Empty Nest and Empty Brain

J started daycare today.

It felt strange to drive home alone this morning after dropping Beth at school and CA at the train station.

No toddler struggling to get out of the car seat.

Stranger still, to walk into an empty and quiet house, and to actually have the whole house to myself for a few hours.

No little person demanding a video or a bottle of milk or a cuddle.

After a few minutes of mixed emotions, I settled down and achieved my two biggest goals for the day:

• Reading the Bible
• Starting on my Diploma of Publishing course materials

I quickly discovered that it took several attempts before the words in my tutorial made any sense.

It's been 15 years since Law School and three years since I left the workforce, and the brain does get rusty.

Some days, CA teases me because I can't string a sentence together properly. My brain knows the words but my tongue says something incomprehensible. It's embarrassing.

A mum at playgroup says her brain's gone out the window after two kids. All she knows are the names of the characters in the kids' TV show In The Night Garden.