The other morning, as Michelle prepared to leave for work, she ticked off what she calls “The Four Fs”: food, flashlight, fob, and phone. [I miscounted, she listed five Fs. The fifth one is listed here.]
“Everything else,” she said, adding a fifth [sixth] F, “is just filler.”
She does well to tick these off. A week or so ago, after she left for work, I received a phone call from her. She sounded out of breath, and I immediately assumed she’d had an accident. Instead, she was merely winded from fast-hiking up the road for 10 minutes to find a phone (our cell phones are useless within about 15 minutes hike of the bay). She had forgotten her keys (a.k.a. “fob”). Aly and I grabbed them and headed out, meeting her on the trail to hand them off. She called her work after calling me, but she was quite late that day, and her shower had been rendered moot by the time she arrived.
We’ll likely check these 4 Fs off each time we leave the cabin, although food is only needed when we’re likely to be gone across a meal time, and flashlights usually aren’t necessary in the summer months.
Being a visual person, I’ll have a little trouble remembering the fourth F, phone, because of the “ph,” but that gives me an appropriate sound to make when I remember suddenly, and to my exasperation, which one I’m missing . . . .