Now what was I doing...?

So I got this email from Oprah yesterday (I think she may have CC'd a few million other email addies too, but that's not the point). She included an article on things you can do to prevent memory loss, which was quite informative. And yes, this is one of those blog posts where I foray into the personal and leave behind all the writerly biz official professionalism...

The first suggested way to help prevent memory loss is to teach. Concept behind this is pretty simple: if you know something well enough to teach it, then it's going to stick in your head better. Hey. I like that! Because I teach all kinds of different stuff as a substitute. Does this mean in my old(er) age, I'll be able to remember the formula for finding volume of a cylinder, which president came before Lincoln, the difference between mean and median, and what year the battle of 1812 happened? "Use it or lose it," I smugly mumbled to myself. "I'm not gonna be one of those old ladies who forgets where she parked at the supermarket!" Well... maybe. I've kinda already been there.

So maybe the memory benefits don't apply to substitute teaching. Because, seriously, after a Teacher Stunt Double day, I feel like a quick-onset Alzheimer's patient. Sometimes I forget to fuel up the truck before leaving town for home (which makes for a heart-rushing, sweaty-palmed drive back to town the next morning, which might ultimately give my son his first ulcer). Or I forget for the 4th day in a row to run by the Post Office and send off that Netflix. Or I arrive home and can't for the life of me remember What the Heck I'd Planned to Cook for Dinner (because, as my daughter reminds me, there's no food at all in the house!). And then the kids get to joking or playing a game and I hear them giggling together like last night when they set up the electric race track just so the cat could watch them race the cars, and they were giggling and squealing, and I can hardly remember what life was like before kids...

Happy Friday, everybody. I'm heading off to the Greatest Place on Earth. No, not Disney-related... The grade school library. To sub! Can you believe they pay me to do that? Muahahahaha!

Autumn Piper
Got romance?