By susan fishman orlins (Whether you are my age or pre-memory loss, please share this with parents and friends who’ve crossed the line.)
What was I was just thinking to write about? Oh yeah, memory loss.
That sounds like a bad joke, but it’s what I actually said to myself when I opened this file to write about my forgetfulness.
Already this morning, I knew I needed to go upstairs but couldn’t remember why (to turn on the humidifier). And there was something else. Oh yeah, I went to my laptop while preparing my shredded wheat—and I knew there was a reason. After a minute I remembered it was to stream NPR while preparing my shredded wheat.
The first time I looked up Alzheimer’s (and it’s cousins senility and dementia) was shortly after I gave birth to my oldest daughter. I attributed my diaper brain to, well, diaper brain.
Still, I needed to put memory triggers into place. So before leaving our New York apartment, in addition to taking the diaper bag, I ran through my mental checklist: Keys, Tissues, Aspirins, Gum, Money. (Memory Tip #1)
 That didn’t help the time I forgot to take my daughter out of a taxi; she wasn’t on one of my checklists. Since I’ve never been a fan of purses, I continue to use that same mental list. Except now I include reading glasses and Medicare card.
I’ve grown to accept the Trivia game I play with my mom. We both do it (I saw whatshername on Oprah, y’know the one from California. Maria Shriver? That’s it!).
When I was in 7th grade my dad took a memory course and would come home after each class and teach me what he learned.
For example, using that mnemonic system I still recall the phone number of my piano teacher, the one with slick black hair and  pointy shoes to whom I took a bus downtown from my junior high school. I would mount the steps to his third floor apartment and learn to play “Tears on my Pillow.” To the boogie woogie beat of “Beat me Daddy Eight to the Bar,” he would rub my bare thigh faster and faster closer and closer to my panty line.
Though it was as creepy as it sounds, it never occurred to me to tell my mom and I didn’t want to be impolite and ask him to stop. Funny how my distant memory is sharp as cheddar cheese.
On the other hand it’s almost a cliché to say I can’t remember whether I took my vitamins five minutes ago or whether I was just thinking about it. Yet, I lack the patience to fill one of those day-of-the-week pill holders.
So, after I take my morning vitamins, I separate out the one I need to take at night. And then after I take the vitamin at night, I put it back with the others for the morning. (Memory Tip #2) (Another morning pill I keep with my toothpaste so I remember to take it (Memory Tip #3).)
Then at night I go through my closing up the house mental checklist (Memory Tip #4): Doors (make sure they’re locked), Water (refillable bottle to take upstairs), Phones (ringers off for the night), Thermostat (turn down), Vitamins (as mentioned above).
 As for memorizing, it’s not so easy. But the benefit is that it trumps all other worries for a month while you work on it, as I wrote in my post Speak Easy about my stand-up performance in a Valentine’s Day show.
Thank goodness for photographs, because without them my whole life might be as ephemeral as a shadow. Maybe this is why I cling to the notes my girlfriend and I passed in Mr. Ashcom’s 10th grade history class and to letters I received nearly 60 years ago and all the time in between. Though I’m sad about the lost art of letter writing, the Internet has at least saved my Letters Received file and my fireproof memory box (random bonus tip) from bursting.
Agatha Christie’s lexicon decreased significantly as she aged, while her use of vague phrases such as “all sorts of” increased. Scholars believe she probably suffered from Alzheimer’s disease. Generally, though, when writing I feel less challenged than when bumping along in the rest of my life. But do let me know if you notice me slipping into all sorts of uninteresting words and phrases.
What worries me most is that I can’t remember what happened in the short story I was reading when I paused ten minutes ago to refill my cup with hot water. Or when I can’t tell you anything about the movie I saw last week. There’s no checklist for those.
Anyone out there have other memory tips or creepy old man stories?
UNRELATED ANNOUNCEMENT: See my latest Home Goes Strong posts (they’re packed with tips!)
By susan fishman orlins UNRELATED ANNOUNCEMENT: Check out my article, “29 Great Tips for Choosing the Right Picture Frame & For Hanging Artwork and Family Photos”
What was I thinking when I ordered the book 1,000 Places To See Before You Die?
Here’s what inspired me to look at it. My friend Karen told me she’d taken an amazing trip to Antarctica and that she had found the tour operator in this book.
