m-i-s-s-p-e-l-l-i-n-g....misspelling

I knew how to spell once. Really. I was never spelling bee worthy, but I could get by. My question is this: What is it about birthing children which makes little pieces of functioning brain tissue fall out of your head never to return?

I avoid words now, words that I suddenly no longer know how to spell. This can be quite irritating, as those words are sometimes as simple as "their" and "eat." I sat for twenty minutes last night looking at a word. I typed it. it didn't look right. I looked it up on trusty dictionary.com. It was right, but still didn't look that way. So, I continued to stare.

You know, the longer you stare at a word that doesn't look right, the stranger it looks? It's kind of like the reflex to start feeling around on your head the second someone says, "tick."