I SHOULD WRITE THIS SHIT DOWN

Saturday morning after my usual breakfast sandwich and journal writing time, I was driving to Trader Joe’s along Ward Parkway. Kansas City is a city of boulevards and parkways. Ward Parkway is particularly lovely, lined with tall trees and old mansions. There is a wide lush median with an the occasional fountain (we’re also the city of fountains). At the intersection of Meyer and Ward there is a large roundabout that circles the Meyer Circle Sea Horse Fountain which was just refinished last year. The stones that make up the fountain now shine a bright white. It’s a really pretty fountain. Any hoo…as I made my way half way around the circle, I noticed the sun reflecting off the water and the people jogging up and down the sidewalks and I sighed with the loveliness of the day. Then something entered my brain and I thought “Ooh…I should write about that thing! That would be something not depressing to write about.”

Now I’ve completely forgotten what it was that entered my brain.

You see? Nice things float around inside my head. It is not all doom and gloom in there. I just seem to be misplacing those thoughts at the moment. I seem to be misplacing a number of things at the moment. Thoughts. Appointments in the calendar. Reasons for why I got up from the couch or why I walked with purpose into the kitchen. Did I feed the dog? I think maybe I did? Josephine got two dinners that night. Lucky dog. It’s like I only have a brain for science and as soon as I step out of the work space, someone blows a thick smoke into my ears. This does sort of happen to me when I’m on two wheels. The number of times I end up behind a car containing heavily pot smoking passengers (new band name?) while I am on my scooter has become immeasurable. I’m more likely to pull into the driveway with a contact high than not.

But no. This fog isn’t pot fog. I know that it is the hazy brain of an aging female mixed in with a brain that tends to be the keeper of the locations of all the things. It is a combination of hormones and just asking too much of my brain. I’m learning French (if you can call it that). I’m reading a book that I checked out digitally from the library which means it will be yanked out of my digital reader when the time is up. I’m learning how to build code to run a slide loading robot. That shit is hard. And all of those reasons above are why I might sit in the driveway in my car, scrolling through Instagram for fifteen minutes before taking the groceries inside or forget to sub that yoga class (yeah..that happened). I have things on my work calendar that I only see in when I have Outlook open. I have things on my google calendar that only see when I have my gmail open. I have stuff on my phone calendar that I never really even look at it.

My calendar situation is a mess.

I spent fifteen minutes this morning fixing all of that and combining my calendars into something that makes more sense. At least for now. I went with combining it all to my google calendar because I have everything color coded and I feel like my brain appreciates this. In fact I just moved a red work block activity scheduled for a previous day to an earlier day because of an unexpected opening on the microscope I need to use for this project. I found great pleasure in this action, but also that red work block was wedged into a full column of other work blocks. It was nice to visually clear that space and now I may be able to actually finish a cup of coffee that morning.

Even still, I forgot to take my Tuesday block of pills and Wednesday morning I stared at my pill box for a long time convincing myself that this day is Wednesday.

Not Tuesday.

WHAT'S IN AN AGE

Collecting the morning sun

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Last week, while being put through some preliminary test at the eye doctor’s, the technician asked me my age and I completely forgot how old I am. I said “47? 46? I think I am 46.” That was my final answer. I went on with the rest of my appointment, reading tiny letters and answering ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to better or worse, lens 1 or lens 2. My left eye has been irritated and goopy off and on for about year. I chalked it up to allergies and sinus drainage. Turns out it wasn’t allergies, but a scratched cornea. I got my prescription for a steroid eye drop and went home. Then I asked Michael how old I was.

Y’all…I’m 44.

I have a pin number for my bank card, a different pin number I have to remember to use my library card, yet another pin number I have to use when I log time for teaching a yoga class. I have to remember many different combinations of numbers in order to navigate every day life. I obviously have not made it a priority to commit to memory the number of years I have been living on this planet. I am some number of years of age. Apparently that some is at times older than reality. So be it. My friend Sarah suggested that I just start telling people I’m 60 and see if I get offered discounts and compliments. I am seriously considering this strategy. Sixty is a nice round easy number to remember and I have to tell you that the more time I spend as a home owner, the more appealing those retirement communities look. I would move in one today if they’d let me.

Do you remember when you were so proud of the number of years you have been on the planet that you not only kept track of the year, but the months as well? You would happily chirp “I’m nine and three months!” or defiantly declare “I’m sixteen and a half!” as if the half really mattered. Those were the years when you thought that the number really truly mattered. At some point the importance of that number shifts. You start clinging to the years you thought were important because you realize you are creeping into a category of years where you will be invisible. Our attention spans are short. We place a lot of value and advertising space for the really young or the really old. We only want to read the first and last chapters. Those middle chapters are just filler. I am in those middle chapters. The advertisements that show up in my inbox are either geared for a woman ten years younger than I am or ten years older. I will admit that recently, more and more of those ads are geared for an older woman.

So you can see that it would be easy for me to think of myself as older.

The thing about the invisible years is that you get to be all of the ages and no one cares. Some times I’m ten years old, giddily tossing fireworks into a cart. I’ve been known to randomly do a cartwheel for no other reason than to make sure that I can still do a cartwheel. Then there are times I’m eighty and it takes me a second to stand up straight after sitting for a certain amount of time. I’m up at five in the morning, ready to start my day. Age is just a unit of time and time is relative. Is this just some philosophy I made up to make myself feel better about aging? Of course it is. But at the same time, I don’t know why I should feel bad about aging. I don’t feel the need to cling to my youth. A commercial just came on asking the question “Who has time for wrinkles?” I counter that with “who wants to waste time thinking about wrinkles?” I’ve got cartwheels to do and fireworks to set off. I’ve got a mug of coffee to drink while bird watching in my back yard.

These are the things that make me forget my actual age. At least this is what I tell myself to keep me from worrying that it is really dementia making me forget.