Funk-y

If you’ve ever thought to yourself, “Gee, I really wish I could get myself into one hell of a funk right now,” I’m here with your solution — because that’s the helpful kind of chick that I am. 

All you need to do is go through your finances with a semi-fine-toothed comb, realize how little money you have and how truly in debt you are, and then literally pour your heart out on paper to beg someone for as much financial aid as they can possibly give you so that your special needs child can continue to get the special needs education that he’d be completely screwed without.

It’s just that simple.

Well, not entirely that simple.  If you want it to be a really good funk, you need to repeat the process every year.  By year 4, I assure you that you’ll be thoroughly demoralized.  I know that you’re ready to get started right now!

I’d go to sleep for several days in an effort to rid myself of this slimy funk-y-ness, but tomorrow, my husband and I have to meet with a bunch of professionals so that they can finally tell us, officially, that our son has an ‘educational diagnosis’ of autism.

At which point, we’ll turn to each other and very calmly say, “No shit.”

Inspiration, part deux: The Taxman Cometh

Yeah, okay.  Who thought I’d actually finish the photos by the end of the month?  Let’s see a show of hands….

Anyone with your hand up?  You need to read me more; you would have known better.

It is definitely not off my radar, but I have to admit that my taxes are currently absorbing what is left of my sanity — and I haven’t even started them yet.

But Dys, you have a month left!  No, no actually, I have 10 days.

My kid goes to a fabulous, wonderful, I can’t say enough good things about it but someday I’ll write a blog where I try, super school.  Said super school is private and, therefore, requires a tuition payment larger than our mortgage payment.  Now, it’s the best money ever spent, BUT it’s still a frickin’ boatload o’ dough.  Thus, we file an application with them for financial aid.  The application requires a copy of our taxes.  The application is due on March 24.

You see the issue.

So, my entire goal this week is to get my laptop into the shop to be repaired because, yes, last year’s taxes are on there, which I have to have to do this year’s taxes, and then to get my freakin’ taxes finished and still have hair left on my head.  And hopefully to remember to shower once or twice in the process.  I’m self-employed, so taxes are not a matter of adding up what we paid versus what we owed and mailing in the form/check.  No, there are deductions to be taken and receipts to be found. 

Yes, found.  Did I mention that I have ADD?  The majority of those receipts (I do attempt an effort, after all) are in piles of papers that conveniently reside throughout every corner of our house (I’m sorry, honey, truly sorry!) and in boxes and in tubs and in baskets and on countertops and on desks and ….  you get the idea. 

I once watched an organizational show (har dee har har - if you have enough money to spend, you too can be organized!  foooooor about 15 minutes….) where the ‘professional’ actually had the audacity to say that the client was a ‘surface abuser’ and that meant that the professional was going to minimize the number of surfaces the client had available to abuse, thereby supposedly forcing her to put things away instead of pile.

Excuse me.  Are you going to remove my floor too? 

Yeah, then forget it, Sister.  That’s not going to accomplish your goal, and if I’m paying you that kind of money, you’d damn sure better bring more game than that.

If you need me, I’ll be on the floor - looking for my receipts.

Just one more

They have ADD national conferences, and seriously, I think that could be a great thing to attend.  I have some serious questions before I register though.

• Are the session times listed an hour early in the hopes that we’ll only be 15 minutes late?
• Does it even start on the day they say it’s going to start or do they have the sense to have 2 days of welcoming receptions before the meetings?
• Does anything start before 10 a.m., and if so, do people actually show up?
• Do they have night sessions for all the people who can’t stay awake during the day?
• At 9 a.m., do they stop in mid-sentence and call for a medication break?
• Just what exactly is in the goodie bags?  Is it too much to hope for free meds or at least some coupons?
• Is there at least one non-ADD person we can call that has a master key for when we lose ours?  More than once?
• If they hold daytime sessions, do they automatically schedule wake-up calls for us for 3 hours ahead of time and another one for 10 minutes ahead of time (which is when we’ll actually be getting ready)?
• And do they have nightly ‘go to bed calls’ to make sure we stop playing just one more level in our computer games and reading just one more chapter in our books before we turn the light off?

Because, if not, I’m not sure I want to go.  It would be too much like being at home. 

Music to breathe - Citizen Cope

I instantly fell in love with this song, even though I could only partially hear it at the time. 

To be honest, I’m not much one to listen to new music.  Every once in a while, when I don’t have a cd in the car that matches my mood, I will flip on the radio.  I have absolutely no tolerance for commercials or suffering through talking heads unless I’m actually looking for a traffic update (it’s a long commute to pick up the kid at school), so in general, the second I hear someone start blathering, I’m button punching.  The result, of course, is that I also rarely hear an entire song.  All that to say that the radio doesn’t introduce me to much either.

