My whosit and a whatsit now??

They've been called mental lapses, old-timers, brain farts, and many other terms I know I have heard of, if only I could recall. Or as my sister puts it "Have you seen my this? It goes with my that, and it was just over there."
Today I learned that psychologists call it a 'prospective lapse.' I learned this while reading a very interesting article on CNN

http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/personal/10/24/o.midlife.memory.meltdown/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

This article describes me to a T. Except for one small detail. The author is describing adults in their 40s and 50s. I am 27. So what is my problem? I call it being absent- minded. Or just having too many random facts, ideas, opinions, and tasks crammed into my brain. Either way it is a serious problem for me.

Like today. I had a job interview this morning. I have known about it for two weeks. I have waited and waited for an interview with the school district. Finally they called! Oh hooray hooray they called at last! My interview was this morning at 10:45. Or so I thought. That is what I had been thinking all week as I anticipated it. At 10:00 am sharp, all dressed to kill, James at the ready to go to daycare, I retrieved the paper I wrote the directions and time on only to discover my interview was. at. 9:30. am. Oh. Shit.

Where did 10:45 come from? How could that possibly have been confused with 9:30? I don't know. All I know is that there was only one thing left to do. Grovel. Profusely. Which I did, and fortunately for me went in and interviewed at 11:00. And despite my mental lapse, the interview went well. Although if I were the interviewer and my interviewee forgot and then went later, I would be pretty skeptical of her employability potential. I hope they can forgive me.

This happens more and more frequently now. I am a compulsive list-maker, because I know the only way to remember anything is to write it down. I have a notebook that hangs out in my kitchen, where I write down everything in my head that I need to remember. Grocery lists, to-d0 lists, ideas for my yard, recipes, pretty much anything that comes to my mind that I am afraid I will forget. I really am just as likely to find my TV remote in the vegetable bin of my refrigerator as I am to find it in the seat of my couch. And there was a phase a few years back where I locked my keys in my car at least once a month. I am not kidding. Once I locked my keys in the front of the car, and Jay's keys in the trunk of the car. He wouldn't speak to me for the rest of the day.

Here is what I can remember:

Every song I ever learned as a child.

A poem about a flying cow I recited at a contest in third grade.

The botanic and common name of over two hundred different species of plant.

Most of The Pledge of Allegiance in Latin "Fidem meum obligo, vexillo civitateum..." is how it starts.

I can also spell just about anything.

Wow, that is all really useful stuff.

I like to joke that having a kid has turned my brain to mush. That's only partly true. I was pretty bad before I had him, but my absent-mindedness has gotten much worse since. I really need a personal secretary (or one of those nomenclator thingys that article mentions) to follow me around and basically run my life for me. I can't wait to see what my memory is like 20 years from now.