The Green Book

Do you ever have that moment where your significant other asks, "Hey - do you remember the name of that [restaurant, winery, hotel] we went to three years ago last Sunday?" And you stare blankly at them because you're lucky you remembered to eat breakfast and brush your teeth that morning?

That's me. All the time.

My short term memory is pretty poor, and my long term memory seems intent on remembering insignificant and often uncomfortable details like that time I was at a baseball game in 8th grade and spilled mustard on my shorts and my friend teased me for weeks about needing a diaper, (which may explain why I hate mustard.) while important dates, milestones, and significant events often slip through the cracks of my brain. I am thankful that:
A) My phone number has a lot of zeros in it
B) Both my children have easy to remember birthdays and KTA days
C) My husband is always there to fix my story when I recall something incorrectly

Okay, maybe not that last one. In fact, I usually just tell him that I was trying to make the story more interesting.

But I was starting to get frustrated by the fact that I could never remember which hotel we stayed in that has the good swimming pool, or which highway exit on the way to my sister-in-law's house has vegetarian options.

Enter: The Green Book

It's a handy little thing, really. Every time we travel anywhere or do a wine tasting (our region has a lot of wine trails), I log it in the book along with a silly memory or two. Of course, as I look back through it sometimes I've completely forgotten what my little comment refers to - kind of like re-reading the inside jokes in your high school yearbook. But I try to write cute things that the boys did or said, or mistakes we made like when I forgot to check the drawers in a hotel in California and left half of my husband's wardrobe behind. Or "Nice wait staff - they didn't mind when J dumped his entire glass of water all over himself, the table, the bench." I started the book in 2012, but it has already started to come in handy. My brother and sister-in-law are visiting a local wine trail, and I was able to give them recommendations based on my notes. And it makes me smile to look back and see the fun things we did, especially because I'm generally a ball of stress in the planning/executing stage. It's good to know that my stress is worth it.

I've been surprisingly good about maintaining The Green Book. Which reminds me, I need to enter in the last few details from our most recent family vacation before I forget the name of that place where we saw the thing.

Drat.