Mood Swing… and a Miss

How many idioms can you think of?

There must be thousands of them in the English language.

For example -
According to Hoyle
Ace in the hole
Albatross around one’s neck
All systems go
All thumbs
Apple of one’s eye
As the crow flies
At sixes and sevens
Like peas and carrots (although I can’t say that one without doing a Forrest Gump impression – “Jenny and me was like peas and carrots again.”)

I love them. In fact, I own not one, but two books of nothing but idioms.

The ‘According to Hoyle’ definition (although in this case, it’s Merriam Webster) looks like this: 1 a: the language peculiar to a people or to a district, community, or class : DIALECT b: the syntactical, grammatical, or structural form peculiar to a language2 : an expression in the usage of a language that is peculiar to itself either grammatically (as no, it wasn't me) or in having a meaning that cannot be derived from the conjoined meanings of its elements (as Monday week for "the Monday a week after next Monday")

Every language has them, some more than others.

There are even ones that transcend languages. Take for instance, ‘Like a bull in a china shop’. Many languages have a version of this saying -

French: comme un éléphant dans un magasin de porcelaine
(like an elephant in a porcelain store)
Russian: Вести себя, как слон в посудной лавке
(To behave as elephant in the dish bench)
Swedish: smidig som en elefant i en porslinsbutik
(agile as an elephant in Ikea)
German: Sich wie ein Elefant im Porzellanladen verhalten
(Behave like an elephant in the porcelain shop)

In the foreign language versions, the bull has been replaced with an elephant, but the general idea is the same. But this begs the question, “what the hell does this have to do with babies, children, twins, or daddies?” Good question.

Much ado has been made about the moodiness brought on by the flood of hormones that have been let loose and allowed to run amuck within the host organism. Hormones that act like (let’s say it together) a bull in a china shop.

So far, this has not been the case with P.Pie. I’m a little surprised, and here’s why:

Early in our relationship, P.Pie occasionally had emotional breakdowns.

And by emotion breakdown, I mean she would be completely and utterly inconsolable. And if tried to console her, she would lash out and direct the breakdown at you. I learned that you just kept your distance and the event would pass.

If one of these events had happened at the very beginning of our relationship, or if they took place weekly, or even monthly, I don’t know that I could have stuck it out. But, as it happened, they were at best quarterly. Sometimes even semi-annual, sort of like a white sale.

As I said, I had learned that the best way to deal with it was to let her cry it out.

So fast forward several months.

When we moved in together, P.Pie’s sister, The VP (then just The Ass’t Manager), asked me if I had seen one of her breakdowns.

It had never occurred to me that someone in her family might have experienced one of these outbreaks/breakdowns. Of course, The VP’s advice was to do what I had already learned the hard way.

Eventually these outbreaks became known as Full P.Pies. Over the years (we’ve been together nearly a decade) the frequency and severity have dropped until they are practically non-existent.

I honestly cannot remember the last time she had a Full P.Pie.

But, I have harbored the fear (as has some of her family) that the onslaught of hormones from being pregnant might bring the Full P.Pies back.

I have talked to other people who say pregnancy hormones are different, but I didn’t want to take any chances. The VP (normally a well adjusted person), when she was pregnant with Gunslinger, had what can only be described as a Full The VP which ended in a broken dining room chair.

So to say I was fearful is something of an understatement.

But pregnancy has really agreed with her. When we discussed it, she claimed that she was meant to be pregnant. In fact, she even hypothesizes that the reason for the Full P.Pies was because she had hormonal imbalances that pregnancy would have fixed.

I don’t know about that, but I do know that pregnancy is a one shot (hey, another idiom!) deal for us.

I think.