Good morning Everyone!
Today, over at Writers Who Kill, I blog about having a mind like a steel sieve. If you have a minute, go visit at https://writerswhokill.blogspot.com/2018/09/a-mind-like-steel-sieve-by-nancy-eady.html.
Have a great day everyone!
Nancy
Posted in Humor, Just stuff..., Writing
Tagged absent minded, absent-mindedness, books, memory, numbers
Good morning Everyone!
Something about the Christmas season seems to send my absent mindedness into hyperdrive. Not so my dogs.
The Mandinator!
Here’s my proof:
1. It was raining last week, and I was the last one to leave the office. I usually go out the front, which requires me to unlock and then lock it back, but that night I went out the back door, which always lets people out even if they can’t get back in. After I got outside and into my car (it has a combination lock that lets me unlock it without the key), I started to panic when I couldn’t find the keys anywhere in my purse. I hadn’t even closed the car door yet. I started to send a frantic text to one of my friends from work asking her to come back to free me, but as I was doing so, I realized there was the most annoying “ping, ping, ping” coming from the car. I looked up to realize that my keys were in the ignition. I must have put them in the ignition without even thinking about it.
2. I am working on a knitting project that involves using a row counter. This means that after I finish a row, I have to stop and hit the button on the counter to tally each row. To do this, I have to put the “free” needle – the one without yarn on it at the time – down. I got quite annoyed the other night when I couldn’t find the darn thing after one row tally. There is nothing more frustrating than losing an object when you have been sitting in the same place the whole time. I was sitting by Mark and he finally asked me what I was looking for. When I told him I was looking for my knitting needle, he looked at me strangely before telling me that it was tucked behind my ear!
3. We put a memory foam mattress topper on our bed last night. We leaned back to see how it felt, and Mark had my glasses in his hand. I kept reaching out to take them back, and he finally asked, “Why are you reaching for my glasses?” I started to inform him that they weren’t his glasses, they were mine – until I realized that my glasses were still on my head. Then I had to tell him that I had forgotten my glasses were still on me!
Compare that to Mandy’s behavior this morning. She sailed onto my chest about 6:30, ready for me to get up. Apparently the extra 4 inches added to the bed by the mattress topper doesn’t pose any problems for her, but I digress. When she did, I noticed that in her mouth she had one of Mark’s handkerchiefs. Sleepy or not, I was aware that most dogs do not carry handkerchiefs around with them, so I removed Mandy’s from her, put it in the hamper, pushed the clothes down to be sure they stayed out of reach and went on about our day. About an hour later, I went back into the room for something and Mandy followed me, sailed back on the bed and began searching for the handkerchief I had taken away.
That moment was when I concluded that my dog is far less absent-minded than me.
Have a great day!
Nancy
Posted in dogs, Just stuff..., Parenting, Pets, working mom
Tagged absent minded, absent-mindedness, dogs, Freshly Pressed, humor, pets
Good morning Everyone!
As most of you who follow this blog will remember, I am particularly gifted with the character trait known as “absent-mindedness.” Here are the latest instances:
1) On my way to work, there is a restaurant, one of those small places that always has something moving into and out of it. For about two weeks, I had been driving by it, absently noticing that the sign read “Coming Soon: Mandolin Cafe.” Each time I passed it, I wondered if the town where I work really has room for another Chinese restaurant….until my mind insisted that I notice that “mandolin” and “Mandarin” are two different things!
2) Have you ever wandered around the house swearing because you can’t find your glasses – only to realize that you’re wearing them? Funny – me neither!
Wink – from http://www.clipartonline.com
3) I wanted to download some pictures onto my computer today, so I pulled out the Nikon camera, found the cable to connect it and started my task – only to have the darn thing run out of battery on me! Digging through the camera bag for the charger, I found it missing. Kayla was the last person to use the camera, so I began the necessary cross-examination to try to establish exactly where she might have left the charger while grumping that if we couldn’t find it, we had a very expensive camera we couldn’t use – only to discover that the charger was on the table in front of me where I had taken it out moments before in order to reach the camera!
4) I was in a tearing hurry about two weeks ago, but I had also reached the point where the gas gauge in my car had gone from gentle reminders to crawling in the desert gasping for fuel. I whipped into the gas station, used the “pay at the pump” feature, hung the gas pump hose back up, got my receipt and tore out of the parking lot to cross the major U.S. Highway separating the gas station and the fast food place. Once I was in line at the drive-thru, however, I realized I couldn’t find my wallet anywhere. Panicking, I stepped out of the car for a second – where I discovered my wallet sitting on the roof of the car, where it had remained safely while I drove from the gas station to the fast food restaurant! (And yes, I said a devout prayer of thanks for that one!)
Have a great day!
