Memory

7:30 am

                I’ve been trying very hard to work on my memory, using the trick I read about in an article by a man who learned to speed memorize a deck of cards (and won some national competition). His trick is to make use of a “memory castle” in which you place images of things representing what you want to remember in various rooms or places in the “castle” which in my case is the house in Weston. I usually only have a few things at a time to remember, so I only use the first couple of locations: the tiny cupboard by the door where the Hood milkman would put our milk, and the cupboard where Dad’s soup and crackers were kept, and sometimes the tiny space up above the place where the wine rack was. I usually try to turn whatever I am trying to remember into something very visual, usually involving a person I know with something or doing something. So, for example, I was introduced to this man named Steve Rice, so I envisioned my cousin Steve eating rice. The trouble is that I can usually remember the person, but I can’t necessarily remember what they were doing. So yesterday I heard an interesting book review. I decided to try to remember the person’s name, rather than just rush to write it down. Her first name is Kelly and I know someone with that last name, so I visualized her, and I had her doing something related to her last name. This morning I could not for the life of me remember what she was doing! I even tried running through the alphabet (a sometimes helpful trick). No luck. So this morning I tried using the computer. I thought I had heard it on Fresh Air, but couldn’t find a reference on line. I did some hunting on the site and finally found it (part of their This You Must Read series) and it was Kelly Link. My friend had been holding links of a chain! Well that obviously was not effective. Too generic I guess, after all, she could be holding anything. So now I am envisioning her standing by a chain link fence. I need to keep working on this technique.

                What did I accomplish yesterday? Not a whole heck of a lot, and another problem with being home is that it is easy to eat a lot! well, at least I ran early in the day. I will run again this morning. Then finish the green stuff (I did quite a bit of it yesterday). Next week a big project will be to fix cages. I have several that need new wire on the bottoms – they are rusted in places, or the wire has broken, or in a few cases, they are hutches and the enclosed parts are wood. Not good. And I need to sanitize a few cages so they are ready for the overflow of growing out babies that will soon hit.

                Here’s another thing I need to remember: to get my friend the book club book. I got two copies of it from the College library, now I need to get one to her. Maybe I’ll stick her in the cupboard reading a book… I’m thinking of going into town later to attend one of the weekly talks at the college Art Museum. I attended one before and though it was on something that didn’t totally interest me (some pre-Columbian art), it was still enjoyable. And so maybe I will combine that with bringing the book. Oh, and she said she would recommend the talk to her Spanish visitors, so maybe they will be there, and I can pass the book off via them. And on top of that, a woman who bought a skein of yarn wants another one. She is at the college and maybe we can connect there at the same time. Very complex. I’ll have to leave here around 10:30 if I want to walk in, which would be a good idea. So if I intend to get any of that other stuff done (run, spin, and deal with skins) I guess I’d better get a move on.

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