Perhaps I shouldn’t Be Operating Large Vehicles

I may not be able to remember what day it is, but I can spot a fellow author at a hundred paces.

Last week, sometime around Wednesday, I lost track of which day it was. On Thursday, I was convinced it was Wednesday and so did not take my sons to their Thursday afternoon jui-jitsu class. On Friday, I took the boys to the store for their post-jui-jitsu snacks and then prepared to drive them to class. . . only to be stopped at the last moment by my husband during a chance phone call: “I gotta go,” I said, “we don’t want to be late for jui-jitsu.” “But it’s Friday, Deb.” “Since when?” “Since all day.” “Oh.” Then on Saturday, I drove to my hairdresser’s salon at noon for an appointment, which I scheduled weeks ago in a fit of great planning . . . only to learn that I had shown up a week early. My appointment is next Saturday… right when we’re scheduled to be at a BBQ.

After all this happened, I considered working myself up into a state about the aging process, or about my inability to be consistent about getting enough sleep, or maybe about the still-lingering affects of that stunning Year One with Triplets, which is always a handy fall-back. Then I remembered something that made me darned proud of myself: I happened to spot one of my favorite authors ever, Jean Ferris (author of the fabulous Once Upon a Marigold and Much Ado About Grubstake, among others), eating lunch in a restaurant when I drove by. Did you hear that? Jean was INSIDE a restaurant, and I was in a MOVING car, and I still saw her through the window—and in enough time to safely pull over in front of the restaurant so I could dash in and say a quick hello. Pretty good, eh? Jean was impressed.

She hailed my eagle eyesight and everything. Given the stretch of mental fuzziness I’d been suffering through, I was more than happy to take her compliment… and keep to myself the fact that I’d just had my contact prescription updated that week by an eye doctor who so tactfully said, “I think it’s time we ease you into your forties.”

Now, if someone could just ease my brain into my forties.