Yesterday I was giving a friend sought after advice on how to alleviate teething pain for their baby. Of course my advice was sound, it worked and my friend was a little surprised. He said, "So far so good. I always thought you were just a fountain of teasing and sarcasm, you've really proved me wrong this time."

To which I sarcastically thought in my head, "Punk." but replied with, "I'm only part sarcasm and teasing, but since my wit capacity has significantly decreased in the past few years, I'm just a bit more effective as a fountain of insanely useful knowledge. And I say that with no sarcasm whatsoever."

That was not completely honest, I am mostly sarcasm and teasing, but it isn't as clever as it once was. Which brings me to my diminished wit capacity, which is a direct result of my diminishing "smarter than a whip" brain.

Yesterday I was also talking to a friend who was telling me how her son Mikey just shoved a goldfish down her five month old's throat. As she goes on describing in detail how she couldn't get the goldfish out, Livie was not breathing, I am picturing in my head the tail of a goldfish sticking out of her mouth, wiggling around as it is lodging further and further into the baby's throat. Then as I was about to ask how she was going to disinfect Livie's mouth and throat of gross fish water and possible excrement, then it dawned on me it could possible be the goldfish of the cracker genus and not of the slimy, live-for-a-day-for-$.30 genus. So I asked, "A real goldfish?" To which she incredulously replied, "No! A cracker! Why would you think of a fish?"

I don't know why. What kind of mother has at least one toddler and doesn't immediately think Peppridge Farm Goldfish when speaking of goldfish? Me, the diminished mom.

Then it reminded me of the time I was watching some investigative report on selling human organs on the black market. The next day I was driving to my parents and at the bottom of a street that leads to their house was a large sign that said "ORGANS FOR SALE, CALL 123-123-123". My first thought was, "How brazen!" and then about 4 minutes later I realized they meant the one that you use your fingers to tickle, not the one that you use your fingers to harvest.

Although I should be embarrassed to put such information out there on the www, I only feel relief, like admitting to the problem is helping me on the road to recovery. Plus, it is a gift from my children, I should care for it and love it and hope one day they pool together their resources and gift me with a bionic brain. And as it is a new year (Happy New Year to all my friends and family!), one of my non-resolutions is to laugh at it all a little more and quit being so hard on myself. We shall see.