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I can't recall when my memory first started to go.

"Did you remember to put the garbage out on Tuesday when I was gone?" my wife asked.

"No."

"Did you remember your dentist appointment on Wednesday?"

"No."

"Did you remember to water the house plants?"

"No."

"Did you remember that there was a Three Stooges marathon on TV?"

"You bet! They had the one where they meet Hercules and the one with Snow White and the one…"

Okay, so it's not my entire memory that's gone just my tasks-that-need-doing memory. So I have some up with a system to help me stay focused -- to-do lists.

I have to-do lists at work. "Ask for raise. Ask for more time off. Ask what it is you actually do all day."

At my home office. "Get more clients. Make more money. Take more time off."

On the fridge. "Buy beer. Hide it in the back where Patrick and Jon can't find it."

In my closet. "If you can no longer fold your jeans to get them on a hanger, put them in the laundry."

I even put sticky notes in my gym bag if I need to do something early in the day.

"Organic shade-grown," a mammoth guy said the other morning while pointing in the general direction of my gluteus maximus.

"Huh?" I looked over my shoulder and pulled a sticky note off my underwear reminding me to buy coffee at Trader Joe's.

"It's better for the environment. And start doing like way more treadmill."

"Thanks, Bruno."

Matter of fact, I have so many to-do lists I have to prioritize them. For instance, "Get flat tire fixed, return spare tire that resembles baby carriage wheel to trunk," comes before "Don't forget to prune both bonsai trees and ear hairs – use different tool for each this time, buy bandages in case you forget."

And, "Take passport photos for upcoming trip to England, figure out what the heck bangers and mash are, practice driving on the wrong side of the road," comes before "Reattach baseboard to wall in hallway, make note for golf bag about no more putting practice in the house."

Besides to-do lists, another thing I have started doing that has helped immensely is to use the dining room table as a staging area, adding items to it that I need to take with me when I leave.

"Why is there a pile of dress clothing – and I use the term loosely -- on the table?"

"I'm taking them to the dry cleaners on my way home from work so I'll have something nice to wear to that music thingy at the Granada Theater."

"If by music thingy you mean the Santa Barbara Symphony that was weeks ago and you wore those jeans that stand up by themselves."

"Oh yeah."

"And what – I'm almost afraid to ask – is this?" She held up a thin metal devise with a plastic ring on the end of it.

"That's a golf ball retriever. It's for getting golf balls out of the water hazards at Birnum Wood Golf Club. Last time I was there I lost so many balls the fish were piling them up and building underwater condos out of them. With this you can just reach out and grab them. See?"

I quickly extended the retriever to its full fifteen feet, which would have been mightily impressive, if the lamp wasn't fourteen feet away. But I simply grabbed a sticky note and wrote: "Buy light bulb" on it.

"When's the golf game at Birnum?"

"Wednesday the third."

"Today is Saturday the sixth."

Dang.

But by and large the majority of my memory problems involve writing projects. "Start column on Monday." "Okay, then start column on Tuesday." "Really start column on Wednesday." "At least pretend to start column on Thursday." "Call editor on Friday, cough and sneeze a lot."

So I guess I shouldn't have been surprised when my wife handed me a note that I had stuck to a pizza box on the kitchen counter. "Send final draft of new book manuscript to publisher no later than noon," it said.

"What time is it?" I asked my wife.

"Four o'clock."

***