Owed to a little dog

By Sharon Stoner

Things are really getting me down right now, and I am frustrated. For one thing, my dog, Timmy. Ordinarily, when I wake-up and take off my CPAP mask, he comes out from under the covers, sits on my chest waiting for his ears to be scratched, and then flops down for a belly rub. During this routine he never barks or makes any other sound. But what has he just done?

My winter doldrums

By Sharon Stoner

My personal editor wrote me, “Keep warm. Or are you already air-conditioning down there?” (I live in “sunny Florida.”)
    Well, I told him, it’s 41° ‪at 11 a.m‬. Up from 28° last night. I think that the AC will be off for quite a while. Hard freeze this morning.

Mementos

In order to remember what the heck I was going to do before I got distracted, I've finally had to resort to the technique of the character Leonard in the movie "Memento" (2000: Christopher Nolan). You may recall that Leonard had a short-term memory deficit particularly severe for someone trying to find the man he thinks killed his wife. He was continually writing down clues and appointments as he tried to piece¹ things together. (Leonard, by the way, was played, appropriately, by Guy Pearce>.)

Not only is my short-term memory not what it used to be, but also, in this e-mail and telephone and open-office-door age, I am continually being interrupted, even on a good day. And besides, I've always liked the high-energy way of trying to do several things at once. I still can, except that, more and more, some of the things I'm juggling fall to the ground and roll under a table, where they may or may not be discovered.

So...make a note! Put it where I can see it! Check the pile! Don't let the mementos accumulate! Keep on top of things! Don't lose my ass!

And good luck!
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1. Ha! Minutes after posting this, something didn't feel right in my addled brain, and I finally realized that I'd originally written this as "pierce"; of course, now that I've corrected it, my parenthetical about Guy Pearce isn't nearly so effective.)