Sunday Evening Lunacy

I consider myself a relatively smart person. I mean I’m no Stephen Hawkings, but I was valedictorian of my high school class. And if that doesn’t convince you of my intellect (perhaps because you know I went to high school in southern Ohio with a student body of less than 400 people), than you should also know that I was a National Merit Scholar.

And I can almost hear you thinking, “Well maybe she’s book smart, but does she have any common sense?”

So I’ve heard this one a lot – the one where someone is called book smart as if it is derogatory with common sense becoming the gold standard of intelligence. Although to be truthful, I’ve never heard it before in reference to me. I assume that this is because to the casual blog reader observer, I appear to be neither book smart nor particularly full of common sense.

Whatever. In my life, my mother is the Queen of Common Sense. I guess growing up in a poor Irish farming family with an alcoholic father and bitter, bitter mother is the recipe for developing common sense sovereignty. I’m not quite sure if that’s the case, but I do know that the woman knows a no-nonsense answer to every quandary.

At least three times a week, SRH and I have the following discussion:

Me: I don’t know…what do you think?

SRH: (Shrugs) I don’t know…what do you think?

Me: Maybe I should call my mom?

SRH: Yeah.

Anyway, I may not have the common sense of my mother, but I’ve never considered myself a slouch in that department.

So explain to me how, this very evening - when I was washing about 250 plastic balls in bleach water to fill up Zane’s new ball pit, which incidentally, the OT is thrilled for him to have because, you know, it provides deep pressure which is helpful for both his tactile and proprioceptive systems. And anyway, I had to clean the balls in bleach water because my dear friend, M, got them off Craigslist for mere pennies, but they were filthy because their previous ball pit home was located out of doors - I had a huge breakdown of sound judgment.

Why, I ask you, would I …

…choose to do said bleach water washing in my new cute lime green top…

…while standing on the irreplaceable Scottish wool blanket that SRH and I bought in London on our 5^th anniversary trip…

…and upon realizing the idiocy of this behavior by noticing white spots on the aforementioned top and blanket, I would STILL run my fingers through my hair before washing my hands.

I’m sure that tomorrow morning, I’ll have unflattering orange highlights on both sides of my head. Because that’s what happens to Black hair when it’s bleached, right? It becomes an unwieldy, nappy burnt orange? It doesn’t become blonde does it?

Because if you’ve known me for more than 5 minutes, you are aware that I think that Black people with blonde hair are an abomination. Something nature never intended. (Even Beyonce, beautiful woman that she is, struggles as a true blonde.) And I feel fairly certain that the superstar doesn’t get her ‘do by running bleachy fingers through uncombed hair while trying to put together a toy for their child at 9pm at night after a long, exhausting weekend of play dates, cleaning house, and brunch making.

So, um, yeah, I think we’re clear on the verdict here: I may be a little book smart, but not so much with the common sense.