Lately, most of my new music exposure has been from watching the show Scrubs.  Now, if you think you’re not the Scrubs type, bear with me, because I was damned sure that I wasn’t either.  In fact, the mere idea of the show perturbed the hell out of me for the first few years it was on, possibly because they played up the whole Heather Graham thing at the time, and I deeply detest her.  I give her credit here, though, she brings the funny.  My husband started watching it this past year, and as with all things in a marriage, you eventually become too lazy to move from your spot and end up subjecting yourself to something you hadn’t planned to.  (I know, I’m a romantic.)  Turned out that it was a great show put together with a lot deeper thought than I ever expected.

The creator, Bill Lawrence, says that most of the music comes from his wife, Christa Miller, and the cast (who now just take their music ideas to her instead of him).  I’m not sure whom I have to thank for this particular song, but a big shout out to the Scrubs family over there.  You’ve given me a lot of music to breathe.

Without further adieu, Citizen Cope.  In appreciation of my ADD, I present this in 3 different formats - because we all know I can’t pick just one.

LP version with video pieced in a reasonably professionalish fashion:

Live and slow, shot by same person as above (so ya know, he’s not singing into his cell phone while he tapes it):

Featuring Santana, a wizard among men, absolutely beautiful.  Again, a video put together, this one over footage from the film The Fountain, a film I’ve not seen but appears to be somewhere between interesting and WTF.  If you really want to enjoy the song, minimize the window so you won’t be distracted by the video.

Blogs that Should Be

I blog every single day, sometimes multiple times a day.  Unfortunately for me –and for you if, for whatever reason, you actually *want* to read my drivel– I can’t type while I drive.

But if I could, you people would hear from me more than you hear from your credit card companies.

Driving is one of the few times of day when my mind is otherwise fairly quiet.  Why?  Geez, you non-ADDers are always with the questions.  It’s because one portion of my brain is solidly focused on driving.  ONE portion, Dys?  Just one?!?  Yeah, trust me; I have fireworks going off from every direction in there the rest of the day (and sometimes night).  One portion is really all you need for driving.  It’s a significant enough portion, however, that you really should SHUT THE HELL UP AND DRIVE, but that’s another blog.

And so it is that while I’m driving, all the things I’d like to say but never make the time for come to the front of my mind.  Of course, I think of small things like:

• Man, my car is filthy.
• Damn, I forgot the bank deposit at home.
• Man, my car is FILTHY.

And then I think of bigger things that I’d actually like to blog about, such as:

• I really have to find a way to stop staying up until 2 or 3 or 4 in the morning; it’s killing me.  I have yet to see a “cure” for this in one of the gazillion or so ADD books I’ve read/bought/borrowed.  Set up a schedule.  Okay, done it.  Now, tell me how to make myself adhere to it.  I have a list of these types of things.
• It’s been something like a solid 8 months since I let go of a friend after he told me that he and his wife were having a kid, and I’m still trying to nail down just what the hell my problem is there.  I’ve talked it out to myself in my car.  (Yes, I’m one of those crazy people, but hey, for all you know, I’m singing or talking on a hands-free headset SHUT UP AND DRIVE.)  I’ve talked it out in my dreams, and I don’t notice my dreams very often so that was a bit odd.  I’ve beat it about in my head until it felt as though a men’s beach volleyball tournament had been held in there ….

What?  Oh, sorry.  Momentary lapse of concentration.  And drool.

• I hate the parent club.  If you have an NT kid and you think we’re in the same club because we’ve both spawned?  That’s like saying we’re in the same club because we both pee more than once a day.  It’s a worthless statistic, a correlation between two things that, in reality, have nothing to do with each other.  Yeah, I have a lot to say on that one.  But I’m not bitter. 
• My kid went to summer camp at his school last year, which was the plan again for this year.  Right up until the moment they let us know that they would NOT be hosting a summer camp this year.  Mother of God.  What the sam hell am I going to do now???  My initial instinct, of course, was to buck up to the challenge and try to just have a great summer with the kid.  Then he spent a couple of days in a row home sick, and by day two, between my ADD and his AS, I was paralyzed, worthless, irritable, and guilt-ridden.  There are several blogs to be had from that one.

Anyway, please know, dear people who trip past my tiny cubby here on the World Wide Web (doesn’t that just sound hysterical to say out loud in 2008?), I do think of you often and wish that I could blather here a lot more than I seem to find the time to do.  But, if you miss my particular brand of humor, just hit up my husband’s blog.  I’m hysterical over there. 

Even when he misquotes me.  Which is always. 

And, yes, even in the blog where he talks about misquoting me.  The man is consistent.  One of the many reasons I love him!