That's a bit odd. What version of Android are you on, does it have any of those junk manufacturer skins, and how old is the phone? If my phone is already unlocked I can spout off the hotword, invocation, and content in a single stream, the assistant pops up in an overlay and prints the note for me to check visually, and then it finishes and hides with no further intervention. Pixel 2 XL, fully patched, it's worked like that since I got the phone.

If you're having trouble with getting the assistant to wake up, and you don't see an improvement after running through the wizard you get when you say "retrain voice model" or "recognize my voice", you should also be able to get the assistant up by long-pressing the middle button in the navbar at the bottom. You additionally shouldn't need to wait for a response after saying "take a note", just dump it all in a single breath.

> when it occurred to me I should remember to put my shoes on

...Are you mocking me? I thought I'd made it pretty clear that I used that tools to help compensate for a memory problem that does, in fact, qualify as a disability. Try "okay Google, remind me at eight pm to reply to $friend about $thing". Or "okay Google, remind me every day at two in the afternoon to make a dentist appointment...".