2003-12-14 - 5:59 p.m.

what are the chances?

YESS!! Today I have defeated Murphy's Law!

Last week I lost one of my favorite toasty warm black leather gloves. This is no ordinary glove, but a black, flannel-lined leather isotoner glove with inlaid stretch fabric on the sides ensuring a snug fit - something that next-to-impossible for my wide yet short-fingered hands. I searched high and low for these gloves and finally found them three years ago. And then promptly lost one of them on a train from Munich, three days after I purchased them. AAAAAHHHHH!!!!

At that time I went on an insane search for a company that sells one glove. Or even for a company that would ship me TWO of these gloves again. None. Already by January they had vanished from the planet, not to return until next winter.

Next winter (last year), I bought TWO pair, which seemed to ensure that I would lose none. Kind of like taking an umbrella on a day that looks like rain, only to ensure that it won't.

I am a disaster with gloves and only now as an adult am I beginning to appreciate the coat that I had when I was seven years old - the one that had little fasteners on the cuffs for my mittens (which I probably lost all the time anyway). Someone should really write to Armani and suggest that he include mitten hooks on his next line of leather jackets..This is something we all could use, I think.

Anyway, in the process of packing I have UNEARTHED FIVE YEARS OF HALF SETS OF GLOVES. I've found six lonely single gloves....ALL OF THEM RIGHT HAND. What's that all about? I checked my coat pockets for huge gaping holes in the left side - none. Perhaps Michael Jackson has stealthily removed them (he's the guy with the left-glove fettish, right?).

Well...so...guess which glove I lost last week? erhem...the left. BUT, it turns out that two years ago on the train from Munich, I lost the ONLY RIGHT GLOVE that I appear to have ever lost in my entire life! And so, now, my lonely remaining left glove can now live happily ever after paired to a new right..You see? there's always hope of finding another.

And now isn't this a fantastic omen for how the rest of my life is going to go??