Anonymous wrote:After searching for 30 minutes in my pockets, purse, car, etc., I found my ipod in the basket where we keep shoes in mud room -- it probably fell out of my pocket when I was taking my shoes off.

Before you accuse the dry cleaners or anyone else, think very carefully about exactly where you were and exactly what you were doing the last time you had the lost item. Upon returning from vacation, an acquaintance of mine couldn't find her "good jewelry". It wasn't in any of her regular hiding places, so she concluded that her cleaner had stolen it and fired her, even though the woman had worked for her for years and nothing else had ever gone missing. Months later she found the jewelry in the laundry room and remembered that the night before leaving on vacation she had hidden it there after getting thoroughly swozzled at a book club meeting. But the story didn't end there -- a couple of years later her jewelry was taken by thieves who waltzed right into her unlocked house. I always wondered if the cleaning lady heard about this.