Even though I fit so readily into the category of the absentminded professor, when I forget things outside of a classroom environment, I get frustrated with myself. Because I am retired and have much more time to organize my life, I get more frustrated when I screw up. Sometimes I'm extra hard on myself, unleashing a barrage of curses. At other times, I just groan and chuckle at my ineptitude. Today, my being oblivious to what I was supposed to do struck me as grossly amusing. I had four things to do, within a mile radius. A cinch, eh? At the jewelry store, I was to pick up my repaired watch and have my wife's necklace untangled; I needed to get gas for my wife's car; and I wanted to get an anniversary card for my wife at CVS. Well, as Shakespeare used to say, "the course of true love never did run smooth." After paying for my watch repair, I said goodbye to the salesclerk. As I was leaving, she reminded me that I needed to wait for the jeweler to finish disentangling the necklace. I had seen her working on the necklace throughout the transaction with my watch. I knew I had to wait a moment, but I totally forgot about the chain at the last minute. Part of my wife's anniversary present was fixing the necklace. Faux pas number one! Then I decided to get the anniversary card. So I unwittingly drove right past CVS on the way to get some gas. That transaction went fine (another part of my anniversary gift for my wife: she hates to get gas) except midway through the fill up, I realized I had overrun CVS. I gently kicked myself for having to backtrack to that store, even though it was close by. It was the principle of the thing: why couldn't I get anything right the first time. That's the story of my life. Last week I had similar mishaps at Blockbuster. I mistakenly rented two copies of the same DVD and returned a DVD that I had forgotten to watch. So the next day, I schlepped to Blockbusters to rerent that DVD and, at the same time, I returned the extra DVD. I guess I could excuse myself because both DVDs were part of the same series, "The Tudors." But there are only three discs altogether. It shouldn't take a rocket scientist to sort out part 2 from part 3. Anyhow, besides stubbing my toe on a board and banging my head on a staircase, this week hasn't been too frustrating.