Lost and Found

They've taken almost all the blue streetside mailboxes out of our neighborhood, so now I have to either mail things at the post office, or occasionally I put things out on my mailbox, and the carrier picks them up and puts them in the mail. Today I had a couple of things to mail. I put address stickers and stamps on them... and then, I took my eyes off the prize for just a moment. I put something in my purse, moved something on the table from one stack to another... and poof, they were gone.

I retraced my steps a dozen times, I looked through every stack, I looked under things, I even looked in all kinds of places I knew they could not be, and I couldn't find them. I decided to give it up; sometimes these things suddenly reappear, they materialize in some ridiculous place where you know you've looked, and I hoped that would happen. Hours pass, the mailman comes and goes and I've missed my chance to get them in today's mail. But they do not reappear.

And after lunch, I did some dishes and threw a few things out. A tiny, dim bulb flickered above my feeble brain. I opened the trash can, moved a couple things... and yes, there were my letters. Somehow in my to-ing and fro-ing, I'd thrown a few things away and the letters must have been in my hand at the time.

Even though I'm officially through with chemo, I'm pretty sure I get to use "chemo-brain" as an excuse for at least another 6 months. But then what? Peri-senility?