The Replacements

They say confession is good for the soul. Heaven knows I do a fine job of dishing on the stuff other people in my life are up to, but I guess it's time I tell on myself for this last one. If you dish it out, you have to be able to take it.

Let me preface this little story by saying I think all the junk food I've been eating may have turned my mind to mush. Christmas through New Year's and on through this past weekend, we have indulged in every food our little hearts desired. Clint said he has purposely looked at menus and tried to find the most decadent and sinful thing listed and order at least one of it. It's been fun, it's been filling, it's been fattening. I knew it would have to come to an end for the sake of good health (and being able to wear real, non-elastic waistband pants), but now I am starting to believe that gluttony can actually make you a dimwit.

Maybe the eggnog killed too many brain cells. Or my body is working too hard to digest all the food I've been shoveling in it to give my brain any energy to function. Because I have been scatterbrained. Absent-minded. Okay, downright dumb. A couple of weeks ago, I grabbed a sandwich bag to put some leftover cheddar cheese in for storage. The next day, I opened our drawer where the bags stay and found that I had indeed put the cheese in the bag--and then left the bag in the drawer, instead of putting it in the refrigerator. There have been a couple of occasions where I went to the store for one thing, then came home with three or four items and not one of them was what I originally went to get. My vocabulary has been on the down slide and I've been using brilliant expressions like "thingamajig," "what's its name," and "whosywhatsy."

As an example, over queso and chips Friday night, we were talking about classes we had taken in college. I remembered being told as a freshman that the easiest science to take at Clemson was, "what do they call the one where you study rocks?" Clint stared at me, wide-eyed. "Do you mean geology?" Um, yes. I seem to have forgotten how to speak (and if you know how much I love to talk, that is some feat). Is it stupid in here, or is it just me?

For my 30th birthday, Clint gave me a gorgeous pair of gold and pearl Chanel earrings. Classics which would never go out of style. For the past five years, I wore them with practically everything. Bad days don't seem so bad when you have your Chanel security blanket with you (or on your ears). But a few weeks ago, I went to garnish my outfit with a dash of Chanel and found only one of my earrings. I could not find its sibling anywhere. I thought I might have left the straggler behind at my parents' house over Thanksgiving, but it was not to be. I worried that I might have left it in Virginia on our anniversary trip, and while I love the Homestead, I did not want one of my earrings living there without me. I cleaned out my jewelry box and searched the bottom of my closet like a dog digging for a bone and still: not to be found. I had a Chanel orphan situation on my hands.

After apologizing and mourning and pouting, I moved into the acceptance stage of my grief and started looking online to see about finding a replacement pair. Sure enough, I came upon a website with tons of people selling pre-owned designer duds and saw the same earrings for sale. I even managed to talk the lady down on the price. The only thing better than Chanel is Chanel at a bargain price. Count me in.

The earrings came Saturday. I brought the package inside and, with trembling hands, opened it to find my replacement earrings. My Chanel second string. Thank goodness! I immediately went to my jewelry box to put those babies away for safe keeping, where I noticed another pair of earrings looked tangled, so I picked them up and...oh. My. Stars. The previously mentioned missing earring was caught in the back of this particular pair. My missing child was there the whole time! And now I found myself horrified. I heard Clint's footsteps coming down the hall and my heart raced. I was holding two identical pairs of not very inexpensive earrings. Bless my poor, non functioning brain.

I confessed, and he warned me that he was leaving the room so as not to say anything he might regret later. Cue more apologizing on my part, head shaking on his part, and both of us feeling flabbergasted. This whole thing leaves me feeling like I have lost my mind, but I'm afraid that if I buy another one, I'll find mine and be stuck with two of those, too.

So off to eBay I went. My spare pair are up for auction and at this point, all I want to do is break even quickly, so that this debacle can die down and the jokes about my being off my rocker can lessen a bit. My dear hubby is also offering to get me the Lumosity app for my phone so that I can work on sharpening my brain age, and he has chivalrously promised to put me on one of those kiddie leashes and lead me around should this problem get so bad that I am just wandering aimlessly.

For safety and sanity's sake, I'm now highly motivated to cut back on the food that is making me dense (in both senses of the word). Hopefully, getting back to my normal routine will get me on the road to clear thinking again. I have to hand it to him, Clint summed it up best when he told me, "Women. You can't live with them, you can't sell them on eBay." Man, I hate it when he's right.