Debate is raging within my household this week about whether I was recently (and accidentally) exposed to poison ivy while yanking weeds from our yard. I am inclined to say ‘no,’ while Crankenstein says the answer is very much ‘yes.’ Now I hear the strains of suspenseful music every time I sense the faintest itch.
Last night I again flirted with disaster, mistaking a tube of Burt’s Bees clay mask for Crest and nearly applying it to my toothbrush. Then there was, a few weeks ago, the load of laundry I tossed into the dryer late on a Friday afternoon, still damp around 40 hours later because I’d forgotten to turn on the machine.
Generally I am the opposite of flighty. Crankenstein has a theory that most couples consist of an absentminded or whimsical partner and a steadying influence; she jokes that I’m her “human Ritalin.” So we were both alarmed a few days into May, when I noticed our latest mortgage payment hadn’t posted. Not only had I forgotten to authorize the payment, I’d overlooked April’s end-of-month reminder — copied to my watch, phone, tablet and laptop — to verify the task was completed.
It wasn’t the end of the world; I was well within the two-week grace period and, as a precaution, switched future payments from manual to automatic processing. But when uncharacteristic mistakes coincide with the diagnosis of a neurodegenerative condition, it makes you uneasy. As is the case with most things, discussing it with Crankenstein made me feel better. She’s noticed no signs of a cognitive decline and agreed it’s probably stress that has made me more distractible than usual.
If this persists, we’ll discuss it with my doctor. In the meantime, I’m glad to have a freezer that sounds an alarm if it’s left open. Not because I’m afraid of spoiling food, but because ours is one of those bottom-drawer numbers (an impractical design if one’s spouse has 87 open bags of MorningStar Farms products) that would give our dog easy access to the yogurt and banana KONGs we keep handy for emergency bribery purposes. Maybe that’s why I forgot about the laundry — I wandered by some alluring Ben & Jerry’s and the rest of the world disappeared.