rattled boats

I've noticed that nowadays I'm full of aphorisms I think are common sayings that apparently are not. I always liked to mix my metaphors anyway, even in the good old days when my brain was working (semi)properly, but nowadays I catch myself writing important reminders in my notebook like "rattle your boat" and I have absolutely no idea what they mean.

Now, I started carrying around this little notebook a while back, because I noticed that I would have an important thought and forget entirely what it was within approximately 30 seconds. I'd think to myself, "Oh! I have to...." and run upstairs to do it, only to forget whatever it was I was about to do before I got there.

This was especially likely to happen if someone else in the room was so inconsiderate as to suddenly sneeze or perhaps make some other type of shocking sudden bodily-induced noise as is, alas, frequently the case around here. But I think I've said enough on that particular topic already. Suffice to say that the interruptions can now safely be anticipated and that I have devised emergency plans for dealing with the inevitable chaos these sudden ruptures cause in my thinking processes.

Hence the notebooks. The perfect solution! Except that frequently the notes I write myself don't make any sense, either. Thus it was that this morning I found the "rattle your boat" reminder. What on earth could I have meant by that? What boat was I thinking of? Do I have a boat that needs rattling? Was the boat a metaphor for something else I need to remember to rattle? Was I simply thinking about expressions and what they mean to us, in which case I'm doing exactly what it was I thought was so important to do today, only I don't know it?

Anyway, all this is to say that I've been hard at work creating systems to work around my new handicap. But I've learned that the handicap is such that it will outwit any system I can come up with. We're not just talking about a hole in my head; what I've got is a devious hole with a logic and plan of its own. I write down everything I'm supposed to do during the day--including when precisely to take my medications--in this little notebook that I carry around with me. But then I can never find my notebook. So I get new one, until at last I have lots of little notebooks, all saying different things, and reminding me to be different places, normally during times which have already passed by the time I find them again.

Surely someone will be reading this and wondering why I don't just carry the notebooks around instead of leaving them various places where they can't help me. Sadly, I do carry them around. Just a little while ago I noticed one in my pocket. I've been carrying it around with me all morning as I wondered variously which things I should be doing, which were due when, and which had priority over the others. I can carry this little notebook around all day and yet still write my notes elsewhere, forgetting what I did with the earlier ones.

Well, I do at least know one thing for certain. I am now the proud owner of a rattled boat. Perhaps that's not quite what I'd originally intended when I wrote that message to myself this morning, but we'll call it a successfully accomplished mission anyway.

Which means I can probably quit for the day.