mombrain

Coffee Good Morning Bad

If you've ever woken up with MomBrain you know my early morning fog is not unlike a drunken stupor. This is especially true on mornings like this, when I rise an hour early because it is the only hope I have of taking a shower, and if I do not shower today the Haz Mat team will surely knock on my door.

Ah, yes. MomBrain in the morning is not a pretty sight. MomBrain an hour early in the morning is frightening. Of course, the remedy for any stupor (drunken, morning, or otherwise) is caffeine. So that is how MomBrain came to be fumbling with coffee and cursing her other personality, which some people have uncharitably called ANAL. This is because I am very organized, and keep my coffee in tupperware bowls with big fat labels for "Regular" and "Decaf." (Okay, my tea is also labeled. As are the Little Guy's toy shelves. Um, and my office shelves. BUT I AM NOT ANAL.)

I know my other personality is NOT ANAL because if she was she would have labeled the bowls instead of the lids. She would have remembered MomBrain's morning issues and predicted this morning's disaster, which began when I flipped both lids off and promptly forgot which bowl went with which lid.

Crap. Crapcrapcrap. They smell the same. They look the same. But they are not the same. I NEED CAFFEINE, DAMMIT. And I most decidedly do not need caffeine tonight after dinner. Okay ... Plan B. I'll mix them together, drink twice as many cups, and buy decaf later today. I AM A GENIUS!!!

This is how MomBrain came to be jumping up and down in the kitchen with a large Ziploc baggie full of ground coffee. It is also how she forgot to seal the baggie, which is how coffee grounds ended up all over the counter, all over the floor, all over a freshly showered MomBrain, and all over Miss Kitty. And you know what kitties do when they get dirty - they lick themselves. Our caffeinated kitty is now chasing ghost mice and banging into walls while I debate whether I can brush coffee grounds out of my wet hair before it turns into liquid coffee. Eau de Folgers, anyone?

Dorian Gray's Mom

Greetings from the Holiday Inn, also known as MomBrain HQ. Please do not call us if you are looking for lodging; our hotel is fully booked through the New Year.

Our seven guests are delightful: two Parental Units (PUs, which of course I mean in the nicest of ways), Sister N and Sister K (my sanity and my heart), two 14-year-olds (whose sole purpose is to make me feel old and creaky), and an 8-year-old (a delightful entertainment for the Little Guy).

Of all our guests, the teenage girls have done their job the best. Let me tell you, nothing makes you feel older, fatter, and uglier than going downtown with two lithe, gorgeous sweeties in their size 0 jeans and straightened hair. This is especially true when you are unshowered and wearing an oversized sweatshirt with a big ketchup blob on your left breast. It is even more true when said ketchup blob rides around on you all day without your noticing it.

Even after ketchup removal, the teens just have a way. Dinner that night included a killer salad with many choices of Newman's Own dressing. The conversation went like this:

Teen 1: Boy that Newman guy sure has a lot of faces.
MomBrain: Well, he's an actor after all.
Teen 2: He is?
MB: Haven't you heard of Paul Newman?
T1 and T2: (in unison) No.
Sister N: He's only one of the most famous actors of all time.
MB: You've heard of Robert Redford, right?
T1 and T2: No.
MB: Tom Cruise?
T1 and T2: Yes!!!
Sister N: Paul Newman was in a movie with Tom Cruise - "The Color of Money."
T1: Ew, he was that gross old guy.
T2: (gags)
Sister N: (sighing) Pass the salad please.

Music Lessons

Our last musical adventure began with a shriek, followed by a haunting melody. But just to mix things up, MomBrain's music fest last night began with the music and ended with much screaming. This is because I had to relearn the lesson that every beginning musician knows: Thou Shalt Not Chew Gum While Playing.

It began with the garlic - four cloves of it, in the lovely pasta and feta cheese dish I made for dinner. In my rusty musical retirement, I'd forgotten that it probably wasn't a good idea to eat garlic immediately before singing with other human beings. No time to brush! I popped a stick of gum and ran off to rehearsal.

You need to know that MomBrain is blind before her time. Reading sheet music requires reading glasses. But I cannot see the conductor without peering over the tops of the glasses or removing them entirely. Listening to the conductor's lengthy directions, I took off my glasses and hung them from my mouth. But then, with no warning, she launched eighteen third-graders into "The Crawdad Song" and I couldn't see the music. I pulled my glasses from my mouth only to see a long string of chewing gum stretching from the earpiece. I tried to pull the gum off, but now a sticky triangle of gum connected my left hand to my glasses to my mouth. Crapcrapcrap. If we hadn't been in a church I would have said the F word, third-graders be damned. Four measures of piano silence went by before I jammed the glasses onto my face and willed my sticky fingers to fly, mama, fly over that keyboard!

You get a line and I?ll get a pole
I?ll meet you down by the crawdad hole
Honey! Baby!

End of song. End of all hope. Off come the glasses, and now there's a wad of gum behind my right ear that is still connected to my glasses. Holy crap, there goes the conductor again launching into "Accentuate the Positive" and I know I'm doomed so I jam the glasses back on and finish the rehearsal wondering if peanut butter really does take gum out of hair, wondering if anyone saw me stretching gum around like silly string, wondering if the conductor will make me write sentences for setting a bad example. I will not chew gum in rehearsal. I will not chew gum in rehearsal. I will not chew gum in rehearsal.

Hose Monsters

This week marked my 18th wedding anniversary with the Big Guy. 18! Eighteen! Holy crap I'm old. Anyway, this being Date Night, and this week being the big A, I thought about Dr. Phil's advice to "ask yourself, every day, what can I do today to make my marriage better?" No brainer! The very best thing I can do for my marriage, any day, any time, is wash the car.

Oh yes, my friends - a clean car is the quickest way to the Big Guy's heart. So, in hopes of scoring major Date Night Points, off I went to Brown Bear Car Wash. But the Beary Best wash and wax isn't good enough for my sweetie. So I plugged a pile of quarters into the industrial strength vacuum, also known as the Suck Monster.

Picture MomBrain. Picture a giant blue sucking hose. Picture a little gray wand that keeps falling off the end of the hose. Picture Mombrain riding that writhing hose like a horse, shoving the gray wand back on and swearing like a sailor. Every time the wand fell off, the hose would jump and twist like something out of Alien, attaching itself with great force to whatever was closest. This was mildly irritating when the attached object was a floor mat, a car seat, or an umbrella. But it was slightly more irritating when the attached object was my cheek.

It's true. Somehow the Alien Hose jumped up and sank its fangs right in to the apple of my cheek. Leaping up and ripping at the hose, I hit my head on the door, then fell across the seat, feet hanging out the door as I wrestled with the Monster. Meanwhile the Car Wash Guy behind me whistled a complicated bird sound, which I know was Car Wash code for "Dude! Check it out! We got another one!"

Getting the Beast off me required both hands and one foot. But the Beary Best part is it left me with a hickey the size of Texas, right on my face. On Date Night. The Big Guy didn't say a word. He just squired me around town with a manly look. I think he was kind of proud.