Thanks to my husband. Don’t we make a cute couple?
(I took a few liberties with the assigned gender, thankyouverymuch…)
Do I have some fantastic anti-gravity boobs, or what?!?
Your results:
You are Spiderwoman
You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky, and have great power and responsibility.
|
 |
Someday, at some point in my life, I will learn never to plan anything in a way of “I’m going to do this!” because, inevitably, something gets in the way. Much like a rhinoceros in the middle of a one-lane road. There’s just nothing else to do but wait it out.
So it has been since the moment I wrote my last post about filling in some of the gaps I’ve left on my site. Work has gone completely bonkers, the kid has been sick and very busy as we head into the Chaos Of The Last Month Of School(TM) (a well-earned title), and, as a result of these and other unforeseens, I’ve been up almost all night every night this week working. Did I mention how much that sucks?
My intentions are still good and still there (oh, just how ADD did THAT sound?!! lol), but in a move that shows me I really have taken some amazing strides in the last year when it comes to dealing with my ADD, I’m okay with waiting a bit longer because: (1) I’m not stressing about it, (2) my family life is of the ultimate importance to me, and their wait for me to be around is hard on them (and me). So, they get me first. :) Probably seems simple to some, but to me, knowing that and feeling that –and without stressing by feeling I should be doing a million other things instead– is huge.
Hope you take the time to really enjoy what you love this weekend too. We’ll all be back.
Because you never know who will show up, link it, and all hell could break loose.
Well, okay, it hasn’t broken loose just yet. But, on the off chance that it does, I’m realizing that all those things that have been keeping me from getting my collective website house in order are finally almost finished. Said things being (1) taxes, (2) my car getting fixed [Wednesday, people - it could be WEDNESDAY!!!], and (3) my husband’s work in-freakin-sanity. There’s still that whole “last month of school” thing that is approaching and is nothing to sneeze at, but ya know, there’s always going to be that something. In short, it’s time to get off my duff and get it done.
Short pause for a guffaw from my ADD side because I said “get it done.”
Okay, back on track. On checking my e-mail for the first time since taxes, it turns out that ADDitude Magazine, a great resource for ADDers, has added a link to yours truly on their ADHD blogs page. While most likely entirely search-engine-rendered, I’m going to choose instead to be highly flattered (she said with a giggle), and I’m going to take inspiration to finally make an attempt at some pages that I’ve been MTD for quite some time now — such as the one that contains Dyskinesia Speak and lets you know that MTD is my abbreviation for one of the most-used ADD phrases uttered: Meaning To Do. And, yes, even my About page that you’ve all loving clicked upon a thousand times only to find out that while I’m apparently willing to tell you about my car accident, my neighbors, and music that I like, I’m apparently too lame to get around to describing myself.
WELL, NO MORE, PEOPLE! I’M SETTING ABOUT A TASK HERE!
And now that I’m committed to my task, I just remembered that I forgot to take my Adderall today. I know. You can already tell that your reading future here is in safe hands, huh? ;)
I shall return – postmedication, postbank, and postfood and caffeine of some sort for good measure!
Ow. Oof. Yikes! SH!T!!! These are the sounds of me walking through the house, cooking, moving furniture, carrying anything for that matter, or basically, um, breathing.
Yes, world, I am here to admit to my shame: I … am a clutz. It’s true. My soul has an almost ethereal natural grace about it. My body? Not so much.
I have actually read and been told that being clutzy can be a part of ADD. No one has really offerred an explanation for it, so I’ll surmise that we’re not quite as aware of what is surrounding us/going on around us/where our bodies fit into it all. Sure, I can go with that.
The running joke in our house used to be: “I’m going to make dinner.” “Okay, I’m sorry you burned yourself.” Because it was GOING to happen. No matter what. Now imagine that I worked in the restaurant business for about 4 years, 3 of them near a 600-degree oven. How I’m not scarred like my entire body survived a 4-alarm fire, I have no idea because I earned it. Have you ever reached over and grabbed a probably 475-500-degree pan with your bare hands? I have. I’m here to tell you that it smarts.
