I will find the bright side if it kills me

Do you ever play the 'bad news, good news' game with your personality flaws? You know: Sure, you procrastinate about putting things away, but on the bright side, when Christmas rolls around again the decorations are right here! Or, yes, maybe you watch too many movies, but consequently you never miss an entertainment question in Trivial Pursuit?

I have my overnight sleep assessment at the hospital tonight. As if I'm not nervous enough about this already, I realized abruptly at around one o'clock this afternoon that my health card expired on my birthday back in June, and I still hadn't renewed it. I don't have a good excuse for this, so let me give you the pathetic one: my birthday is in the mid-June, which puts it smack in the middle of all the end-of-school craziness, and then it was summer, which, come on! Summer! Baseball! Travel! Drinking! Driving without a license! Yeah, I did manage to remedy that one, whereupon I discovered that my other excuse - that the Service Ontario office is in a really annoying-to-access area - was groundless, since a new one had opened really close to my house. If I had been more on the ball, I would have renewed my health card while I was there for my license, but I had Eve with me and I wasn't sure I had all the right documents, so I thought I'd do it when school started. Pam's birthday is in early September, and I thought we could go renew her license and my health card at the same time and then have lunch! It was a plan! It occupied prime space in my mind! I wouldn't forget, right?

Have you ever read the book Gremlins that the movie was based on? There's something about the main character telling a friend that he NEEDS to go by and tell the person who's watching the little furry things that turn into gremlins that he MUST NOT feed them after midnight. I think the friend's name was Pete. The very next chapter contains two words: Pete forgot.

I forgot.

I was, in fact, in possession of the expired health card when I went for my initial appointment at the Sleep clinic. I was planning to pretend I didn't realize it was expired, act shocked and dismayed when they pointed it out, and throw myself on their mercy. As it turns out, they didn't even mention it or seem to notice. I considered it odd but fortunate, especially since I would certainly have long renewed it before my actual overnight stay.

Yeah.

So I think, no problem. There's still time to go this afternoon. Which is good, considering it's me, because I have a thing about having to plan whether I'm leaving the house or not the day before, so the fact that I could contemplate a totally unplanned excursion and not immediately withdraw to under a table or inside a Buffy marathon shows huge growth.

I was trying to proceed quickly now, to make sure I was home by the time the kids got home from school. So naturally every computer in the house immediately became hideously, gleefully uncooperative. I couldn't find the list of required documents. I couldn't print the renewal form. I couldn't find my passport (fuck off, it is SO the computer's fault). I checked my husband's rolltop desk where we always keep them and it wasn't there. I had the fleeting thought that I had had it in my purse for New York, but surely, SURELY I would never be so irresponsible and careless as to still be carrying it around in my purse when I am fully aware that I am a person who frequently, ceaselessly, LOSES STUFF. I checked my purse anyway. It wasn't there.

I grabbed a hydro bill and I knew I had my driver's license and a credit card, and I still couldn't find the list of documents, so I decided to go, on the chance that I didn't actually need my passport.

I got there and looked at the pamphlet and realized that, of course, I DID need the fucking passport. My shoulders sagged in defeat and I was about to turn around and go back home. Then I thought, well how much MORE stupid will I feel if I realize that I was here WITH my passport in my purse and didn't realize it. Not to mention that, on the chance that the clinic wouldn't let me do my overnight with an expired health card, after years of waiting and months of nervous anticipation, I would probably injure myself severely.

So I emptied my entire purse on the counter in the Service Ontario Office. And I found my passport.

Bad news: I'm a careless, forgetful, disorganized moron. Good news: I have a renewed health card.