Nancy
Posted in On the Home Front, When things don't go as expected, working mom
Tagged absent minded, camera, charger, humor, mandolin, photographs, wallet, wearing glasses
Good morning Everyone!
Here is my list of some of the reasons I enjoy being the mother of a seventh grade girl.
1) I am no longer the most absent-minded person in the house – seventh graders apparently can hold only one thought in their head at a time for a maximum of 20 seconds.
2) I live with 10 children for the price of only one – happy girl, tired girl, sad girl, mad girl….
3) In the person she is today, I catch glimpses of the wonderful woman she will be and the child she used to be – often in only a five-minute span of time!
4) I can beam with pride when she does something extraordinarily thoughtful, like the sweet note she wrote and delivered to her dentist and her staff yesterday right before they pulled four of her teeth…..
5) While wondering at the same time exactly what information she missed in what class that day while writing said note.
6) I have her convinced I’m psychic. When she’s mad at me but can’t say anything, I tell her to stop thinking what she’s thinking and am spot on. She hasn’t yet realized that I remember myself at that age.
7) The social world of the seventh grade girl and her friends is even more exciting than General Hospital when I was in college – without the murders, of course.
8) The list of chores she is capable of doing has expanded from individual tasks to whole rooms.
9) We’ve started a family pool betting on the exact date on which she will be taller than me – and I am on the inside track to win said pool!
10) She still will hold my hand and sit on my lap sometimes – and I really love that!
Have a great day!
Nancy
Posted in Child's Play, On the Home Front, working mom
Tagged absent minded, children, daughter, family, General Hospital, humor, kids, parenting, working mom
Good morning Everyone!
Photo Credit: http://www.clickartonline.com
Last night, Kayla asked me if she could fix the Kraft Macaroni and Cheese we were having at supper and deciding it was time to loosen up on my Mac N’ Cheese obsession, I said yes.
I suggested to her that she might want to get the ingredients out before the noodles were done. She told me that there weren’t any extra ingredients to the mac n’ cheese besides the packet from the box! I told her she needed butter and to call me when she was ready to mix so I could give her the other instructions.
That was my mistake – I gave a 12-year-old two tasks in one sentence. Apparently, their brains can’t handle it.
Mark announced that the pork chops were almost ready. I waited for Kayla to let me know she was ready to mix the stuff up. Instead, this colloquy occurred.
Mark: Did you drain that before you mixed it up?
Kayla: Nobody told me too!
Me (from the den): I told you to ask me when you were ready to fix it!
Kayla: No you didn’t!
Mark: Well, actually, yes she did.
Kayla (to me): You could have told me that I had to drain it first!
Mark: How many times have you watched Mom make mac n’ cheese? Let’s see if we can save it. Go ahead and get the colander out.
Silence, then Kayla to Mark: It’s not funny!
Mark and I: Well, actually, yes, yes it is.
I’ll omit the stories of parent’s pasts, which include attempts by Mark and one of his friends to make mashed potatoes without boiling them (his sister was removing random pieces of potato from the ceiling the remaining six years they lived in that particular house) and the absent-mindedness that caused me twice (years apart) to place my palm directly on a piping hot stove burner seconds after I had just removed the pan and should have known better.
It’s nice to know that Kayla is carrying on the family tradition!
Have a great day!
Nancy
Posted in Child's Play, Cooking, Food, working mom
Tagged 12 year old, absent minded, Cooking, daughter, food, humor, Kraft Macaroni N' Cheese, parenting, working mom
Good morning Everyone!
Have you ever lost something important like your keys while you were at work? Losing your keys at work is absolutely maddening because you know they have to be there SOMEWHERE or you never would have made it to work in the first place.
Car and House Keys
Photo Credit: http://www.clickartonline.com
Well, that happened to Kim, one of the people I work with, yesterday. She noticed about 10 in the morning that they were gone, and by 5:00 p.m. yesterday every woman in the office (there are 7 of us, including Kim) had looked for those keys – we looked on her desk, in her desk, in file folders, behind her desk, under the two stuffed chairs in her office, under rugs, in the parking lot, in her car, in envelopes she had put in the mail, everywhere in the office she had been and everywhere in the office she had not been. By the time we left work at 5 (fortunately Kim had a spare key to her car), I was beginning to think that the keys had been carried away either by elves or aliens, take your pick. I asked her to text me when she found them, but no texts came in last night.
Photo Credit: http://www.clickartonline.com
One was sent this morning, but by me, not her. Leaving the house, I had to lock the front door, and reached in the outer pocket of my purse to pull out my keys. I looked through the key ring a few times, trying to figure out where my house key had gone – and then the penny dropped. I was holding Kim’s keys in my hand from my purse. I called Kim immediately to let her know, apologizing profusely. FN.
