Forgetting

Happy July! I had some time to myself at Sam's Club today and was thinking about aging and forgetting. Sometimes forgetting is good- like when you forget long enough about "that one time your son broke the faucet handle in the back yard three days before you were supposed to close on the sale of said house and spewed so much water you were sure the basement would flood and there goes the sale of your house" that now it's funny to remember. Sometimes forgetting is not so good- like when it involves leaving your lesson for YW home on the counter and you don't remember about it until you stand up to give the lesson- but I'm over that one now, too.

I haven't stopped forgetting, though. I do it frequently. And, from what I hear, I'll get to do more of it in my future. (Maybe I won't remember that I forgot. That would be nice!) For right now, I'm just staying in practice. Today is a great example.

A couple of weeks ago we invited two guys from a program called "Slow the Flow" to come to our house. As part of their water conservation eforts, they'll check out your sprinkling system to see how well it's functioning and give you steps you can take to more efficiently water your lawn. I was told that I needed to be watering my lawn 30 minutes a day every 4 days in June. That 30 minutes needed to be broken down into 3- 10 minute segments every hour or so to allow the water to soak deep into the grass. That encourages deep root growth and the roots of our grass were too shallow. (Probably because I was only watering 10 minutes 3 days a week. It's enough to make anyone shallow!) We also have a few sprinkler heads that need to be cleaned or replaced, but we haven't had time to do that just yet.

Back to today, I was outside checking on the garden when I noticed that one section of our side yard was drying out nicely. It gets full hot sun most of the day and since the sprinkler head there happens to be broken, it was getting 0 mintes of water every day. In an effort to save the grass, I turned on the hose with a little sprinkler head for 15 minutes on one half of the dry section and then moved it to the other half. Then I had to run inside for a minute.

I shut the door and that part of my brain turned off. I switched laundry, I read my scriptures, I grabbed my shopping list, I went to the post office, I got gas, and I went shopping (the really big- "Wow, you have no food in your house!"- kind of shopping) at Sam's, unloaded the car, talked with my Aunt Nancy and brother, Keith, and was working on putting the groceries away when I decided I was hot. It's a cooler, overcast day today, so all the windows were still open and the A/C was off. It's still only 80-ish, but humid as thuderstorms are supposed to be developing this afternoon. I turned on the A/C to dry out the air inside a little and began closing my windows. That's when I saw the sprinkler still sprinkling merrily away- 3 hours later! So much for slowing our flow!

Our side yard happens to be on a nice hill. So, one good thing about this whole esperience is that not only was the second half of the dry spot now very well watered, the over spray and drainage had also nicely watered the first half. Wish I could somehow average out all those 30 minute segments for the next couple of weeks.

Turns out that forgetting the sprinkler was also good for one other thing. As I was headed back in the house I noticed the box of frozen Eggo waffles still sitting on the ground behind the van. Where I had asked the kids to leave it as they were helping me unload. So I could put them in the freezer outside and not inside. I forgot. They were mostly still frozen as it had only been 15 minutes instead of 3 hours.

There are some definite reasons I am a list and routine kind of person. I need to go find both because I forgot where I put them.