Dec
1
Thank you for the med-taking suggestions. I think the pillbox/app reminder combo ought to do the trick. Maybe I can even also remember to take, like, a vitamin! I mean while OBVIOUSLY I have an incredibly varied, seasonal, nutrient-rich diet (last night I had seven pieces of Swiss cheese for dinner followed by a spoonful of peanut butter) a little supplementation can’t hurt.
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A TINY STORY ABOUT HUMAN KINDNESS
I was in line at a craft store the other day, one of those Jesusy mega-stores that rhymes with Swabby Knobby, and I was sort of staring off into space and switching my basket from one arm to the other and mentally whistling idly when the couple I was behind suddenly turned around and said, “Oh! We aren’t in line.” That’s when I realized they were just looking at a display, and in fact there was no line whatsoever, and the nearest cashier was quite a ways away. I was just … standing there, creepily close to a couple of strangers, emanating a vaguely impatient vibe like maybe they needed to hurry up and decide already if they wanted the twinkle light mason jar or the novelty chalkboard stickers.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know why I thought there was a wait!” I said, flustered, waving my hands in a weird interpretive-dance manner that I guess was meant to artistically indicate that my behavior couldn’t be helped on account of the spinning seal I have in my skull instead of a brain.
“Well, we just looked like we were in line,” the woman said, reassuringly.
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Dylan got his first Incident Report at school this week, a serious enough offense that his teacher emailed me about it and he had to have a discussion with the principal. Apparently everyone was getting ready at the end of the day and even though it was several minutes before the final bell rang, Dylan and another kid bailed. Just walked out the classroom and left. I’m fairly convinced that he didn’t do it mischievously or even purposefully, I think he saw another kid leaving and he was like, oh, okay, must be time to go home. We did lecture him about not, you know, escaping from school grounds before the teacher has given the okay, and maybe being more aware of context clues such as empty hallways and no one outside and no buses having arrived and and and (I realize this is a pot/kettle situation given the above story), but overall I am kind of enjoying the combo of horror and delight he’s been going through ever since the INCIDENT REPORT. On the one hand, he’s a good kid who never ever gets in trouble at school and that was clearly distressing for him, and on the other, he seems to also be feeling a teeny tiny bit like:
Nov
28
Do you enjoy solving problems? I myself have recently become enamored with the daily jumble and crossword puzzles, like to the point where I get kind of vampire-hissy when someone spills cereal milk on the comics and it bleeds through and now I can’t tell if the clue answer is going to be EMU or ECRU. But anyway I have an actual problem of sorts and I need some smart person to fix it for me, so put your thinking cap on.
I have a medication that needs to be taken with food. There, that’s pretty much the whole problem: because I can’t build in a reminder like “I do this thing right before bed” or “I do this thing when my phone alarm goes off” it’s REALLY hard to remember, and it feels like such a minimal effort on my part — ONE PILL, can I just remember to do this ONE SMALL CAPSULE-SHAPED THING — and it’s frustrating as hell that I keep almost forgetting, day in and day out.
It doesn’t matter when I take it, it just has to go with food, and not, like, a sip of a smoothie or something, it needs to be a chewing-based “standard meal” because … well, I don’t actually know. It’s enzyme activated or something? Look, I don’t make the rules, I just try to follow them, and the food-accompaniment part is what’s tripping me up.
I don’t always eat on the exact same schedule each day so linking it with a point in time doesn’t help. Here are things I have tried:
• I put the bottle on a certain shelf and moved it once I’d taken the dose, so its physical location would prompt me. Then I forgot to look at the shelf.
• I put a little note on the fridge that said “No” on one side and “Yes” on the other, and I would flip it accordingly once I took the pill. Then I stopped seeing the note. Seriously, after a few days it just … didn’t register in my brain. Kind of like if you move into a house with a hideous light fixture and you’re like OH MY GOD I CANNOT LIVE WITH THAT THING ONE MORE DAY and ten years later you’re like, what light fixture?
• I put the bottle right next to my laptop, which is shamefully where I eat the majority of my meals. This only served to belatedly remind me at least an hour after I’d actually eaten, when I’d finally notice it and think: FUCK. Or worse, I’d glance at it and not be able to remember if I’d taken it or not.
So, any ideas? I need a goldfish-brain trick for 1) remembering to take it in the first place (WITH FOOD), and 2) verifying that #1 occurred.
(These are the exciting things you get to worry about in your mid-forties, kids! Don’t touch my goddamned jumble.)
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