I would like to believe that aliens or elves or Bigfoot or the Tooth Fairy slipped those keys into my purse when I wasn’t around, but deep down I know that the condition of absent-mindedness struck me again!
Have a great day!
Nancy
FN. Kim has been a very good sport about it all!
Posted in Just stuff..., working mom
Tagged absent minded, absent-mindedness, co-workers, cooperation, finding keys, humor, keyrings, keys, lost keys
Good morning Everyone!
It is well-known at my household that I have a gift for being absent-minded. My family is resigned to the fact that I will forget the dinner choice they made in the den after I walk the ten feet or less it takes to reach the kitchen and have to ask again. Kayla, when she leaves the house to catch the bus, makes sure that she locks the front door to the house so I won’t forget. while Mark is very patient when he asks me for something from the kitchen, I leave, go in there, putter around for a while and then return to the den without his original item. Kayla knows when the two of us are riding around to do something to speak up when I am about to pass the original destination, having already forgotten what that was.
Yesterday, I reached what must be the pinnacle of absent-mindedness for any mom – I forgot to pick up Kayla! She has been riding to and from school on the bus, but on Thursdays I pick her up from the house and take her to art, then pick her up from art at the end of my workday.
Yesterday, although I knew I had to pick Kayla up from art when I left the office, I had forgotten by the time I reached the driveway of our house. I remembered Kayla just as I pulled up into the driveway, so I immediately left and returned to art to get Kayla.
I called our art teacher, Bonnie, to let her know what I had done and that I was immediately turning around to pick up Kayla. Bonnie is always a very good sport about things and I was so amused at myself I told her what had happened When I picked up Kaya, she was outside Bonnie’s The Cottage Gallery, waiting for me with that gleeful l look all children get when their parents manage to mess up on something.
After we got home, Mark told Kayla not to worry; he’d always send me back to get her – we would never want to do that to Ms. Bonnie!
Have a great day!
Nancy
Good morning Everyone!
I would like to be able to tell you that my 3 1/2 week absence was due to something spectacular, such as completing a full novel during NaNo month, FN. 1, but, alas it is just due to puttering around with various things, some of which I am sure I will share with you later. I am fortunate enough to have a story or two to share with you that will at least make you smile, if not laugh.
In my “little black book”, which these days is basically my cell phone, I have two cell phone numbers that have multiple sixes in them. One of those cell phone numbers belongs to my sister, and the other belongs to my friend. A little while ago, I spent the night at my sister’s house in Huntsville, and was able to leave later than my sister and her husband did. I enjoyed sleeping in, and their dog was happy to have me there, but when it was time for me to go, Wolfgang had to go into his crate. He was NOT happy about it. I sent a text to my sister telling her that “Your dog is not very happy with me right now.” I shortly received a reply to my statement – a question mark from my friend, followed by the pertinent observation that she very much doubted that her dog was unhappy with me, since she didn’t have one!
You’ve guessed it – I had mixed the two numbers up. I sent the correct text to my sister, apologized to my friend and that was that.
Obviously, having made that mistake once would have cured me from making it again – or so anyone who doesn’t know me through this blog would think. Apparently I am a slow learner, though – this weekend I sent a loooonnnnngggggg text to my friend about a project we are working on together. Shortly afterwards, I received a response, which was simply “?” from my sister. I mentally shook myself, sent the correct text to my friend, apologized to my sister and have resigned myself to waiting for the next installment of the story!
From Print Shop Professional 3.0
Used under license; protected by copyright
Have a great day!
Nancy
FN 1. “NaNo” stands for National Novel Writing Month, or something like that. It is fairly well-known among writers. It always is in November. The challenge in NaNo month is to write an entire novel, or 50,000 words, whichever comes first, in one month. I fully intend to participate in the insanity one year, but this year was not it.
Posted in Just stuff..., On the Home Front, Technology, working mom
Tagged absent minded, cell phone numbers, confusion, humor
Good morning Everyone!
Mandy, Our Husky-Basset Hound Mix
I begin this morning with a plea for help – someone (probably from Britain, since they use the word “mum” for “mom”) has been searching my blog the last few days for information on husky-basset hound crosses. Please, please, please whoever you are, put me out of my misery and tell me why you want to know! I’ve already been fortunate enough to “talk” to another dog owner who has a husky-basset hound cross, Neda, who owns Sawyer and would love to add to that number!
Frosted Flakes Box
I went grocery shopping Sunday night, and had only two things on my list – napkins and Frosted Flakes. True to character, i.e., The Perils of Absent-Mindedness, I came out of Winn-Dixie with two different types of roast, four instant packages of rice, a large number of apples, three types of ice cream, Italian bread, spaghetti, Ragu sauce, apple sauce and canned green beans along with various other items – but had bought neither napkins nor Frosted Flakes. I didn’t have the heart to go back for them either, so I guess we will live without napkins or Frosted Flakes this week.
