The Nugget Newspaper - News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon

A nightmare for any writer is to not be able to find the right word you're looking for, and I seem to be experiencing that more often lately. I don't even have to be writing to forget my words. I'm in Bi-Mart last week on a mission to find a nine-inch disposable deep-dish pie pan in which to bake a zucchini pie. First of all, they've changed the store all around - much to the consternation of us seniors - so the first thing is to locate the new housewares section.

A cursory look down several aisles doesn't reveal anything resembling pie plates. A sales associate stocking shelves asks if she can help me find something and my mind goes blank. I can visualize exactly what I want, I just can't remember what it's called. I make vague hand gestures as if it has become a game of charades.

"If you can tell me what you want do with it," she laughed, "I can usually figure it out."

She's obviously encountered seniors on the floor before. I managed to convey the pie pan part but next couldn't remember what it was made out of that made it disposable. "Aluminum foil!" she exclaimed. "Yes!" I sighed. Apparently I need a translator with me just to accomplish a simple shopping trip - or is there an app for that?

A couple of weeks ago I was shopping at Food4Less. Stopping at the end of an aisle, I went to look at my shopping list and realized I no longer had my purse. Just as I turned around to retrace my steps, I saw a clerk walking toward me carrying my purse on her way to the manager's office. She had found it in the produce section where I apparently set it down to bag some veggies and walked off without it. I'm going to have to go back to a purse with a shoulder strap so that doesn't happen again.

I tell ya, when you get to be a certain age...

A friend of mine and I had this totally serendipitous moment the other day. I was walking home past Clemens Park and noticed a large black poodle-mix dog sniffing around in the grass, but not a person in sight, and I didn't recognize the dog as being from the neighborhood. I called the dog several times but it wouldn't come to me so I sat down on the curb and talked to him until he finally came over, and then was very friendly. He had the required tags, but no nametag.

Luckily I had my reading glasses with me and was able to make out a phone number that had been scratched onto the back of his vaccination tag. I called the number and a woman answered with "Hello Diane," which at the time I didn't question, and I asked her if she was missing her dog. She said no, that she was shopping in Bi-Mart and her dog was in her car, so I described the dog standing next to me to her. She was half hysterical! How could this even be?

She asked me if I knew whom I was talking to and I said no. Turned out she's a friend and my name came up on her caller ID, which is how she knew it was me calling, but it was so out of context, we were both completely confused. We had this weird moment of cognitive dissonance where neither of us could figure out what the heck just happened.

Needless to say, she rushed over to the park having realized she had driven down the street that parallels Clemens Park and stopped at a house for sale to pick up a flyer. She apparently left the car door open, and the dog slipped out without her noticing. She got back in the car and drove to Bi-Mart, never realizing her dog wasn't in the back of the car.

I'm sure we all have moments when we really wonder if we are losing our minds, maybe even get mad at ourselves for not being able to do things or remember things as well as we used to. I was commiserating on the phone with my ex-husband the other night and I said, "I remember when I used to be able to keep 25 or 30 balls in the air at the same time, now I'm lucky to be able to hold onto one."

I prefer to look at it positively and believe my mature mind resonates at higher frequencies and explores higher dimensions of consciousness ... and if the details of every day life inadvertently slip by me, so be it.