Houston, we have a problem!

I am someone who is extremely organized.  I usually have two or three lists "circulating" in my head at any given time and often, I am adding to one list, while crossing stuff off of another. Multitasking at its best! Somewhere in my mind is a virtual file cabinet overflowing with appointments, dates, phone numbers, social security numbers, passwords, birthdays, anniversaries, logs of past conversations, thousands of "read" emails, historical references and so on and so on. In the past, I never had a problem remembering anything.  My keen memory has always been something I have taken great pride in.  That, and my ability to be meticulously organized and detail oriented. The "virtual" lists I juggle in my head daily, are a major contributor to that organization. I would often pen a hard copy of these lists to paper "just in case" my brain failed me; which until recently, it had never done.

One of the things I noticed about getting older was that my sharp as a tack memory is not so sharp as a tack anymore nor does it multitask as easily as it used to.  In fact, I liken my mind to that of a computer whose hard drive has been corrupted.  The information was there but now, whenever I try to access it, my brain just spins aimlessly, stopping every so often to try and retrieve the information, but coming up empty handed.  My computer recently suffered a similar fate but I was able to fix it quite easily.  I simply hit CTRL F11 on start up and wiped the drive clean. My computer is now running faster than ever; almost as good as the first day I got it. It accesses and retrieves information effortlessly, all while running several different applications at a time. I wish there was an option to do this to my brain.  How cool would it be if I could simply press a button and defrag my mind, deleting all of the useless and corrupt files to make room for the relevant stuff in my life.

Unfortunately said button does not exist, so back to the real issue at hand.  For the first time in my life, I can't come up with a "list" for this trip.  I have no "what to bring list", no "what needs to get done before I leave list", no excel spreadsheet in my head listing the daily allowable expenditures for food and the like, no "what we are going to do while we are there list", etc. etc. I am at a loss without my lists and to not have one for this particular trip is especially discombobulating. Every time I try to access the list, my brain sends out a password denied signal and I am refused entry.  Either my brain is telling me to just wing it for once in my life, or it has decided that this is just too complex of an adventure for me to undertake, and has decided to protest by limiting my access to the list hoping that I will abandon said adventure.

Let's just hope that the list appears soon, or I have this sinking feeling we're going to end up in New York with just the clothes on our back, and a couple of toothbrushes in my pocketbook.  Now THAT would be a real adventure.  :o-)