Admittedly, I am often an attention hog. But this is getting freaky. Almost every hour of every day, the same reader gets logged as having visited my website, usually many times in a row. Beats the hell out of me who it is, but I get more hits from some podunk little server in Florida than I get from like, AOL and AT&T combined. If you're reading this, Florida person (I'm sure you will be within the next few minutes), here's a little message for you: I enjoy your company, you're probably a great person, and you're welcome to poke around my website, but YOU NEED ANOTHER HOBBY. Besides ME, that is. I mean, come on! Every damned day, sometimes ten or twenty visits per day? Please!
Bird-watching, maybe? Knitting? Home-made internet porn? Gambling? Hey, all it takes is a dollar and a dream...
Anyway...
The most notable and harmful effect of pregnancy for me is not morning sickness or moodiness. Don't get me wrong; I've got more than I want of either of those things, too, but I've been dealing. No, the worst of it is the stupidity.
WHO KNEW that when a woman becomes pregnant, she becomes a total fucking moron? If this were a widely known fact -- if everybody could experience a day's worth of pregnancy-dumbness -- it would solve the over-population problem VERY quickly.
It started with losing faces and names. I spent three days a week this past quarter sitting at a table with the same classmates, and I STILL can't remember some of their names. People I argued with! People I flirted with! People I had dinner with! And sometimes, folks walk up to me and say, "hey, Helena, how's it going?" -- and I have NO idea who they are. Or, someone will say, "so what does so-and-so look like?" -- it could have been somebody I've spent hours with, and I won't even remember hair color.
Then it moved into more serious territory. I was quoting "Twin Peaks" and suddenly could not remember the name of the character who'd spoken the line. I could see his face in my head, but the name had simply vanished. Guys, I'm more likely to forget my own mother's name than to forget the names of "Twin Peaks" characters.
And now, I've just kinda lost all of my abilities to use nouns in a coherent conversation. Recently, I told Jake: "Your dad is still awake upstairs; I can hear his feet-marks." FEET-MARKS? Good job, English major... Jake suggested: "Footsteps?" Uh, yeah. That.
Everybody's favorite is: "...you know, the one with the thing?"
That could mean anything. It takes a great deal of training to distinguish, using only context clues and my dumbassed vocabulary, something like, say, strawberry ice cream, from, say, quilted toilet paper. "Thing," and "stuff" have become my two favorite words.
"How're you feeling, Helena?"
"Oh, I'm okay. But a little bit... you know... stuff."
Duh.
"So how do you feel you did this quarter, Helena?"
"Uh... good. And stuff."
DUH.
"Are you hungry for dinner, Helena?"
"Duuuuuude, I could go for some of those red things... On top of that stuff that you make in the frying pan... and it's like, really flat?" [Transl.: "Pancakes with strawberries"...]
Freaking TRIPLE DUH AND A HALF.
How am I going to be a decent mother if all I do is sit around looking at pretty flashing lights and grinning like a dumbass? How am I going to explain the mysteries of life to a child if I can't even explain pancakes with strawberries? What happens when the little one is born? I point at her or him and yelp, "Wow, look at that thing!"?
I mean, okay, I can understand making certain biological sacrifices and concessions in order to be, like, motherly and nurturing and all that... I understand that it's probably a good thing to be tired all the time, and to be sensitive to loud noises and bad smells -- those things keep the baby healthy, even though I often feel like a lazy dog who occasionally raises her head to sniff at something and whine. But to turn me into a full-fledged paleolithic cave-person, incapable of basic memory and language functions? Is this strictly necessary?
Ever hear that BS about how you're supposed to read all sorts of classic literature and listen to like, Mozart or something when you're pregnant? So that you have a smart kid? I'm here to bear witness to the fact that it's IMPOSSIBLE to do these things at a time when you're having difficulties understanding Lifetime movies.
Anyway... I've lost my train of thought about forty times while typing this, and I kinda feel like I'm about to hurl. So, this is me, signing off...
Love,
~Helena*