Why Us Moms Are Putting Pretzel Rods in the Fridge: We're Running on Empty

I was talking to my husband, and he started laughing, “Dani, open the fridge!”

“Okay,” I slowly opened it to a bin of pretzel rods sitting next to the cartons of milk.

“Oh man, I put that in there?” I put my hands over my face. But not in disbelief, more like: not again.

He nodded, laughing like a child; his eyes and his whole face were laughing, too.

This has been happening to me a lot lately.

The other day I was heating dinner for my children, and I couldn’t for the life of me find the ketchup. I looked in the pantry, went down to the basement. Then, I went to call my husband, who did a Costco run the other day, and I couldn’t find my phone. I retraced my steps. I called from the houseline and found my phone ringing in the pantry.

As a mother, I have so many thoughts in my brain that I’m never completely paying attention to what’s in front of me. I can be making a grilled cheese sandwich and look up and not remember making it because I was in such a deep trance of thought.

It’s a bit terrifying!

Also, when I'm trying to focus, I'm interrupted every two seconds by, "Mommy, can you get me a snack?" or "Mommy, look at me!" There's always so much going on.

I am constantly questioning if I’m completely losing my mind.

It's an everyday conversation with my own mom.

“Mom, you’re not going to believe what I did!”

“What now?” I hear her sigh through the phone.

Motherhood comes with constant worry and exhaustion. There’s a lot of mental and physical drainage. And when you're running on empty, you start doing wacky things.

But I guess this is our brains on motherhood.

And we’ll take it because we’ve never been happier.