Oops, I did it again…

Don’t you hate it when you get stuck doing something over and over again that you know not to do? I’m talking about ripping the inner cereal bag with too much force, so it tears vertically and goes everywhere. Or hitting your shin on the table every time you sit down, so you have a permanent bruise. It’s messy, frustrating, and often painful. Each time you do it, you try to remember not to do it ever again.

Lately, I’ve realized I have a bad habit that I seem doomed to replicate. This is what happens…

I get busy, and am shuffling papers to find the next ones to work on. I’m using the fingers of my left hand as a file sorter: thumb and pointer finger for events, pointer finger and middle finger for ads, middle finger and ring finger for giveaways, ring finger and pinkie for miscellaneous. Needing more fingers to capture all the categories, I inevitably put a stickie note in my mouth to hold temporarily, because it has something important on it that I don’t want to forget. Usually a phone number, a URL, the name of a contact. When I finish shuffling, I try to take the stickie note out of my mouth, and it’s stuck. On my lip. When I rip it off, my lip is raw and screaming in indignation at me, “why didn’t you remember this always happens?” Oops, I did it again.

This even happens at home. I use stickie notes often for driving directions. So, I gather up all the stuff I need to take with me on my many errands, my hands are full, and I want to be sure the directions are easily accessible when I get in the car. So in it goes - after all, the mouth is the perfect stickie note holder - there is no way to forget it’s there or for it to fall into the depths of my purse, never to found again (at least not while groping blindly with one hand while driving with the other, and trying to find it by feel, and pulling out various receipts and other detritus). I get in the car, put my pile of stuff on the floorboard of the passenger side, and pull at the stickie note. Yep. Once again, it’s stuck. And my poor chapped lips complain for ten minutes after I’ve mangled them by yanking the note off.

Pray for me. I clearly have a problem.