Wanted: Denim ballerina bag with Piano books inside

What should be the hardest thing to lose has disappeared. 

Somewhere, in our house, is a blue denim bag with ballerina slippers on the outside. Inside the bag are my daughter's piano books. It was shortly prior to bedtime last night when the tears started falling. 

Tonight, it was more tears and raiding the shoe box she stores her money in as she is saving up for an MP3 player because her father won't let her buy an iPod. She thinks she has enough money saved up to purchase her piano books.

I told her that was silly. There is no reason for her to buy another set of piano books. They have to be somewhere. I was confident, when I said that, we would be able to find her piano bag. She says she remembers her bag being upstairs in her room. Now it is gone off the face of the earth.

We started in the obvious place but, for whatever reason, the bag is not in the sun room, where our piano rests. Instead, the piano bag is elsewhere, in a mysterious place, that no one - not me, not Megan (my daughter), not Alex (my son), not Karen (my wife) - can find. We started at the top - checked in my daughter's bedroom & closet, in the toy box, & in my son's room. On our main level, we looked in the piano room, in the master bedroom, and in the sun room. We looked in the living room and we looked in both vehicles. Then we looked downstairs. I looked in the furnace room, in the living room area, in the sump pump storage room, and in the den. It is nowhere to be found in this house. It has to be somewhere - I'm assured that a denim ballerina bag with piano books inside cannot grow legs and walk away.

The worst part is that I vaguely remember seeing the piano bag and remember thinking, "That's a weird place for the piano books." Of course, I didn't take the piano bag, at that time, and put it in the sun room. I don't have an answer to the question "Why didn't you put it in the sun room if you thought you were seeing the piano bag in the wrong place?" I apparently didn't think it was in such a strange place that I would never see it again.

In other news, though, I did find my knee brace. Prior to my knee surgery, I was wearing a flexible knee brace to help support my knee and make it not hurt. Then, it was gone. I found it under my bed. Not next to the denim ballerina bag with piano books inside, but the knee brace was found.

Life will go on and someday we will find where the piano bag is located. It is large enough that it will be found someday. It's not like a needle in the haystack - it's like a 8 1/2 x 11 blue denim bag. My daughter's piano books are within that bag and she needs that bag for tomorrow night - she has piano lessons @ 5:30. I get to go with her and be in the room when we tell her teacher we haven't been able to find her piano books. We have looked everywhere. And we have come up empty.