I'm losing whatever was left of my mind

Well, it's Day 10 of the weight loss plan, and I'm down a whole 4 pounds. Not bad, except that 3 of those appeared after I'd started exercising. So, net, down just 1. Weight loss has never been easy for me; I've had to fight tooth and nail for every pound, which is part of the reason why regaining those 20-plus pounds earlier this year was such a blow to my ego. But this time I really want to get them off and keep them off long-term. At 50, it's long past time when I should have seriously started looking out for my health, and I'm feeling the effects of not having done much on that front. Weight issues aside, my cholesterol levels and blood sugar and blood pressure (most days) are fine - in fact, my "good" cholesterol is at a high enough level I've had my doc comment that she wishes her readings were that good. But the extra pounds have taken their toll on my hips and knees, and my feet are just damn near flat these days. There's nothing I can do about any of that at this point. I just hope to keep additional joint failure to a minimum.

What I have no way of knowing is what toll has been taken on my cognitive health. Is there plaque build-up in my cerebral arteries? Are my brain cells really getting enough oxygen? Or is it just that, at 50, cognitive mental processes start to slide and there's not a damn thing I could have done differently to change that?

You see, what makes me wonder is that I've been noticing more and more that I'm forgetting things. My doc tells me not to worry, but I can't help it: There's Alzheimer's in the family. Well, not a definitive diagnosis of Alzheimer's per se, maybe more just what used to be called senile dementia, but it comes through my father's side of the family. Grandma was off in an alternate reality long before she died, and Dad's showing signs of going down the same road. So it scares me. I lose the word I'm looking for, I lose track of where I set things down, I walk through doorways and forget what I was going after. Okay, maybe that last one isn't anything new - that started shortly after I'd had our first child, and it hasn't gotten better in the intervening years. Back then I could attribute it to new-baby sleep deprivation - which begs the question, does sleep deprivation have lasting long-term effects, or am I just grasping at straws?

Today, for instance, I spent a good chunk of the morning excavating my desk. It needed it - badly. Organized I am not. My filing system tends to resemble nothing so much as an archaeological dig: I look for things by pile and stratum.

Stratum, from wikipedia:

"In geology and related fields, a stratum (plural: strata) is a layer of rock or soil with internally consistent characteristics that distinguish it from other layers. Each layer is generally one of a number of parallel layers that lie one upon another, laid down by natural forces.. They may extend over hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of the Earth's surface."

Yep, that's my desk in a nutshell. The "natural forces" in this case being my lazy-assed self. There's usually a stack of mail I need to deal with, a stack of Dad's bills and papers I haven't paid/filed yet, a stack of Squidboy's bank statements and mail, a stack of recipes I need to file . . . you get the idea. And it works for me. Most of the time, at least. If I wait too long to deal with the piles, everything kind of slides around and gets intermixed, and that's when trouble starts.

See, I knew I'd seen the bill for Dad's VA insurance recently, but couldn't find it. I tore through every pile on the desk and all I could find was the notice from the VA that the bill would be coming, but not the bill itself. The notice came back in late September and was still readily findable. The bill? Uh-uh. It wasn't in Dad's pile, Squidboy's pile, my pile, or the recipe pile. (BTW, just so you know, the household bills never even make it to my desk. Athos has charge of them - and for good reason, as you might imagine! LOL)

I called Dad to see if maybe he still had the bill; some few mailings still go to his old address and get forwarded to the new, and then he forwards them to me. Changing the address for the VA is going to require signatures from him and a copy of the power-of-attorney, and until late September I didn't even know I was going to have to deal with them at all on insurance. I was going to take care of that (and one or two other address changes also requiring paperwork and signatures instead of phone calls) when I drove down there a month or so back, but the trip got postponed and postponed again, and now I'm going in mid-January . . . weather and road conditions permitting.

So where was I? Oh, yeah. He didn't have the bill either. Panic ensued. I started tearing through auxiliary "filing stacks". No luck. I even called a good friend who visits Dad fairly frequently to see if he'd look through Dad's accumulated mail for it when he was there next. Dad's doing fairly well mentally most days, but when he asked three or four times what it was I was wanting him to look for, I started to worry that maybe he had it but just didn't recognize it for what it was.

And then I stopped . . . took a breath . . . and looked in the checkbook. Just in case, y' know? I couldn't find the damned bill because I'd already paid it. And not that long ago, either. Oy.

You see why I worry about my memory?

Pardon me while I bang my head against the wall for awhile....

At least my desktop is cleaner now. The accumulation of "Congratulations, you're pre-approved for our credit card!" junk mail has been shredded, the new credit cards for an account we almost never use have made a reappearance (which is why we hadn't even realized they were missing), the last few months' worth of bank statements are ready to be properly filed in the notebook as soon as I locate the hole punch, and I found the 2011-2012 planner that went MIA right after I bought it in October. I even found a missing prescription that I'd refilled a few days ago, one that came into the house with several Xmas-shopping bags - and promptly vanished in the chaos. If I keep going, I might actually have everything ready to do our taxes as soon as the year-end paperwork comes through next month, instead of the going through the usual oh-crap-where-did-I-put-that-file?!? routine that usually happens along about mid-March.

Or not. If I ever got that organized, the universe would probably come to a screeching halt, and I don't know if I want that on my conscience!