Yesterday morning I stopped by the pharmacy to pick up a prescription refill. As the pharmacist was checking me out, I said “I don’t need any of the paperwork and I don’t need a bag.” As I just dump the bag and the paperwork as soon as I get home, it seems a waste. In any other setting, if I just have a few items, I pass on the bag as well. Usually the receipt too. I just don’t need more bags of any kind at my house.
Well, the pharmacist put the prescription right into a little bag, although she didn’t print out all the paperwork about the drug. Probably 25% of the time, even though I have said no bag, I get a bag anyway. It is so automatic. I didn’t make a fuss… what good would come of it … just dropped the bag into the trash on the way out of the store. But I was thinking about how many things we all do almost automatically.
Then YA and I took a big shopping trip to Target. We had a couple of non-food items that we looked for first, so ended up at the END of the food area (dairy) first, instead of the beginning (produce). Even though I’ve shopped here many times and we had a list, it was extremely disconcerting to be going “backwards”. We ended up backtracking at least 3 times when we realized we had missed something. I’m guessing that I would have this reaction in any grocery store that I’ve shopped at repeatedly. I didn’t intend to internalize a direction when I shop for groceries, but clearly I have. Part of me thinks that I should do something about this; how dare the grocery industry mess with my mind. Another part of me thinks it’s probably too late!
Anything you do without much thinking?
Trail Baboon 
Lots of mistakes
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On several occasions since July I have been lost in thought while I drive to work, and I turned right instead of left at the end of the block, heading to my old workplace instead of the new building. I turned right for 22 years, and it is a hard habit to break.
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If a horse is used to pulling a wagon along a route over and over, and if you then change the route, the horse resists for a moment, sometimes looks back at you before making the turn you want. I think cars are like that. I blame the car when that happens to me.
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Yes, Honda vans are notoriously stubborn and single minded.
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As are Ford Escapes.
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Getting ready in the morning. While I generally manage to get clothes on each day, I have sometimes found myself part way through the morning realizing I didn’t take my allergy pill or wondering if I flushed the toilet. More than once I have stepped out of the shower realizing that I intended to wash my hair and didn’t. The mornings when the dogs need things out of order really throws me off – VE’s equivalent of shopping the store backwards.
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i am so looking forward to doing it all different the end is in sight
my warehouse is a bunch of loose stuff i need to tuck into corners and be done with
an organ two pianos etc make it challenging but heck i’m up for that
i have a hard time plugging into a script. i try to remember to go on autopilot but it’s really a matter of remembering how to redo it again. i realized i see the world from a birds eye view and see the store from a sky view not front to back. my brain walks in the door and hovers above the racking to locate chips dairy and veggies rather than normal means
my tea and dog/cat/fish feeding to start my day are redos of yesterday’s routine and has been honed to efficiency
i’m always doing 3 things at once and maybe that’s my problem, always shuffling rather than marching
i throw my bags in the wastebasket at walgreens too. they have reduced me from multiple bags down to one so i guess that’s something
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Twice a week I participate in our online t’ai chi class, which has meant that I’ve not lost most of what I’d learned up to March 2020. No mater where I’m doing it, I try to stay focused, but will often get to the end and think – did we do the kicks section? I’ve zoned out, gone and made my grocery list or whatever, and done that part on auto-pilot.
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I remember when I worked at the bookstore decades ago, it was almost impossible to break that habit of bagging every purchase. If the customer said they didn’t want a bag at the moment I was about to reach for the bag, that would usually work. But if they gave the instruction early on, it was pretty much inevitable that by the time I’d taken the money and given them change or ran the credit card through the machine, it would slip my mind and I’d revert to habit. Tear the receipt off, put it on top of the book, bag it.
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Must be the same principle at work when in pre-pandemic times a waitress would ask: “sugar and cream?” in response to an order of a cup of coffee. Nine times out of ten, she’d bring both sugar and cream along with the coffee despite me having answered “no, thanks” to the question.
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At my local butcher shop I’m known as the “no bag lady” because I always tell them I don’t want a bag.
Maybe I’m just a creature of habit, but I actually like that the places I shop keep items in the same place from week to week so I don’t have to go hunting all over for them. When shopping at Aldi, for instance, I make my shopping list by writing down the items I need in the order I encounter them when I enter the store. Dark chocolate, then bread, fruits and vegetables, dairy, and so on. The last thing on my list are the weekly “Aldi finds” which can be in any number of places, and which, depending on the individual store, they may or may not carry. I get a weekly email from them that tells me what the weekly specials are. It also allows me to create a shopping list that I can send directly to my phone, pretty efficient and painless.
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HI- Driving is a common one; If I’m doing something different I have to pay extra attention at the first intersection or I’ll automatically go left, not right.
Muscle memory can be pretty fascinating. In the tractors, I get used to reaching here to shift. Then get in the other tractor and I’m still reaching out into space for a lever that isn’t there in this tractor.
For several years, the fan and light switch in the bedroom was in and to the right. We moved it to just inside the door on the right a year ago. I still sometimes come in and go in and to the right and there’s nothing there…
A few times I’ve gone to where the silverwear drawer was 15 years ago…
This spring I got new tool boxes in teh shop and reorganized a lot of hand tools. I still haven’t learned where 3/4’s of them are; I have to open every drawer. When it warms up next spring I’m going to add labels… (because it’s an unheated shop and everything is cold in there.)
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Yes, moving things to a new location is a sure recipe for disaster.
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There is always some degree of scavenger hunting at my Cub. Bounce things around to some degree about every 2 weeks. Here is one: go into a new store you do not know and find rice cakes. They can be in so many places. Even our two Cubs here do not agree on which section to place them in.
OT my son’s tumor was cancerous but she got it all. She is very upbeat about how it all went and the results. And remember, it was found by accident. He has been with his ex-wife for 5 days, about as long as she can be around him and not want to kill him. But so nice for her to nurse him. And his son and her boyfriend. He and Boyfriend are good friends, and wonderful for him to have son nursing him, but he is gaining back strength very rapidly. So going home today. The boyfriend is a chef and cooked perfect meals for my son.
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That’s a really great outcome.
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BTW maybe it’s because I make so many small purchases, but clerks very often ask me if I want a bag, meaning I don’t need one. I often wear a vest of many pockets so I can put purchases in the pockets if it would need a bag.
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I never managed to reply today—my day did not go as planned. I was busy getting a shingles vaccine, going to the office to water plants, cooking. All weekend, the days just seem to melt away.
The office closed this week, but I stopped going in last week due to the COVID spread. I have a hard time not making my lunch to take with me. All last week, and today I found myself grabbing the lunch bag, getting ready to pack it up when I remember that I don’t need it—I will be working from home.
Better late than never today.
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