When I was in college, I came across a “National Geographic” centerfold that showed hundreds of penguins in Antarctica. For years
it was my dream to go see those penguins (or their descendants) in person.
 But what if I were to go to Antarctica? I could fall into an ice crevasse. Ever since hearing about the main character in the true story “127 Hours,” I have imagined finding myself stuck in a crevasse and have wondered whether I would die due to squeamishness about cutting off my arm.
I’m guessing everyone has wondered about that, though I probably return to this thought more frequently than the average Joe Plumber.
What if I went to Antarctica and got hit by a polar vehicle? What are the hospitals like there? Do they even have hospitals? And if they do what’s the infection rate?
Along that same line of reasoning, I wonder whether I would embark on the nearly weeklong trip I took in 1980 on the Beijing-Moscow Express. If I were to take that train now, I’d first want to know the quality of medical care in Irkutsk, for example.
At the same time, I suffer from FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). So just knowing how much Karen loved Antarctica meant I had to consider it. All my life I’ve made this mistake of believing if someone loves or hates something that I will also.
I didn’t take physics in high school, because everyone said it was hard. Then I found out classmates thought it was hard because of the math. But I was good in math.
In a worry context, I would have benefitted from understanding how things work. Isn’t it physics that keeps airplanes aloft and bridges with bumper to bumper 18-wheelers from collapsing into frigid rivers?
This makes me think of how absurd it is to ask waiters what they like on the menu. For example, I love chicken livers; in particular, I like the way I make them in a puddle of olive oil, medium rare then plopped with all the oil and liver juices onto a slice of whole grain toast. Add a little salt and pepper. Mm.
So recently at my least unfavorite restaurant I asked my favorite waiter, “How are the chicken livers?
“You’re gonna love them,” he assured me. I can’t blame him; it was I who ought to have known better; I could never like any chicken livers as much as my own. At best theirs wouldn’t be horribly worse. Needless to say they arrived overcooked in a goopy dark sauce. Yuck.
 So my 1,000 Places to See book appears on my doorstep and I randomly open it, landing on page 368 that trumpets a hot-air balloon safari from which to view the “hundreds of thousands of wildebeests [as they] mass together . . . moving in search of vital substance.”
Need I point out that this is double trouble? That the balloon pops and I become vital substance for the wildebeests?
Isn’t life is trouble enough without seeking trouble?
I’ll leave the remaining 999 examples to your imagination, because I’m worried my blog posts are already too long.
What destinations do you avoid and how come? If stuck in a crevasse, would you cut off your arm or die?
By susan fishman orlins Unrelated announcement: See my latest post on Home Goes Strong, “6 Household Ideas From China Make Life Easier & More Pleasurable.”
Here’s how I don’t like to drink wine: from a wine glass with a long slender stem. I know this may sound silly, but I don’t get how a tall skinny stem can securely hold up the whole vessel. In my dining room, stem wine glasses pose a particular hazard. We have a round table with a lazy susan in the middle. So if someone scoops peas onto his/her plate and leaves the serving spoon sticking out over the edge of the turntable, the next time someone spins the lazy susan, the spoon handle can take out several wine glasses.
So you can understand why I was smiling when stemless wine glasses appeared on the shelves at Crate & Barrel.
It reminds me of how, as a kid of around nine years old, whenever my mom or dad drove along the Schuylkill River with me in the car, I waited—barely breathing—for our two-tone Buick to veer into the water. On bridges, unable to imagine how they held a car’s weight, it was worse. We would cross the Schuylkill River on Philadelphia’s Spring Garden Street Bridge with me balled up in the back seat, squeezing my eyes and fists tight, preparing for the bridge’s collapse and our plunge into the menacing water below.
A lot of my worries result from my ignorance of science. I don’t even want to discuss how a metal capsule with hundreds of passengers and their luggage climbs to 30,000 feet and travels for 14 hours over the North Pole, if you are going from Washington, DC to China. Who hasn’t, at some point in their lives, wondered about that? It helped a tad that I once read how a plane’s ability to liftoff relates, at least in part, to air pressure above and/or below the wings.
It also helps that a friend once told me the first 30 seconds after takeoff are the riskiest. So I always look at my second hand and then forget to check again until way more than 30 seconds have passed. Imagine if he had said the first hour.
