I do my best thinking between the time my front door is locked, to within five minutes of pulling away from the house in our car.  During that time frame, anything I have ever forgotten is suddenly remembered.  From things I needed  to bring with me, such as my Bible for Church, to things I forgot to do before I left, like turn off the oven.   My husband says that it will take me two trips to get past the pearly gates in Heaven.  On my first trip I will remember something and have to go back and take care of it. 

Now I'm not sure if it's the fresh air hitting me in the face and racing through my bloodstream, finally reaching my comatose brain cells that cause me to remember at this eleventh hour, or if I just work better under pressure.  Either way, my husband doesn't appreciate it much.  He has even got to the point of not starting the engine until I am fully seated, buckled and have sat there for a good minute.  At which time he asks, "Are you ready?"  To which I usually reply, "Yep!"  Then he starts the engine and heads out onto the road.  Then I exclaim, "WAIT!" or, "OH NO!" and my sweet hubby finds a place to turn around, muttering things to himself that I have yet to decipher. 

You might just call me a procrastinator.  I am not.  I always get started right away with the work at hand, but somewhere along the way my get up and go, drops dead.  I'm left standing in the middle of a room asking myself, "Why am I here?" 

I've wondered how it came to be that I have the brain of an amoeba.  I suppose it could be a combination of things or it could stem from a single incident from my childhood. 

When I was a little girl visiting my Grandpa's farm, my cousins and I were running around playing.  We needed to go under the electric fence and I tried to stand up before I had crawled completely under and my brain was given enough power to light up the farm house. 

There I stood, screaming, much to the chagrin of my cousins who were trying to entice me out from under the wire.  Finally Papafather came to my rescue.  Some say I haven't been the same since.  I suppose they could be right, but that would imply I was better somehow before and that now I am an inferior me.  I am uncomforable with that thought. 

There are problems with being such a late thinker.  I spend a lot of time standing in my kitchen with the refrigerator door open, wondering what to make for dinner.  I forgot to get the meat out of the freezer to defrost. 

Another problem is that I usually leave my house in a hurricane aftermath state.  I understand other people look at their watches and realize they are leaving the house in an hour so they get their children cleaned up, get things put away, and gather up everything that needs to go. 

Not me.  That thought doesn't even enter my mind until five minutes to take off.  Maybe that isn't the right way to put it.  Take off is what takes place five minutes before I need to be on the road.  I launch out of my seat, grab my grubby children, hollering all the while what they should be doing to help their poor mother.  Like a crazed rhino I charge about the house trying to remember everything I need to do. 

Finally the front door slams, gets locked, car gets loaded, and there I sit in the car, waiting for my husband to start the engine.