Remember What?

Garden weeding would be lonely if not for all my talking to myself . It's not a situation of split personality, it's how I remember what I forgot. For instance, I walked out to the backyard, spied the dried, spikey leftover blooms on stick stems from last year and decided gardening gloves would be good. So, I hiked up the stone steps into the garage and grabbed the gardening shears. I went back down the steps and began to snip, snip, snip. When the pile grew a foot high, I leaned over to pick up the mess and:

"Hey, where're my gloves? I know I grabbed those gloves."

I looked all around the dirt and under the snip pile. Hmm. I layed the shears on a railroad tie ledge and trotted up the stone steps into the garage. There they were. Right on the garden glove shelf.

"Good grief."

Back down the steps, picked up the pile, hauled it away to the compost area behind the fence. I reminisced out loud:

"Just last night we were saying we should start planting, but if my memory serves me (a line drive) I think I remember reading that the threat of frost in Michigan is not past until after Memorial Day..."

Returned to the job.

"Garden shears, garden shears, gar-den sheeears....??"

I walked all around. Passing the time:

"No problem with fellow blogger, 2nd Cup of Coffee's, 30x5 exercise challenge. I mean I move enough in one day to cover the 5 and more. What about that 10 mile hike around the grocery store parking lot looking for my car earlier today? Yeah, I'm gonna win that prize. Oh, there they are!"

Snip, snip, snip... Fashionista arrived on the scene. She's practicing her lines from Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice...she needs help, will I read the cue before her line....okay, sure. Snippers in one hand, photocopy in the other. Snip, snip, "comes, my lord...."

"Don't get it dirty."

"That's not the line."

"No, Mom, my homework, don't get it in the dirt."

"I won't!" Snip, snip, "comes, my lord..."

Fashionista puts on her best medieval. "Make room, and let him stand before our face. Shylock, the world thinks, and I think so too, That thou but lead'st this fashion of thy malice..To the last hour of act: and then 'tis thought..Thou'lt show thy mercy and remorse more strange.....plus 13 more lines that soundeth just like these..................."

Wherefore art thou kidding me?!? I asked her how on earth she remembered all of that! Then cameth my speech:

"Every day I talk myself through questions like why am I holding open the refrigerator door or why am I standing on a chair in the entryway. Almost every night after dinner, I take the garbage can out from under the sink and set it by the dishwasher, a more convenient location for the scraping of scraps off dirty plates. Then I pick up the plates one by one from the counter, each time walking over to the cupboard door under the sink and I open it to find the garbage can missing....duh...."

Fashionista snatched the homework from my hand. I wasn't helping.

The phone rang. Good. I prefer talking to people. I ran in to answer. Missed it. Pushing the play button to retrieve the message, I heard:

"Hello Jane, this is Sandy (nobody here by those names) I just wanted to thank you for inviting me to spend time with your family yesterday (we went to Grandma's yesterday) and for everything you've done for me (can't think of anything). But most of all, I wanted to let you know there is a frost advisory for tonight, so you might want to bring those pretty flowering baskets in, so they don't die. Okay, well, see you later." click

A smile spread over my face for two reasons. #1. Somehow it made me feel good that Sandy Somebody could not remember the phone number of her dear friend, Jane or what Jane's voice sounds like (that was me on my answering machine), and #2. I was right about the frost.

(This story is true and unfabricated for your reading enjoyment.)

Heidi