What was that again??

So...I've been musing this week over a number of episodes of recent brain flatulations and I'm getting a little frustrated. Allow me to vent here...

How is it I can remember that stupid radio jingle from 1980, recite the entire "Return of the Jedi" movie, complete with sound effects and vocal inflections, and play the "Beat Simon Says" game at the pizza hut and win free pizzas, but I can't recall what I ate for breakfast, or what you just said your name was, or how old I am?

When an important event is imminent, I've got the date and time practically stenciled to my forehead but my brain periodically, and unconsciously, reverts back to the day/time I THINK it's supposed to be and my actions follow accordingly. I literally can be looking at the calendar with Tuesday at 6 chiseled into it, saying repeatedly to myself "remember, it's SIX o'clock on TUESDAY!" and I will get in my car on Wednesday at ten minutes to 7! Aaargh! And I'll drive to the wrong place, the place where Sara's soccer game was played last week but this week it got moved to a different location, and I KNEW all this, but I don't realize what I've done until I'm pulling up to the wrong place. So I'm a day late and several miles short.

The worst is when I let other people down with my memory farts by forgetting about an important event, or when I repeatedly can't recall a good friend's name, or am constantly late for appointments. I've forgotten weddings, funerals, baby showers, graduations, birthdays, bar mitzvahs...well, maybe not bar mitzvahs, but I'm sure if I had more Jewish friends (which would be really cool, btw) I'd be forgetting those as well. People end up thinking I just didn't care enough to remember, at which point I just want to go hide in a hole somewhere. ...

I've tried beeping electronic planners, paper calendars, writing on my hand, asking people to call me, post it notes as wallpaper...all of these things help some, but have yet to prevent the steady stream of memory mishaps.

Were I a genius who spent all their time in a laboratory curing cancer and an army of lab assistants to assist, or in a board room with a personal secretary to arrange everything for me and run my schedule, I'd totally rock! People would pass me on the street and say "That Liz Paulin, she's a regular scheduling fiend!" As it is, being a stay at home mom whose job description includes "multi-tasking" and "home secretary", I'm afraid I'd be more apt to get a tomato lobbed at me than receive adulation at my time management prowess.

Did I mention I'm the spouse who forgot her own wedding anniversary?

Anyhoo (I've picked that up from April recently) I just thought I'd vent this morning. And FYI, if I ever forget your name, or your anniversary, or you gave me the top secret government files on UFOs and where did I put them @%$#??!! just pretend I'm really an ingenius, yet eccentricly mad scientist who is on the verge of uncovering the meaning of life.

...and please don't be offended!