A Flagrant Flaunting?

I was just typing one of my entries and had one of those moments when you remember something you were supposed to do and it zaps you like an electric shock, a small slice of panic. One of my students was talking about just this kind of moment the other day. For me, it doesn't have to be a real thing. Often, with all the details I am bound to keep track of, I'll have one of those zaps over something I just think I didn't do but I really did do. Or sometimes I just confuse myself and think I was supposed to do something and didn't, but it really wasn't ever true. It was just me scaring myself. I'll do this when a student asks a question. They're confused, and I mix up my classes and think I made a mistake, didn't open an assignment or a discussion or the like. But today when I was typing my entry I realized with a start I had forgotten about my funny little word count rule. Up until this last batch of entries I buzzed through to get myself current again, to not let this project wither away, I made each of the entries about a new thing carry a word count that's a multiple of 52. I liked the idea and had stuck with it, been religious about it, revising and editing to come out with the exact number of words: 364, 572, 1144. But in this recent flurry I never even thought of it. Hence, the panic, the sizzle of shock running through me. It wasn't as though I had consciously decided it was okay to break my rule. I hadn't. I had just not remembered the rule, not once until today. It's like my dreams where I smoke cigarettes and have this clear idea of how many I am "allowed" to smoke each day. I've got it all worked out, only it's never true. I don't get to smoke any cigarettes. This time my rules went out the window without my knowing. So be it. I imagine it's just as well. I bet I never would have brought myself current if I'd had to work that hard on that last batch. I must have known that, so I hid the rules from myself that day. I knew I would never flaunt the rules if I knew, so I didn't let myself know. I wonder how many words this is? Oops--four words shy.