Proof That I Am Losing It!

People who know me well won't be surprised to hear I'm turning into a bit of a glue bag lately. My once legendary memory certainly isn't what it used to be, and sometimes I do stupid things. (To any family members reading this, I say: SHUT UP.) Ahem, anyway, where was I? Ah yes, I remember now. We were talking about how dopey I've been lately. Here are two recent examples:

Thanksgiving 09. My dad, who LOVES turkey more than any other food on earth, informs me he wants to pay for the turkey. Knowing he likes to contribute, I say fine. I buy the biggest bird in the store and wrestle it home to the fridge. (Emily was gagging over the clear plastic wrap, but that's another whole story.) I tell my dad $42 for the turkey. Of course he gives me a check for $50. I point out that it's $8 more than it is supposed to be, and he says the extra is for shipping and handling. Isn't he cute? Okay, so my house is ground zero for Turkey Day festivities. We have my immediate family during the day and the raucous extended family (the same ones who need that SHUT UP referred to above) for sandwiches in the evening. One of the ways I prepare for this invasion is to take all those stacks of paper that accumulate in the kitchen and move them to my bedroom, also known as the staging area when we entertain. I figured I'd get back to the stacks the next week. Thanksgiving was great, the turkey was yummy, my dad was happy. All was well.

Now, since my mother died, he has gotten very anal about that checkbook. He is proud of his ability to balance it down to the last penny every month. So I figured I'd better cash that check and be done with it. Except, I couldn't find it. It had totally VAPORIZED. GONE. I figured I'd put it somewhere for safekeeping and it would turn up. Only it wasn't in any of my usual safekeeping spots. Uh oh. End of part 1 of the story.

SIDEBAR: Also around Thanksgiving, Jake's school sent home the forms for their after school enrichment programs. I signed him up for basketball four Thursdays in March, wrote the $20 check, and sent it back to school. They had sent a nice note saying they wouldn't cash any of the checks until the first week in January so as not to tax anyone's funds during the holidays. Nice of them, huh?

Resuming part 1, after a thorough search, I had to confess to my dad that I had somehow lost the check he'd given me for the turkey. Of course he said no big deal, wrote me a new one, which I promptly cashed, and that was that. Like Amelia Earhardt, the Bermuda Triangle and other enduring mysteries, I figured I'd never figure out what had become of that check during the holiday madness. Ahhh, but then it gets better...

First week in January I get a phone call from a volunteer at Jake's school. Thank you very much, she says, we received Jake's registration for basketball and he's all set. Except. . . there wasn't a check for $20 in the envelope. No, there was a $50 check made out to you from a George Sullivan. . . That's my dad. Oh my God. I laughed and laughed and laughed and then I laughed some more. I don't know the woman who called but chances are she won't soon forget my hysterical laughter.

Mystery solved. I am mental. I have NO memory of how this could have happened. It's all a blur. People ask me how I can juggle a full-time job, a demanding writing career, two kids, a house, a husband, etc. The breakdown apparently occurs in the small details of everyday life.

Second example. . . Near disaster at work. . .

This week I discovered a free online software product called Log Me In.com. It allows me to network all three of my computers so I can access any of them from any of the others. This is very exciting for a number of reasons, but mostly because it allows me access to my home computers from my laptop when I'm traveling. It's hard to explain how this will revolutionize my life. Trust me when I tell you it will. Big time.

Okay so yesterday I was testing out my ability to make updates to our website via this new groovy connection. Normally, I use the PC in my basement to make web updates. So I am upstairs on my Mac laptop, logged into the PC and clicking away on updates to my company's home page. To say it's pretty cool to be using a Mac to make updates using a program that is available only for the PC is putting it mildly. It's revolutionary. My friend April, who works with me, agrees, so I am not the only geek in town. Anyway, I digress....

So I make the updates, click on the link to publish and voila. I punch in the URL for my company's website and get THIS.

Just to be clear, I work for an English-speaking company. If you clicked on the link, you will see that I immediately thought I had overwritten my company's home page with what looks to be Chinese. Can you spell total FREAK OUT??? Since our webmaster is in France this week, if I had overwritten, we would have had an even bigger problem than usual. I ran downstairs to the PC, but couldn't do a thing because it was still being controlled by my laptop upstairs. Ran back upstairs, closed down the browser. Ran back to the basement, hands shaking profusely, and republished the page and checked it. Phew. Everything was where it was supposed to be. Came back upstairs, took another look at what I had typed into the browser.

OH.

MY.

GOD.

I left a very important G out of our web address: http://www.agacGfm.org. That is our address. Leave out the G and you get a trip to the Orient. My hands shook for an hour after this incident. After hearing about my self-made near-catastrophe, Dan said G is for GEEK in this case. Suffice to say my excitement over this new software was short lived.

I am losing it. There's no doubt about it!

But hey, at least I'm not John Edwards, right? :-)