Further evidence that I am starting to lose my edge.

In the position that I play, the position of Mom, there are skills that come into play that may seem insignificant to some. There is, of course, the Eyes In The Back Of My Head skill. Also, the Been There, Done That skill, which pulls up scenes from my own childhood and allows me to quash a plan before it gets hatched because I did that once and it did not work out in my favor. The skill of Anticipatory Reaction has saved me many a spilled drink at the dinner table. And the Ability To Count All The Way To Three works in a way that no mere warning could ever accomplish.

But I'm losing my grip on one of my skills, the one called Knowing Where Everyone Is At All Times.

Truthfully, it's been an easy skill to keep up on, since the other members of my household all seem to have the grace of a pack of elephants and we have old squeaky floors. Plus, Spawn has a tendency to sing all the time and my husband is either coughing or sneezing (allergy season, you know), and the cats generally are meowing/hissing/fighting/running all the time, so keeping tabs on my family has been pretty simple.

But lately, I've found myself losing track of them. My husband can be in the back yard instead of in front of the TV like I thought he was, and I will have no recollection of him walking through the house to go outside. Or Spawn will be in the living room one minute and the family room the next, and I never heard the kid move. The cats I can still pretty well keep track of, since they mostly want to be under my feet at all times. (Meow? Meowmeowmeow?)

I am starting to wonder if I'm losing either my hearing or my grip.

I used to be a lot more on top of things around my house, but here lately I've found myself preoccupied more often. There's a lot of stuff rolling around in my brain that takes up an inordinate amount of space, and then there are the lists. Because my psyche doesn't seem to be content with the two shopping lists I have tacked up on my fridge, I have started to make lists of the intangibles in my life -- things I like and hate about my jobs, goals yet unattained, ideas that need fleshing out, worst case scenarios.

Maybe I just need to chill out.





-- Mox