Babe, your nightgown is on inside out...

The title of today's blog says it all.  These are the things that happen daily.  

This is really going to date me, but to any of you who are reading this and are old enough to have seen the movie "Splash", do you remember Tom Hanks' secretary?  She'd been struck by lightning and acted peculiar ever since?  She shows up for work with her bra on the outside of her shirt.  I often think of that scene because I feel like that could totally be me on any given day...

One day it's leaving a burner on.  Another, it's literally starting a fire while trying to cook a simple pot of instant rice.  Another day an article of clothing is on inside out.  Or I put the opened bottle of salad dressing in the cabinet instead of the refrigerator or try to fill my water bottle with the lid still on it or I hear the timer go off, but then don't actually take the food out of the oven or....the list goes on and on and on and on...

Then there is the conversation piece...I can unload the dishwasher or I can tell you what I had for lunch, but don't expect me to do both at once because my brain cannot handle recalling information and knowing which cabinet the glasses go in all at the same time.  I either have to stop talking or stop moving in order to finish one thing or the other.  If I'm talking to my husband and he gets up to scratch his back or to plug in his phone, my train of thought is gone because that's all it takes for my concentration on what I'm saying to be broken.  

Word finding is a struggle.  Some days it's worse than others, but it happens daily.  When I'm writing, the words come more easily to me.  And if one doesn't, I can google or use the thesaurus tool and more often than not, figure it out.  However, when speaking, it's an entirely different ball game.  I will have a word, and then it's gone.  I will try to recall what it was, and it's like my brain literally hits a black wall, like there is just nothing there.  It's not even that "it's on the tip of my tongue" feeling.  It's literally like I try to pull it from my brain and everything is just blackness, like I actually have the vision of a black space where my word recall should be when I try to close my eyes and come up with the word.  What almost worse is when I use the wrong word, and I have no idea I even did because my brain doesn't even recognize it...I'm a language arts teacher, lover of the written language, passionate about reading and writing and everything that entails, yet I hit this "black wall" daily.  

If you were to stop by my house for a visit, we sat on the couch and chatted, and then you said good-bye and left, I might even be able to step out onto my front porch to see you off.  You would think, "Oh, she is doing well today."  But, what you wouldn't see is that if I stood up and tried to carry on that same conversation with you, my voice would become weaker, I'd be running out of air quickly, I'd be winded and struggling to get the words out, my sentences and conversation wouldn't be as complex, my heart rate would go up, the room may begin to spin, my legs would begin to ache and tremble with nerve, muscle, and joint pain, my conversation wouldn't be as fluid.  After 5 or so minutes, I'd have to sit down because that's where I hit my threshold.  

But, I just double-checked, and none of my clothes are on inside today, so there's that...