A back-to-school night project when my oldest daughter was in second grade helped explain how bridges work. The teacher asked foursomes of parents, seated knees to chins in their little children’s little chairs at little squares made up of four little desks, to construct model bridges from paper and tape. I would have failed but for a clever fellow parent. If I remember correctly, he rolled up paper into four tubes, each of which he taped. He then set another paper, or more likely a stronger material, on top and showed that when you put pressure on top of the tubes, they don’t collapse.
Even knowing the science hasn’t helped me when crossing the 4.35-mile (and mile-high?) Chesapeake Bay Bridge, a long way to hold your breath. I think the worst part of being on that bridge is that you often have only one or two lanes in each direction AND, rather than being solid, the sides are see-through. So it feels like only air is separating you from the breathtaking drop to the chilly, murky bay below.
The last time I drove my car over that bridge was eight or so years ago. I remember having to listen to Julie Andrews singing “The hills are alive with the sound of music . . . ” to try and soothe myself. I’ve heard there are people who will drive your car over the bridge. (Over, from one side to the other, that is.)
Even with surrogate drivers and stemless wine glasses, however, I’m not ready to park an 18-wheeler in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and toast the planes flying overhead.
By susan fishman orlins Unrelated announcement: Check out my new post “Delight Your Guests With my Mom’s Party Games” on Home Goes Strong.
Check out my serious post with tons of bedbug 411, Find, Prevent & Deal With Bedbugs, on Home Goes Strong.
 On the Top Ten of my Hit Parade of Worries is bedbugs. Like Eat, Pray, Love on the New York Times bestseller list, bedbugs have been on my Hit Parade of Worries list for 189 weeks. It started when friends contracted bedbugs in their home and told me they had to lie in bed at night to be hosts, which drew out the critters, so the Hazmat folks could come in their Hazmat suits and eradicate them. The process took weeks of shrink-wrapping books and going through everything else in the house, as well as paying more than $1,000.
For a long time I’ve been ducking this most worrisome topic for my Worrywart blog, because my thoughts on bedbug risk and avoidance are way TMI, especially with all the bedbug hype in the media these days. What terrifies me is that anywhere you sit–movies, trains, planes, restaurants, shops, people’s homes–one of these guys could hitch a ride in your pocket and head with you through your very own front door to settle in and start a family.
A more accurate title for this post would have been “Bedbug Avoidance Invention,” but I opted for the more aesthetically pleasing “Prevention Invention,” the same way when selecting a couch I amazed myself by choosing the one that looked better rather than the most comfortable one, which I have regretted
 ever since.
The reason I am broadcasting my idea here is that I don’t have time to manufacture the product myself. I’m hoping someone else will do so and I can simply buy it.
Which brings me to my invention: Everywhere I go, I wish I had something to cover my seat. I picture my product something like a Kleenex packet, but a bit bigger. Inside would be large, super-thin, disposable, biodegradable sheets that I could withdraw, one at a time, the same way I do a Kleenex when I want to blow my nose. When outside of my home, I could use the sheet to cover my seat and then throw it away until I’m ready to park myself somewhere else. I hope you make a big fortune when you find a way to manufacture this. Sleep tight.
Please send me some reassuring
thoughts (for when I’m snoring)
about insects that might be boring
holes in my ankles.
By susan fishman orlins Unrelated announcement: My two new posts on Home Goes Strong are: “8 Simple Ways to Brighten Your Fall Garden” and “Create a Dramatic Look in Your Powder Room.”
Semi-related announcement: My new post on Huffington Post is: Worry Less: 10 Lessons from Cognitive Therapy
Right after posting One Space or Two? I began to worry that readers would roll their eyes, wondering why I thought anyone would want to hear about the minutiae that hopscotches around in my head. It was wasted worry, because the views of my blog doubled that day and plenty of smart people (like Harvard student, high-powered lawyer, author/filmmaker) mentioned they too have pondered this space-after-period conundrum.
The favorable One Space or Two? reception emboldened me to move on to its distant cousin: XO or What?.
For certain friends I would never sign XO (you know who you are). I feel safest using XO when signing emails to friends who have themselves signed off with a variation of XO. When stumped as to how to sign off in a reply, I scroll down to see how the sender signed. If someone uses x’s and o’s, then so can I, and they ought also tolerate a smattering of  and  .
