I had planned to go bouldering with my daughter so I ate a lighter-than-usual breakfast so I would be lighter than usual while climbing, so by the time I got into town I was hungry and went into a bakery and as I stood there waiting my turn and deciding whether to get a slice of pizza or a sausage baked into what looks like a croissant* I felt for my wallet and it was missing.
I started patting all my pockets and realized i was blocking traffic so I went outside and did a more thorough search of myself – suit jacket, pants, and winter coat and although the spare notebook, crow snacks, various receipts and two random small candles were present and accounted for, because they live in my coat, everything else was missing – wallet, card holder, pens, various ID cards, spare elastic hair thing, cleaning rag for spectacles (the small one), emergency USB stick, spare lighter (in case I need to light a candle or, should the apocalypse or final uprising occur while I am out and about, a camp fire or a barricade).
Pickpocket OMG! I thought, before dismissing that theory on the basis of no pickpocket is that thorough.
What that leaves is I am a moron as usual.
That reminds me my wife is doing genealogical research and noticed a question on one old census, “Are there any idiots or lunatics in your household?”.
She did not tell me how my ancestors answered that but I know how I would.
But interesting, how those words used to be, like, scientific expressions.
I knew at once why I forgot everything (barring OCD pickpockets) – I had short-circuited my morning routine. After breakfast I was upset because my wife said, “you realize you are not telling me this for the first time” as I explained that black rye is not a different sort of rye but simply a more roughly-milled rye flour (something I explain every time I bake rye bread and someone compliments it and I say, oh, you think so? well I used some black rye flour) and I went upstairs to get dressed and my mind was busy thinking about how dumping information is a love language and time to put my pajamas into the clothes hamper and I did that and got dressed and put my phone into my pocket and went downstairs because my brain read “pajamas in hamper and phone in pocket” as “putting things away/into pockets” with the result that it did not feel weird to go directly downstairs instead of – as usual – standing by my nightstand and putting everything into my pockets (wallet, cards, hair thing, lighter, USB stick, pens, glasses cloth, IDs, etc).
Putting on shoes, I even had a hunch – some distant clump of synapses trying to warn me – that I might be forgetting something so I checked if I had crow feed (yes) and a face mask (no! good thing I checked!).
Anyway. Morning routine. Very important.
__________
*by this i of course mean “whether to purchase a slice of pizza, or a sausage baked into a croissant,” and not “whether to have the baker bake into a croissant one of two things – a slice of pizza or a sausage.”