LJ Idol - Week 12 - Most Annoying Personality Trait
I can’t find my damn keys!
What did I do with my stupid purse?
Where the hell is my bra?
Have you seen my freakin’ debit card??
It's lost...again.
I misplace things. Things I use every day, things I need to have close at hand. Pen caps and sippy cups, cell phones and birth control pills, I am constantly losing important pieces of my puzzle. Other people might find something else about me more annoying, like my habit of interrupting or my generally dizzy demeanor. For me personally, nothing is more frustrating than the Easter egg hunt my life has become!
I’d like to blame it on my kids, who do have a tendency to wander off with Mommy’s shiny stuff and her sanity too. I KNEW I didn’t lose the $20 bill that was on my desk, although it seemed possible given my track record. But, sure enough, my three year old daughter finally admitted - eerily - that she gave it to the “lady in the wall.”
“Um…what lady in the wall, baby?”
“The one who is totally covered in candy, mama.”
*Gulp*
Who knows what inspired her to say that. Frankly, I didn’t want to think too hard about it.
But, it only took crawling around the room for an hour poking up under the baseboard with tweezers to find where she had stuffed my money. Then I told her “If the lady in the wall asks you for money again, you tell her you have to ask your mother first!”
I’d like to blame it on ghosts, or maybe just poltergeists, but really, why would they be haunting a ranch house built in 1983? I am pretty sure our property wasn’t once an Indian burial ground or uninterred cemetery, like the kind they build houses on in horror movies. Still, last week I was installing a new toilet floater, the instructions sitting on the sink, and left the bathroom to talk to my husband. When I returned, the instructions were gone. Well, the toilet instructions were gone. On the sink were now instructions for how to replace the alternator in a ‘91 Thunderbird. My husband did that a few months ago, but how the hell did the instructions wind up on the sink then?
I stalked around the house angrily looking for the papers until I got so mad I thought ‘Fine. I don’t need instructions. I’ll figure it out on my own!’ As soon as I walked in the bathroom, lo and behold, the instructions were just laying on the floor next to my toolbox. Were they there all along? No way! Or…were they? It really felt like someone - or something - was messing with me.
I’d also like to blame it on thieves. A few months ago I couldn’t find my wallet or my driver’s license. I looked fretfully all over the house and car. And then I remembered these punky teenagers wandering suspiciously through the parking lot when I took the kiddos to feed ducks that afternoon. And I hadn’t locked my car door. They took my stuff!
Scared they were on a shopping spree with my freshly paid off credit cards, I called every company and reported the cards stolen. Then I checked my bank’s automated phone number over and over all night to make sure they weren’t depleting my account of funds. In the morning my husband cleared his throat while straightening the living room and handed me the wallet. Carelessly knocked between my desk and file cabinet it had been within arm's reach of my laptop since the day before. When had I taken it out of my purse? I don’t remember.
And that is really the heart of the matter. Remembering. I am so absent minded. A coworker told me that on average a person’s IQ drops about 12% when they have kids. Great. I have two, so does that mean it's dropped 24%? Could it be early onset Alzheimer’s? I doubt it, but sometimes I feel like my forgetfulness is a medical condition. And the stress it causes definitely is!
Maybe my brain is full, like an overstuffed file cabinet. When I casually toss some last little piece of information in there, like where I am placing my bra so I can find it in the morning, the memory just slips out of the cabinet onto the floor, abandoned, because there’s no room for anything else.
This has got to end though. I feel like I’m losing my mind. And, with all my frantic foraging, my home is starting to look like greedy relatives ransacked it hunting for the millions their rich auntie socked away. I think if I just had a dedicated spot to place things in…well, you know I wouldn’t use it and it would just serve as an annoying reminder of my scattered brains!
What would really help? Accepting that the only person who can help me remember anything is me, and that I need to clean my house and clear my mind a little before I go seriously insane. Well, clear my mind and maybe offer another twenty to that lady in the wall so she’ll leave my stuff alone!