Counting my marbles...

   So, I'm really starting to question my mental stability these days. I have never had a very good memory so forgetting things is normal. However, this past week has caused me to actually stop, look at myself in the mirror, and ask the question, "What is wrong with me?!!"  Which I guess talking to myself is a little crazy, too. I've been guilty of that for years though. lol! Anyhow, I'll highlight a few of my twilight moments for you from the past week. I use lotion as if it was one of the commandments God gave us. I can't help it, I have really dry skin and it's very necessary to avoid looking like I am slowly being cremated. Well, my favorite lotion is Gold Bond and I bought a huge squeeze bottle of it a few weeks ago. I have been coating my entire body with a thick layer of this lotion ever since. There is only about a fourth of the bottle left. The other morning I went to pick it up and all of a sudden two words on the bottle jumped off at me...BODY WASH! That's right, folks, for the past few weeks I have been daily coating myself with a thick layer of body wash, not lotion! I just stood there looking at those two words as feelings of confusion washed (no pun intended!) over my body.  I kept looking at the bottle and asking myself over and over how could I have missed this. What is going on? Did someone switch the bottle? Sadly though, I had to admit that there was no evil trick at work here and I had actually been willfully applying massive amounts of soap to my body for weeks because...well, your guess is as good as mine!
   The next thing that happened was even more baffling. I know what you're thinking, how do you top the "lotion" story. To be honest, I don't think I can, but this next one is equally as questionable.
Nathan, my youngest, is in first grade and has quite a bit of homework every night. He brings home a folder every day that carries his work safely to and from school. It also contains completed work that the teacher returns home after it has been graded. So the other night, I'm cleaning out the folder, like I do every night. I make a stack of papers to toss, and a stack of the new homework to be completed. After he finishes his homework I put it back in the folder to be returned the next day. When I got back home the next morning after dropping the kids off at school I noticed his little blue folder sitting on the kitchen counter. Ugggh! So, I send an email to his teacher asking if it's okay to just send it tomorrow. We are only about 4 minutes from the school so technically I could have just run it back up there and left it in the office, but that would have involved me having to get out of the car and be seen by people, and my morning car line look is not for viewing. So, if I had done that I would have had to take a shower and do my hair and make up and put on real clothes...you get my point. I had no plans of leaving the house that day so I was planning on wearing my ugly morning look most of the day! This folder dilemma could ruin all those plans. Fortunately the teacher agreed, so my plans for the day were saved. That night, as we prepared to start Nathans homework, I gathered the new homework out of his backpack. After he finished the pages he had brought home, I started looking for his spelling homework and sight words. These are kept at home from Monday- Thurs for him to do one page a night and returned on Friday morning. They are no where to be found. I decided to open up his folder to see if I had accidentally put them in there the night before, and that's when it got weird. The papers I had put in his folder the night before were all wrong. The math page was already graded and the spelling pages were all completed and graded, too! What was going on? This was impossible, because the folder had never made it to school that day and it was only Tuesday so there should still be three pages of spelling left to do. Even stranger, was that meant the homework he had done the night before was still missing. Again, a feeling of confusion begins to cloud my brain as I try very hard to figure out what in the world is going on with Nathans work. I begin to try to think back to every move I had made since taking all of the papers out of his folder the night before. I remembered putting the stack of graded papers on the counter. I must have mixed up his papers last night by mistake and taken some of the graded papers and put them in his folder. Okay, weird but whatever. I'll just look through the stack of graded papers to see if I had put the right papers in there. I go to the counter, but there are no papers at all! I remembered that earlier in the day I had cleaned off that counter and thrown the stack away. Great, now I have to dig in the trash. It gets better. When I go over to the trash it has a nice new bag in it. Yay, so that means I get to dig in the big can outside. In the end, I found them in the trash with all the graded papers, under the used coffee filter I had thrown out and sitting on top of the remnants of our dinner. Nice! I took them in and wiped the yuck off as best I could. When I put them in front of Nathan to complete he looked at me like I was crazy and refused to touch them. Thank goodness for 3-in-1 printers! I made copies of the original gross homework and Nathan was able to do his work. I put a nice little note in the upper corner explaining to the teacher why he was returning photo copied papers that appeared to be covered in stains of some sort (because the coffee stains were so dark they photo copied, too.) I think I am really developing a great reputation with his teacher. lol! At least the folder didn't go back to school that morning, cause that would have looked even crazier if she opened it up to see that I had returned already graded papers for his homework.
   I also had to swing by the gas station the other morning to get some cash so that Nathan could eat breakfast at school cause I never have cash on me. I ran inside and grabbed a few snacks that the kids could take for break and because I needed to purchase something to get cash back, of course. When I got out to the car I gave each of the kids a dollar and told them they could use it for a drink at break and then dropped them off at school. Later that day it dawned on me that I never gave Nathan his breakfast money. Just in the short walk from the register to the car, I had forgotten why I had gone in to get cash in the first place!
   These are just the main things I can remember from this week. Which, is impressive considering I am losing it!!  So, I am making lists to help me remember what I am trying to accomplish each day, making sure lotion is lotion, and taking inventory of my marbles occasionally to make sure I don't lose any more. So, if you see me out and about with a confused look on my face, look around...I wouldn't want you to slip and fall on any of my loose marbles!