losing my religion. and my keys. where’s my car?

I want to be more organized.  Right now I’m more unorganized than I’ve ever been in my entire life.  My house is a mess.  My carpets are stained.  Dirty clothes have taken a corner of my bedroom hostage.   My car smells like a Burger King.  The kitchen looks like I recently threw a kegger.

And as my home gets more and more unorganized, so does my brain.  I’m forgetting things.  I never used to do this before.  I never forgot things.  The other day I filled a bottle of water with clean water and chilled it to take to rehearsal.  I pulled it out of the fridge and sat it by my bag.  I had charged up my cell phone and put that next to the bag as well.  As I left for rehearsal, I took my bag and left the phone and the water behind.  I keep forgetting to bring scripts to work that I need to e-mail to my troupe members.  I forget to put on a load of laundry so that I have clean clothes.

I can see this happening in Eric as well.  This morning I went to the dryer to find a pile of clean clothes dumped on top of the machine.  They were clean but now they were so wrinkled that there were pairs of pants that had married t-shirts and weren’t willing to separate.  Inside the dryer was another pile of clean and dried clothes, but they had been in there so long they had all joined a commune together.

We have to wash our clean clothes just to wear them.

In my bag are two months worth of paid bill receipts that I haven’t transferred to our “paid bill” pile.  This is also a bag filled with empty gum wrappers, pens without ink, random pieces of paper and empty cigarette boxes.  In my trunk are items from my old office that I haven’t gotten around to finding a new home for.  Our CDs are in a giant pile around the CD player and others are strewn around the carpet in front of the CD holder.  Videotapes litter the floor and there are six Tae-Bo tapes in front of my VCR from a failed taping session yesterday afternoon.

There are 6,212 bobby pins on my bedside table.

Taylor has bought a tiny broom that he keeps beside his food bowl to keep his feeding area clean.  He hems and haws and tsks and taks as he sweeps around his dishes each morning.

There are seven pairs of shoes by the front door.

There is a dishwasher full of clean dishes underneath a countertop full of dirty ones.

The computer desk is covered in sheets of paper with failed printings.  The futon in the office is covered in half-clean/half-dirty clothes.  The bathroom counter top is filled with makeup and lotion and I can’t even start to clean it all up.  There are seventeen balled up pieces of toilet paper on the counter, smeared with failed make-up attempts for this show.  Eric’s copy of Modern Railroading is covered in baby powder.

I’m sure at the bottom of the pile by the VCR is a tape I never returned to Blockbuster.

I can’t find my watch.  I’m wearing a Mr. Potato Head watch instead.  It can’t get wet, but I keep forgetting and washing my hands or face with it on, and then for two hours my watch doesn’t tell time.

I can’t find the comp tickets I had for Eric to see the show this weekend.

I haven’t gotten around to paying my Squishy bill.  I keep forgetting that there’s a book that I’m reading and I start a new one.  I sometimes leave the house without putting on deodorant– I’ve taken to carrying a spare in the car because this keeps happening.

What is happening to my brain?  My lovely brain.  It used to work so well and do such nice things.  It used to be able to find f of x and now I can’t even remember if that was a derivative or a function or what either of those terms mean.  It’s not like I miss calculus or anything, but I mean, come on!  It’s my brain.  I put those things in there for a reason.  I didn’t think my memories had expiration dates.

Watch this:  “We the people of the United States in order to form a more perfect union establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure our blessings to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution of the United States of America.”

That’s from memory.  Now ask me if I changed the litter box yesterday.  I have no fucking idea.  I remember asking Eric to, and I remember thinking that he hadn’t.  Did I then go and scoop the poop?  I think I didn’t, but maybe I did.  I’m not sure.

I went into the kitchen today and forgot why I went there.  I had to back track into the living room, touch my bag (which I had just closed) and then go back even further to the bedroom and I still couldn’t remember.  I went and stood in the shower– then I remembered I went into the kitchen to get a glass of water to take my allergy pill.  I’m tempted not to tell you that after I got the glass of water I couldn’t remember if I had already taken my allergy pill or not.

Last week I forgot the names of three people.  I could see their faces, I couldn’t remember their names.  I spent thirty minutes trying to remember William Hurt’s name.  I had a conversation with someone last week and I remember the conversation fully, but I cannot remember who I was having it with.  I can’t even remember if it was with a girl or a boy.  I can’t remember when my doctor’s appointment is next week.

But if you want to know the poem in Gary Larson’s Cow Poetry that the cow recites to the group, I’m your gal.

I want my precious brain to retain it’s knowledge.   I want to remember that that last sentence should have an “its” and not an “it’s.”  I’d rather remember to bring all of my props and costumes and not just know all of the words to “Sir Psycho Sexy.”

My brain used to be able to remember a song once I heard it twice.  Now I still sing “Suckers they come a dime a dozen/ When I say cousin you know what I’m talking about boy.”  That doesn’t even make sense.  Of course it’s “When I say dozen.”  Why won’t my brain re-learn that?  Where is my ability to go in and change what my brain knows?

Oh, forget it.

Forget what?

Ha.