I Found the Lost Notepad!

The yellow notepad had become as important as a headlamp, water and whiskey during the dark, swampy days here following Hurricane Rita.
Connected to the outside world only by cell phone, I had essential telephone numbers and story idea information on that notepad, which I carried with me everywhere. It was a vital organ.
And then I lost it.
During the post-storm delirium, as we trudged around like drooling zombies in The Swamp, the nickname for our sweatshop, lots of things got misplaced: cell phones, headlamps, potato chips, water bottles, open beers, minds. Knowing this, I clutched that notepad as if it were a lifeline tossed to me in the turbulent ocean.
But then I lost it.
I had no idea when. I just suddenly realized that I had someone else's notepad, perhaps plucked out of the sea of notepads lying around. I was certain that it had occurred somewhere around the tables set up as a makeshift newsroom overlooking the main entrance.
But it wasn't there, and my desperate interrogations of those who had worked in that area came up empty. And whose notepad did I have? Was this person freaking out like me?
I searched every floor of the building and could not find the notepad. It was gone.
So, using the info stored in my cell phone, I spent a good hour piecing together whose number belonged to whom. I put them all in my new notepad, which had been someone else's notepad, and had a new vital organ to protect.
Subsequently, that notepad became even more important, for it contained phone numbers, FEMA account PIN and password numbers, a kazillion insurance-related numbers, and a jillion idea tidbits I later used for this very blog. I slept with the notepad for two weeks. I have it inches away from me right now. Touch my notepad, and I'll smack ya.
Like a jilted lover getting over a breakup, I accepted the fact that my old notepad was gone, although the mystery continued to tug at me.
Until yesterday.
While lurching around in my dusty, disjointed, plastic-wrapped, storm-battered office in search of computer stereo speakers and CDs needed to brighten the ambiance in our temporary first-floor workspace, a yellow object caught my eye in the nearby photo office. I could see in there because walls have been removed, leaving little more than metal support posts, looking like ribs. I stumbled through open walls, ducked into the photo office, grabbed the notepad and quickly recognized my horrid handwriting, which I call "slophand," a barbaric form of shorthand that no one but me can read. I resigned myself to poor handwriting long ago, during the Big Chief Notepad days.
I figured the long-lost yellow notepad landed here one of two ways:
1.) I left it sitting in another part of the photo office, near one of the only telephone landlines working in the building after the storm. I had used that line, as well as neighboring computers, several times. Someone picked up and moved the notepad into the photo editor's office for some reason.
or
2.) I set down the notepad right where I found it while searching for AA batteries in a nearby cabinet.
I'm thinking it was the latter, but who knows?
We were all tired and punch drunk back then.
There's nothing I really need in the notepad, but there is some comfort and relief from finding something whose mysterious loss drove me squirrelly.