Missing: One Mini-Pad

I was getting undressed this morning to have a shower and realized my mini-pad was missing. I am never without a mini-pad. Forget diamonds – when a gal gets to a certain age it's a mini-pad that's your best friend. That and vodka. 

I thought maybe it got dislodged and was stuck to the inside of my pajamas but I turned them inside out and it wasn't there. 

Maybe, I thought, it was stuck to the back of my thigh. I felt up my own leg (cheap thrill) and no, it wasn't there. Nor was it on my back or in my hair. I honestly don't know how it would travel from my underwear to my hair, but you never know. 

I even checked the bed and for one horrible moment imagined Dave going to work with a used mini-pad wrapped around the back of his neck. So I phoned him, and thank gawd, no mini-pad. That would have gone over well with a garage full of mechanics. We would have had to move. Probably to Outer Siberia. Just so we wouldn't hear the laughing.

I have no geezly idea where this stupid mini-pad is. With my luck it'll show up at the most inopportune time. Like tonight. We're having the neighbours over for dinner and I have visions of the dog trotting out of the bathroom with it plastered to her head.

The mini-pad dilemma

Have you ever been carrying a mini-pad around in your pocket, at work, and you had your hands in your pockets, in the staff room, waiting around for the coffee to brew and looking around dopily because you're bored stupid and it takes forever to make so-called "instant" coffee, and you suddenly realize the mini-pad isn't in your pocket anymore, it's on the staff room floor which is called "staff room" because there is staff in it?

What do you do?

Pretend it's not there, knowing full well every person in the office will be saying, "Ew, Cathy dropped a mini-pad in the staff room and didn't pick it up" all day long and possibly for the rest of your career?"

Pick it up quickly and hope no one noticed, knowing full well they did? And the whole picking-up process is so embarrassing that it happens in slo-mo, and your face is a rictus of frozen cherry-popsicle coloured humiliation?

Make a big deal out of it? Like, "Oh lookit that, I dropped my mini-pad! Ho, ho, ho! Good thing it's not a used one, eh? Ho, ho, ho! Lookie me, I'm a big dumbass. Ho, ho, ho!"

Not that it has ever happened to me. (Yesterday.)