I have reached the point of chronic exhaustion, where almost anything that passes into my hands, then passes out of my hands, unremarked by me- and is therefore often misplaced. To date we have a large bottle of cider vinegar living without a cap since my obsessive egg dying last Sunday. Wine cap, misplaced as soon as I opened it... why yes, it was screw top. And for the record, just as The Goats Do Roam, so too does that bloody cap. Passwords for anything related to the internet, except the biggies I check all the time? Gone. They melted away when I wasn't paying attention- with a little merry "vwip" noise. Thank god for the "forgot password?" link, though it would be good if there was a link that said "always." I am now putting off updating a password I only just updated five days ago.
On Tuesday, Dave and I spent ten minutes searching for a set of truck keys... that I had just had in my hand... only to find them in Dave's pants pockets. Neither of us remembered that I had handed them to him. It was a consolation to me at least, to be in company.
While I am not usually the most attuned to details, the chronic forgetfulness is always worst when I've been under a lot of stress- I'll do things like forget to turn the oven on when cooking things, or to turn it off afterward... shoes? Forget it. I end up stumbling about in a constant "I know I had it at some point..."
For the past two weeks I had been fighting with a light at work, that I would swear I would turn off- my dad taught me to turn off lights when not in use! And then I would look again, and the damned light would be on. Day after day. This light is in the dressing room, the furthest switch from my office in the lighting booth- a floor down and a cavernous theater away. Normally it is the cantankerous costume volunteer, but she's not been using the space since the Wonka strike. Finally three days ago I broke down and addressed the ghost the students (more on this some other time) think haunt the theater:
"Listen ghost. I'm fine that you're here. I am sure you will outlast me. But could we pretty please work together? Seriously, if you have to turn on lights behind my back, could you turn on the ones that are closer to my office?"
The ghost wasn't talking.
Yesterday I got in, and I knew for a F-A-C-T (emphasis on the F-ing) I had turned off the light when I'd left the night before. I crossed the balcony, climbed down the ladder to the stage, opened the door-
and there was a student and an ed tech, working one-to-one. It was a comfort to see living human faces behind my struggle, and the Ed Tech was pleased (well, sort of pleased) to see who was constantly turning the lights off on him every time he left the room. With a plea to please, please turn off the lights when he leaves the space, I left the space- and left the lights on. Only to spend the rest of the day annoyed when he continued to leave the lights on after he'd left.
Still, it was a solid win for my embattled memory.
Which brings me to dreams- Last night was miserable for sleep, to the point where I got out of bed to listen to a book and on-line window shop until I exhausted my eyes with gross consumerism (wallsconce, flush mount, mission style... clear selection, new tab, new store, that's not my Etsy password? Reset... this is guaranteed to wear me down). Dave, privy to my shitty sleep, didn't wake me when he went to go fishing today. This left me open to Oversleeping Dreams. Not the kind where you dream you oversleep, but the sort of odd, vivid dreams that come with the territory of missing your normal wake-up.
And I dreamed about my grandmother. I was with her in the nursing home, and we were talking- and it grew slowly apparent to me, that while she was talking in the bright, and simple way I've become accustomed to, as if she were always reading a picture book to a child-
She wasn't repeating herself.
At all.
No thirty second loop of short-term memory, no filler syllables sung for the sake of sound. Sentences. Sense. We were conversing. About death, of course. I don't recall specifics of the conversation, just the sense of wonder at her cogency- and that when I spoke in return, I was afraid doing so would break the spell. But we talked, brightly, simply, with no repetition from memory lapses. This, I remember.
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