...As A Doorknob

The Husband's family came in town a few days ago. His brother, brother's wife, and their three children to be exact. I'll just call them The Family for the purposes of this post. The Family has lived overseas for about eight years now, and usually visit for a few weeks in the summer. It's been a good year and a half since we've seen them this time (longer than usual), and it truly is enjoyable when they visit. We've seen them twice since they've arrived, and, well, it's seems that during this visit there is an unwelcome side affect...

I feel as dumb as a doorknob.

Now let me say that this has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with how The Family is acting. They are all sweet as can be. It has everything to do with me.

A little background...

I used to think I was smart, and I used to feel smart. It feels so nice to feel like a smart person. Anyway, I always made good grades in school, and people used to tell me how smart I was. I went to a college prep high school, took honors classes, and graduated with honors. I received a full scholarship to college, and, except for that one semester freshman year, I made excellent grades. (I had a lot of fun that semester!) Again, I graduated with honors. I was accepted into a very competitive and nationally ranked program for graduate school. They don't "give honors" in graduate school, but if they did I would have received them. Then I applied for and was offered a position in my dream job, at my dream company. I began work; I loved it and was good at it. You get the drift, I led a charmed life for a few years, everything fell nicely into place, everything went well, and the icing on the cake was that I felt smart and accomplished. This went on for a while, until I had Little Man (no offense, Little Man).

Once I had a baby, I quit my job. I stayed home. I changed diapers, watched Baby Einstein, and cleaned house. That was about the extent of use of my mental capacity. Then I had another baby. More diapers, more cleaning, more staying at home. Now don't get me wrong, I love staying home with my babies, but it has definitely sapped me of my smartness. I think over the past three years I must have lost many, many brain cells. One here, one there...a sleepless night, there go a whole bucket load. For me, I went into survival mode when I had the babies. Only the bare necessities got done. In fact, I still feel like I'm in survival mode, nine months later. Even my self talk has changed, instead of hearing complete, complex sentences, what I hear is more like this: "Must change diaper, grunt, grunt. Wipe lunch off face, grunt, grunt. Clean floor so baby no choke on dirt and leaf, grunt grunt. Feed baby milk, grunt." You get the idea.

Now onto The Family who is visiting. My brother and sister-in-law are brilliant. I don't mean that as an expression, either, they are bona fide brilliant. They also work in demanding careers that require them to use their full mental capabilities on a daily basis. What I'm trying to say is that they have many, many active brain cells. So here they come to visit, right during a spell where Baby Girl is not sleeping. By not sleeping I mean that she wakes up about 1 am every night, and really doesn't go back into a deep sleep, until about 7:30 The Next Night. So I am so, so very sleep deprived and losing brain cells at an alarming rate. I'm having a hard time solving the simplest of problems. If I had to take one of my own cognitive screenings from work I would probably fail. Dementia, anyone? So we've seen The Family twice now, and, well, whenever we see them I feel about as smart as a box of rocks. Not a very good feeling. The Husband says I'm crazy, but I feel what I feel. I'm just trying to console myself with the knowledge that my brother and sister-in-law are, above all else, really good people. They are also parents, so they know what I'm going through. Still...

Maybe one day, hopefully very soon, I'll start finding some of those much-missed brain cells...