Here’s what often happens when I arrive at the end of an email: I feel compelled to express warmth. It seems unfriendly to abruptly sign just Susan. After all, I was voted Friendliest Girl in the Ninth Grade (the honor in my life of which I am most proud, not including  anything related to my kids . . . and equivalent to my friend Ginger having won a “Bandstand” dance contest).
The whole signing business wears me out and wastes time. I dawdle, debating the best way to sign off. Speaking of best, one thing I–of the cheesy XO–cannot bear write at the bottom of an email is “Best” . . . or worse . . . the oft-disingenuous “All best,” which a landlord I once had, who didn’t like me at all, used and it soured me on “All best” for life. A few times I tried “Best,” but then deleted it; I just couldn’t do it, the same way I could never bite into a sardine.
Ixnay also to “Ciao” and “Cheers.” A better thinker/writer than I would be able to articulate why this pair of enders grates on me. Btw, it’s nothing personal of course, so please don’t be offended if you use any unfavorites of this XO user.
“Love,” on the other hand, a traditional way to end letters, ought to be used selectively. Never with Mr. Wrongs, who would also squirm at XO; in such cases, no signature suffices, the blankness of which makes me think of my first set of in-laws, when I was 19, whom I didn’t call anything and my mother said that wasn’t right. Though, when I receive an email ending with “Love, So and So,” literal person that I am, it makes me feel, well, loved.
I’ve consulted a few friends on this winding up of emails. A couple of suggestions I find palatable are “See you” and “Take care.” Oh dear, now I am going to be even more self-conscious signing off, because some of my email correspondents will read this, which is what happened when I published an article about the awkwardness of social kissing (which I’m over) and one friend, whenever we visited after that, would back away when she saw me coming with hands in the air like a stick-up victim and say, “Don’t worry, I’m not going to kiss you.”
Signing off with my kids, is a whole other matter. Haha, not only do I spread a reckless array of X’s and O’s along the bottom line, I emphasize the sentiment with !!!!!!! which looks something like XOXOXOXOXO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and to leave no room for doubt, I add <3′s: <<<<<<3 <333333333333 <3 <3 <3
How great if you would let me know ways you deal with signing off. Does anyone else obsesses over this? Please send some new ideas for how to say “Ciao” on the page.
XO Susan
PS Just got this email from my daughter reminding me of my shortcomings re signing text messages:
“HAHAHAHAHA!!!!! And in text messages, ma, you write xoyozo, or sometimes, xyocoz. XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOOOOXXOXOXOXO!!!!!!!!!”
By susan fishman orlins Unrelated announcement: See my latest article on Home Goes Strong, “Renovation Basics, What You Should Know Before You Remodel.”
I was not looking for trouble. As you may know, my riskiest activity is bicycling and I do so with great caution, riding on sidewalks, wearing a helmet, using a Velcro travel mirror on rental bikes, lighting up like I’m Las Vegas when the sun goes down. 
I’ve biked in some scarily trafficky locations for a worrywart, like Beijing, Paris and New York. So the last thing I expect is to have the bejesus scared out of me on a bike trail in Niagara-on-the-Lake (near, but nowhere in sight of, the terrorizing falls) where summer-green vineyards soothe on one side and a lazy blue-green river meanders on the other. On my first day out, I am biking along in a dream, when I emerge from a short stretch of sun-dappled woods (I know all this is a cliché, but it’s precisely my point that this whole place is a cliché of sun-dappledness).
Just as the shade trees part, I spy in front of me a fox. Tightening my hold on the handlebar grips, my legs spin the pedals fast as a pinwheel at sea. The fox continues strolling, like we’re two neighbors passing on the street in the kind of  neighborhoodwhere folks go about their own business and don’t acknowledge one another.
Then, swifter than I could say “Gadzooks, a fox!” this guy from nowhere bicycles up close and says, “There are plenty of foxes around here. They’re just looking for food, nothing to be afraid of.” And I’m thinking “Oh, yeah?” but I say “Whew, that’s a relief.”
Then he adds, “What you need to look out for are coyotes.” The bicycling bearer of impending doom hears me gasp and tries to reassure me, “The coyotes usually won’t hurt you (here, I breathe out, but only a little). . . unless they’re in a pack.” What?! My brain is doing a jig trying to figure out when I run into a pack, am I supposed to pretend I’m a rock or ought I skeedaddle?
