Pregnancy Brain Strikes Again! Plus With Drunk Leprechauns. I Should Also Maybe Stop Driving.

Scroll down for the awesome diagrams.

I had never heard of "pregnancy brain" before and thought it sounded kind of made-up. Like, Oh, she's just distracted, she has pregnancy brain. Like, tee hee, she can't concentrate because she's thinking about the baby. I stupidly thought that perhaps "pregnancy brain" meant instead of focusing really hard on crunching the numbers due at the end of the day, I might accidentally spend 45 minutes on babycenter.com looking up whether or not the baby has fingernails yet.

(By the way? She does. Isn't that cute?)

Turns out, that is not what pregnancy brain is. At all. Pregnancy brain is when your body sends all of its blood and nutrients and thinking power to the growing baby and leaves your brain to fend for itself. And apparently, left to its own devices, my brain basically functions like a dimwitted half-cousin with language issues and a drooling problem.

Thus, "pregnancy brain" is when you suddenly find yourself standing in the middle of the room for some reason but you don't know what it was and Oh! Remember that time that thing happened and it was funny and you should maybe blog about it, do you have a picture to go with it? Why is your husband staring at you like that? What? Oh, right! You were in the middle of a sentence. Wait, you were? I was? About what? Hold on, I have to pee.

It's happening all the time now. I put my socks on and then go to look for a pair of socks to put on. I panic because I cannot find my cell phone and ask if it's okay if I just call my sister back so I can find it. I made a nice dinner for Ish on Valentine's Day that took me twice as long as usual because I kept forgetting to do things even though the recipe was in front of me. Every morning I put my wedding band on, then my engagement ring; except the other day, I looked on my dresser and realized my engagement ring was still sitting there, even though I swore I'd already put my rings on. I looked down at my hand and realized I'd put my wedding band on, then a totally different ring on top of it.

Yesterday, I went to Whole Foods. On my way home, I discovered there was a new TJ Maxx! In my neighborhood! I decided I needed to go check it out. So this afternoon, I drove over to it only to discover it was gone!

But how could that be?

Well, right. Pregnancy brain.

But here is the story of how, in my world, a entire giant building suddenly disappeared.

Now let's remember that I'm maybe somewhat directionally impaired to begin with. (I wrote this post with diagrams of how I was supposed to drive the .3 miles to get from work to the deli but instead ended up driving around a pond somehow...)

In my world, yesterday I drove directly to Whole Foods and then drove directly home. And on my way directly home, I passed TJ Maxx. So today, when I was coming from a point even farther away but absolutely directly home and it wasn't there, I was baffled. Where could it have gone?

Let me show you what I mean.

In case you can't tell, to get to Whole Foods from where we live, you take Folsom to 4th street and turn right.

Getting to Whole Foods

Um, and yes. We are talking about an approximate total of FIVE BLOCKS.
How do you lose a TJ Maxx store in five blocks???

In my own feeble defense, one-way streets make all of this far more difficult.

But okay. So, to get home from Whole Foods, especially if you park in front of the store as I did, you simply double back.

Getting Home from Whole Foods

Easy!

And so yesterday, as I was traveling on Howard starting well before 3rd St., I figured I'd have to bump into TJ Maxx, since I had done so the day before. Except I didn't.

Eventually I had to give in to the notion that perhaps the store hadn't disappeared but that at some point my version of directly was not, actually direct.

And seeing as today I was driving on the street I ACTUALLY LIVE ON, I had to figure it was yesterday that I did something, ah, indirect.

So when I reached home and had not found the TJ Maxx, I did the only smart thing I could think of to do. I decided to retrace my steps from yesterday, hoping somehow it would jog my pregnancy brain version of "memory" and give me some clue as to how I got home the day before.

I turned around and headed back to Whole Foods.

Getting to Whole Foods, Day Two

Yes, yes. All of this seemed familiar.

I even got this far...

...before realizing that, ah-ha!! Yesterday I'd turned left! Here!

(Oops. I also accidentally made half an arrow blue and the Whole Foods pink. Sorry, Whole Foods!)

On Harrison! For no! Reason! At! All!

(And the only reason I remembered I'd done so was because I also remembered thinking that the guy driving the car in front of me, who was also turning left, seemed like kind of an asshole.) (Why I thought this, I have no recollection.)

But yes. As you can imagine, I was quite relieved to have found TJ Maxx. I pulled my car into the parking lot and pretended like of course I knew TJ Maxx was on Harrison Street. Like, duh. Where else would it be?

Then while at TJ Maxx I didn't find anything I wanted. (See previous entry.) I did manage to buy that cute folder thing, but even more traumatic than their sad little selection of clothes I might possible fit into was their "St. Patrick's Day Doll Display."

I don't know about you, but I do not see these dolls and think, Gosh, they're so cute.

No. I think, AGGGGHHHHH! WHAT IN GOD'S NAME IS THIS ALL ABOUT???

They look possessed!

And...drunk.

Where do you even begin with this one?

This guy is squinting with his tongue out as if to try to remember what he's doing. He also looks shitfaced.

What I want to know is, why does he think he can play golf with a flute? Because in case you can't tell, that's a GOLF ball by his boot, next to the frightened-looking Grandfather Leprechaun head.

Hey, kids! It's Shitface The Leprechaun, and he's coming to your house to lick you! And kick golf balls the size of his head around while he plays you a little ditty on his black stick flute!

My trip to TJ Maxx was not all I'd hoped it would be.

Then, when I got back to my car, and managed to get out of the tiny parking lot (which was hard to do in and of itself because the directional arrows in the parking lot were very, very misleading), I realized I still had no idea how I'd gotten home the day before. As I drove, I had to search the streets for any sign of what I'd done.

You can bet I hadn't gone directly.

In fact, I went so indirectly I need to go download a NEW image from Google in order to make the street map big enough to show you what I did do. Hold on.

Okay.

How Not To Get Home From Whole Foods

Seriously. With an under 10-block GRID to travel, you would think it wouldn't be hard for me to find my way directly home. After all, I've lived in San Francisco for seven-and-a-half years, and lived in SoMa for one. And yet I still managed to take the wrong street in BOTH directions - West AND North to go about five blocks.

The best scariest pregnant brainiest part of all this is that I hadn't even known I'd done it. I had to go back over my steps to figure out what in the world I did, and why it hadn't seemed like I'd done anything wrong.

Turns out...

This is how I always used to get home off the highway when I was commuting from work! (That X = the highway exit). MYSTERY SOLVED.

Sure it makes perfect sense for me to go from Harrison, which I shouldn't have been on, to go all the way to 9th, as though getting off the highway in the opposite direction, to get back home. Of course it does.

Shitface the Leprechaun totally gets me.
*lick*

**********Comment of the Day**********

Citycat said...

I once got lost on my way to Costco from my old apartment. Key factors here: I was ON FOOT, because it was less than half a mile away, I had lived in that apartment for over three years, and I took a wrong turn. Funny thing? THERE ARE NO TURNS BETWEEN MY APARTMENT AND COSTCO. SO here I am, in an alley full of trashcans, entirely lost, because I turned for absolutely no reason.

And I'm not pregnant. Just stupid.