Have I lost my mind, along with my keys?

There are markers to indicate that a brain is filled way past capacity and has reached the point of throwing extraneous information out.

Who hasn’t walked into a room driven by purpose only to realize they can’t remember what it was?

I sometimes find myself standing in front of the open refrigerator door, looking for something like a pair of socks or deodorant. (I usually eat something anyway, to save myself a trip later.)

The most obvious symptom of a life that’s out of control is chronic key-losing. Now I’m a fan of organization, and 98% of the time, I leave my keys on the western end of our kitchen island. And I’m not ashamed to mock others who, like my husband, don’t have a designated spot for keys.

Then there’s that other 2% of the time. The places I have found my keys, when they’re not in their special spot, make me shudder.

My favorite way to lose my keys is to throw them in the trash. It’s happened often enough that I start digging as soon as I realize the keys are missing.

I’ve also found them in the garage among the shoes that live in a pile, waiting to be cleaned. The hubby found them there after I enlisted the help of the entire family in my key search.

(On the flip side of key-losing is key-gathering. Sometimes, in my enthusiasm for keeping my keys close, I’ll grab the hubby’s keys and drop them in my purse. That would be his fault for leaving his keys too close to my designated spot.)

Lost keys are a wake-up call to the chronically overloaded, and I shouldn’t have been surprised that the dang things went missing today. Getting three kids out the door, working in the school library, and an afternoon of errands had taxed my brain to its limit by the time the school bus arrived. Getting one child to a study date and another to gymnastics would be my final push for the day.

So, naturally, I couldn’t find my keys. My oldest daughter helped. I even sent her to look in the mailbox, since I had picked up the mail with keys in hand. And they weren’t in the trashcan.

I sent the girls to the van and grabbed a spare key. We’d at least be on time. But I thought of one more place to look—in the bill basket, on top of the fridge, another place my keys like to hide.

Then I remembered. I had put a bottle of water in the freezer to cool off for a few minutes, and I had left the keys in the freezer to help me remember to take the water to gymnastics.

The girls were puzzled when I explained, sheepishly, that I had hidden my keys from myself—on purpose.

They’ll understand someday—when I’m a grandmother.