One of the biggest problems I find I'm facing lately, as a person beyond a certain age and also as a person who seriously doesn't get enough sleep, is finding the right words to speak or write. This may seem like no big deal to some people. It happens. You say 'dishwasher' when you mean 'washing machine' or you call your kid by your dog's name. You find yourself staring into space in the middle of a conversation, completely at a loss as to how to finish a sentence, because you can't remember how you started it.
Most of the time, for many people, this isn't really an issue. Both the dishwasher and the washing machine use water to clean stuff, and sometimes if you're lucky, the person or persons you live with will switch the words in their heads too, corresponding with your mistake, so you don't find you've put the Lenox wine goblets through a heavy duty spin cycle. And screwing up the kid's name with the dog's isn't so bad -- you can tell the kid you love the dog just like you love them and they (nine times out of, say, thirteen) get over it. The dog, honestly, doesn't care what you call her as long as you're still feeding her and letting her out on a regular basis.
This is an especially big problem for me, however, since words are my job. I have to know their proper use and forms, spelling, definitions, and sometimes even their origins -- and I have to be able to retrieve them from the multitudinous file cabinets in my brain with relative ease and speed, since time is money. (No, really. I generally get paid by the hour so there's no slow-poking when I'm on the clock, and yes, that's why I sound grumpy when you call me to chat during work hours. You know who you are.) The problem I seem to be facing lately is that some of the drawers on some of the file cabinets are getting a bit stuck.
So, hoping to remedy this situation, I have decided to do three things:
1) Ingest more fish oil. I understand fish oil is the WD-40 of the brain, and hope this might loosen some of those rusty spots. I promise to avoid breathing on anyone without carefully brushing and flossing first, however, since I hear fish oil has a few unattractive side effects. Look, do you want me smart or do you just want to kiss me all the time?
2) Sleep better. That may sound grammatically incorrect, but I meant it exactly the way I said it. The truth is I spend a lot of time on the couch -- it is the best horizontal cushioned surface in our house, and napping is freaking awesome. However, napping for two hours at night, working for two, then napping for two, then working for two, then slipping into bed hoping the BHE* won't notice I haven't been there until forty-five minutes before I have to get up to get my daughter ready for school is really not the best way to experience restorative REMs. Also I hear I look a little like the Wild Woman of Borneo and have frightened my neighbors when I come out in the morning for the newspaper after a couple of nights of that. I am going to go to bed at a reasonable hour and stay there and sleep -- um, just not tonight. I have to get this blog out first.
3) Rely more frequently on external reference sources, such as dictionaries, thesauruses (thesaurisi? See? I'm going to have to go look that up now), and various grammatical and structural style guides. In truth I've always done this, but now I'm just going to have to do it more often. I have already gradually increased this practice, and guess what? I'm actually learning new stuff and re-learning stuff I'd forgotten! And I love to learn stuff, so it's okay. I can swallow my editorial pride for the greater good, that being learning and continuing to do what I love -- defending the English language. Semi-colons especially.
I don't know if all of this will fend off the inevitable -- I hear as we age it becomes more and more difficult to retrieve details and vocabulary and short-term memory -- but I'm going to give it my best shot. I would hate to have to re-name the kid and only use paper cups.
*BHE= Best Husband Ever, copyright 2012 Various Milliner, Ltd., an extremely small publishing services firm based in the northeastern United States. All rights reserved.
