I've had it with the dropping thing. Every minute I drop something and it disappears.
I'm getting ready for the day. I write from 8 a.m to 1 p.m. If I don't, my books won't get done. I like routine. So after I rinse my face, slap on the new anti-age Olay crème, put drops in my eyes and take my Walgreen multi-vitamins with iron, I reach for my bottle of Lipitor. I take forty milligrams. The lid won't budge. I hate these friggin' caps on the bottles. What moron thought of these? First of all, they're top heavy, then what's with the 'turn to the right, left, press on the arrow.' Who can see? Some people have cataracts. Don't they get it? Can't they use a normal flip up cap? Dummies. They think if you're over 50, you need locks on your doors and impossible tops on bottles.
Now I'm in a bad mood. I press my thumb hard on the top. The bottle drops from my hand and the friggin' pills fly all over the floor.
I'm on my knees. My hand slides along the bathroom tile, picking up nothing but dust and hairballs. Where are the pills? The bottle? "Damn!" I shout to no one. "I heard you drop, now where are you?"
Time is wasting. I finish blow-drying my hair. Now, the ring. I can't work without wearing my good luck amber and silver ring. But the ring drops. I hear it bounce on the floor. On my knees, my glasses on, I look, but no ring. No lipitor pills or bottle. Nothing but a few paper clips and one red button.
I'm anxious. I'm an anxious person. I don't like to be off my deadline. I like to be on time. Maybe because I have abandonment issues. It's enough that I dropped the TV remote a week ago and that the television has been stuck on CNN all week. Who can see the buttons on this fancy TV that my son-in-law gave me? He's a high-tech boomer genius. He also gave me a robot for Xmas named Harry. He thinks it will keep me company.
I get a flashlight, shining it along the floor.
"They couldn't fly away," I say to my daughter Bonny on the phone.
"Mom," she says in a baby voice, "Maybe you should talk to the doctor -- you've been losing and dropping things a lot lately."
"I do not!"
"You lost your cell phone again. You can't find the remote, and then it was your house keys. Mom -- poor thing. This isn't good.''
"So what are you going to do? Drop me in a nursing home and put a balloon around my wrist?!"
"Don't shout Mom. Don't get excited. That's why you drop things. Focus."
"I do focus."
'"You drop.''
"Dropping isn't a disease.''
"Focus, Mom. Gotta go.''
I look one more time, crawling about the apartment, looking for my dropped keys, glasses, cell phones, credit cards, eyeliners, papers with telephone numbers written on them and all the things that live in some invisible hole. Someday I'll find the hole. Meanwhile. I have to figure out how to turn off CNN.
Barbara Rose Brooker is the author of the bestselling The Viagra Diaries, The new edition of The Viagra Diaries will be published by Simon Schuster in Spring 2013. AUDIO GO PUBLISHERS will publish the new edition early fall 2012. Twelve foreign countries will put publish the new edition in 2013. The sequel will be published in 2013, along with Should I Sleep In His Dead Wife's Bed? HBO bought the rights to The Viagra Diaries for a TV series. She will be performing this November at the SF Commonwealth Club. For updates go to www.Barbararosebrooker.com