VegemiteGrrl's Home for the Absent-Minded

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!

I don't have roommates.

Mr Veg keeps me in check as best he can, mostly by sending me faintly amused/only-slightly-annoyed text messages.

We wouldn't have made it a year of being married if my bullshit annoyed him that much

I think he likes it because it's ammunition inevitable ribbing, lol

Ugh, someone(s) in my old building used to repeatedly leave the door to the building open (i.e. fail to shut it so it locked itself) in spite of multiple notes/signs. I don't wish it on anyone, but having a break-in cures you of that sort of absent mindedness.

The morning after I got back from an out of town car trip last month, I walked outside my apartment and found that I'd left my keys in the door, and beside the door, a bag of groceries, my jacket, and a 6-pack of beer. I was tired.

took me a half hour to find my glasses after I had set them down on the bed (why i set them there i dunno)

i think i read somewhere (ilx maybe) that misplacing something and then finding it again is your brain subconsciously setting up a type of reward system

congratulations

that time i lost my favourite cufflinks for six months did not play out like a reward system fwiw

what kind of fucked up rewards system makes you feel like a total moran i ask you

looking for my glasses once a week (at least) is EXHAUSTING

i need that chain for my glasses so that i'll just have them dangling from my neck like a constantly rewarding albatross. i still won't be able to find them. I've broken at least two pair by sitting on them.

looking for my glasses once a week (at least) is EXHAUSTING

veg

um, veg

you're wearing them

lol I wish

i suppose I should mention that time i sewed a button on my coat, and only realised exactly halfway through that the button was still on the table

Keeping my Five Important Items (work phone, personal phone, keys, wallet, work pass) on a shelf by my front door (and making sure that everything goes on the shelf whenever I come back) has been a neat solution to prevent me being a brainless idiot and forgetting where everything is strewn around my flat.

I had big problems with worrying that I hadn't locked the door (though as far as I remember I always had locked it), so now I put my keys on a shelf near the front door whenever I get in and picking them up is meant to be the LAST thing I do before leaving the house and I try not to put them in a pocket until I've locked the door. It worked for a while, but once any system becomes entirely routine I don't bother remembering whether I did it or not, so the doubt is creeping back.

Like those lab mice who run mazes and there's a ton of brain activity for a new maze and then by the time the maze is familiar there's not much brain activity and the mouse probably gets out and goes "did I go through a maze? also, did I lock my front door?" (did I leave the gas on? no, I'm a fucking squirrel, etc)

(I left the bath running for hours the other day and it didn't actually flood and I don't know if that's because it fills really slowly and I caught it just in time or because the little drainage hole saved me. but I thought of this thread...)

xp I have a set place on my desk for my keys, phone, wallet, watch, and glasses. If they're not in their designated places then they're either in my pocket (keys/phone/wallet) or I'm wearing them (watch/glasses). It took years and years of losing these items regularly before I came up with this system, or rather, made myself do this. Everything outside of those five items though, and it's anybody's guess.

(and in case I still sound to triumphant in that post, I too have broken a pair of glasses by leaving them on the bed and then sitting on them)

too triumphant

Ah, you found the o.

I've found myself wondering if I locked the door when I've gone on vacation because there's always a lot of back-and-forth carrying things to the car with the door still open and I get to thinking "on that last trip from house to car did I lock the door or was I still in car-loading mode?"

So I got to saying to myself "I am locking the door" whenever I'm leaving the house for more than just going to work type trips. But then the problem is that when I think back to remember if I said that and I do remember, I second-guess myself and start thinking I'm remembering doing that for a previous trip and didn't actually do it this time.

left one of the burners on my stove on all night, two inches from my dish cloth

:/

hate electric stoves

xpost you should take a picture of the locked door with a timestamp.

yeah they are bad news bears for the absentminded

How to combat absent-mindedness...I had to buy tracing paper on the way home last night for myself and a few other teachers (provincial testing). The store was less than 10 minutes from my school, but I'd managed to forget the previous night. So as soon as I got in the car, I started saying "Tracing paper, tracing paper, tracing paper" aloud for 30 seconds at a time. I'd stop for 15 seconds, then start again. I managed not to forget this time.

Anything more than one item or one stop, I don't go out without a shopping list.

I mean if you REALLY wanted to know whether you turned your stove off or locked your door, make a short checklist of the life-threatening essentials (stove, iron(as if), door, keys, wallet, whatever) and put 30 of them next to your front door. Then each day before you leave, check all those things ONCE and date each item. Then put the list in your pocket to look at later if you forget whether you did something.

otm

i will buy a date stamp. I will turn my apartment into a Duties and Tariffs Office Under the Public Concern of His Majesty King George III.

Think of yourself more as a librarian of the necessities.

lose-y decimal system

This thread needs a patron saint--I nominate Uncle Billy from It's a Wonderful Life.

http://thefilmspectrum.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Picture-151-300x224.png

this thread came to what one might consider its logical conclusion for me today, when i missed a flight for the first time in my life (that bit is surprising, though). i wasn't even late. i wasn't hungover. the flight was at 2pm, i woke up really early and went for a run and packed, even remembered the european adaptors which i never do! set off early figuring it'd be nice to have some time to chill in heathrow. got to check-in desk and realised that the thought of my passport had just NOT CROSSED MY MIND TODAY AT ALL. my passport has been on top of my chest of drawers for months now, i see it most days. i probably saw it this morning. it just didn't occur to me that i needed it.

i frantically booked a taxi to ferry it across london for me. sadly, despite the unusual extra time i had, i was undone by london traffic, and it got to me too late. i could've got on a later flight, except it was for a whistle-stop landing to do an interview, see a show and come back tomorrow morning, and there was no room in the schedule to rearrange it to. not entirely sure what will happen now :/

Oh that's such a bummer. I have regularly have nightmares about that kind of thing.

Like, actual nightmares.

Bummer, lex. That's bad luck!

Despite many last-minute scrambles, panics while stuck in traffic, frantic excavation of bedrooms to hunt for passports, etc, my only missed plane was because the line through the security scanners I got put into went reallllly slowly and idk I guess I thought that if it was the final call for my flight there'd be an announcement or something, but then I slowly realised there weren't any tannoys or screens in the security queue area.

I find travelling really stressful and when anything goes wrong I tend to lose it completely which is uh embarrassing.

the weird thing is that i have flown a lot and i am always so ultra-paranoid about this, constantly checking my bag en route to the airport etc in case it's jumped out

and yet this time it just did not cross my mind that i needed a passport in the run-up to today.

i thiiiiiink it's because i haven't flown for a while (over a year) and i'm out of practice, plus as it was only for one night i was much more relaxed in general about what i needed

I find travelling really stressful and when anything goes wrong I tend to lose it completely which is uh embarrassing.

i pretty much lost it (not in an angry way, in a total meltdown way) first when i realised i'd forgotten it, then when i realised it hadn't got to me on time

although i sought reassurance on twitter/fb and i think the winner was probably someone whose aunt turned up on time, with all her documents, but missed her flight because she sat at the gate and stared vacantly into space without noticing her flight was boarding, her name was being called, or her flight was taking off

omg