I was in the kitchen last night. Just ate supper and was cleaning up.

Dinner wasn't fancy. Paper plates sufficed for nuked processed foods along with organic green beans and red potatoes and a green salad augmented by carrots, onions, and nuts.

Clean up required putting a few items into the compost pail, utensils into the dishwasher, and leftovers into the refrigerator. Hands full, I followed a clockwise racetrack and thought ahead to what was next to be done this evening. Finish reading "To Say Nothing Of the Dog"? Start reading"The Citizens of London"? Write a short story messing around in my head or continue working on "True Being"? Or watch the Monday Night Football game?

I got my hand moving toward the trash can. In it was the silverware. Within a few seconds, I realized the leftovers were in the compost bucket.

I laughed about it, retraced and recovered, but I wondered, was that a memory lapse or a brain short circuit? When I go into another room and can't remember why I was there, only to return to my origin and remember, "That's right, I have to pee," I figure it's a memory issue. This, though, seemed different.

I googled memory to learn more. Should Google in this context be capitalized, "I Googled it," or lower case, as I typed. I'll need to google it to see.

Google returned 10 google results in .15 seconds. The first page was all about upgrading my computer's memory or diagnosing my computer's memory problems. None of them addressed human memory issues. No one offered to sell me additional memory for my brain for the lowest price on the web, with free delivery.

On a whim, I googled memory again just now. The results are different. I suspect Google has used my previous web pages and cookies to figure out what I really want. Still, the first entries remain, "Upgrade your computer's memory."Wikipedia now has an entry, beginning with a definition of memory in psychology. I'll keep the pages open and read them later. Meanwhile, I'm amused by my mind's tricks to help me remember things.

I change passwords every 90 days. If you ask me a password, I can't remember it but my fingers can, especially if I don't think about it and I can't see what's being typed. I use sentences to create passwords by using the first letter of each word in the sentence. I want 8 word sentences since most of my apps require 8 characters. An example would be, "Negative Energy's true name is Duane Robinson." Only seven letters so I'll add a '1' at the end:  N E T N I D R 1. Next I'll alternate lower and upper cases:  N e  T n I d R 1. Now the letter i is changed to a 1 and the letter e is changed to a 3:  N3Tn1dR1. Some apps require a special character to be used and have lists of what are and are not acceptable so the last character is sometimes an exclamation point. I will use the sentence and patterns to learn the password. Then my brain will forget it but my fingers will remember.

It's the same with ordering coffee at Starbucks. I can order a Double Tall, Non-fat, no whip mocha at Starbucks without taking a breath. Other places don't use those terms and I sometimes need to order a sixteen ounce (sometimes also called a medium) two shot, non-fat, no whip mocha. The Beanery barristas at my favorite coffee shop know my drink. New staff learn it easily. It's a 12 ounce double shot skinny Mexican mocha in my own mug. I dubbed it the Speedy Gonzales after the cartoon mouse, and the barristas remember. A new one said she remembers everything except the 'skinny' part so I changed the name to a 'Skinny Gonzales'. That works. Sometimes, though, when someone new serves me, I fall back to the Starbucks order and then have to think back through the order and translate it.

Of course, driving is the worse. I don't drive often any longer because I wake a great deal, and my brain remembers my usual routes. It's no problem if I'm by myself but if someone is with me and I'm listening to them or talking, the brain takes over driving duties and we head down the normal routes.

I don't remember where I was going with this so I guess that's it. Once I save and post it, it'll probably come back and look for revisions.