Oh, yeah, I have ADHD...

I had SUCH a hard time focusing this week. I actually stayed up until five AM working on a paper today. Then I woke up late for work and made a power point presentation at work, went to class and presented my paper, then wrote another paper (which was a page too short) went to that class and came home. I couldn't focus, had trouble staying on task, and kept doing other things.
I came home and read an article on adult ADHD.
I remember when I came to grad school I was doing so well when I made sure I had a normal sleep pattern and ate regular meals. In addition, I need to manage my time with that awesome day planner I spent forever looking for and really organize myself.
A girl I work with was talking to me the other day when I mentioned my problems with ADHD and she said 'ADHD, is that really real?' Let me be the first to say, for every single one of you who might ask the same questions:
I am not just lazy, unintelligent, unmotivated, or any other excuse you have for ADHD. I have a condition which causes me to have difficulty focusing and controling impulses. When I work on something, a million new ideas and other tasks are flowing through my mind at once. Half the time I stay up late it's because I think "hey, I always wondered about [insert obscure thing here], let's research this!" or "Hey, I want to look at some pictures of puppies, let's go to flickr!" It's something called hyperfocus. This is when people with ADHD are working on a task and get extremely focused on a minor detail, like when I was putting up the sticky notes for my paper and was concerned with aligning them perfectly, or when cleaning my room I decide to meticulously arrange and go through the beads in my bead box. It's compulsive behavior that is terribly hard to pull myself away from. While working on something in hyperfocus, I often think "this is not big picture, I need to move on to something else" but I don't.
My mother's answer to this problem is more meds, which may work for other people. For me, I want to learn to control these impulses myself. I was medicated for most of my life and it involved not only remembering to take a pill every day and sometimes twice a day but also frequent check-ups with a psychiatrist to maintain dosage, EKGs to make sure the medicine wasn't messing up my heart, and exhorbitant amounts of money for all of these. In addition, the last medication I was on (when I was eighteen) made me feel foggy, tired, and slur my words when I didn't get enough sleep. I am trying to simplify my life and take the minimum amount of medication possible (which, with allergies, asthma, and an iron defficiency is still a lot), so I am trying to keep from going on meds.
The thing is, it is SO hard to take care of myself when I constantly have to justify that 1) ADHD exists and 2) I have it. I guess the inattentive component is harder to identify.
So yes, I know this is a hot-button issue, and I know it's overdiagnosed, but know that many people like me do have it, it's real, it's NOT an excuse, and we have to develop all new strategies for performing tasks that you can do without a second thought.
The End.

Being sick is dumb

I really really REALLY want to move my bed right now. I want to rearrange that whole area. But I KNOW that would just kill my energy level. Really would. And my room mates would come home to all my stuff in the middle of the house with me collapsed on the floor asleep. Right? Electrolytes aren't THAT effective, right? I'm just so BORED and when I get up to do something I get tired. And I have all these great ideas when I really need to be working on the paper my professor so generously gave me an extension on. Or the presentation over that paper that I'm supposed to give on Wednesday. Or the peer review of the 27 page long paper that is due Tuesday. Or the final draft of MY version of that paper, which is definitely not 27 pages long. Or the project in another course which is due Wednesday. All of these would be a better idea to work on. Look, now I'm tired again.

Get to know the people you stick.

Today I left work feeling sick and ended up going to the emergency room to get checked out. I'm fine, everyone, I promise. And to those friends who perhaps might have been upset at not being called, if it was anything at all, I would have told you. It seems I was sick this weekend and getting over it kind of threw me over.

Anyway, the nurse I had was particularly awesome. Seriously. She was easy to talk to, started off by asking if I knew that I didn't look like I was 23. I laughed and told her it wasn't the first time I heard it. We talked about that, then she told me I looked smart. I said it was the glasses, and she said no, it was the way I carry myself, the way I talk. I said it was something you learn when you are 23 and look fifteen, but she said it was more than that.
Then we talked about getting stuck for IVs, and it turns out she is a breast cancer survivor. She said she tries so hard to make sure that she does a good job when she has to draw blood so that she causes as little pain as possible. She was just amazing. When she left, my friend who came to stay with me turned to me and said "she needs to teach other nurses how to interact with patients."
I totally agree.
Get to know the people you stick. Even if you don't literally stick them. Get to know the people who come to the cash register, who enter your office, who buy ice cream from your truck. Get to know the people you stick. It makes a difference.

The little things.

