Trying to save all my remaining brain cells

I read somewhere that doing crossword puzzles and sudoku may help to keep one's memory sharp.  Well I can recall a day back in late 2009 when I started to lose my mind (Oh boy).  Ever since that one crazy night I can be in the middle of something and totally blank on what I was about to do next.  Today on lunch I had absolutely nothing going on and ened up in the Dollar Tree on the West Side.  I was looking for candles and stumbled upon some crossword puzzles and such.  I don't know how I remembered what I remembered about puzzles but I did.  So I grabbed a little tablet like book that has wordfinds, crosswords, and my one time favorite Sudokus. 
Since it was terribly slow at work today I decided to crack open my new time killer and quickly rock out a sudoku.  Yeah right.  The joke was on me big time.  I got like three numbers filled in and was stumped!!  I used to do these things all the time with little effort.  Now I'm feeling like a super novice.  I figured if I gave my mind a rest, do some othe types of puzzles then come back to it with "fresh" set of eyes I would be better able to figure out what the heck was going on in front of me.  Naw!!  I had to cheat and then cheat again before I got on somewhat of a role.  It took me about 2 hours, breaking here and there to help a few customers, to fill this thing out completely.  I have some serious work to do to get back up to par.