Lightbulb Moments

I'm not 100% sure but sometimes I'm afraid I'm a little stupid.  Not stupid as in "That girl din't git no book larnin'" but stupid as in "What the hell is she thinking?  Is she thinking?"  


For example, Monday I got up, ate breakfast, and then had THE worst heartburn I've ever had, ever, in my entire life.  EVER.   


Tuesday, I got up and ate the exact same breakfast I'd had Monday and got THE worst heartburn I've ever had, ever, in my entire life, EVER, except for Monday.  


This morning (Wednesday) I got up, ate the exact same breakfast again that I'd eaten Monday and Tuesday and lo and behold, I have THE worst heartburn I've ever had, ever, in my entire life, EVER, except for Monday and Tuesday.


The STUPID part is that it didn't occur to me until TODAY that my heartburn was most likely caused by my breakfast.  


Seriously.  Three days in a ROW I ate the EXACT SAME FOOD with the EXACT SAME RESULTS and it took me THREE DAYS TO FIGURE IT OUT.


If Forrest Gump were real and sitting next to me he'd say, "You're not a very smahhhht girl..."


The thing is, I do stupid shit like this all the time and never seem to learn from it.  


I keep buying the same 144 pack of cheap-ass kitchen garbage bags, even though 99% of the time the bottom falls out while I'm hauling them off to the dumpster.  It's not like I'm only buying a 12 pack and figuring, "What the hell, they're cheap, I'll just get 12 more..."  Oh HELL no.  I'm buying 144 at a time and thinking, "These things are freaking useless... why did I buy them again?"  and then 2 months later, I go buy ANOTHER 144 OF THEM. 


Moving right along, let's take a look at the fact that I am lactose intolerant.  (Don't worry, I'm not going to go into detail.)  I know I'm lactose intolerant.  I know that if I eat ice cream, sour cream, cream cheese, or anything containing the words "cream" or "cheese" I will become very sick.  I am a ROCK STAR at not eating ice cream or drinking milk or putting sour cream on my baked potato (*sob*) but for some reason, I can't get it through my head that CHEESECAKE is DAIRY.


I know, I know... the word "cheese" is right in the title.  And yet time and again I am faced with a dessert menu and without hesitation I will order the one item with the word "cheesecake" in the title.  Pumpkin cheesecake?  Bring it.  Raspberry cheesecake?  Ohhhhh yeah, baby... serve it right here.  Apple cheesecake?  Blueberry cheesecake?  Turtle cheesecake?  Cheesecake cheesecake?  Bring.  It.  On.  


An hour later, as I'm sprinting to the bathroom, I will scream at Dan, "If you EVER see me ordering cheesecake again, KILL ME BEFORE I TAKE MY FIRST BITE!"  


He says (soooo helpfully, I might add, because, you know, he's an asshole), "Why did you order it, then?"


Well, DUH... BECAUSE IT'S CHEESECAKE!!!


Here's the thing:  I know, with absolute certainty, that the sun will rise and set tomorrow, the tides will continue to ebb and flow, I will yell at Maisy 16 times today for walking back and forth under the coffee table scratching her back, and I will, again, order cheesecake.  And eat it.  And hate myself for it later.


(I hear there's a restaurant close by that makes Snickers cheesecake.  Can you imagine?  SNICKERS CHEESECAKE.  O. M. G.)


And so it goes.


And even though I am well-known in some circles as the person who has an answer for everything, the only answer I have as to why I keep doing the same dumb-ass things over and over again and achieving the exact same results every single time is, "I don't know..."  


(You know how when you were a kid and your mom would tell you not to do something and then you'd do it anyway and the results were catastrophic and your mom would say, "I just TOLD you not to do that!  Why did you do it?" and you would look down at your feet and say, "I don't know..."  It's kind of like that.  Only I'm the one doing the asking AND the answering.  "Danielle, WHY are you a dumbass?"  "I don't know..."  Sigh.)


Backstory, to explain why absolutely none of this is my fault:  My mother is the queen of doing stupid shit.  She's incredibly smart, has her Master's Degree, and when it comes to book larnin', she's right on top of her game.  Anything else and she's a friggin' blonde joke.  My sister and I spent our childhoods rolling around on the floor pointing and laughing at my mom for all the bonehead things she did.  We would chortle and guffaw and clutch our sides squealing, "Oh my GODDDD... you're STUUUPIDDDD!"  (It was all in good fun.  Really.)  


I remember when my dad tried to teach my mother how to drive a stick shift.  She simply could not grasp the concept.  Every weekend he would take us out to the boonies and my mother would try to drive, and my sister and I would sit in the backseat singing this song that we made up, over and over again, to a tune that we invented all by ourselves:


"Don't sweat, just hope
we make it through the day...
Drive carefully
and don't drive up a tree..."


I'm sure she was very proud.


Paybacks are a bitch, yo.