Brain? Helloooooo? Where Did You Go?

I never know when my brain is going to work and when it's just going to take up space in my sizable head.

As a for instance, at holiday party #1 this past weekend a group of us were talking to a girl. (My two friends were talking and I, mostly, wasn't.) She commented that many of her recent boyfriends liked to put their hands on the place where she was about to sit palm side up. She allowed as to how she had solved that problem by not dating anyone anymore. I suggested, with my first words to this person, that she could also get around this by dating guys with no hands. This an example of when my filter turns off, but my brain keeps going.

A good example of a complete shut down was at holiday party #2. For a while I was consuming cheese dip at a speed normally reserved for bilge pumps in tankers. I decided I should take a break and went to talk to my friends. When it came time to re-investigate the dip, I discovered that it was surrounded by two very attractive girls. To some this might be the perfect opportunity to both a) talk to two very attractive girls, and b) to eat some very attractive dip. But all I saw was two unapproachable but still very attractive dip guards. My solution? Take a piece of celery (the longest dip-able accoutrement within reach) and lean waaaay over the table so I could just barely stick it into the bowl. The celery and the cheese dip weren't really intended for each other, and attractive girl #3 noticed me eating dip that way and comment on it. I mumbled that it was good and promptly got a big glob of dip stuck to my lip, which then slid of onto the floor. Smmooooth.

The last and most recent example can hardly be counted as my fault. I played on open mic last night, and I had only just last week finished the second song I was about to sing. My lack of free time forced me to spend the hour before the open mic madly trying to memorize the words. When I got up to sing I was feeling pretty confident until I noticed that the girl sitting front and center was wearing a low cut satiny negligee shirt substitute over enough cleavage to kill an elephant. (It's actual cleavage and not the ivory trade which is wiping out large eared friends.) With all that distraction going on, I have no choice but to blame her for me starting out on the wrong note.

As an aside, I seem to be stuck without any good word for females in my age group. Girl sounds too young (though I use it anyway). Woman sounds 45. Lady is something New York cabbies yell at women in old movies. "You gotta be kiddin me, lady!" Female sounds too clinical. "I was observing two female subjects as they guarded the desired cheesy comestibles." Bird is too English. Chick makes me sound like I’m a frat boy from the 80s. What's a dude to do?