Fritzi

I just found a note that I had written to myself in my desk drawer.  It’s scrawled on a post-it in my own hand but it’s what it says that scares me.  Written in familiar black sharpie are the simple but inexplicably odd words:  Unplug Fritzi. 

Fritzi is my cat.  Why on earth why was she plugged in?  How was she plugged in?  When I last gave her an affectionate chin-scratching, there was no evidence of electrical cords, chargers or power ports.  And, perhaps, most unsettling is the question of why I would want to unplug her? 

I called Seth.  He had no idea why anyone would want to unplug Fritzi, either.  But, he’d managed to find his way to work this morning and that, in itself--judging by his own levels of scattered thinking--is a triumph.  We agreed to pursue the matter of Fritzi and her connection to the power grid later.

My memory is not what it once was.  Those of you who have seen me standing in the middle of a shopping aisle, eyes narrowed, turning slowly in a full circle should know that I am simply trying to remember what it was I came for.  Write a list, you say? I did but it’s on the kitchen table.  I have always been forgetful.  Though the situation has--lately--been aggravated by the newly mis-firing synapses of advancing age, I was a forgetful younger person as well. 

I have purchased the usual paraphernalia.   Dry erase boards, magnetically attached to the fridge, provide suspicious code that I cannot interpret just a few hours after scrawling it. I watch colorful post-its drift to the floor, their adhesive exhausted by the sheer number of days they’ve been expected to cling to the computer monitor--the chicken scratch upon them meaningless and indecipherable.   I email myself important dates and switch my wedding ring from my left hand to my right to jog my memory.  These methods are reasonably effective but still find me coming up short.

Like the truly senile, however, I can rocket back in crystal clarity to the spring day that Mrs. Price brought in a chartreuse caterpillar on a leaf in kindergarten or the color (and taste) of the orange icing on a cake my mother baked when I was barely tall enough to reach the bowl on the counter. 

I have read that memory issues might be related to hormonal fluctuations but I can’t remember where I read that. If anyone has any ideas about why Fritzi may have been plugged in, please let me know.