I know I’m getting old. All the tell tale signs are there.  Things crack loudly when I get up. When I climb stairs some strange groaning sound uncontrollably escapes my lips.  It’s a constant battle to keep the gray hair under control and I have old lady liver spots on my hands.   Why are they called liver spots anyway? Does this mean I have to worry about my liver now?   My pill box can’t hold another pill.  Soon I’ll have to get one of those pill boxes that is the size of an iPad.  In addition to morning, noon, and night it has openings that say “after taking Metamucil” and “before you watch Murder She Wrote.”  It’s getting bad I tell you.  I wake up before the sun and can’t go back to sleep and then I’m ready for bed again at 7:00 p.m. I forget things if I don’t write them down.  For a while now I don’t always find the exact word I’m looking for.  For instance the other day I said “I need to put a new light bulb in the sink.  The old one is burnt out.” On my bad days I’ll declare to the children “I’m almost ready for the home.”

Painting a sexy picture right?  Usually I deal well with all this stuff and being the realist that I am, I know that aging is a part of life.  If getting older is the trade off for having grandchildren I’m ok with it. But the other day I did something so stupid that the only thing I can think to blame it on is my shrinking aged brain.

I was making dinner and as I usually do I threw on an apron because I was too lazy to go upstairs and change out of my work clothes.  When hubby got home from work he came in the kitchen and joined me and we cooked and chatted, talked about our day, our usual routine.  I had my cell phone close by as I usually do and I showed him some pictures I had taken earlier that day of my son and grandson together.  A little while later I realized I couldn’t find my phone. I took a quick look around the kitchen and didn’t see it.  I knew I had not left the kitchen/diningroom area so it had to be there.  Soon my husband joined me and we looked in every drawer, cabinet, pantry, nook and cranny of the kitchen. That phone was nowhere to be found.  My husband started sending me text messages to see if we could hear the notification but I told him I had possibly left it on vibrate. We tried calling but didn’t hear anything.  By this time my son Alex had joined the search.  We decided that maybe I had accidently dropped it in to the kitchen garbage can so I got a trash bag and piece by piece I emptied out the full kitchen trash can.  No phone.  That’s when the conversation turned to something like this:

Husband: When did you have it last?

Me: Before dinner

Husband: What were you doing with it?

Me: Showing you a picture

Husband: Then what did you do with it?

Me: I have absolutely no idea. 

Husband: You can’t remember what you did with it after that?

Me: My mind is a complete blank.

Husband: You did not leave this room.  It has to be here.

Me: It’s gone forever. I’m sad.

Husband: This is like the twilight zone.

Son: How much is the reward?

We decided to be really super quiet and call it again.  Well what do you know?  We could hear a faint ringing that sounded like it was coming from the living room. Like some slapstick comedy we all ran to the livingroom and called it again.  Nothing.  “Hey guys, I didn’t go in the livingroom.”   Back to the kitchen we flew.  We called it yet again. We could hear it ringing ever so slightly but could not figure out where it was coming from. We started playing that old children’s game “you’re getting hot, hotter,now cold, now hot again” as we tried to figure out where the ringing was coming from.  My husband put his finger to his lip and shushed us as he opened the pantry door and announced “Honey, your apron is ringing.”

I have absolutely no memory of putting it in my apron pocket.  We had to have spent close to an hour looking for it. And what’s really bad is I looked at and saw 18 missed calls and for a split second thought “oh my gosh! Someone really wants to talk to me.”

So I need to invent something like Life Alert or the Clapper for cell phones. Cool idea right?  If you lose it you just clap loudly three times and your phone emits a loud signal so you can find it.  Think about all the ways that could be used -remote controls, glasses, car keys, the cat.

 I’ll get right on that…soon as I’m done cutting all the pockets off my aprons.