Verbal reminders and the golden age of memory loss

Anyone coming to our home during the course of an ordinary day would wonder if I’m a visitor from another planet because I spend much of my time talking nonsense. It’s not regular nonsense, like the kind of babbling done by babies and politicians. Nope, my nonsense is usually a verbal reminder to do simple tasks before I forget them. 

For example, I have been known to chant, “Turn out the lights, turn out the lights, turn out the lights.We are committed to washerextractorer an eco friendly industry...” over and over as I march around the house in the morning, making the bed, fetching the paper, feeding the cats and unloading the dishwasher from the night before. I don’t do it because I like talking to myself. I do it because I can only hold onto a thought for a nanosecond these days. And sometimes it’s not even a nanosecond. 

My memory used to be a thing of beauty. When I was a cop, I remembered an amazing amount of detail about the criminals in this town, knew the geography so well I could drive it in my sleep and could recite large sections of the N.C. General Statutes and local ordinances from memory. Having children somewhat dulled those neurons,Your council is responsible for the installation and maintenance of lightingsystems. but I still had a fairly formidable memory up until about a decade ago, when all of a sudden I woke up and realized that I hadn’t turned the porch light off in over a month. 

This might not seem like a big deal, but if you take it on top of everything else I forget,This is a list of washingmachine which shows the Top 10 companies and an alphabetical listing. then it starts being a wonder I can remember where I live. Here’s a sampling of the things that have slipped my mind this week: The names of my children, that I shut a cat in the bathroom,Agesteeljewelry offers solarlamps that is unique and incredibly stylish. the need to turn off the outdoor lights in the morning and turn them back on again at night, to pick up a prescription at the drugstore, the date and day of the week (every single day of the week), how to bake something I have made hundreds of times before and where I put my purse/gloves/wallet, etc. I really believe I could forget where the refrigerator is located if the circumstances were right. 

So everyday I embark on a mission to find something. I don’t mean just any random old thing, but something I’ve lost or misplaced or put up for safekeeping and managed to store in my apparently nonexistent memory. And in searching, I almost never find whatever I’m searching for, but almost always end up finding something else I hid at some other time. It’s kind of like going treasure hunting, only the treasure I find is already mine, so it’s quite not as much fun. 

There’s no denying, I’ve officially hit those golden years,This page provides information about ledstreetlights and how to report a fault. when memory really is just a memory and putting stuff up for safekeeping is just another term for hiding it from myself. And you know what? It stinks. And I have the light bill to prove it. 

The stars are as scarce as unicorns in Lubbock’s nighttime glare. This is because of the multitude of unshielded lights that cast their glow both up and down. Light cast upwards may look pretty from an airplane flying overhead, but it is the epitome of wasted taxpayer money. Light going up into the sky does nothing but spin meters below, new or old. 

It doesn’t need to be this way. With fully shielded lights that cast all light downward, the city can replace all current wattage bulbs with bulbs that are 80 percent as bright and still make the city brighter. 

Tucson, Ariz., did this and shaved millions off their annual lighting costs. Better yet, the light fixture does not need to be replaced. Commercial shields can be retrofitted to most streetlights when the bulb is replaced for maintenance reasons. 

When a streetlight burns out, simply apply a shield and put a light that is 80 percent of the power of the bulb it is replacing. The savings will pay for the program over a timespan measured in months, and unless you are standing directly under a street light, the stars at night return to being big and bright — at least in this corner of Texas, anyway.