Cities

An acquaintance of mine said to me the other day, that whenever she starts thinking about intellectual matters and sort of tries to train her brain, her head aches like crazy.
She made me feel better about myself for that's what I've been feeling last 13 months.
Sometimes I can't recognise myself, I get emotional very easily, my speech gets nervous and writing - worse. There are times when I re-read my posts (mostly in Georgian, because you shouldn't ask much from me in English) and they are so illogical. Not that I've ever minded logic, but still, I used to write well (at least to some taste).

Then one rabbi who is also our family friend, gave a class couple of months ago and told us, that somewhere in Talmud it states that woman continues to have her "pregnancy mind" for two years, especially if she's nursing.
When I was in the midrasha I used to say that Talmud isn't studied by women only because it's all about what men think and say, and we (wise girls) know that men never understand women, they are from different planet, so women will not bear studying a book which is only based on men's wisdom.
So now I really take back my words, Talmud is right. Pregnancy mind (rather lack of it) definitely continues for more than a year - I am living proof for that.

After couple of months we had Ezra, my brother-in-law came over for Shabbat and before dessert we decided to play some game. Since you can't write or use various muktzeh things on Shabbat, we started to play this very Soviet game called: "Cities". It goes like this, 4-5 people are in game; one of them picks any letter from Alphabet and says a name of a city (e.g. Leipzig), and second one says the name of other city beginning with the last letter of the city mentioned before (Leipzig - Glasgow), so it continues like that (next one will be Glasgow - Weimar). Time is also very limited there, VERY MUCH indeed, you should say the city names in one-two seconds, quicker you are, the better.
Now I'm trying to remember the suitable expression to my failure in that game.
I couldn't recall the cities of Georgia, let alone the worldwide. My mind was blank. All right I could've named some of them after thinking for couple of minutes, but not in seconds definitely.
So I got very upset, left the room and cried my heart out. My husband tried to calm me down reminding me what our midwife had said abour postpartum time + nursing = mini-dementia.
I was upset and embarrassed anyway, because I used to be quite good at that game and knew loads of cities.

My husband asks me every now and then if I'd like to try, but I am scared and always say, not yet.
You know what though? Having written this, I realise that I probably will play this Shabbat. It's time to overcome the embarrassment, it's my family after all and no-one will laugh at me if I fail again.
I can't let the pregnancy mind become me, if you know what I mean. Plus, I am not pregnant anymore and it's been more than a year since, I shall give it a try.

What a great mind-[en]lightening thing is blogging, isn't it?