The Vortex Gene
by Joshilyn Jackson
Today was the day I was going to REALLY go by the office of the nutritionist I paid to see and then rescheduled and didn't see and rescheduled and so forth to the tenth power of etcetera.
DIGRESSION: I am having some post-op trouble getting my body back into ANY of my clothes. Been a year since the surgery now. I am doing all the right stuffs and nothing is moving, so it's time for outside help.)
So I have paid all this money to get this special program with the tests and the thyroid check and the monitoring and the complimentary boob refluffment surgery; NOW I just have to GO BY and give them blood and drop off my paperwork.
Digression: I could just mail the paperwork, but they acted like I was a weirdo when I asked if I could also just mail the blood.
Digression 2: I don't really get complimentary boob refluffment surgery with this package, alas. I just threw that in to tantalize Sarah.
Anyway I have to take by the paperwork and give them blood for a cholesterol check and who knows what all other repulsive bodily whatnots they want to sample... 
Digression: MY mind immediately went to, "MAYYYBE they want a piece of hair from my arch-nemesis to make a nutritive-fat-vampire spell? I would pick Donald Trump. He would be a great arch-nemesis. And the way the spell would work is, I would eat things, and the excess calories would go on HIS hips. But how would I get a slice of his hair? His hair is so FAMOUS. That's like the world's most famous comb-over. I bet it is insured by Lloyd's of London."
So today, like every other day for the last two weeks, I was REALLY going to actually go by, instead of just planning to go by and then spending ten hours flipping my screen back and forth between copy edits and spider solitaire and not going.
Announcement: If anyone at my publishing house is reading this, it was probably 90% copy edits and only 10% spider solitaire. *truthful nodding* ANYWAY.
I did not go. Because I could not find my keys. I am an amazing key loser. AMAZING. World class.
Scott is---perhaps luckily, perhaps simply as a result of the practice afforded him over the last 17 years---- an Olympic-level key finder. He has found my keys in the yard beneath an azalea (on a day when I had no clear memory of going outside), IN MY PURSE (which is where they ACTUALLY GO, so I had not thought to look there, and in my heaviest winter coat (it was June), and once in the meat-n-cheese drawer of the fridge.
Today he found them in my car, which was sitting in the driveway with the passenger door open. The keys were the slot for keys. The car was running. I had this vague memory of GOING to the car, then realizing I needed a cup of coffee, going back in to GET the coffee, and then not being able to find my keys.
SO I did not make it to the nutritionist today.
There is only one clear conclusion: 
God wants me to buy A LOT of really cute jeans. One size larger. Preferably made by 7 for All Mankind.
No?
Scott says this is definitely not the message. He says messages from the Divine generally tell wives to go buy jeans from Kohls or Target.
Okay, how about this: The real message has nothing to do with commerce. The message of the keys is...
I cannot murder my son for losing his $200 pair of super-special-corrective glasses today because the only reason he lost them was that I have genetically poisoned him.
Now THAT is sadly true.The kid is as absentminded as me, and it's hard to justifiably slaughter him for an offense I perpetrate as egregiously with 30 years more practice at life than he has had. I also think the message has a PS, which is Scott has to go to the middle school and FIND the glasses, which are probably tucked neatly in the spoon receptacle at the front of the lunch line, or resting sweetly in the square tank of a toilet in the second floor boy's bathroom, third stall from the left.
What genetic "gifts" were you given that you wish your parents had damn well kept? And for my fellow parents---what horrors or wonders have your genes perpetrated upon your hapless little children?
