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Parenting

I’m at Moving Brain

We’re moving, and I am coming unglued.  Unhinged.  The hinges are off.  I can’t find them.  I don’t know what they look like.  It’s summer, people.  This is a time for lazy pool days and jammies till 10am.

But noooo.  Not in my world.  In the world that is Melanie, I feel like I’m atrophying if I don’t have eleven projects going on at one time.  I was born complicated, and my aging brain is fritzing out on me and ready to give up.  Moving to a new house has driven me to the brink, through the brink, over the brink…what is a brink, anyway?

There’s Student Brain, when your noodle is oiled and lubed and primed for exams and loads of pointless information.

There’s Married Brain, when you’re slightly off from all the bathroom-sharing and where’s the cup of coffee I set down right here, riiiight heeeere.

There’s Mommy Brain, when you’re coming apart at the seams a bit and can’t remember which boob’s turn it is to nurse.

Then there’s Moving Brain, when your whole life is in shambles and your thoughts squish amoeba-like behind your eyeballs and you wonder what day it is and whether or not you’ll remember which box contains your sanity.

I’m at Moving Brain.

Today as we pulled out of the driveway, this is what I hear:

Evie: Woo-hoo, wook at meee, Eh-wee-ut!

Elliott:  Mom!  Evie doesn’t have her seatbelt on!

I stop the car in the middle of the street, hop out, and fasten her seatbelt, thanking both of them profusely for taking up the slack around here while Mommy loses it.

I cannot remember the names of my family members.

I used to make fun of my parents for this, and now I’ve arrived at this level of crazy.  Throughout my childhood, I answered to Za-Bu-Dar-Na-Melanie, and two of those name-starts were dogs.  And now, my own sad brain cell levels have dipped below an imaginary line of demarcation between remembering names and scrambling them beyond recognition.

The harder I try to produce the right name, the more my brain freezes and I just stare helplessly at El-Al-Ev-Spike, willing him to read my mind and do my thoughts.

I had the brilliant idea to send both children to day camps this week while I finished packing.  Brilliant, until I realized that the camps are located on opposite sides of town, the start times are identical, and the end times are two hours apart.  This means that my big “Mornings to Myself” are really “Mommy Driving in Circles Around Town.”  Today I spent so much time driving with varying conglomerations of children that by mid-afternoon on my way down the road, I blanked completely.  Panic started to rise as I realized that I could not remember where I was heading.

Nothing.  Blank slate.

DENTIST!  As I was reaching the intersection critical to our destination, my synapses fired and I pointed the car in the right direction.

I’m forgetting to eat.  Last night I scarfed a frozen burrito right before bed and today I realized that I hadn’t had anything to drink (other than coffee, let’s don’t get stupid) and grabbed a slug of water from a reused plastic cup from Moe’s.

Everything is packed.  We are in that no man’s land between here and there, when we’re still here, but all of our stuff is packed and the only thing left in the fridge is a bag of onions.

I can’t find anything and it’s making me batty.  The fact that all four of us are wearing clean undies right now is a sign of the Holy Spirit’s sustaining work on the earth.

And this is summer!  This is summer!  There is something intrinsically wrong with me that I can get this nutty in June.  We are supposed to be living post-nut right now.  But we have moving, and let’s all pray we dig out and settle before the precious girl we’re hosting walks off the plane from Eastern Europe and into our lives.  Surely we can pull it together before then, so she doesn’t judge all Americans by our garbage bags of clothing and inability to locate the plates.  Surely.

My eye won’t quit twitching.  And the other day the hubs commented on how I’d fixed up.

Me:  Fixed up?  Uh, honey, I can’t find my make-up right now.

Him:  Oh, well, you’re wearing lipstick.

Me:  Nope, I’m just worrying my lips so much that they’re chapped.  And then I had an allergic reaction to some all-natural lip balm and now I look like a duck-billed platypus with bad botox.

I used to be kinda smart.

Not in an obvious way.  At college graduation, one of my best friends, best friends, who was in my wedding, saw me all gold-tasselified and gasped in a shocked voice, “You’re smart?!?!”  It’s a subtle brilliance.  Very subtle.  You might have to squint.

However.  Somewhere on a diploma buried in our home are the words summa cum laude.  As if that means anything when your armpits smell and you can’t remember if you brushed your teeth.

This morning we awoke to the sound of our sick doggy barfing on the carpet.  My sweet Spike, my emotional crutch who’s licked and cuddled me through infertility, depression from infertility, adoption, anxiety from adoption, and all my other mental chaos, is sick, really sick, and on a downward spiral involving enough pills to start our own doggy pharmacy.

Around 7am, his burning little tummy upchucked the meds on our worn carpet.  I rolled over and shoved my head harder into the pillow.  A few minutes later, I got up, observed the vomit on the floor, and walked past it into the bathroom.

And then I forgot about it.  We entered into camp chaos, packing backpacks and double-checking tutus and swimsuits, and we headed out for a day of schlepping.

I schlepped, and I schlepped, and I schlepped schlepped schlepped.  And during one of our brief home layovers, I re-discovered the vomit, crusting around the edges, and set out to look for the wet vac.  It wasn’t in its usual location, shocking, what with all of our current organization.

I went downstairs to try to find it.

And then I forgot about it again.  By the time I got downstairs, I already forgot about the vomit.  In a fog of Sid the Science Kid, peanut butter and honey sandwiches, and dentist appointments, I slid out the door once more.

I drove around town for several more hours, and now it’s 8:30 at night and I’m writing about the vomit while the vomit is three yards away and I still haven’t found the wet vac.  I’m sure to get on it right after I save this post.

Fer shurrrre.

Just now:

Him:  Did you clean up the vomit?

Me:  Ummm…no, but I took a picture of it for my blog [pose like a three-year-old at a dance recital].

Him:  Mel.

Lest you wonder why my darling hubs isn’t cleaning it up himself, please know that he’s pulling more than his share of the weight around here right now, as I keep wandering into his office, flopping down in a chair, and sighing, “Harrrrrrd.  Tooooo harrrrrrrd.  I.  Can’t.  Take.  The.  Pressure!”

I think once we survive this move, I’m going to find that dumb diploma and hang it somewhere important, like over the toilet, to remind myself that even thought my brain done fly this coop, it once did me well.  It once earned me A’s.  At one time, I could hold whole semesters worth of information in my noggin.  Now I can’t seem to remember my own shoe size, but that’s cool.

Latest update:  I found the wet vac, had it in my hand, but set it down to let Spike outside to do his business outside, in the outside, for the love, Spike, outsiiiiiide.  After letting him back in, we headed upstairs and I just realized that I left the vac, that’s right people, downstairs.

Sigh.  Toooo farrrrr.

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images from creativedaycafe.blogspot.com, 67-72chevytrucks.com, and my horrified iPhone