I am unobservant

I have decided I must be one of the most unobservant people in the world.  This should not come as a huge surprise to anyone who knows me.  I have perpetual tunnel vision - I get caught up in the “zone” of whatever I am doing and the rest of the world could come crashing down around me and I wouldn’t notice.  Because of this I am afraid to read a book to myself while my daughter is awake.  I fear that while I am lost in my book, she will find something in the house that wasn’t completely child proofed and kill herself.
 
You should know that there is a precedent in my life that justifies this fear.  When I was about two years old my mother left me in the charge of my diabetic father and my 13-year old cousin.  When she came back a while later, I was in the fireplace getting soot and ashes all over the place while my father was unconscious in the kitchen after having an insulin reaction.  And my cousin?  She was reading the whole time and hadn’t noticed a thing.

So today, I noticed for the first time that the leaves on the tree outside of my office window had turned yellow.  Not just some of the leaves and not just a little yellow-ish.  All of them.  Completely yellow.  And I never noticed that they were starting to turn even though I have only been in this office a couple of months and even though each day I gaze out the window and sigh with happiness about the fact that I finally have a window office. 

Sigh.