Attention Challenged People Need Routines

Ahh Sunday - The traditional day of rest
My grocery shopping day with some Mommy time and no major projects. Even Sunday has its routine. While it's not the same as the rest of the week, it is still a routine. In an attention challenged household, such as mine, anytime we create a routine, or ritual, the better organized we are.


Although the animals must be fed at more or less the same time every day, Sunday is my one TV watching day. In the morning, I like to take in CBS Sunday morning and John Seigenthaler's A Word on Words on PBS. A Word on Words is particularly interesting as various authors are interviewed about their recent books and John Seigenthaler is himself, a Nashville legend.


Today was pretty similar to most Sundays, in that nothing was planned but shopping until later in the afternoon when we planned to visit my friend Leslie. But My Sweetie decided to take The Boy for some Daddy-time, leaving Jewel and I to procure the food stuffs.


We get into our shopping clothes, brush our hair and fix it up nice, make sure we have our shopping lists and money and out to the car we go. We get in our seats, looking forward to this female ritual of shopping, when I realize that the key is in the car and it's turned to the on position before I ever touched it today. I give it a try anyway. Nothing. What's this?!


I explain the situation to Jewel who is naturally a bit disappointed. I try to roll-start the car in reverse - it's a manual transmission, so it is possible. It almost works twice, but I can't get up quite enough momentum before I hit the ditch at the end of the driveway that was created by the spring monsoons, a couple years ago. So we get out of the car. I put up the hood, so the men will know when they get back that I need some help. I can't jump start the car by myself, you know. Our closest known neighbor is a couple miles away and usually not home on such a lovely Sunday morning.


I am sitting in the kitchen racking my brain about how it came to be that my keys were in the ignition and the switch was on. Then I remembered. Yesterday, when I returned home from the football game, I left the windows down in case I needed to take the car out again later. (So it wouldn't be so hot.) Later when I decided I was calling it quits for the day, I went out to the car and turned the key to put the windows up, since it's all electric in there. Obviously I didn't remember to finish what I started. I can't think of what distracted me, but obviously I spaced out. Which brings me back to the attention challenged bit.


Obviously, I need a better routine that what I got, for keeping the car cool while parked. Perhaps, I will finally break down and purchase one of those sun shields for the windshield. I've been avoiding that purchase for years, because it means old people to me. Whoa, before you start sending indignant emails, let me explain that my PARENTS - lovely people - started with those things by cutting up the refrigerator box in 1975 and carefully shaping it to our car's windshield. Am I scarred for life or what? Hmmm. Probably doesn't even cost that much to get one at the store. I can see something on my list for next Sunday.