You know you're tired when you take the dog medication with your own. Note to self: do not multi-task when you're tired, especially when rationing out medications. It wouldn't be so bad if this wasn't the second time in 6 months I've had to call poison control to advise me on an accidental ingestion. The first time was during the summer when I took a double dose of Malaria prevention medication before returning to Brazil all because I mis-read the directions on the package. Like then, the cheerful person at the poison control call desk assured me that my dog's anti-inflammatory medication would have no ill effect.
Speaking of accidential poisioning... My husband was up late last night paying some bills on-line when he came across our well water test results from last March. Who knows what possessed him to read over them at 11pm, and not say, sometime closer to March 23, when we received them. Well, the poor man came to bed completely shaken and guilt-ridden when he discovered that we apparently had a significantly high amount of arsenic in our well water. I too was horrified to learn we'd been all been ingesting poison for five years! But before turning in he'd spent a couple of hours researching water filters that remove arsenic. Finding a suitable unit, he ordered it. In the morning it occurred to me to take a look over the test results for myself. I read the results as "not detectable." But what do I know? So I called the lab and had this result confirmed. Sure enough, turns out we have really great drinking water - not a bit of arsenic to be found. Perplexed I went through the paperwork once more and found a SAMPLE results form; arsenic was illustrated as very high. Uuummm.... cancelled the filter order in the nick of time. An arsenic water filter was not on my Christmas wish list. Another wild blunder at the Gibbon's house by two people clearly a bit distracted.
My mother always used to say, never try to sew or knit or work on any project actually at bedtime or you'll just end up doing it over or totally ruining it. I got the sewing and knitting part (not by actually listening to her sage advice but the old fashioned way - by ignoring her advice.) Second note to self: add bill paying to the list of things that should not be left to the end of the day. Funny how as the years pass, that list seems to grow and grow. How many times have I thought how nifty it would be to get the bread machine filled and the timer set before bed so that the family could have fresh-baked bread in the morning only to discover that I'd forgotten to add the yeast. A brown brick smelling deceptively like yummy hot, fresh bread is quite a disappointment. Late-night laundry has been recently included on this list. Waking up to a load of pinks in the morning that used to be whites the night before has its drawbacks. (If only I had remembered that I put that red rug in the washer earlier in the day and planned to do a dark load next....) Ah, the mind is a terrible thing to lose.
Laughing at oneself (and with one's spouse) is the only salve that will cool this irritant. It would be easy to land an internal wincing blow with that critical eye under which no error goes undetected. But there really is no end to the episodes of mischief I unwittingly unleash on a daily basis. It seems wiser to share my blunders and laugh a little, or sigh a lot, as the case may be. After all, it is impossible to age gracefully if there's no grace involved.
