Sunday, October 03, 2010

Mummy brain: not just for mummies anymore

Some of you may not know that John is currently on parental leave. This means, for those non-Canadians out there, that he is receiving employment insurance from the government plus "top-up" from his employer so that he is receiving 95% of his salary (not all employers do this... but the large ones - and nice ones - often do) for something like 30 weeks of leave. He's at home with us until April. Pretty sweet. And some of you Americans actually complain about a socialist state? Puh-lease. It's pretty great from where I'm sitting.

Anyhoo... so John is fully participating in getting the girls off to school, lunches made, cleaning done, all those lovely domestic chores that occupy a mummy's brain for a good part of the day. He's still squeezing in a bit of writing and is on campus a couple of times a week but he is most definitely on parental leave.

And this was very obvious yesterday on our way home from an afternoon at the apple farm when I realized that so-called "mummy brain" had somehow spread to John.

The sun was shining, we were cruising along a country road about halfway home when:

John: CRAP! Where are my sunglasses? (thinking he left them way back in Mountain at the farm)
Me: (looking at him curiously) Um.... on your face?
John: (dumb silence)
Me: (hysterical laughter)

5 comments:

John said...

In my defence, the sunglasses do come with a cloaking device that I had left on. Also, I was really, really drunk.

Thanks for sharing my shame.

Julie said...

bwahahaha! welcome to the club john.

Shan said...

Oh my gosh! Please thank John for the laugh. Mike would never hear the end of that here.

little b said...

awesome.

Unknown said...

WOW. I am so damn impressed with Canadia, I could cry. My husband took 3 weeks of parental leave, and people thought that was pretty over the top. I took an extra 2.5 months of working 3 days a week (down from 5), and again, people thought that was milking the system. Oh to be in Canada! Good for you guys - that's so healthy!!!!