The results of Monday’s poll are in, and by a score of 3 to 1, you have declared that it is, in fact, evil to put peanut butter on your daughter’s flip-flops if they are left out under the sofa to encourage the dogs to destroy them. There were also two “other” votes, but unfortunately the poll did not save the word with “other.” If those of you who voted “other” have time, please leave a comment letting me know what your “other” word was. However, alas, based on the vote, Kayla’s flip-flops are safe. And it was such a fun idea to fantasize about!
Words
Yesterday, I learned that it is not only my daughter that can make funny mistakes when it comes to words. My art teacher is going to have her gallbladder out, and while I was at my lesson, she and I were joking about what she would do while she was “incapacitated.” A high school age student, also in the room, looked up in horror and asked, “Isn’t that when they sever your head?” I swallowed a laugh (I’m getting very good at it), and said, straight-faced, “No, that’s decapitated.”
In the “that can’t be true but unfortunately it is” range of stories, I came across the oddest advertisement on the internet yesterday. A company called lifegems.com advertised that it would create a “certified diamond” in the lab from the “ashes/carbon” of “your loved one.” Cremation is, in fact, used more and more often, but really, folks, somehow the idea of wearing Aunt Bessie’s remains in a diamond eternity ring is NOT appealing to me.
Of course, this company is not the only free enterprise seeking to find a good use for cremated remains. I heard on the radio a couple of months ago about a little company here in Alabama that two men have started where they will, if you so desire, take cremated remains and use them in shotgun shells. This being the South, the radio news team found Billy Bob from Nowhere, Alabama to interview about the idea, and Billy Bob proclaimed that he could rest easier knowing that he would be used after death to bring down a five point buck! Only in Alabama.
And on that macabre note, I wish each of you a good weekend!
Nancy
Posted in dogs, Just stuff..., working mom
Tagged absent minded, dogs, grocery shopping, humor, shotgun shells, urn, words
Good morning!
After I sat in the drive-through lane at Wendy’s for five minutes only to discover that I was sitting behind a parked car, which explained why the line wasn’t moving, I decided to reflect upon the perils of absent-mindedness.
From Print Shop Professional 2.0
1) Traffic stoppage. I have sat at a four-way stop sign waiting for the light to change, wondering why the people behind me were so impatient. (Note to self: Stop signs won’t change to green.)
2) Unnecessary car repairs. Mark and I had to swap cars one day. I was in the Ford Escape, and became quite annoyed when it wouldn’t start – only to realize that I had been pressing the air conditioning on/off button in a vain attempt to get the car to start, rather than putting the key in the ignition. (My Hyundai has a push button start.) I was grateful to have discovered this before I called for a wrecker.
3) Retracing steps. I work in an office building with three flights of stairs, and I am on the top floor. It can be quite inconvenient to leave my office, travel down to the basement, forget what I came for, and have to travel back up again three flights to the point of beginning to remember what I needed. Good exercise though!
4) Retracing steps, part deux. I have been known to walk through the house repeating over and over again the item that I need to carry back to a particular room just to be sure I don’t forget.
5) Retracing steps, part trois. (Ha! And you thought I didn’t know French. Actually, I don’t; I’m just guessing that “trois” means “three” in French – it could be the French version of Troy for all I know.) I also have had to turn the car around at various points along various routes because I forgot to stop at the one place that I had intended to travel to when I left my point of origin.
From Print Shop Professional 2.0
6) Taking extra trips to the store. I have been known to leave the house for one specific item from the grocery store, return back 30 minutes later with $100 worth of groceries, and realize that I never did get the one thing that I really needed.
7) Finding food in odd places. I have found the peanut butter, and various non-refrigerated items in the refrigerator; I have found the ice cream in the refrigerator and not the freezer; I have found the milk in the cupboard once or twice.
8) Voice overuse. My family has become very patient about repeating their menu choices – I ask in the den, take the ten steps to the kitchen, and realize that I have forgotten what they said, and have to call out the question again from the kitchen.
From Print Shop 2.0 Professional
9) Poor wardrobe choices. Wearing your night-clothes to work is normally not recommended. Wait – that’s just a dream I had! I have, however, discovered that I was wearing mis-matched shoes.
10) Giving adult responsibility to a 10-year-old. My daughter has learned quickly to remind me to stop somewhere when she sees that I am about to miss a turn. I am very grateful that she has not learned to comment upon the phenomenon.
11) Having something to laugh about – Priceless!
Have a great day!
Nancy
Posted in Just stuff..., working mom
Tagged absent minded, daughter, family, humor, retracing steps, traffic, working mom
Genuine Blogger Award, 6/13/2011
Tales from the Mom-Side 