I did the same thing at Starbucks earlier in the week.  I saw the barista busily working the milk-froth step in my latte process and I thought, that must be so great, to be so busy for hours you don’t have time to think!  You don’t have to tell me how ridiculous that thought was.  If she had a little one at home I am sure she would trade an eye or a leg or at least a pinkie toenail to be home with her baby if she could.  I get it.  I am so blessed to be able to stay home with Ellie, especially in this economy.  

And yet…and yet the hours of the days are filled with my heart and body being engaged but my mind being left to fend for itself.  After two years of not working (waiting for my social security number, then getting pregnant with Ellie) it isn’t pretty in there.  Its dusty, messy, and whole sections are vacant.  Writing this blog is the only thing keeping my brain from being purged from my body as the lifeless, useless, extraneous material it is.  Pretty soon my white cells will start attacking it (what’s this huge thing doing here?  It serves no purpose and it taking up a lot of real-estate that could be better used for heart muscles).

I try to talk to Bill about it and he says things like. ‘Oh, you aren’t busy enough, I have things for you to do.’  He glances at the carpet that hasn’t been vacuumed in days (ok, ok weeks), his gaze floats up to the dishes in the sink, back down to her toys all over the floor.  I try to explain it isn’t the busy I need, its the engagement.  It’s the intellectual stimulation.  It’s the SOCIAL stimulation – talking to adults is becoming a lost art.  I’ll have to read books about how to end a conversation without once mentioning poop.  I’m just not sure how to do it anymore.  What?  You just closed a global program to install software in seventeen countries without a hitch?  Well, Let me tell you the day Ellie pooped ON THE CHANGE TABLE.  It was actually quite beautiful.  Like a little poop snow-cone with the little curl on the end.  I’m so proud.  

Who needs a brain when my heart, and her diapers, are this full? Besides, the brain is like a muscle, sure it’s atrophied now but it will come back when I start using it again.  Right?  Right!?  And if not well, I’ll always have my poop stories to fall back on.