Last week the after school program (ASP) and I tested our little twig boats in the recreation pool. Then I had a bit of a disagreement with one of the girls about obedience (not running off ahead when I'm the only caregiver present, for one), and we had to go talk to her mom. She then proceeded to pout the rest of the day, at one point picking up a stick and a big block of cedar and rubbing them together, saying that she was going to make a fire and throw it on me. I ignored the behavior, assuming that she had some pent-up agression and needed to release it through imaginative play. I knew she wasn't ACTUALLY going to start a fire. Nevertheless, I told her mother about it the next day, and she was very upset. She told me to tell the girl that it was not appropriate, and the next time she did something like that to immediately call her.
It seems that day she gave her daughter a lecture about it before dropping her off with me, because she wouldn't speak to me. She spent most of this week ignoring or trying to be disobedient in one way or another.
Then yesterday she and her brother were the only ones present for ASP. Her brother was tired and slept the whole time, leaving just the two of us to play and talk. We were playing "Sorry" (the board game based on Parchisi) when she all of a sudden said "I'm sorry, Kate."
I thought she was talking about the game, so I asked what for.
"For being mean to you."
Unbidden. We hadn't even discussed it. I was so proud of her! I am still so proud of her! I told her that I'm a safe person to be mad at because I'm not just going to up and leave because she says something mean to me, and that it was alright. Then she invited me to her spelling bee.
This child is used to having all the attention and then suddenly her little cousin is taking all of it, staying at their house a lot, and she's not getting her way in everything. Learning this lesson at nine years old is hard, much harder than learning it at four, and I know that she is making progress in learning to think about how other people feel. And that is awesome.

Penny likes to roll the windows down...

Some days I don't know if I can handle this dog anymore. Some days I can't get anything done because she jumps on me at the computer until I pay attention to her. Some days she gets my leather sketch journal and chews on the cord I use to tie it closed. Some days I catch her "feasting on the Word", and there's a corner missing from the cover of my study Bible. Some days she runs and runs and runs and barks and jumps.
And then we have a day like today.
I came home from studying for my exam expecting Penny to be ultra hyper. Unresponsive. Disobedient. But no, she listened to me! She had one time out to calm down when we had a guest come, but she DID calm down. And then we went through her commands just because, and I didn't have to say it more than once. And now she is chewing on one of HER toys and hasn't bothered me once since I got on the computer (which was only about twenty minutes ago). And I remember she has a few weeks until our intermediate obedience class starts, and that I'm not afraid to bring her around other dogs, and that I trust her more now, and am in tune with her, and I realize how beautiful owning and raising a dog can be. Especially one who may not have had the greatest of pasts.

We DID have a kind of crazy Saturday though. I took her to the river and wore my swimsuit so that we could get in the water together. Penny is scared of deep water so I have a life jacket for her. (She's also overweight and the river has a current, so I feel better having one on her. I've gotten A TON of comments and I am getting a tiny taste of people telling others how to raise their children, and I don't like it. No, dogs do not automatically take to the water. You have to condition them to it. I have read a bit of this. And also, just because something CAN swim doesn't mean they can swim as long as I want to be in the river, where I can touch the bottom. Rant over.)
We got to the river. I jumped in. Penny braced herself on the bank. I called, I cajoled, I pulled with the leash, but she would not come. Then I made a bad decision. I grabbed the handle on her life jacket and pulled her in with me. She gave the most distressed panting sound I have ever seen. She frantically paddled over to me and tried to climb onto me, leaving scratch marks on my torso and thighs. She swam back over to the bank and held onto the roots, panting like crazy. I couldn't get her off of them. The families watching me were yelling "ohh! Pobre perrito! Tiene miedo!". I got out of the water, helped her out of the river, and we walked back to the car.
The pre-vet club was holding a fund-raiser dog wash so I went over there to get the mud off of her. It took all four of us to hold her in the kiddie pool and wash her down.
I took her to Petsmart (which I think might be her favorite place) as a reward/apology for the rest of the day. Then we went to Chick Fil A. I got a meal, Penny got a cup of ice, and we sat on the porch and ate our treats. Poor thing.
I am NOT giving up on this water thing, but I am going to change my tactics. We'll get this beat!

My beloved monster and me...

I took a pay-as-you-go contemporary dance course today. It was the first dance class I'd visited since clogging over two years ago. And the last class I took like this was six years ago. I danced barefoot. I think I have a blister on my big toe. Not on top of, but under, where I walk. And I definitely got confused by really really simple combinations (I may have been a bit dehydrated). I'm not on the same level I was six years ago (was it really six years??? I can't believe it!) but I'm doing it! And I'm going to get more in shape! It felt so good to break a sweat and have my mind challenged at the same time. I hope next week is even better! I'm bringing tape in case the studio doesn't have the shoes again.
My dance instructor was this old, slightly overweight woman and she danced right alongside us. We did a pretty ridiculous routine to "my beloved monster" from Shrek. But we still danced. And--get this, dancer people-- we did pirouettes across the floor BACKWARDS! I've never done that before! She said it was in preparation for going both forwards and backwards so dancers practice direction changes. I need to practice that majorly! And I think I might even practice the combination.

But, it did kind of piss me off that I could only do a single pirouette when six years ago I was working on my triple. I blame the bare feet.