Drink up those Frappuccinos, people

Thursday

Jul102008

It seems fitting that today, almost exactly three years after Mommy-Brain set in, I took a significant step towards regaining a semblance of my former cerebral capacities. (which were never much to begin with, but hey…)

Three years ago Jonathan and I were sitting in a huge Chinese restaurant in Vancouver when Mommy-Brain hit. I was so tired, beginning to feel nauseous (though if I knew then how much worse it would get I might have jumped into the English Bay), and my brain suddenly stopped working. I was propping my head up with my hand, elbow on the table, and staring off into space.

“What are you thinking about?” Jonathan asked me.

“Nothing,” I said.

“No, really, what are you thinking about?”

I looked straight at him and slowly (I did everything slowly at that point) said, “Absolutely nothing. I’m not thinking at all. I’m not even daydreaming.”

He tried to engage me in conversation. I tried not to smell every single person’s meal in the entire restaurant. I picked at my food, pushed it away, propped my head up, and thought about nothing at all. For another seven months. And for another year after that I had only three thoughts:

- Do we have enough diapers?

- Do we have enough laundry detergent?

- Exactly how many cc’s has each boy retained today? (not consumed, retained)

[Actually, now that I think about it, the Mommy-Brain actually began to creep in a mere 10 days after conception – but that’s another topic for another day.]

But now I’m climbing out of that abyss. Creating and maintaining this site helped – it challenged my brain a bit and made me learn new things. And this summer I’m directing a summer day camp, which is the most I’ve interacted with adult people on an ongoing basis since the boys’ conception. (realizing that – for the most part – I haven’t missed it)

And I’ve been reading the Wall Street Journal again (albeit sporadically) for a year now. And between issues of Real Simple (where the vocabulary and concepts are - thankfully - exactly that), I’ve read a few issues of Forbes, too.

So this week I felt ready to start wading back into one of my hobbies in my previous life… trading securities. I bought a whopping 28 shares of SBUX - woo-hoo! That’s all the available cash I had in my Roth IRA. The rest of it is tied up in CHD and TSCM (Church & Dwight, The Street Dot Com). Those were my last two purchases, both made in 2001. For the next four years I didn’t want to sell them, then for the next three years my brain wasn’t functioning. I took a look at that account this week and saw I had enough to buy some Starbucks, which I’ve been vaguely wanting to own for several months now.

Except that every time I mentioned the idea to Jonathan he kept wanting to get options instead of the actual stock for 49 reasons that all sounded very unappealing. And besides, I’ve learned that as a general rule, if Jonathan wants to buy a particular security – particularly if it’s an option – it’s best to run the other way screaming. He’s a finance whiz for sure, but not with securities.

I can hear most of you snoring now, so let me finish by saying all of my previous decisions were made based on 15% research and 85% gut feel. And this Starbucks purchase was about 1% research and 99% gut feel. But at least I’m back in the game!

So take that, Mommy-Brain! Wah-psh! Wah-psh!