Maybe Guy on Bike is perversely trying to take it down a notch when he says, “What you really need to be careful of is all the ticks.” He reports he plucked two off his leg this very morning.
Funny how everything is relative. Without the coyote scare, I could have made a whole day out of dwelling on ticks. As I pedal, I keep glancing down at my legs in search of blood-sucking insects and the Target logo. I mention my plan to bike the vineyards tomorrow, hoping he’ll steer me to some especially scenic areas. “I hear they’re lovely,” I say.
“Yes, they are,” he answers, “but watch out for drunk drivers, they’re everywhere.” He cites wine tours and out-of-towners who indulge to excess. I’m impressed by how many alerts he has managed to cram into such a short span of time, but is this guy for real?
Or is it me? Do I have some kind of anxiety feramones that attract frightening information? I wonder whether other people encounter admonitions like this wherever they go. Maybe they do and just don’t take notice.
When I return to my bed and breakfast, the uber-involved owner sits down and pours us both a glass of wine. I tell her about the doomsayer and that I plan to bike the vineyards tomorrow. “Keep an eye out for chemicals in case they’re spraying the
fields,” she replies.
The next day, before wheeling around to admire the grapevines, I saturate my skin with deet (I know, I get the irony, it’s a tradeoff) and put on my neon yellow windbreaker so drunk drivers will at least see me. On the ride, I sing Christmas carols to keep the coyotes at bay, and I keep an eye out for chemicals.
I return to D.C. with nothing worse than one poison ivy bump. (Come to think of it, I was warned about that too.) It is a relief to be back in a place where the only things I have to worry about are crime and terrorism.
By susan fishman orlins Unrelated announcement: Check out my new post, Are You Prepared if a Tree Falls on Your House? on Home Goes Strong.
When I travel, and even when I don’t, I’m both a schlepper and a non-schlepper. It’s in the worrywart’s nature to schlep. For example, I take seven pens in case six run out of ink. On the other hand, my back hurts when I carry things. To show you how serious the carry problem can get, I went to Obama’s inauguration and, fearing my Canon mini was too heavy, I settled for using the camera in my cell phone (the kind of cheap phone Verizon gives you for having stayed for two years and promising to stay for another or risk having them raid your savings account).
The non-schlepping also relates to my lack of patience/inability to wait at airports for checked suitcases. And above all, I’m dedicated to sparing my bags from the bedbug orgy in luggage compartments.
But one non-negotiable schlep is my food bag, for which I use a nearly weightless nylon tote that I double in case I need an extra tote for something. The doubling is like having compartments because I slip things like receipts and my water bottle between the two bags.
The following will give you an idea of all the food I’m schlepping home as I write this on the train from NY to DC. (If the idea of reading the list of traveling groceries doesn’t sing to you, you may want to skip the next two paragraphs, after which I have a feeling I am going to diverge from the schlepping theme to the food theme and examine why, for example, I never leave home without a food bag.)
In my wheelie bag, rolled up in assorted plastic bags, are a jar of crunchy organic peanut butter that I bought yesterday at the Fairway at 132nd St., having rented a bike and pedaled along the Hudson to get there. Also in my bag from that same market where the carts are barely narrower than the aisles is a package of whole wheat English muffins, a bag of peanuts, a bag of hard pretzels, a bag of Snyder’s unsalted minis, 3 Nirvanna organic 72% dark chocolate bars that I’ve been searching all over the place for and half of a semolina bread twist.
The other half of the semolina twist is in my food bag along with a deli container of chopped liver, (pause: the mere mention of chopped liver requires me to stop right here and eat some), three tomatoes, two peanut butter sandwiches, ZipLoc bags containing 5 varieties of pretzels, a peach, paper plates, plastic utensils, napkins, and maybe some other stuff I can’t even find.
So, what’s with the food bag? What might happen if one day I were to save the hour I spend preparing the pre-trip food bag and skip out of the house with only my backpack and my wheelie? The worst things I can think of are 1. that I would be dependent on train/airport food and 2. that I would get hungry and not have any chopped liver to reach for.
Well, I don’t really need to explore this any further, since both of those scenarios are unacceptable.
|
|
RECENT COMMENTS