Which is dumber, a monkey or an ape?

This morning we woke much earlier than necessary. The little cat, Buddy Wiggins, woke the Beloved Mister with her mewing (Maine Coons, such as the mother & daughter rescues with whom we share our home-- along with Bert, our humble and companionable shepherd mix rescue-- are highly vocal creatures), and Ms. Booty Homemaker found herself startled awake by the Mister's choice words for the trash bag torn up by a visiting racoon on the back porch. Ms. Booty H's fault her own self. It was she (me) who left the bag on the porch yesterday, intending to walk it down the rickety steps (one should really be a mountain goat to regularly mount our back steps) at a later point. Bad Ms. Booty! This is the second time in a week she has let the critters from the forest and the Springs from back of the house tear up the garbage, strewing chicken bones, coffee grounds, egg shells and other choice bits about the porch and onto the asphalt driveway apron below. Ms. Booty should be composting, for one thing. And for another, she should learn from her mistakes. But here's the thing of things....

Hormones.

No. I'm not joking, nor am I attempting to offer up an excuse. Something about pregnancy and the rush of chemical reactions throughout the body / mind can have a profound effect on one's very brilliance. Fortunate for me, the Beloved Mister is most often amused by this and in response to one particularly egregious error on the part of the dumbed-down Ms. Booty Homemaker, he chucklingly said, It's funny. It's funny that pregnancy makes you stupid. Think what happens to really stupid people!! I laughed too, and neglected to remind him of the rather moronic things I've said and done when NOT under the influence of a rush of baby building hormones.... the most famous example of which, and one that still tickles us to this day, is my (at the time) utterly serious query, Which is dumber, a monkey or an ape?

In previous times of severe stress, such as during the death of a loved one and / or a prolonged and painfully ugly and legally brutal breakup, I've fallen prey to the kind of rattled and wonky behavior that accompanies such events: daily passing my exit on the Interstate, leaving my driver's license with the drive-thru bank teller three times in the same month, repeatedly locking myself out of car or home....

It's odd to me that such unhappy times and such a happy time as now bring on a similar though not same kind of stupidity.

I am drunk with child, as I have been drunk with love, with life, with loss.