Jane's Lost It!

You probably already knew that. I guess I did, too, but I wasn’t ready to talk about it. Nowadays there isn’t much ELSE to talk about. I don’t know if it is age, or hormones, or STRESS or all of the above but some days I wonder if I should be allowed to leave the house unescorted. Oh wait! I’m the parent with a job. And benefits. I have to leave the house. And this morning, leave I did, wearing my slippers. True, they matched my pants beautifully, but it wasn’t the look I was going for. Although.... a day in slippers coulda sucked much of the cranky out of me.

I have also been known to try on two different shoes and get distracted before deciding which one I liked best. The body is an amazingly adaptable thing. I know this because after roughly two minutes, my feet quit sending signals to my brain indicating that there is something amiss, and walking with two completely different heel heights becomes as natural as showering naked.

Which maybe isn’t all that natural to me because I have been known to step into the shower in my underwear.

Speaking of underwear, I was organizing my delicates drawer the other day and I found a pair of red panties – in exactly my size – which I have never seen before. The brand is Ashley-something which is not one of ‘my’ brands. I tried them on and I really like them. I would remember if I had purchased them because I would have wanted more. The worst part? This is the second time this has happened. How does one acquire strange underwear?? No, I don’t think Homer is playing hide the salami with someone else while I’m at work… these aren’t that kind of underwear. And they aren’t his size, either, if THAT’S the way your mind is rolling.

And there was the vacuum. I vacuumed the entire living room the other day. I know! What a concept! Except that I had this odd feeling that it was moving across the carpet too easily. I’m just that in tune with my Dirt*Devil. I wondered if the beater bar was moving. Check. Hmmm. It seemed to be picking up the obvious litter. Around the time that I finished the room, I checked the dirt cup. I’m kind of masochistic that way – I like to see all the crud that was sucked up. It makes me feel accomplished. Only I couldn’t see it because THE DIRT CUP WAS STILL BY THE BACK DOOR. Where I left it after I emptied it. Now, it’s called a dirt ‘cup’ but it’s actually about half of my vacuum, which looks something like this:

See how big that sucker is? You would think I would notice something like that.

By the time I got home last night, the rug and floor in the laundry room had dried enough to vacuum up all the feathers from the exploding pillow escapade. I was also looking forward to giving the laundry room a good cleaning (sick, I know, but wait) in hopes of finding the eyeglasses I lost the night of the antenna fiasco. They are my best nerd glasses and I feel totally smarter when I wear them, but we became separated somewhere between the time I got home from work and the start of the football game. I kept thinking they would show up but they haven’t and now my recollection of my actions that night has dimmed to the point that I only remember that I was awake. I think.

And no, they are NOT on top of my head. But they probably were just before I lost them.

Which brings us to this morning. We were running a bit late due to the slipper episode so I drove Alpha’s rig with the intention of dropping her on the other side of campus so she could get to her class early enough to get a seat since it was standing room only yesterday. Only I got distracted and made a wrong turn. And then missed the turn that would have fixed the problem. So I tried to make a U-turn but missed the light. And then hit the roundabout just in time for the train arms to come down. And at the next red light I was behind a dummy who was going straight from the right turn lane. Yes,I wanted to turn right.

Alpha was so sweet the entire time. She kept saying things like ‘Well, I still have 10 minutes.’ And ‘Oh, there are always more people on the first day – and then you never see them again.’ And finally my personal favorite ‘Sitting during class is for lazy people’.

But I did get her there a few minutes early. And I made it to work without incident, which I wouldn’t be able to say if I had actually hit that pedestrian that came out of nowhere and crossed in front of my car while I was looking the other way.

I TOLD you I shouldn’t leave the house.