VegemiteGrrl's Home for the Absent-Minded

"I forgot to use a condiment" is not an excuse

Making coffee this morning, I nearly poured milk into the kettle.

Not sure if this is absent-mindedness, but -- last night I broke wind while walking out of the office, and was so embarrassed I sat down immediately at my desk and pretended to do work for ten minutes. Nobody mentioned anything.

Leaving the office, I was so distracted I crossed the street without looking and got side-swiped by a motorcycle driving on the wrong side of the road. Just missed me by inches. So basically, yesterday I almost died because of a fart.

did the "putting electric kettle on the stove" thing yesterday.

In someone else's absence, I've unexpectedly inherited a work task which would be very easy and potentially disastrous to screw up by missing something out of a labyrinthine assortment of contradictory spreadsheets. Like, if I get this wrong some of our stock will become permanently unorderable and there'll be a complicated nightmare of trying to recall things which will already be out in the wild.

I know absentmindedness is not necessarily the same as disorganisation (I've got both btw) but I'm here thinking "I can't even remember not to leave my housekeys in the door or in the fridge, and someone expects me to get this right?"

Might be time for you to suggest to your boss that this highly susceptible to error procedure is revised.

I think the long-term goal is that I revise it myself, but I'm taking advantage of nobody actually telling me that outright to put it off for a while, since I don't feel like I understand the procedure well enough

(but nobody else does either, any more - the person who devised it has left, and the person who's been doing it since then is absent "indefinitely" but she didn't seem that comfortable with it and seems to have put some contradictory information in)

I have the exact opposite project - my boss is making me work an insanely over-complicated spreadsheet that will literally be of no use to anyone whatsoever -- except, of course, my boss, who will tick it off their to-do list, then move on to their next poorly-thought-through project

Spent nearly a minute after work today rifling through my backpack, disgustedly looking for my book which was crooked under my arm.

aw that gives me a warm feeling of nostalgia <3

I didn’t have time to plunge it right away so I just left it. Sometimes you need to let it sit for a while anyway, y’know? And then it will flush.

Honestly this isn't really "absent mindedness" it's avoidance and laziness.

Like, it takes 5 seconds to plunge a toilet, and no, I am not aware that letting it "sit for a while" is a method of unclogging a toilet

wait where are you quoting that from?

huh, uh, wait a minute, what thread linked this blog:
http://playgroundconfidential.com/2013/03/21/when-it-rains-it-pours/

lol, wrong thread, so appropriate

lol

oh wait no, it's totally this thread, sorry:

Incidentally my friend Rebecca wrote an AMAZING blog post on the unintended consequences of absent-mindedness. This is haunting:

http://playgroundconfidential.com/2013/03/21/when-it-rains-it-pours/

― Chuck_Tatum, Monday, April 22, 2013 6:22 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

a friend of mind is absent-minded, like really absent-minded, and he just lived through something that might make him be less so. basically, dude was going out, he locked the door and then left the key in the door. somebody broke in (well, turned the key and opened the door) and took tons of stuff and now he's struggling with insurance issues because there are no signs of break-in etc.

Oof.

i went through a couple of months when we moved into our house where I was constantly leaving the keys in the door. usually from unlocking the door and entering the hosue, so keys were in the door while we were IN the house.

but

ugggghhh

i did that at least three times in the last place

twice overnight

Luckily, we have two doors (and a postage stamp-sized foyer in between) to our apartment because I have to take the keys out of the exterior door to use them on the interior door, where I leave them dangling in the door knob until the next time I am frantically searching for my keys.

That's the trick, really. Live in apartments that don't open directly to the outside.

Apartments w/ doors that open directly to the outdoors seem very strange to me after getting used to Chicago. It seems incorrect - like having your bathtub on the lawn.

It's like having your foot in Uruguay.

To get into my place I have to go through two locked doors and one unlocked just to get to the elevator. the elevator.

(Which sometimes - in the spirit of this thread - I take to the wrong floor, where I try to unlock somebody else's door. So I scream "Sorry! Sorry! Wrong door! Sorry!!")

Our place comes closest to a door that opens directly to the outside in that there is not a common area. We just happen to have two front doors (I'm guessing it's a weather thing. A door that opens directly to the outside would make for a very drafty living room).

To get into my place I have to go through two locked doors and one unlocked just to get to the elevator. the elevator.

Does the theme from Get Smart play as you walk to your apartment?

Jesus Christ, my posts from ~6 pm are a mess, a mess.

In reference to the blog post I cited, I think there's an overlap between laziness and absent-mindedness at times, but there are differences too. Laziness is "I'll do it later" and then you "forget." True absent-mindedness imo involves doing things that are completely illogical in a way that is not actually one iota easier, even for the moment.

lol nickn

I yelled at the outside of my local bank building because they removed the ATM machine. Then I realised I was standing in front of KFC.

hahahaha oh that's beautiful

ground the coffee, put it in the filter, turned on the coffee maker...turned away to do some things and then ran back over to the coffee maker when I realized I hadn't filled it with water.

I've forgotten to put the carafe under the coffee maker basket after doing everything else both at work and at home. At home it'll just drain into the sink, but at work it went off the filing cabinet onto the rug. Oops.

oh yeah that's the worst.

Put shampoo on my sponge instead of shower gel. They're in completely different containers and the liquids themselves are different colours, but I didn't notice until after I asked myself why the 'gel' wasn't lathering up properly.

ugh I have done so many combinations of this mistake it's sad

best one was squeezing hair glossing cream into my hand and then rubbing it all over my face like moisturizer. i don't even KEEP it with the moisturizer, I had already moisturized, i was just staring at myself in the mirror like oh god is this what senility is like ;_;

oh and spraying hairspray under my arms back when I used spray deodorant

oh my lol

A few times I've nearly sprayed shaving gel on myself instead of deodorant.

I was fixing a PC earlier today, and I just realised that I left a torch inside the case - it was still switched on as well.

Oh and I just switched it back on to see how flat the battery was, and nearly blinded myself because it's still very bright.

Spent three minutes a few days ago walking around the class and muttering to myself as I looked for a cup of coffee I had just poured; found it in the supply cupboard with all the paper, pencils, and erasers. Class got a good laugh out of it.

spacing out in the shower I twice couldn't remember whether or not I'd already washed my hair. So I may have just washed my hair three times.

^^^ this. also the number of times I get out of the shower with conditioner still in my hair is...well, a lot.

my immediate short-term memory scares me sometimes. I'll lock the door to the house and as I walk down the steps I immediately think 'wait did I lock the door' and have to go back because that is not a thing that you go to work wondering about.

You just have more interesting things to think about than whether you locked the door. Right? Like trying to remember the last three words of the second verse of that song that popped into your head.

I left my keys stuck in my front door lock for like 12 hours this weekend.

Do you people not have roommates?? Who haven't killed you yet for no apparent reason?? The one day I left the iron safety gate open on our kitchen window, I got a mid-day text on my shopping trip from an unhappy roommate.

I left ONE out of three doors open while I did my laundry up the street and I got another lecture! Two out of three doors were locked!