocery and got myself a small container of the creamy variety. I bought myself a newspaper and I thought I'd enjoy a quiet 10-minute lunch in the car, parked in the shade.

At the deli counter I asked for a plastic fork but learned they were out. "No matter," I thought to myself. In my mind I could picture my glove compartment filled with dozens of plastic forks wrapped in plastic - some with napkins, others with little salt and pepper packets.

When I got to the car I opened the glove compartment, then the console in between the two seats and finally the car trunk. I rummaged around looking for my plastic dinnerware, the very plastic ware I could see in my mind. Finally it dawned on me that those dozens of utensil packets are actually back home stuffed in a kitchen drawer.

Lacking any utensils whatsoever, I made a little scoop out of a tuck-pointer's business card and went to work on the chicken salad. I had to toss the newspaper mid-lunch because it became such a mess. I suppose the post lunch shampooing of the car won't be that expensive.

Ah, for the want of a fork.

Clearly I have an inventory control problem.

I have supply and I have demand, I just don't have them matched very often.

The other day I had to shimmy down into the crawl space to fiddle with the dryer vent connection. The dryer vent exits the crawl space in an area off to itself. We have a lonely light bulb down there in the middle of the crawl space but it does not cast light where I needed it. I've always kept a utility light plugged in down in that space so I can take light around when necessary. On this particular day the utility light was on lone to some unknown gremlin who must live under our house.

I hollered through the floorboards to get my wife's attention.

"A flashlight please!"

Now we own, or have owned at one time, every form of flashlight ever made. My personal favorite is a flexible snake like thing which has a light at the end and which you can bend to hang over a pipe or coil so it stands on its own. But we have cheap battery-less throwaway flashlights and we have big expensive flashlights that require lots of batteries. We've got tiny flashlights that give off big, intense light and we've got clunky flashlights you have to hit on the side each time you use it. Those are the ones that give that yellow, hazy glow that is not all that

helpful.

But on this particular day all those assorted flashlights had rearranged their whereabouts or left for parts unknown. None were to be found - any where. I briefly entertained using a candle to light the way but the cobwebs all around convinced me otherwise. Instead, I wrestled with the dryer vent in the dark and then called it a day.

Somehow, someway, I need inventory control in my life.

Rulers and tape dispensers and scissors, we have plenty. But when they are needed, where are they?

A co-worked asked to borrow a map from me the other day. I knew I had one in my file drawer and I went rummaging around to find it. To my chagrin, I pulled out of said file drawer a pair of navy blue socks that I had squirreled away for a rainy day. I'd forgotten their existence, but remembered the day my feet got so wet in the rain that I had hidden them away for a similar situation involving cold, wet feet.

Socks in my file drawer, oh my.

So until that happy day that I get a handle on inventory control, I suppose the answer is obvious.

The question then is, where does one buy a plastic fork with flashlight attachment?