Right Hand, Rubber Band

I’m left handed and I wear my watch on my left hand.   Well, I did wear a watch on my left hand, then, it broke several years back.   I decided to have a go at wearing no watch and see if I really needed it.   I had my cell phone with me all the time and it told time just fine.  

It turned out I didn’t need the watch and I’ve been glad to have one less thing to manage and put on each day until Apple came out with their Apple Watch.  It is friendly, useful and non-intrusive.   I like it.   But it’s caused a change.

I keep a hair band on my wrist for when I need to put my hair up.   It might be that it’s hot or that I’m going running or that the windows in the car are down and I want to keep it from blowing about.   Maybe it’s the look of the day or maybe—and this is the big one—I don’t want my hair to fall into my food.  

I had elastics in my purse for years, but ever since I stopped wearing my broken watch, I’ve just put on an elastic every day as a ready-to-go accessory.   The Apple Watch does some amazing things, but holding back my hair isn’t one of them so I still need an elastic.   Only the wrist I was wearing the elastic bands on for many years is now busy with a watch and I’ve had to move to the other wrist.

Typically what happens is I go to put my hair up, pull my hair upwards with my hands and then reach for the elastic band on my left wrist.   I know it will be there because my hair is down.   If my hair was up, it wouldn’t be there because it would be in my hair…only it’s not there.   There is no elastic band on my left wrist.    Did I lose the elastic band?   It only lives two places: my wrist or my hair.   What could I have done with it…oh, that’s right, it’s on my right wrist now because of the Apple Watch.   “Right hand, rubber band,” I mutter to myself when I realize this for the fifth time that day.

The next part of the process is interesting in my brain, because I’m having to work through a set of hair-putting-up steps I did so routinely and effortlessly with a left-wrested elastic band.  Only with a right-wrested starting point, things are backwards.   I start out holding the hair in the wrong attitude for my fingers to even be able to reach the elastic band.  

I’m getting more adept at the reversal of hands, but habits are hard to relearn.

The Big Boy Update:  Uncle Jonathan had the children at lunch today.   He noticed asked my son, “Why are you grabbing your crotch?  I think it means you need to go potty.”  My son replied, “No.  It’s my symbol!  It means I’m ready for my toy.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter was drawing pictures on her teacher end of year cards tonight.   She was drawing trees.   She would tell me about the leaves, then she’d draw the trunk and then she’d make some marks below the trunk.   These, she told me, were the “croots.”

Fitness Update:  Eight slow miles.   I thought I was running fast, only I wasn’t.   I thought the pace numbers I kept getting were slow, but they were correct.    When I got home I realized it may have been the eighty-five degree temperature and high humidity that contributed.    I didn’t think about it too long, though, because I wanted to get something to drink.