Renaissance Faire 
Downtown San Jose
Sometime around the end of 2015, I wrote a post in which I talked about just how much of a walking, talking, brain-free medical experiment you are in the months after you give birth, and my recent discovery that this situation unfortunately does not come to an end for…well, for a long time. I honestly have no idea how long it lasts, because I went straight from being a mess with one kid to being a mess with two kids, and I’m still a mess, and presumably I won’t be at some point in the future, but for now?
Omg such a mess.
The problem with this whole “mommy brain” thing (which is real, and results in you doing things like leaving full carts of groceries – plus your wallet, for bonus points! – in supermarket parking lots, and driving all the way home before realizing what happened) is that when you have an infant, everyone’s all understanding and accommodating. “Of course she forgot to write me back!,” we say of the brand-new mother. “She just had a baby! She’s not supposed to be able to remember anything! Awww maybe we should send her some cake.” Nobody sends moms of two-year-olds cake. Which is fine, because they probably had some at the three bouncy-house birthday parties they attended over the weekend, but that’s besides the point.
I never used to forget anything. That’s barely an exaggeration. I had an ongoing, constantly updating file in my head telling me exactly what the things I needed to do were (obbbbviously completely unrelated to my history of anxiety, hahahahaaa), and I just…got them done.
Memory has never been a problem of mine, until now. Because these days, I forget to return emails more than I suspect I know (because I can’t remember). (If you’ve emailed me and not heard back, it’s because my brain deleted the information, not because I am mean or don’t care, I promise – so please do a girl a favor and write me again…?) I need to set alarms for myself in order to remember to join conference calls and Skype meetings. I have forgotten to put shoes on my daughter twice in the past week (fortunately, that’s what grocery carts are for: containing children whose parents have forgotten their shoes). I forget to wash my hair. I forget pants.
What. Is going. On? When your children are 2 and 5, aren’t you supposed to have a handle on this Multitasking Times One Thousand thing that your life is now? Aren’t you supposed to be a well-oiled little machine dispensing hand sanitizer and wipes at the appropriate moments, and never forget to return a school form, because moms don’t forget stuff like that?
Man, I have no idea. I just know that I have said (out loud) “it’s like herding cats!” at one point or another during each of the last four days, and that is not a sentence I ever imagined myself uttering, let alone imagined becoming a go-to catchphrase. But it is like herding cats. It is like herding tiny, insane cats who are trying to sit on top of each other and both need to eat the exact same banana.
Cats don’t eat bananas.
…What was I saying?
Anyway, I went to a renaissance faire. All of the above started out as a post about what I’m wearing in these photos; I had this idea that I’d talk about how I had woken up that morning planning to wear an awesome renaissance-y costume, and then ended up just wearing a semi-floaty skirt because I was exhausted and because Life, but somehow I made my way through an endless series of tangents and ended up with banana-eating cats.
Which always means that I should press “publish” without even looking back over the post to see what the hell I just said.
Cool, gonna do that.
The End.