Actually, the bumps, bruises, injuries, burns, etc., where I make the most noise aren’t usually the ones where I am the most injured. It’s when you hear a sharp intake of breath and then a quiet voice calling out words that you can’t actually hear, that’s when there could be an ER involved. The pan? I didn’t even do that; the only sound was the pan dropping on the table, the collective stunned silence of the people around me as they watched in horror, and my footsteps walking as fast as I could to the back so that I could immediately immerse my hand in vat full of ice.
Today, however, has been one significant THUD after another. I have: BASHED the very edge of my elbow into the sharp edge of the closet door (a solid 5 minutes with my head between my knees trying not to lose my lunch), SMACKED 3 toes into the corner on the leg of our rolling dining room chair, and CRASHED into a huge amplifier that is in the normal walking path in our basement. By the by, that’s the second time I’ve done that this week. Thankfully, the most recent one was on my thigh instead of my shin. Not because it hurts less than the other did but because at least I didn’t hit the same already traumatized spot.
Can you get long-term disability checks because you’re a danger to yourself when you MOVE?
Truly sick the week before spring break, missed all but 1 day of school. Spent pretty much the whole of spring break running around like a madman and driving his poor, now-sick-herself mother nuts:
“Hey Son, how about you go get your clothes out for school tomorrow?”
“Okay. But Mom? You’ll have to check my cold in the morning.”
“Oh son… You are SO going to school tomorrow. In fact, in the history of the world, there has never BEEN a kid who was MORE going to school than you are, tomorrow.”
Well, first I have to say that I hate the new admin page formats, currently with the heat of a supernova. I’m sure I’ll move past it at some point. Maybe. I think my favorite part so far has to be that the posting box got (yet again) smaller while the font size for the blog title, etc., can be seen from my neighbor’s house. wtf, mate?? And what’s with the barf-tastic color scheme of light blue on… light blue? Bah.
On with our regularly scheduled program…
I’m down here right now instead of upstairs eating dinner with my family. Yeah, I feel like a total putz for that, but sometimes, the only thing I can do is remove myself from the situation - often because I know that my angst is palpable and will only make things worse when the kid in the mix grasps no one else’s feelings almost ever, with the one exception being when someone has angst - because of him. Now, mind you, that’s not empathy or sympathy coming out, and it isn’t that it’s the only feeling he can read. No, it is because if I have angst because of him, it directly affects his ability to do whatever the hell he wants. Yes, often in the Aspie world, if you can’t figure out why a child is acting the way they are, you need to re-center and remind yourself that their world is 100% about themselves and, therefore, about how THEY get to interact with the world, not about how the world interacts with them. Resort to the simplest question of, “Is there a way that he could be making this entirely about himself?” and you’ll almost always find your answer.
I have ADD, and one facet of that for many people, myself included, is the need for praise/reward for behavior. If I do something nice, I need to hear that I did. Some people would call it being self-centered. Some would call it having low self-esteem. I’ll grant you a component of both, frankly, but truly, it’s because that is how *I* interact with the world. Praise/Reward creates energy in someone with ADD; it’s a snowball effect. And, truly, it’s usually pretty pathetic how little praise/reward it takes to have that snowball rolling down the hill like a freakin’ meteor in the direction you want it to go.
Explains A LOT about my years as a teenage girl and the barge-load of mistakes I’ve made with boys/men all my life.
As we all tend to reflect what we want, ADD’ers also tend to give a lot of praise/reward, sometimes to the point that we can seem overbearing, stifling, or flat-out crazy. To us, our words of praise or encouragement mean the world, but I imagine they often mostly just bounce off others as fairly insignificant comments or, at best, leave only a fleeting impression. We are the quintessential example of “a smile can make someone’s day.” Truly, a kind word and a smile from someone as I hold the door for them coming out of the gas station can absolutely turn my day around 180 degrees.
The point is that I had imagined that my child would be like me (don’t we all). I’m sure every parent is disappointed in many respects when it comes to that fantasy; Junior has no interest in football and doesn’t care about your favorite car, and Janie would rather drive a forklift than take ballet and refuses to even consider the flute. As the ADD parent of an Aspie child, the person I want to make happy more than anything else in the world couldn’t care less about my wants, my efforts, or my good intentions brought about by my love for him. My drive to see him happy means absolutely nothing to him, even when I am successful, and in the end, it is my innermost being that feels it has been resolutely rejected. It is crushing, in the worst of ways.
