S1E35. Mini-Miscues

After shaving, I put the razor and shaving soap back in the medicine chest but didn’t notice until the next morning that I hadn’t returned the brush.

Upon seeing a good friend for the first time since she became a grandmother, I forgot to congratulate her.

To help me learn my way around our new town, I decided to look at a map and forego GPS when traveling to a restaurant we had been to once before. I was derailed, though, by a detour, became lost after several attempts to get back on track, and finally asked Sally to pull up directions on her phone’s GPS. As I followed her instructions, I was convinced we were heading home (south) instead of towards the restaurant (north). I was wrong.

My memory of our first visit to that restaurant was that it was on the left-hand side of the road as we approached from that same direction. Turns out it’s on the right.

Waking up one morning, Sally asked me something as I walked around the bed towards the door. As a result, I forgot to put on my wedding ring.

Friends asked me what was in the marinade for the grilled shrimp I made. I told them lemon juice, lemon zest, olive oil, garlic and parsley…forgetting all about the white wine.

I changed my morning coffee brewing routine again…and forgot to put the ground beans in the coffee maker before hitting the ‘brew’ button.

It’s not unusual for the wrong word (although a semantically related word) to come out of my mouth. Sally catches it and alerts me when it happens.

If I get frustrated with a hard crossword puzzle, I’ll cheat instead of coming back to it the next day.

Before going to bed, I close the blinds and pull the curtains in our bedroom. One morning Sally asked me if only closing the blinds on one of the two windows was some kind of experiment. It wasn’t.

Sally remarked that my sister had given us a certain frying pan. It took me a couple of hours to realize she was right. I initially thought that the gift had been given to me years before I married Sally.

I went downstairs one day to pick up a package from Amazon that was delivered to the garage (the normal delivery location). Halfway there, I realized I was walking to our mailbox which is at the opposite end of the building.

And here’s one that happens a lot: I’ll decide I want to do something and then not do it…but remember later on in the day that I wanted to do it…and then I’ll do it.

Does all this add up to anything? Is this cognitive death by a thousand cuts? Is this what prodromal mild cognitive impairment looks like? Or is it just that I’m noticing my mistakes more?

I haven’t a clue.

I take some solace, though, in the fact that Sally is making her share of mini-miscues, too. So wherever we are going on this journey, it appears that we’re going to get there together!

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