Sometimes I Drive Myself Crazy

I post, below, another composite of The Wee Bonny Smudge just to make a point. You see sometimes I drive myself crazy.



You see, that collage represents the lost fifth month. What I had previously been calling her fifth month was really her sixth ... and so on. Can someone please tell me how someone who can and does make these composites not be able to count to five?

Careless errors. They are my bane. I still remember taking a math test in high school, you know where they start you out with easy questions like 5²= ? It's a gimme and the answer is 25. I knew that but wrote 10 because I carelessly said to myself 5x2 rather that 5x5. Grrr.

These days, I check a recipe, list the ingredients, go shopping for said ingredients, and upon returning home almost invariably find that I neglected to list something. Recently, I plumbed new depths when I forgot to list manicotti from a manicotti recipe. Oh, I got the garlic, chicken, cream cheese, parmesan and what have you, but I came home sans lasagna. It's at times like that that I'm afraid abuse the Queen's English and wish to dislocate my very own jaw with my very own fist.

I could go on and on. I have been playing Sudoku on my new Nintendo DS. I truly get the logic and can do an almost-intermediate puzzle in about 20 minutes. That's not a record, I know, but I'm just saying ... However, on most efforts the &*^% machine usually clocks me at 40 to 60 minutes because it penalizes me 20 minutes for every careless error that I make on the way. I'll see that a 2 must go in this box, but I will have a brain cramp and put it in the adjacent slot, or I'll enter a 4 rather than a 2 or whatever.

It drives me crazy, I tell ya. I drive me crazy. But at the age of 60 I know it's not going to get better. In fact it's going to get nurse (oops, careless error — I meant to say worse).