Happy Bastille Day.

I've got nothing to say but it's okay.

My house is dirty. I keep playing online Boggle. The house gets dirtier, my scores get higher.

Also, I'm more tired and ADD-ish lately. Maybe I need to up my dose b/c I'm so fucking fat.

Staring at the screen, looking like a lemur.

Who Moved My Stuff?

or
Things Not to Do to Me

So I occasionally write these Adventures in Ritalin posts, but the thing is that I really do flake out when I'm driving, all the time: I enter this fugue state and then I kind of come to and realize, "Oh, hey, I'm up to this part already!" When I go on automatic, I really go on automatic. And I really don't like it when my stuff is moved b/c there are too many papers and it's In the Way. And I get it that if you're at all marginally neat, that's going to be tough to live with. But here's the thing: if you Move My Stuff, I can't find anything, and that I get really upset, b/c it's like it's Lost Forever.

Primera does some version of this when she doesn't see her preferred object: it's like, "Where's my DS case? Moooom! I can't find my DS case!" and then, like a half-second later, "[Sob] It's gone! I lost it!" Because if she can't see it right then, it could be permanently disappeared. As a kid, I used to have this half-thought, picturing the oblivious object, safe and secure somewhere, perhaps in a nice landfill, waiting to be discovered, impatient with the obviousness of its location and my stupidity. And it was that certain quiddity, that knowledge that it was out there, but I was too stupid to find it, that would really push me over the edge.

So anyway: don't move an ADD person's stuff. At least w/o telling them or giving them a really giant clue. And never, EVER throw stuff out thinking we won't notice.

End of PSA

More Adventures in Ritalin


What my kid had for breakfast today. Why? Because I shut off the 7:00 alarm after hitting Snooze four times, and I didn't wake up until the neighbor's kids, bless them, rang the doorbell to walk Primera to the bus stop. Which meant she'd eaten nothing until I hightailed it to the bus stop eight minutes later, after we'd gotten her dressed in a hysterical hurry (yay for laying out clothes the night before!) and I'd already frogmarched her over to the stop. I am a golden goddess of parenting, yes indeedy.

More Adventures in Ritalin, Part the Nth

Went to the mall today (well, yesterday, actually, it being 2 AM here as I sit and type). Forgot to mark where I was parked. Attempted to find it 1.5 hours later; wandered around helplessly for five minutes until I saw the sad little torn strip of my Kerry/Edwards bumper sticker (yes, someone ripped part of it off. After the election. Injury to insult).

Prima is in a better mood this week; last week she was spreading clouds of poison gas through the house, and charmingly commented, "I'm really happy at camp and then I get cranky when I'm home." Today she smiled at me and said, "I'm cranky at home because it's MY HOUSE." She also told me she's polite when she's at other kids' houses.

Am reading a very nice biography of Paul Erdos and trying not to do armchair diagnosis as I read (hand flapping? Check! Awkward gait? Check! Neologisms? Double check!). There's a hobby for you: The search for crypto-Aspies.

Dwight has a great post over at Wampum on Eric Schopler, may his memory be for a blessing, and Bruno Bettelheim, of whom the same should not be said.

Today I was in line @ Fairway and there was a woman whose little boy was making some noises that seemed stimmy. But then I start to think that I'm looking for autism everywhere. And then he never spoke, and he didn't turn toward his mother when she spoke to him, just continued looking at the chrome on the side of the conveyor belt and making his happy stim noises. I let them go ahead of me and said something about remembering what it was like to have kids that age, and then I felt bad, b/c maybe she was thinking, "My kid is older than you think." At least she got out of there quicker.

Randomness: trying to do more cooking for myself in an effort to a) save money and b) lose weight. There is never stuff in the house I like to eat, b/c the spousal unit does a lot of the shopping, so I end up eating someone else's snack food, which isn't v. satisfying.

More adventures in Ritalin: when I went food shopping today at about 6:45 PM, the parking lot was close to empty, so I just zoomed in and parked at the end, which was close enough to the supermarket that jockeying for further position seemed unnecessary. Nevertheless, when I exited the store about fifteen minutes later, it still took me several minutes to find my car. As usual.

The following things happened after my previous post: I went to take care of the aforementioned red tape; I didn't have all the library books I needed, though I'm told there isn't a block on my records even though I still can't find three of the damn books; I realized I had no (0) money on me, except for a dollar bill and some coins, so I had to use the muni meter and keep feeding it my dwindling supply of coins; I needed to see someone named Jane. Jane was going to be out to lunch until 1. I then went to see the person I need to see after I see Jane. I was told that since I didn't have the forms from Jane, I'd have to come back at 2, when they'd be done having their end of year banquet lunch. My muni meter ticket was due to run out at 1:51. I went to have lunch at someplace called Da Deli, where I had something that billed itself as a grilled chicken pannino with pesto mayonnaise. Fraid not. It was suspiciously liquidy, the whole production. So after that scary little interlude, while I wondered re salmonella b/c I don't think the chicken was cooked the whole way through (but seriously, what is wrong with me that I'm ordering up pesto mayonnaise at someplace called Da Deli?), I went back to Jane and got the paperwork I needed. I was told, "Make copies of this. You'll need it." Except I had no money for copies, except for the 90 cents I had on me for the muni meter. I figured I only needed another half-hour, made my copies, and suddenly realized (I thought) that I'd left one of the crucial pieces of paper at home, except I found out later it was in my purse the whole time.

