VegemiteGrrl's Home for the Absent-Minded

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

xxp Oh yeah, I am a total meltdown person too mainly with bits of anger thrown in. I remember running like hell to get a bus once and then the straps of the bag containing the very heavy thing I'd been running across town holding broke and it was the final straw and I basically had my meltdown in full view of the bus and then I was too embarrassed to get on the bus and waited an hour for the next one instead. I don't know why I am even admitting this on the internet.

(I left my bank card on the counter in the bank today and a nice eastern European guy in paint-spattered overalls ran out of the shop after me to hand it over. thank you that guy! <3 )

I left my passport behind when going for a flight recently, fortunately I remembered about 20 seconds after the taxi had pulled away from my door. Then about a month later I left for a train, realised 2 minutes later I'd left the tickets. Went back to get them, left the house again and a minute later realised I'd forgotten the sleeping bag I needed. REALLY need a checklist by the door.

If I missed a flight I would actually literally die.

I left my passport at the customs desk and walked for thirty minutes to my gate while wearing headphones, only when I took them off to chat to someone in the lounge did I hear my name over the speakers. Had to run there & back again to catch my flight. Ugh.

Every day I take an anxiety pill in the morning, two days a week I take a Vitamin D supplement. I always remember if I've taken the latter, but literally an hour or two after I've woken up, I'm always forgetting if I took my anxiety pill or not, so then I give myself an anxiety attack trying to remember and either take another one just in case or just go without.

I'd get one of those plastic M-F tubs but I refuse to live like I'm 60 years old yet.

I don't travel much but I do a lot of dance performances with multiple costume items and I have to treat packing like it's for a life-or-death mountaineering situation: everything gets laid on my bed and I envision myself doing all the things I have to do that day and what I need for them. When I'm confident that it's all there, I put everything in the bag and then purposefully check the bed for anything I forgot.

The times I've forgotten, like, my phone, because I laid a piece of clothing over it and it was "out of sight, out of mind" are so monumentally frustrating to me that I try to protect myself from it EVER HAPPENING AGAIN.

In the past couple of weeks I've had people running after me with (a) my phone (which I had left on a table in a pub); (b) my wallet (which I had left in a crate of mushrooms). Surprisingly I've never missed a flight, not really sure how.

I thought of this thread last night b/c at 11:30, just as I got into bed, I got a phone call from a stranger who found my gym bag on a newspaper machine across the street from my house where I'd left it 5 hours earlier while locking up my bike. Amazing it was still there! And that the bomb squad hadn't detonated that unattended black backpack.

awesome

Just missed a train because I thought if I left my house at half past two I would have 20 minutes to get the 14:39. Next train was 20 minutes later so no major disaster but wtf is wrong with me :|

Read ffm's passport post, thought "oh I left my passport somewhere in the airport once too", realised I'd already posted that to this thread a year ago along with the same plane-missing story I reposted yesterday. Well, this is the thread for not remembering where we put our keys an hour ago, readers will just have to live with us also not remembering what crap we spouted on the internet a year ago.

Most of the prescription medication I've ever taken has been in day-labelled packaging and I don't know how I'd ever manage if it wasn't. Generally if I take them right before bed I don't forget them (I cannot remember them at any other time of day; shame the SSRIs I took kept me awake if I took them at night) but it's nice being able to check I really did take yesterday's just by looking at the packet.

Just spent over an hour turning a room upside down looking for a pair of jointing clamps (spring loaded clamps for holding two planks of wood together at right angles). Turned out that they were in the box with all the scrap wood. I guess that made perfect sense when I put them in there.

i just realized that i forgot to choose a career path

in actual absent-minded news, i forget if i posted here yet about the time i went into the liquor store and left my car door open. like, not unlocked, but totally open.

Omg, I did that once. Pre-anxiety meds in 2009, I was in a state of mental disarray. Was living with my then-best friend, who'd just been divorced, and about to head with him to meet my then-girlfriend at karaoke night.

I was infuriated with him at the time because he clearly didn't like that I was with someone and kept hitting on my girl, and trying to interfere. I'd actually decided to break up w/ her that night (a move I changed my mind on later in the evening, and we stayed together another 5 months!), so my mind was racing, heart pumping.

It was free ice cream scoop day at...was it Baskin? I dunno. So he wanted to go there. I had just bought $700 worth of new guitar equipment that I'd stored at my parents' place and was driving home to my place. New guitar, new amp, stand, everything. And it's in my car.

This Baskin Robbins isn't in the worst part of town, but not the best either. In my state of disarray, I leave my car to go to meet my friend, and leave the rear door wide open, with the guitar, amp, and everything exposed. For about 20 minutes.

My friend shouts at me about it and I come running over and he's like "YOU JUST LEFT YOUR CAR OPEN WITH THIS STUFF IN IT!". then joked about the magnum condoms he found in the back seat and said "congratulations" sarcastically.

I've also locked my keys in my car with the car running before, but only once.

yikes. good thing nobody took the guitar equipment. i backed into a parked car in a parking garage two weeks ago because i was preoccupied with existential concerns (i remember thinking, precisely, "i need to make some changes" as i felt the impact.) i left my info on a note in the car's windshield and just got the bill. fixing dents is fucking expensive.

guuuuuuuuuuh my brain, where is it

synced my ipod last night, grabbed it before I went to bed so that I could take it to work today...but I guess I didn't put it straight into my bag, because poof! now it's nowhere to be found.

have a feeling it's going to wind up being in the towel closet or the kitchen drawers, since those were the last 2 places I remember wandering in the house before bed. who the fuck knows. I even checked the refridgerator this morning ;_;

help me

just got in bed with a couple of bakewell tarts. after drinking my brew was looking forward to tucking into the tarts, until I realised I'd alread eaten them five minutes ago.

haaaa

at 7:18 tonight my friend called me and asked "are you on your way"? Appears I had a rehearsal for a short play he's directing tonight and forgot about it. first time that's ever happened!

ipod found! not in the trash or the washing machine as feared but just under the couch WHEW

went to the doctor's for a blood test, said to the receptionist 'i'm here for some radiology'

i am not a scientist

H asked me last night why the plastic wrap was in the fridge, but we both knew the answer.

H asked me last night why the plastic wrap was in the fridge, but we both knew the answer.

― i don't even have an internet (Hurting 2), Monday, July 1, 2013 6:12 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'll take Dexter monologues for 200, Alex

hahah

Walked into kitchen with dirty glass and pack of lightbulbs. Put the dirty glass under the sink and didn't realize what I'd done until I attempted to put the pack of light bulbs in the dishwasher.

<3 irl lols

first time seeing this thread and i fit in here to a T.

these days before I leave the house I usually pat my pockets &tc four or five times just to make sure I have my wallet, phone and keys because the number of times i have mislaid or forgotten one or a combination of the three is too many to mention

a few months ago I withdrew money from an ATM and then forgot to actually put the cash in my wallet

have you ever left your debit card in the ATM machine? i've done that twice. what happens is the card gets sucked back into the machine and destroyed.

haven't done that, generally my ATM asks me to "insert and remove" my card which i guess is a good safeguard against what happened to you.

3 times

hi

the card is sometimes retained by the bank, and then you can go into the bank and spend an hour trying to prove who you are in order to get it back.