Wednesday, January 4, 2023

My Scattered Brain by Bonnie Le Hamilton

 



I was getting ready for bed last night when I remembered that today is Wednesday and it’s my turn to write a post. I don’t usually remember this late at night, and I really have no excuse because after work yesterday I took my sister-in-law shopping, and at the end of the evening, she asked me, “Tomorrow is Wednesday, isn’t it? Are we going to our knitting group tomorrow?”

“Yeah, it's Wednesday, and yes I’m planning on it,” I said, and yet it didn’t sink in that I also had to write my post until hours later when I was getting ready for bed.

Had I remembered I needed to write a post earlier this wouldn’t be an issue. And here I wanted to try and be more organized this year.

So much for that.

And what makes it worse, last week, on Tuesday evening as I was getting ready for bed, I messaged Konnie and said, “Please tell me it’s your turn to post.”

Too bad, that wouldn’t get the same results this week.

Actually, I’m surprised I haven’t received a message from Konnie reminding me, she usually does. Though of course, she isn’t feeling well right now.

Something I wouldn’t know except the other night I couldn’t sleep, so I started reading one of her manuscripts on our shared drive. It is an unfinished manuscript and I wanted to be assured that the two main characters did not end up being biologically related, from the clues given there was a possibility there, since the heroine's mother had no memory of her life before meeting the heroine’s father and uncle, and she shared some features with his cousin.

So, Monday I called Konnie to ask her about it. She couldn’t talk right then because she was in the ER. She called me when they were on the way home. I did beg her to tell me they were not biologically related. She assured me they weren’t, though they share some relations, they are related on different sides of the family tree. Good news there.

Bad news, she’s sick so she hasn’t noticed I haven’t posted yet. She usually does. I promise. She usually reminds me like on Tuesday morning, or at least well before my usual bedtime that it's my turn. She knows I can be scatterbrained. After all, she’s lived with me for a couple of decades.

As hard as I try to stay organized, what my house looks more like is orderly chaos. I can generally find what I’m looking for unless Patches managed to move it to someplace else.

I have little nests here and there piled with things, and I know what things are in what nests. I know where they are, but it's still a mess. I’m working on it.

But again, I’ve always been like this. I try to be neat and orderly, but I have piles of papers and notebooks, and sometimes books all over the place. Some of the mess is also mail I really should be dealing with.

Once, many years ago, my husband asked where a certain paper was. My answer was something like this, “Oh, in that pile on my desk. It should be somewhere between the yellow paper and the pink paper.”

He just stared at me in shock. There was a rainbow of color in that pile, and it was pretty tall for a pile of papers. I walked over and pulled what he needed out of the middle of that mess, somewhere between the two colors I had mentioned. He was still in shock when I handed it to him.

Give me a break. I try to be organized, but at least I can remember where I put things.

In contrast, my husband was always misplacing things.

Once when we returned home, he unlocked and entered the house ahead of me, as I entered, I heard metal hitting wood, which had to be his keys landing somewhere, only logical.

A few hours later, he had to go somewhere, and couldn’t find his keys. He panicked. I considered how far ahead of me he was when I heard the keys land on wood and looked toward the nearest piece of wooden furniture to that location. And there they were, right on top in plain sight. I could see them from across the room.

He could never figure out how I could stay so calm when he was panicking. I used my head instead of zigzagging around the house searching every hiding place he could think of. The man was literally looking under and between the couch cushions!

Let’s see, it hit wood. Oh! There it is!

So, I guess I’m a "logical scatterbrain." How about you?

Happy writing everyone!

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