Piece Of Mind

Did you know that when you live with your parents, later in life, you actually start to lose large pieces of your mind on a daily basis? It’s not like when you temporarily lose your keys or forget someone’s phone number. Or when you sit in traffic because it was decided that rush hour was a convenient time to pave the road or there’s an accident on the other side of the divider and all the drivers in front of you decide to look and take photos and you think, “there are two hours of my life I’ll never get back.”

No, this is something entirely different. 

When my Dad – who has very limited sight and even more limited acceptance of that fact – insists on pouring his own drink and I then spend my few free moments of the day cleaning up the spills that could have been avoided if he would have just allowed me the privilege of doing it for him in the first place… there goes one piece of your mind. 

Then when my Mom thinks she is saving 15 cents (yes, cents) by using a coupon from one particular store that is miles away from where I’m doing their regular shopping – resulting in my having to spend a half hour more of my valuable time, traveling in the car (not to mention about 10x as much in gas as the coupon is worth) – just so I can buy that item that she didn’t really even need but had a coupon for… there goes another piece of mind. 

And, finally, when I spill some yogurt down the front of my new shirt (because I’m so tired from running around doing errands and fixing things around the house) and I realize I’ve witnessed this same scene before but, instead of me, it was with the very people I’m usually helping clean up after – that’s when it occurs to you that it’s not a piece of mind you’ve lost but your peace of mindfulness!*

*Don’t sweat the small stuff… Listen to your heart… Take time for yourself… Set clear boundaries… Give yourself the gift of forgiveness… Go ahead and vent… Remain calm… Make the best of a bad situation… Don’t take it all so seriously… Treasure the journey… And when all else fails – LAUGH!

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See My Keys?

How many of us, on a daily basis, have lost (oh, okay, misplaced) our keys? It’s by no means the end of the world as we know it. It’s just a case of senior moment-itis. Or is it…?

And it’s not just our keys anymore either. We lose our phones and our wallets, too. But it doesn’t end there. We carry around so much weight (women particularly) because of all the stuff we insist on taking with us in our handbags – just to leave the house:

• Multiple forms of ID
• Breath mints
• Lipstick
• Feminine products 
• Pen and paper (if you’re my Mom and you don’t have a smart phone)
• Coupons (if you’re my Mom and you can’t resist a sale)
• Tissues (if you’re my Mom and you can find multiple uses for them)

Don’t even get me started on the room-to-room surveillance mission. I tell myself each and every time that I needn’t write stuff down because I’m just going to the next room… Then, as I look around (helplessly trying to find a clue as to what I came into that room for), I start taking a mental picture of my surroundings:

• Will something familiar tip me off?
• Will an object just magically appear in front of my eyes?
• Maybe if I retrace my steps it’ll all suddenly become crystal clear? 

I could go on and on and on but I need to go out and run some errands… See my keys?!