Family Ties...Minus Tina Yothers

I read an article in the NYT Motherlode blog the other day about how to make sure your kids grow up to be friends. Actually, I think the article was asking readers if there was an actual way to make your kids grow up to be friends. By means other than, you know...beating them with reeds until they promise to run right out to their nearest Piercing Pagoda and buy a Best Friends necklace for their sibling.

This subject has always fascinated me. I am very interested in the whole concept of sibling rivalry and the bonds that tie us all together in knots so complex that extricating ourselves from them is like trying to pull gum out of a 2-year-old's hair (or a gum wrapper from her nostril, which I've had recent experience doing, and proved to be more difficult than the Popcorn Kernel Incident).

I think this fascination stems from the fact that my five siblings and I are very close. Like, extremely so. Like, for awhile there it was almost an unhealthy, co-dependent kind of relationship, built on love, trust and mutual appreciation for Jaws, Star Wars and Silence of the Lambs. And alcohol.

Life Is Like A Box Of...Um...Something....

So...anyone notice that the number of blog entries I've been producing has fallen off in the past few months?

It's not that life in the Scott household is any less exciting, boisterous and blog-worthy as it once was. Oh no. In fact, just the other day I had to wipe Elsa's nose with my own shirt, because she herself was shirtless, let out an atomic sneeze, and nary a tissue was in sight. How's that for exciting?

Instead, I believe I've fallen victim to a phenomenon that plagues The Swollen and Annoyed: 

Pregnancy Brain.

And because I'm battling such a powerful bout of Pregnancy Brain right now, instead of coming up with something original to write, I'm shoplifting a snippet from my next book for you to enjoy, while I waddle off to the couch, snuggle up with my body pillow and remote, and see how many times I have to hear my children shriek in the other room before I have to hoist myself up and investigate (and possibly reattach a digit).

So without further ado, here is a segment from Chapter 5--The Fifth Month (aka, No, We Are Not Naming The Baby Jean-Luke Picard Scott Of The Star Ship Enterprise…I Don’t Care If It Is A Family Name)

I myself was a skeptic at first. Pregnancy Brain, I internally scoffed. What a bunch of baloney (ew…can’t think of baloney right now). So you’re telling me that just because my body is busy creating another life and giving me mystery twinges in my left buttcheek that my brain can’t remember to make sure I put on deodorant in the morning?

That’s exactly what I’m telling you. And it’s not just a chance of walking around smelling like a Taco Bell all day that shoots up five thousand percent. It’s the little brain functions we normally take for granted that will leave us wondering why we suddenly feel like we must have smoked waaaaay too much pot in college.

One day I was in the kitchen with my husband and he was nagging me about cleaning off the refrigerator. And while I can usually hold my own in an argument with the World’s Most Logical Man On The Planet, during the course of our conversation I found myself struggling for verbal breath.

Jeff: So you think you might want to take some of these pictures off the fridge?

Me (staring blankly at the ten-year-old pictures of our families during various vacations and other moments of merriment): Pictures?

Jeff: Yeah, you know…it’s looking at little cluttered.

Me: Cluttered? You think?

Jeff: You can hardly tell what color the fridge is underneath all this stuff.

Me: But I like it.

Jeff: Can’t you find some nice frames for these pictures.

Me: But I like looking at things.

That was my big argument. I like looking at things.  What I'd meant to say is that when I'm standing in front of the fridge, filling one of my gargantuan bottles with water to stave off another lovely side-effect of pregnancy--constipation--I like to look over the snapshots of yesteryear and remember the good old days when none of my siblings had yet to procreate, and we all still had fun together. (Yeah, doesn't that make you want to run out and get knocked up, too? Not only will you turn into Forest Gump for almost an entire year, but your days of carefree fun are so over. Oh yeah, and you won't poop again until the next presidential election.)

To this day when I’m having a brain fart (yes, I just used the word fart. After having kids I throw around potty words a lot more than I used to…sort of a disintegration of my intelligence), or I offer up a lame argument during a discussion with my husband, one of us will say I like looking at things. It serves as a humbling reminder that I am not always whip-quick on the uptake. Hard to believe, I know.

After doing some extensive research on the matter (ie, Googling it and finding a WebMD article), I have found that Pregnancy Brain is due to a number of factors—exhaustion, hormones, preoccupation with the fact that you can no longer fit into your fat jeans, let alone your skinny jeans. Pregnancy Brain will cause you to forget to swap your clothes from the washer to the dryer—until you notice the smell of rotting clothes coming from your laundry room. It will cause you to set down your purse, your keys, your toddler and spend the next twenty minutes scouring the house and swearing under your breath that you can’t find them (and you’ll really start swearing when you finally do find your toddler contentedly rubbing blush into your cream-colored carpeting). It will make you forget words, names, lyrics, the state capitals, and whether or not you like the show Jerseylicious (side note: you don’t). Some experts even believe that a pregnant woman’s brain actually shrinks. Watching Jerseylicious while you eat an entire bag of peanut M&M’s will do that.

Here endeth the Pregnancy Brain snippet. I'm off to sew Rollie's thumb back onto his hand.

Nobody Nose

And then there are situations when, even in a state of semi-panic, I can still visualize the blog entry that will come out of it.

So Friday I decided that the acrid smoke of distant forest fires that has blanketed our county for the past week was probably not the best thing my young children should be inhaling. And instead of coming up with some neat craft or indoor game for us all to enjoy together, I plopped the kids on my bed with some popcorn to watch Peter Pan, while I settled myself into the office chair and started pecking at the keyboard, determined to get in some uninterrupted writing before a.) Elsa decided she'd rather come sit on my non-existant lap and start pressing random keys until I gave up and paid her attention, or b.) Rollie lost interest in a movie he's already seen fifty billion times and started leaping from the bed to the rocking chair until he miscalculates one jump and winds up with a massive head wound.

Your Father's Idea This Was

Another thing I've learned as a parent of two young children is that concepts I take for granted as being relatively easy to grasp can blow the mind of a 4-year-old boy.

Take the movie Star Wars for example. The other day, Jeff decided that Rollie wasn't being mentally challenged enough by the idea that my belly is roughly the size of a bean bag chair because tucked away inside is a small human, and so he introduced Rollie to the magical world of Storm Troopers, Wookies, and Harrison Ford before he divorced his wife, got an earring and can only get roles where he is either about to retire, coming out of retirement, or on his way to a rest home.

Episode XXVIII--Mark Hamill Looking Like He Could Use A Nap.
And A Shower

And so we drew the blinds, popped some popcorn and settled in to watch Episode IV--Mark Hamill At His Aesthetic Peak.

Ben Dover

It seemed like a good idea at the time....

My dog has this really annoying habit of dropping pieces of his food all over the floor when he eats. And then not cleaning up after himself. Kinda like some other members of this household.

And now that I'm sporting a physique that causes some serious water-displacement in the bathtub, bending over to do anything is just not worth the effort. Even if I spotted a hundred dollar bill, a gift card to Target, a coupon for a free pedicure, an autographed picture of Matt Damon naked; none of these things is important enough for me to lean down over my behemoth belly and pick up. (Now if it were Matt Damon himself who was on the ground and needed help getting up...different story....)