Monday, November 14, 2011

Key hunt

I seem to have lost my keys to my office. I seem to have lost them while looking for my glasses. I now have the glasses on my face, but the keys are nowhere. A reminder of the thin line between order and disorder.

I have two sets of keys, one for home, one for work. I was doing a great job of keeping track of them. (Translation: I was only having a couple of moments of panic/day, thinking I'd lost them and scrambling to find them, because I can't remember things like "where I put my keys this morning". THEN we got the new set of keys for the new house.

Chaos I tell you, nothing but chaos since that day.

For about a week I juggled the three sets of keys. It was taking up way too much of my conscious thought, so I finally decided to organize my keys and get myself back to two key rings. I plunked myself down at my desk, and took apart the "home" ring, winnowing the collection (having realized that many of the keys were no longer necessary) and adding the new house keys. The end result was a streamlined and easy-to-use set of keys that lets me into both of my homes. Perfect.

Perfect until 3pm that day, when my stepson's mother called to ask if I was able to get into my house to grab his yoga mat for him. No problem! I ran to my car, drove home, and discovered I had no key on my "home" ring for my apartment. HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?!

I jumped back into the car, ran back up the stairs of the victorian house that I work in, breathlessly grabbed the apartment key off of the office windowsill (where I'd apparently left it, along with the no-longer-needed keys), hustled back into the car, back to my house...the kids and their mom were there at this point, waiting for me in the driveway. I stick the key in the lock...WRONG FUCKING KEY. AGAIN.

I apologize profusely. I go back to work, feeling like a big dummy.

I did finally determine which key, from the windowsill collection, would open the door.

And then I lost my glasses. Which involved having to come to the office to see if they were here (they weren't) and sometime between when I checked the office for the glasses, and this very moment, the work keys went missing. They're not in my bags...they're not in any of my coats...they're not sitting out in the open at my house...they're not here in my office...they are now truly missing.

THIS is when you know that a) you have ADHD and b) you are beyond your capacity to operate even remotely efficiently. When apples start to fall off of the wagon, one by one, normally that's when I realize that just like my keyring, I need to take some items off of my to-do list. The current challenge to that, of course, is that we are in the middle of necessary home improvement so that we can get ourselves moved into the new house by the end of the month. And there's nothing I can do about it.

Argh.

I'm super excited about the move of course, and the house, I'm just not super excited to realize that I can't take anything off my plate right now, which probably means that I'll be spending a great deal of time dealing with ridiculous shit like lost keys, missing glasses, and losing my own ass.

4 comments:

  1. Two key rings would be a disaster waiting to happen for me ;-) Stress is the real issue here, though, and how it melts the ADD brain. I was coming apart at the seams all week, and yesterday had to take a subway, a plane and another subway and I could NOT keep my DC & Boston subway cards sorted out. By the time I got to Logan the T driver had to talk me through the entire ticket-feeding-into machine operation . . . and I have done this a hundred times. I was like a four year old. Delivery dinner & Peapod delivery saved the night. Good luck with the housing transition, and congratulations on seeing an end in sight!

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  2. Ha, well funny you should point out that two key rings is a bad idea. The ONLY reason I have two, is because I have about 15 keys for home and 15 keys for work. There's no way I could have all of those keys on one ring (sadly!).

    DINNER DELIVERY...how much do I love delivery...of just about anything? A LOT. LOTLOTLOT.

    PS I did find the keys - under a bag that I had set dowon on the floor to take to the new house. I forgot to take it to the new house, so there it sat on top of my keys.

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  3. Awesome key-losing-location. And yes, that is way too many keys for anyone to drag around ;-) I thought you'd enjoy knowing that right after I wrote that comment, I locked myself & my two dogs out of the house, panicked, called my husband to make plans to go get his keys, and then remembered I'd taken the house key off and hid it in my bag . . . which I had . . . so, it turned out all was well. From freak out to exhausted in 90 seconds! Keys. Argh!!

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