"Try building puzzles," my doctor advised. "It might help it."

"Do crossword puzzles," my older sister-in-law recommended. "That's what I do."

"It," by the way, is my increasing forgetfulness, what I disparagingly refer to as "Middle-Age Muddle," like when I find myself searching my purse for a check that I never actually received; or telling someone about a movie I just saw, without being able to remember its name or the actors who starred in it; or finding myself in the middle of a sentence, only to wonder what it is that I wanted to say.

This isn't a new problem. For more than a decade, I've been adopting practices to help counter the effects of my increasingly less reliable memory: keeping lists on the refrigerator, in my purse, on my desk, wherever I am. Leaving messages on my own answering machine so that I can remember what it is that I wanted to do when I get home from work (and vice-versa).

Even hanging an old V-belt around my neck (my husband started this, but now I do it, too) to remind myself to turn the spigot off when I'm finished watering the vegetable garden.

Why is it that, as I move toward the second half of my 50s, so much of what I know is becoming increasingly difficult to access? Names of books and authors once so familiar to me now remain in the recesses of my brain, only to emerge after

the

moment I wanted to recall them has passed.

And phone numbers, once learned without effort - I can still remember the one from my childhood home - now must be posted beside the telephone.

Looking for the reasons behind my memory's demise, I can't help but think that my revved up lifestyle makes remembering more difficult.

Living, as we do, in the Information Age, we spend most of our waking hours taking in new data. Well, maybe not "taking in," but our senses are certainly being bombarded with information at a record rate, and television news is the worst culprit. It no longer transmits information on a single subject; instead, a streamer across the bottom of our screen constantly gives us news highlights, and the latest weather and traffic is posted on the left.

How am I supposed to remember, or even follow, it all?

So, on the advice of my doctor, I started taking an herbal supplement to boost my memory and am in the final stages of building a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle. Maybe that will help.

But I think my sister-in-law has the real solution for coping with my memory woes - no, not crossword puzzles, but humor. When I asked her what she does to help remember things, she said she couldn't remember, then quipped: "There's real irony in the fact that I can't remember the strategies I use to cope with remembering."