I don't know if it is because I am getting older or just because I am busier than usual, but I seem to be losing my mind. I spent an hour the other day looking for my car keys -- only to find that they were in my pocket. They weren't between the sofa cushions or in the refrigerator. They were right there in front, er, behind me. Sometimes the most frustrating situations are brought about by things that are right there in front of us... yet just out of reach.

Take JR and his bone marrow situation. His eventual donor, Annie, wasn't on the other side of the planet. She was living in the same house as his father. How easy would it have been for the writers to have handled this differently? Annie wasn't exactly a willing donor in the sense that she wanted to make JR well. She did it only to endear herself more with Adam -- and to earn the eventual accolades that will come down the pike.

I fear that Annie's usefulness is on the downward slide. While I love the snippy exchanges between Annie and Brooke, there's only so much insanity that viewers can stomach before going... crazy. I believe everything about Melissa Claire Egan's performance. I buy that Annie doesn't care whether JR lives or dies. What she wants is a parade in her honor when JR gets out of the hospital

I love the Heaven scenes with Dixie. Rather than doing a This Is Your Life type of show that's been done and overdone on other soaps, AMC took a different route. While JR fought to stay with his mom, former wife, and uncle, his loved ones were in his hospital room urging him to fight for his life. I thought the scenes were well done from every aspect (well, except that there was a stand-in pretending to be Babe).

A lot of you wrote in to take issue with my comment that it was "too late" to bring Dixie back from the dead, saying that Jesse was an angel and was resurrected. I didn't forget about that, but Jesse appeared as a tour guide, if you will, when he was in Heaven. Dixie has actually "done" things -- she tried to shield Tad from a bullet, she prevented the women's room door from opening so that Kathy could stay safe... I'll discount Dixie haunting Adam because that could easily be dismissed as his imagination conjuring up images of Dixie. What I meant, though, and probably didn't express properly is that I don't think viewers right now would be willing to accept another "undeath."

Fearing that he'd be locked up or taken to the center of town and stoned, David decided to hide somewhere that no one would ever think to look for him: Chandler Mansion. I wouldn't look for him there, though I do think it would be fun to live somewhere that had secret passages all over the place. Those passages were so important that someone actually decided to rebuild them after they were destroyed in the tornado rampage of 2008.

While I was at the All My Children set last month, Vincent Irizarry showed off his scruffy face and teased that David would be "on the run." The question is: how long can David really hide in Adam's walls? More importantly, how long can David get away with things before it's too much? I'm already receiving email from viewers who think it's unrealistic that David hasn't landed in jail or a coffin yet.

One of the most powerful scenes from last week featured David Canary and Michael E. Knight. Adam and Tad have never been the best of friends. So, it was particularly poignant when Adam, ceding that Tad has always been the one to do what was in JR's best interest, implored Tad to go into JR's room and plead with JR to come back to them.

So for weeks we wondered why Damon was wandering around Pine Valley. First he didn't have a last name -- and then his last name was Miller. It might as well have been Smith or Doe. Then we learned that his mother's name was Hillary. For many viewers, that revelation was met with the sound of crickets. Usually when there's a maternity/paternity bombshell, the sound you hear is the collective thuds of viewers' jaws hitting the floor. Not this time. Hillary Miller? Who the heck is she? [I've put together a Who's Who profile that you can check out by clicking here.]

All My Children's writers are finally mining the show's history, but it looks like they may have gone a little too far down the Marick mineshaft on this one. Hillary Miller -- then known as Hillary Wilson -- is a character that hasn't been seen in more than 20 years. Unlike other characters who've left town -- or even died! -- I'm not sure that Hillary has been mentioned since she left town in 1988. It is, however, a nice twist that at least Damon has some sort of ties to Pine Valley.

Many of you are speculating that Damon is actually Tad's son. I don't know how the writers will get away with that. If Hillary was pregnant when she left town, that would make Damon 21 or 22. I picture him more as a just-out-of-high-school kinda guy. Honestly, I'm not sure he even graduated, but that's neither here nor there. But, if that's the case, let's look at this nugget: JR was born on-screen in 1989 and JR is definitely older than Damon.

Do I like the idea of Tad being Damon's dad? Not really, but I guess it works. Damon is like a mini-Tad, so that angle works. With the loss of Joe and Ruth, the Martin family really could use some additional members.

Unless there are other long-lost relatives hiding somewhere in plain sight in Pine Valley.

dan