The typical warning about strong pain medications usually has some form of “don’t operate heavy machinery” as part of the language. Stu and I have reassured each other for years that I promise I won’t go out into the warehouse and use the forklift, and he won’t go plowing the north forty while under the influence. (If you’re going to interpose here that we don’t have a warehouse or a north forty, well pooey on you, you’re just not fun at all.)

So two days ago I went out while there was sunny (albeit chilly) weather to run around doing all the things that were piling up, because I had a feeling that the forecast might be right when it read “rain” for the rest of the week. (ok, so it said “rain on Tuesday” as well, the day I went out into the sunshine. Go figure.) And I went to the post office to mail a bunch of books, the post office to deposit checks, the drug store and maybe the grocery store. I had more than enough stuff, piled in the backpack, the basket, and the floor of the scoter. I was DONE. I had provisions. Right up until a block from the grocery store, a few blocks from home when I realized that I’d gotten all sorts of STUFF at the drugstore, but had managed NOT to get the allergy pills. Which was, after all, my reason for going to that particular store as I was OUT of allergy pills.

I had scads of things to carry back into the house, and was not going to turn back. I was tired, I’d manage; I’d snitch a antihistamine from Stu’s stash and struggle without a decongestant (he can’t take them as they interfere with too many other medications.) (I CAN take them, but despise buying them because every FRAKKING time I do, I have to sign and show ID, somewhat like a methadone clinic patron, because every person on the planet who wants one lousy damn package of pseudoephedrine is using it to make meth in their back bathroom. Apparently. Feh.

Stu gets home and I ask him to get the stuff from the garage and he comes in with all the stuff I hadn’t been able to carry and asks, very nicely if I’d remembered the ibuprofen. And the Pepcid. Both of which I had said I’d pick up. And were there library books (I had said I’d go to the library to get his stuff because when he went on Sunday it was closed for veterans Day, and he’d only dropped stuff off. And Stu, on an average week has 8 to 15 things at the library.)

Oh. Right. Ibuprofen. Pepcid. Books. AND allergy pills. And here I had been doing so well.

I also had managed to call my friend Karen and talk to her at length about Invacare, wheelchairs in general and all sorts of things. This was good. However, Why I insist that Karen’s last name is Barbour when it is absolutely NOT Barbour and I don’t know anyone NAMED Karen Barbour nor do I have any idea WHY I want her last name to be Barbour, well I just don’t have a clue. I am, as we might say flummoxed. (I wonder if Karen would mind changing her last name.) (Just a thought.)

So yes, I went back out yesterday and got the library stuff (most if not all of it, and the stuff for Stu and decided to try a different decongestant because I just did NOT want to fill out another form. I suspected I might cry if I did but I also wondered, as I went a day without the damn stuff if indeed I really needed it, and if another type would do as well, so I bought a don’t-have-to-register-for-it decongestant. It’s only four hours, and I HATE that (I spend FAR too much time daily taking pills, noting when I take them remembering to take them blabbity, blah blah.)

I guess I’m in the weird position of hoping that it’s age and not medication. I mean I hate being forgetful and I’ve been somewhat that way all my life, losing things I have loved, by forgetting where I put them, but it’s been somewhat worse. I’m awfully tired lately too and I’m hoping to blame that on the darkening of the day and the season – not that I’m aware that’s ever been an issue but I’m desperate to find another explanation. I just don’t want it to be the Oxycontin because I have been fortunate all my life when it comes to pain medication. Narcotic or not, it’ s never really affected me in a bad way. No constipation (very common with codeine and other drugs), no fog around my head. But lately….

So here I am hoping instead that I’m showing signs of aging. NOW JUST WAIT A MINUTE HERE!!!!!

Oh help! That can’t be it!