I am fond of the words "shit storm" when used to illustrate family gatherings

Today is the 27th day of September in the year 2011. Today I decided to break my life up into categories. Create goals specific to improving these areas and then kicking it up a notch by creating specific action plans to achieve these goals.
It started as a bucket list, but five items in I realized I was hurtling over a lot of necessary experience. For instance, I cannot wake up on a Thursday when I'm 56 and decide to set a world record on the track. I can however improve my running/jumping/climbing time slowly over months. I cannot on a Thursday night of my choosing in the year 2040 become a Zen Master. Experience inner peace by meditating more I can do. You see how mature I was today? Very proud of me we are indeed. Bucket Lists are clearly for a**holes.
In my creativity category I wanted to write more. To express myself. And that's when I remembered back in May I decided to blog your mind and then I stopped ...... and now I'm back.
Well, now that you are all on the same track as the Stacy Train let's take this journey together.
First the categories in no particular order, please let me know if I have overlooked a key component.
 physical, mental, spiritual, professional, creativity-(al?), parental or PMSPCP for short. (holy crap stick! that would be a wicked combination. So much death)
I'm going to start with Mental because I am a little tired of hearing about people running irrelevant distances using unnecessary equipment a la Facebook.  And before you get offended, who has two thumbs and posts that information all the time? that's right you do. Kidding, I'm guilty as well.
So mental improvement. Here is my goals. I would like to remember things and I would like the ability to focus. Presently I can do neither of these things. It has really become an issue. I was asked for my cell number and email recently. I blanked. I had to suggest they tell me their number and I call them and then we both save to contacts. Don't get the wrong impression I am way too slow to have avoided looking like an idiot. The conversation went something like: "What is the best number to reach you?" "I have no idea. Do you know your number? Can I call you and then we'll know my number?" Sometimes I am embarrassingly ridiculous.
The focus half is equally awful. Especially when it is critical that I listen. The more dire the circumstance the worse it is. When someone, anyone, is speaking to me I am thinking so loud and hard that I cannot hear them. No joke. Sometimes a person is looking me right in the face and I have no idea what they are saying because I am talking to me too and I am being so distracting. And then the inevitable moment happens and clearly we are both contemplating........something. They are racking their brain to come up with a solution to whatever problem or question they just posed. I am trying to figure out what we were talking about by process of elimination. We probably weren't wondering who had bigger feet Michael Angelo or Leonardo da Vinci. I wonder if da Vinci had webbed feet and when that didn't make him a better swimmer he assumed it must make him better at flying. Do all birds have webbed feet? No, I guess not but they all have weird feet.
It's this bad ALWAYS. Joking? Not even a little. I'm not just thinking one thing though. I am thinking something completely unnecessary and also yelling at myself about it "stop imaging a chicken with lips speaking Japanese and pay attention!" And then I start arguing with myself that I can hear them and wonder if a submerged hippo was as gassy as a horse (because in my head hippos and horses are pretty much the same thing). And if so has a gassy hippo ever sent a monkey jet skimming across a jungle pond? Not that far fetched. I have a jetted tub whenever little Audrey takes a bath in it. But as usual I am right about being wrong, I apparently cannot think and pay attention. Then I have to choose should I ask them to start over or just pretend I was listening. Neither plan works well. You might now be thinking about the time you were telling me about how sick your elderly grandmother was and I smiled. It's not as bad as it looked. I'm sick but not as twisted as I sometimes appear. I would have had sympathy IF I had listened to anything you had said. Let's get back on track.
I would like to remember things and I would like the ability to focus. What is my clear plan of action? Simple, I will exercise my brain parts. I've come up with categories. (It's sort of my thing now) Calculations, Solutions, Deductions, and Memorization. I will work on Calculations by completing math drills. I will work on Solutions and Deductions by doing challenging brain teasers. Which reminds me recently I was at Barnes and Nobles and they had a table of books on clearance. A few caught my eye and since I love nothing more than a book, I bought several. I got home and lo and behold I bought two of the same book. I tried to picture the episode from the point of view of the cashier. We started the operation needing my phone number so that my member discount would be applied to my purchases, eleventeen attempts later we were cooking with fire. He had to have noticed that he rang in the same book twice but I wonder if at that point he decided not to mention it because after studying my blank stare he realized there was a high probability I couldn't even read so what did it matter. What makes this story more awesome is that it was two copies of a book called Mental Challenges.  Which brings us full circle and back to my plan. To work on Solutions, I will do Mental Challenges. For Deduction (deduce is funner to say) I will do the other copy of Mental Challenges. For Memory I will make a list of things I want to memorize and I will slowly scratch them all off the list. Soon you may feel free to quiz me on all the state capitols, the periodic table of elements, or ask me to recite the Cremation of Sam McGee. I am sure I will be able to do none of those things but I'm going to give it all the old college try.