While I try to take comfort in a partial silver lining that, on some level, he doesn’t suffer from a need to please others or put their wants above his own, I know that is built not of confidence but deficiency. I can see the edges where that frays with his peers and know that the time is coming where those things will start to, if not matter to him then become a source of terrible frustration and angst of his own. And, somehow, I will have to find a way to help him through it and teach him how to deal with it, on his terms, and hopefully before it molds him into an angry young man. Yes, I will have to teach him how to understand people like me.
And so it is that I am here with my hurt, by the lamp light, tears streaming down my face, because I cannot yet even imagine when or where I will find the strength for that challenge. I just have to believe that I will.
Ever have one of those moments when you get all up on your high horse about something and you’re so proud of yourself in the moment you’re finished because you really had a right to say everything you just said? A full-on, SO THERE! moment?
And in that next moment: Dear God, I am such a jackass. WHY did I do that???
*frantic hand waving* Me, me, me.
I’ve been meaning to write about the car accident I was involved in a couple of weeks ago, but I just haven’t had the energy. Why? Because I’ve been expending all of that energy dealing with the mental, emotional, and tangible fall-out from it, including the fact that my car is sitting useless and battered in a body shop that I’ve never even seen in person while no one is taking responsibility for getting it fixed or paying for the rental car I’m driving at $25/day (and brother, I’m here to tell you that I don’t have $25/day to be giving away - ever, but particularly right now since the IRS wants $$ out of me in 12 days). As I was the hit-ee in said vehicular onslaught, I’m dealing with the other driver’s insurance company to attempt to get something done. Yeah. I’m not sure what planet my sad little brain was on when I thought they’d actually be straightforward and do, ya know, what they’re supposed to do, AKA The Right Thing, but I was obviously delusional that day.
I just left a reasonably nasty (for me) message on the claim adjuster’s voicemail, the jerk who won’t bother to return my call, has been rude to my rental car office, has been a complete assclown to my body shop, and who has the estimate for my repairs sitting on his desk for no less than 2-1/2 days now but has known about the whole damn thing for the entire 2 weeks. I made threats to send my insurance company after him. I used the word lawyer (I slay myself… let’s remember that I don’t have the $ for the rental car). I told him that he was rude AND unprofessional. I’m such a badass. *groan* I somehow imagine him getting the message and laughing himself all the way to the vending machine for his celebratory M&Ms.
The very short version of the accident is that it was pouring rain in a “somebody build an Ark” fashion, and as I was bringing the kids home from school (one mine, one not mine), the other driver (by her statement) tapped her brakes to change lanes and suddenly was careening into a hard spin that would have been 100% impossible for almost any vehicle to make at that sharp of a degree without the benefit of hydroplaning—a benefit she had in spades. In what is, without a single doubt, the very best bit of driving I have ever done in my life (and I’ve had some good moments), my addled brain managed to process the potential outcomes of my possibilities and, from there on, took over with eerily calm almost-instinctual maneuvering. I didn’t slow. I sped up. I drove as hard as I could FOR the median, knowing that I might rub it but that, even if I did, it was the only way to keep the gargantuan barge of a vehicle from hitting my car directly at my son’s door. If I was lucky, we wouldn’t be hit at all and maybe I’d just lose my driver’s side mirror. I wasn’t lucky.
I’ve been in a couple of accidents in my lifetime, only two as the driver — one deemed 50% my fault (I pulled out in front of him, believing his turn signal - foolish, inexperienced driver that I was) and one 100% not my fault (rear-ended on a busy freeway in stopped traffic). Incidentally, they happened within 7 days of each other. But, I’ve been a passenger in several others; I did grow up in the Midwest after all, and lo and behold, ice changes things for anything with wheels. I can solidly state that I have never been in a vehicle that has been hit as hard as mine was in this accident, a combination of the ginormous assault vehicle, 55 mph starting speed, and the momentum of both when combined with hydroplaning. We 360′d in the middle lane of a very busy freeway in the middle of town — both vehicles — and somehow, neither of us hit anyone else. A miracle, nothing short of.
Anyway, the boys dealt with it well, the other mother was able to pick them up within about 30 minutes, my car was towed, my husband picked me up and brought me home, and I was finally able to lose my composure after we’d pulled into the garage and turned the car off. You see, that processing that happened in my mind? I was right. When I looked at the damage to my car, I was hit directly at the rear passenger side wheel/gas tank door area. And when you looked closer, you could see the small margin of the rear passenger door that was abnormally bent. The door behind which my son was sitting.
