Train of Thought

I used to say that my train of thought had jumped the tracks. Now, it's that my train of thought is so short it only has one car.....and it ain't coach.

Bird? What bird?

This past weekend, I'm walking/birdwatching at the Greensprings Trail (red-headed woodpecker, juncos, bluebirds, cowbird, red-winged blackbirds) and I hear this loud, insistent and very clear bird call. I look around, asking myself what it is, and decide it must be a carolina wren. So, I stand there looking for it in my binocs and tweeting back at it. Finally, gave up and decided it must be hiding in the brush.
As I neared the parking lot, I heard my cellphone signal to me that I had a message. "But why hadn't I heard the phone ring?" I wondered. I programmed it with a nice, clear, bird-call ringtone. Kind of like.....a carolina wren....
Oh, okay. Duh.

Where are my KEYS??!?!?!?!?!?

Got out of the car the other night, arms full of stuff from a day at the park. Within five minutes, had lost my car keys. Noplace, nowhere, nohow. Searched, retraced footsteps, and re-searched, with help of husband, flashlight (still looking in the front yard after dark), then gave up to have dinner. After eating (coincidence?) I made a list of all the stuff I was carrying when I got out of the car. There were seven items, one of which was two beach towels we had been sitting on at the park. I hadn't checked that particular pathway, and found them at the bottom of my bedroom closet, on the floor with the keys under them.

Must've tossed them there with the towels and forgotten all about it in my multi-tasking.

My husband, Mac, kindly pointed out that if I had Alzhiemer's, which is always my worry, I wouldn't have been able to solve the problem the way I did.
Okay, he wins that round. :-)

H.I.M. #2

The other day, I was trying to remove my left hearing aid to talk on my cellphone in the car (never a good idea), and instead removed my glasses.

H.I.M. = "Hearing-Impaired Moment"

You've heard of Senior Moments? Had one or two?

Well, today I coined a new acronym: Hearing-Impaired Moment (H.I.M.). It's when someone says something, and you hear something completely different, and continue to listen to them, trying your very best to make some sense out of it. A Pilates instructor told me a good one today:

"A friend was telling me a story about what happened to her the other night. At one point, she said, "And then "nature called." I heard "And then Rachel called." So, there I am, listening to the rest of the story, and it's not really making any sense, so finally, I ask, "Who's Rachel?" She said, "Rachel who?" Well, that was good for a laugh!"

Idiot-Proofing, Advanced Level

So, I'm online trying to register as a Small, Woman-Owned Business in Virginia (don't ask). I get to what appears to be (finally) the end of my online data entry, and in the middle of the screen, the words "PRINT THIS PAGE" appear in a little box. So, I'm trying to figure out how to print it, and getting frustrated, when it finally occurs to me that the thing to do is to click on the little box with the cursor! Voila! I didn't recognize it as a tool, but thought it was an "order."

Take THAT, GUI designers!