If you are not a computer geek like my darling Chris, here is a new term for you to learn: “Packet loss.”
Packet loss is a phenomenon in which data packets appear to have been transmitted correctly, but never show up at the other end of the connection. In computers, this can lead to performance problems. In pregnancy, it can lead to my going into the kitchen for vitamins and instead, eating a half-pound of cheese and an entire tub of yogurt but failing to take a single pill. It can also result in my being able to talk about pregnancy at length (in fact, I currently have no other conversation topics), but having difficulty thinking of interesting things to chronicle in this blog.
While there are many things that can cause packet loss over networks, I am fairly certain I have figured out the source of the packet loss I have been experiencing over the past five months. It weighs about a pound and a quarter, and is producing surfactant.
Haven’t figured it out yet? What I’m trying to say here is that the baby is eating my thoughts. Technically, what’s causing my packet loss is probably a combination of sleep deprivation, greatly increased nutritional requirements, and all that progesterone that’s been flooding my body. I’m sure that intensely focusing most of my mental energy on the bambino doesn’t help. But informally, I like to think of the baby sitting in my uterus, rubbing its hands together like a mad scientist and using some nefarious remote-control device to seek and destroy my neural pathways.
I’ll admit that before I got pregnant, I wasn’t always on top of my game. Occasionally, people poking through my refrigerator might find the remote control, and I’ve been known to accidentally squirt liquid soap on my toothbrush. But these incidents were not everyday occurrences.
Now I routinely get on my computer to do one thing, only to wind up doing another thing entirely (and it usually involves nursery decor). A month later, I still haven’t done the one thing I originally meant to do, and can’t even remember what it was. Also, I have taken bananas out of the fridge and set them on the counter while eating one, come back later and checked the refrigerator for my fruit, wondered where it could have gone, and ignored the bananas staring at me from the counter two feet away. Until days later, of course, when they were all brown and yucky.
Then there’s the time when I found myself standing at the sink after brushing my teeth, fishing around in my cornea for the contact lens I had taken out a few minutes ago, right before I brushed.
More horrifying yet is the fact that, while I am generally a good provider of proper spellings, there have been several times when Chris asked me how to spell something and I blanked midstream. There have also been occasions on which I’ve had to search for the right word, which hasn’t happened in a good 27 years (granted, for a few of those early years, I took the liberty of making up new ones when I didn’t have a term for something).
Possibly the worst instance of packet loss I have experienced to date is this very entry. You see, it had occurred to me two months ago that I should write about my packet-loss issues. Yet, every time I sat down to blog about it, I ended up scouring eBay for deals on the beautiful but elusive Graco Snugride Metropolitan. When I actually did post entries, I could never remember what I was going to write about. Oh, the irony!
It is to be hoped that the packet-loss issues will be resolved when the baby arrives. On the other hand, I will still be dealing with sleep deprivation and nutritional issues. I guess only time will tell. If the packet loss persists after May 8, Chris might one day find me diapering a cat while tossing the baby anti-hairball kittie treats.