In light of that, fine, so I made a stupid phone call today. Two weeks ago, I may have saved my son’s life.
I am a badass.
Today is World Autism Awareness Day.
…in case you live in a bubble without internet, television, or radio access and haven’t already heard.
Of course, I say that, but yet I’m irritated to hell and back that Google didn’t alter its homepage image today in recognition. ??? Because there was never a logo that begged more for a puzzle piece, so how does that work?
The concept of this day (and really, week) is great, and more power to everyone involved in raising awareness throughout the world. Incidentally, I hope we’re raising awareness about more than nonverbal autism; I know that CNN has a wonderful article written by an Aspergian someone on their staff. I also hope we’re doing more than bitching about vaccines and raving about gluten-free diets. Yes, those are important issues, but they aren’t the only issues.
Have you noticed that anything talking about Autism Awareness seems to end up being the same few things over and over again? If you’re a parent of an autistic child, I assure you, you’ve noticed. Currently the winners are:
Things I don’t see anyone talking about:
CNN has dedicated a huge amount of their day’s programming to autism, which is fantastic, truly. It would be even more fantastic if it hadn’t inspired someone to call me repeatedly to tell me that it was on and that I should watch it. I’m pretty sure it would be deemed incredibly rude of me to reply, “In case you hadn’t noticed? I’m Aware. With a capital A. YOU watch it. Call your friends and tell THEM to watch it. Please, scream it from the highest rooftop. But me? I’m covered.”
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go spend some time with my autistic son, whose programming is dedicated to raising my Awareness 24/7/365.
It’s a sad and sorry truth that my dog knows that I have ADD.
Not because those years of woof—>English lessons paid off, mind you. No, every time I get into the shower, the dog slumps down into a completely depressed pile of fur and watches the door like a hawk. Why? Because she knows that when I get into the shower, the odds are 90% that I’m leaving as soon as I get out and leaving her here by herself.
Procrastination. If my dog can tell, I guess I really wasn’t fooling my teachers in high school, huh?
I’m a Gmail user. I was a fairly early Gmail user, having been invited by a much bigger nerd friend who was a really early Gmail user. Since becoming a Gmail user, I’ve been really happy with the service, though I think their organizational system sucks. I’m all for outdoing anything Microsoft, believe me (*nyeeet, nerrrt, vyyyrrrt, vrrraaat…..Bill Gates is the devil….nyeeet, nerrrt), but they missed the mark on that starring crap and having to label every message that meets the inbox. I’ve felt that I could announce my association with Gmail in a positive light and promote their service.
Right up until yesterday, when Gmail made me a liar by association.
I’m not a saint. I’ve lied about calls I’ve never made. I’ve fibbed about what time I left the house or that I must have been outside when the phone rang. Heck, what the hell, I may possibly (but not certainly) have even fudged the date on the postage machine a time or two (you can’t prove it!). So, I can certainly understand the possible problem of not having forgotten to send an important e-mail to someone by a crucial deadline.
But seriously, the CustomTime feature that Gmail just added now brings every important e-mail sent by every Gmail user under suspicion. Did he really send that when he said he did? Did it really get caught in a server blackout on my end when there was a storm in my city or did he use the Gmail CustomTime feature to make me think he didn’t miss that deadline?
Unbelievable, Gmail. You act like you’re trying to help your business clients by providing them the opportunity to whitewash, all while using your other hand to smear mud on the ones who weren’t stuffing $1 bills in some dancer’s G-string when they were supposed to be sending that quote to the client.
Do me a favor? Don’t do me anymore favors unless you’re going to send a week’s worth of those $1 bills my way.
*That’s a record playing backwards, in case you didn’t know.
**Remember Mikey from the Life cereal commercial? He’s dead. Pop Rocks and Coke. Haven’t you heard?
***Ozzy Osbourne has eaten a bat a day for the last 30 years.
****Paris Hilton is having Lindsay Lohan’s lovechild. Pass it on.
*(5) Yes, I’m so lame that I can’t come up with my own April Fool’s and had to climb on Gmail’s. But I had ya goin, didn’t I?
|
