What brings this to mind is the fact that we cannot find our phones. Yes, we are one of the last families to still have a land line, which I actually prefer using to my cell phone, if you can believe it. The problem is that we can never find the handsets. There were originally 4 plus the main phone slash answering machine. When I picked out this phone, I very wisely (if I do say so myself) got one that actually has a corded phone attached to the answering machine, so we always have at least one phone we can find. Due to circumstances beyond my control (aka someone else's tantrum), we lost one of the handsets a while back. But we don't have a big house and the remaining 3 should be sufficient for us to always have one nearby to use. Oh foolish thinking! I actually found all three the other day and placed them in the bases. I was pretty darn excited, too, let me tell you. I think they lasted there a day - I came home from work today and could find NONE! Eventually we came up with one, but for the life of me I cannot locate the other 2. THIS MAKES ME CRAZY. Why is it so hard to put the phone back when you are done talking on it? Beats me. And not only that, the handsets have not been left in plain sight. I literally spent over an hour looking and did not find even one of the missing ones. Now there's an hour lost I'll never get back. Aubrey promised she'll look tomorrow - a good job for her to do on day 2 at home.
But the phones alone are not enough to cause my dementia. We don't have a lot of rules in our house (yes, Richard, we do have rules), but there are some that we have that we really don't think are that hard to live with. Use the towel to dry your hands and hang it back up....use the toilet, put the lid back down when you're done, have food garbage, put it down the disposal, do not pile things up on the piano (all right, it's a keyboard, but I like to call it a piano, sue me!).....not so hard, right? I mean, yes, we have some rules that even I struggle with (I'm sorry, but that half wall just begs for stuff to be piled up on it!), but overall wouldn't you say that the above rules don't seem like they'd be that difficult to follow? I finally decided this evening that maybe the reason Aubrey doesn't follow them is that no one ever taught her how to do these things. So, I called her in and walked her from room to room, explaining the rule and showing her how to do it. See? This is a towel and this is a towel ring, you put the towel through here.......needless to say, she was not appreciative of these lessons. I got a LOT of rolling eyes.....does that count as exercise?
I finally occurred to me that maybe it's a disability of some sort....I believe that Aubrey is either prepositionally or directionally challenged. It's tasks and rules with prepositions or directions that she can't do - hang the towel UP, put the lid DOWN, put the food scraps IN...see where I'm heading with this? I'm convinced this could be a whole new area to be researched, and I plan to start looking into government grants...this HAS to be good for at least six figures, I'm thinking. Please let me know if you have anyone qualified to be a test subject for the study, I'm sure I'll need more than just my family. Now, if only I had passed statistics in college. No, wait, I did.........
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