Although absent-minded at the best of times, my levels of scattiness now appear to be going through the roof. Especially in the mornings.
On arriving at work yesterday morning, I realised that my mobile was still sitting on the chest of drawers in the hall, and that my pen was sitting by the PC in the study. Having administered a suitably painful self-kicking, I then booked a taxi (at 11:40) for my dental appointment (at 12:05). Remembering last week’s unfortunate little debacle (actually, let’s not), I repeatedly reminded myself about this all morning – and, miraculously, managed to get myself out of the office on time. (Even if this did involve walking out halfway through a complex technical dicussion which I myself had instigated just five minutes earlier.)
However, my sense of triumph was somewhat dampened when, upon presenting myself at the dentist’s reception desk, I discovered that I was a full day early. The appointment had been correctly entered in my diary; my only problem was being unable to differentiate between the “Tuesday” and the “Wednesday” sections on the same page. (Do you ever get that? No, thought not.)
In the bathroom this morning, I started the day by cheerfully moisturising my entire face with hair cream. (Wella “polishing cream”, to be exact. Awfully good stuff. For the hair. On the face, it causes a mild stinging sensation. To say nothing of clogging up the pores.)
In the kitchen, I added milk to my tea from the half-emptied carton, poured out my cereal (Special K, as always), then calmly went back to the fridge, took out and opened a fresh carton, and poured that onto my cereal. Only then did I notice both cartons on the work top, gazing at me with that peculiar baffled expression that milk cartons sometimes have. (We’ll get to the delusions in another posting.)
Naturally, this left me so traumatised that I left the house without my diary. The diary which contains the time of today’s dental appointment. Which, equally naturally, I had already forgotten. Thank God I remembered my phone, then. (Although remembering the phone also required an extra-special effort of conscious will, so determined was I not to repeat the mistakes of yesterday morning.)
It usually gets better after lunch.
This morning, I think I might some need extra help. Tell you what: if you read this posting in time, and if you have EITHER my work e-mail address OR my mobile number, then PLEASE E-MAIL ME OR TEXT ME AT 11:30 (UK TIME) TO REMIND ME TO GET THE BLOODY TAXI ALREADY!
Thank you, my little online support group. Thank you indeed.
(*) I also – and I swear this isn’t a contrived stunt – forgot to give this post a title before posting. Quod erat demonstrandum, and all that.
Update for a concerned Karen: I made the appointment 15 minutes early, and eventually saw the dentist 15 minutes late, giving me ample time to catch up with the fascinating world of men’s lifestyle magazines in the interim. I’ve gone off my dental practice; they’ve been taken over by a national chain, whose overriding motive is pure profit. All the nice folksy “don’t eat sweets, kids!” posters have been taken down in the waiting room, and replaced by pictures of glamorous young models saying things like “Teeth whitening is so easy! I only wish I’d done it earlier!” And my reassuring, diligent old dentist has been replaced by a shifting stream of perky new dentists in their mid-twenties, who obviously see the place as a staging post on the way to greater (i.e. non-NHS) things. Also, these perky new dentists don’t see fit to sully themselves with mundane tasks such as scaling and polishing any more. Oh no. Instead, they farm that sort of stuff out to a separate (and private) hygienist, who charges 30 quid a session and “recommends” that I visit her every three months, if you please. It’s all part of a VAST PLOT by EVIL CORPORATE HOMOGENISING BASTARDS who are SUCKING THE… sorry, should I be saving this stuff for 10pm on Friday nights?
troubled diva 