Does Training Make You Dumb?

Here's my question of the day... what is the correlation between thinking and training? It seems like as my training increases, my brain activity decreases. I don't want to go so far as to say that it makes me more stupid (because that would be dumb), but it does make me more absent minded.

For example, Wednesday's is doggy day care day. We've been doing this for almost 3 years now. It's a pretty standard routine. And it's not like I ever forget this, especially because I use it as an excuse most of the time to be able to sleep in a little longer since we don't have to go for a walk. And I don't forget - I have always left the house with them on Wednesday mornings. The problem occurs after we leave. And it's also not that I forget to pick them up. It's somewhere in between. There have been several cases where I've left work knowing that I was going to pick them up and somewhere in between getting into my car and going to get them, I forget to stop. The thing is that day care is probably a 1/2 mile from where I work, so it's not like I have a lot of time to forget, but somewhere in those 2 minutes, I forget to turn off into the parking lot and continue driving. I usually remember just as I pass by the turn, but once I made it most of the way home before realizing.

But it's getting worse. This morning I made it all the way to work and was about to pull into the parking lot when I heard some leashes jingling in the back and realized that I had forgotten to drop them off. This is the second time I've done this. A few weeks ago, I actually made it into the parking lot and parked before making this discovery. In fact, it was more than a little embarrassing as someone from my team was pulling in right next to me and there I was with two big dogs in the car, backing out of my parking space.

My short-term memory seems to have all but disappeared. I'll think of something on my way to get water only to have it vanish within seconds. I've found myself repeating things on the way back to my desk (ask X about Y, ask X about Y, ask X about Y) praying the whole time that I don't run into someone and be forced into a conversation that will render my RainMan-esque mantra into oblivion (what was I thinking about? what was I thinking about? what was I thinking about?)

The old fashioned approach of tying a string around a finger is starting to seem reasonable. Except that I then remember the Sesame Street episode with Burt and Ernie and Ernie has strings tied around all of his fingers. Burt asks about each one and each one is a reminder of another finger until he gets to the last one and then can no longer remember what he's supposed to remember. And then I start thinking about Burt and his pigeons and why the hell does he love pigeons. I hate birds. And it goes on and on. And it's really no wonder that I forget...