mortality, morality and hot tub time machine

I’m beginning to forget chunks of my life, and I’m liking it.

I know I lived on the east coast of the U.S. for five years, but I can no longer recite or recall the various addresses I accumulated while there. I worked in retail. The biggest thing I remember about it is the crappy pay and crappier hours. To me. To me. They were crappy to me. No present or past retail workers who like their jobs were harmed by the writing of that sentence. The kids ask me all the time about my past, and I am happy to report that I can finally give the same answer my mother would give her children: I honestly can’t remember. A lot has happened since then.

Without accurate DNA testing, I can only assume I am more closely matched genetically to my father’s side than my mother’s. Yes, yes, I got equal parts from each of them, but I’m talking genetic disposition or something or other. My paternal grandmother died of Alzheimer’s and I’m convinced I’m right behind her. My mother pshaws this. She says her mother died (of renal failure brought on by old age) with a strong mind because she always had to work for herself. She never had anything handed to her. My mother sees that strength in me and, I suppose, even though she greatly admired my more well-off paternal grandmother, believes that the dementia onset was partly due to her being shopped for and cared for since marrying my paternal grandfather nearly 70 years before her death.

Dunno. I’ve read studies: Sudoko notwithstanding, if it’s coming, it’s coming, and I am my paternal grandmother without the 150 pairs of shoes and navy blue Lincoln Town Car. Smart, ditzy, confused and hurt easily. Loves to fall for the okey-doke. My maternal grandma never once fell for the okey-doke, and neither has my mother. I may be used to fending for myself and finding a way out of no way like my MG, but that is where the similarities end. Well, except for the nightly cocktails. Heh.

How in the world did I start talking about this? It started with how I am embracing my middle age-y memory loss and seems to be ending with predicting how I will die. I’ve spent my free time without the kids watching old and new favorite movies. Q and I had a date night with the fabulously entertaining Hot Tub Time Machine. I rewatched You Can Count On Me with supercrush Mark Ruffalo, There Will Be Blood with my boyfriend Daniel Day-Lewis and The Royal Tenenbaums with lifelong love Gene Hackman. Maybe the themes from three of those films have me exploring my own mortality. And morality. Whatever.

Listening to the silence and perhaps getting around to cleaning the kitchen in comments…