After that I went shopping.

But seriously, I did make some progress. I returned the five library books, at least, and I have copies of the papers, though I've already lost one set twice, so I don't have as much confidence as I might.

I called when I got home and was told that the office where I need to drop off all my little bits of paper won't be open tomorrow, so I should just slip everything under the door. Reminds me of a professor who told us we could turn our papers in after hours by sliding them under his door, but we had to decide if we believed in Hardy's version of fate or Fielding's, b/c we'd be SOL if it accidentally got swept up and thrown out. I took my chances anyway, b/c I was young and stupid.

More Adventures in Ritalin

Finished all my student teaching and have this terrible fear I'll never get around to all the paperwork bullshit involved. B/c I have completed, mind you, EVERYTHING, except for the fingerprinting and turning in my paperwork to the program, but the thought of actually having to drive there with the damn paperwork and turning everything in and so on makes me want to shrivel up, because I know I'm not going to be able to find everything, and there's some website I have to go to to fill everything in and apply to the state.

This is a bad situation for the chronically disorganized. I can get some shit together: grade papers, turn in grades, get work in on time. It's the little details I can't handle....

Oh look! All my readers checked in today!

Another adventure in Ritalin: this time I spent ten minutes trying to find my car in the parking lot, a smallish one, by the local supermarket. I had to keep walking up and down, up and down, pressing on my keyless entry thing so it would beep. So much fun to be me.

Took Primera for a haircut. She has gotten so much better in terms of sensory issues: I remember having to sit her in my lap and hold her during the entire haircut when she was three and four, as she was reduced to a quivering mass (as was I). Horrible. This time she kind of wiggled and complained when the beautician caught her comb on a knot, but was otherwise just an active little girl who didn't want to sit still. Or take out the wrap in her hair, which is a month and a half old and looking ratty. I was afraid if I pressed it she'd start crying, so I dropped it.

I remember having to hold her down to brush her teeth. She had dark lines around her teeth, too, called pellicules, and I was mad to get the teeth brushed and get rid of the dark lines, because I was afraid she looked like she lived on Tobacco Road.

I remember four of us holding her down at the dentist's, with her lying on top of me and me having to wrap my legs around her. I am rarely nostalgic about the preschool years.

More Adventures in Ritalin

Here's the thing about my version of ADD. I'm always trying to squeeze Just One More Thing in. Like today, I got to my tutoring appointment the hell on the south shore early, like 25 minutes early. So instead of being early, I was hungry, so I decided to see if I could get a REALLY quick lunch somewhere. And the first place I passed after having this excuse for a thought was an Italian restaurant in a strip mall. It didn't look especially nice on the outside. Come over to the door, and there's a Bad Sign ITO meal speediness in that the menu is encased behind glass. And there's a waiter in a tuxedo there. But anyway, they're happy to seat me for a 4:00 dinner, and I sit down, and they bring over really good bruscetta and some kind of spread for the bread, and I bet if I'd had time I would have really done justice to the bruscetta. I decide to order ravioli stuffed wtih duck, because the hell? I've never had duck ravioli. And I have a bad habit of ordering duck in restaurants. So the meal comes, and it's delicious, and I'm wolfing it down the way you'd wolf down fast food in the car. And I get to my appointment about ten minutes late, with significant heartburn from the bruscetta and spread and the steaming hot freshly made duck ravioli.

I consider ten minutes late on time, really.

My shrink finds this kind of story funny. And diagnostic, I think.

Ritalin Mom Attempts to Get Organized

Today I went to Staples and attempted to divide my life into compartments: I bought a desk organizer with six compartments. As of right now, two are devoted to family members' care; one is for PTA, one for work; one for school. I also have two notebooks: one for work, one for PTA. My desk is temporarily cleaner. I'm one of those people who generates massive piles of paper, seemingly just by breathing in a room, so I'm hoping this system will provide bennies by at least having a place for the random pieces of paper. Also? Like a lot of people of the ADHD persuasion, I have to have it in front of me and accessible, or I don't know I have it. I have no concept of object permanence, apparently.

I'm still full of that optimistic can-do New Year's spirit, apparently.

So after that last post, I'm thinking, "Time to get back on the meds." Haha. Ha.

More Adventures in Ritalin, or They Don't Call It the Idiot Light for Nothing

Took off for appointment this morning; tank was on about the 1/8 line. Get about five minutes away from appt., get phone call that Secundo is sick and needs to be picked up from school. Have to turn car around, head back. Idiot light goes on. Think, "Fine, if need be I'll stop for gas." Remember that I don't have purse with me, so can't pay at gas station. Wonder if I can beg my way into obtaining gasoline, decide to keep driving. Hit mondo construction, backed up for miles. Reflect that there's still plenty of gas in the car when the idiot light goes on. Get phone call from snippy nurse saying that Secundo has raging ear infection, where am I? Explain am on Northern State, stuck in traffic. Wonder how much of my precious fuel went up in fumes as I've been sitting. Get off at 110, head west. Note that I've been driving for about 15-20 miles with idiot light on. Call doctor, who can see Secundo only if I'm there in 20 minutes. Pick Secundo up (misery, guilt-inducing crying); make calculated decision to stop and get purse. Marvel as pull into gas station that I've made it without stalling out. Show up 10 minutes late for doctor appt. No one is consulting stopwatch. We are seen immediately--yay!

I a 43 years old and had no money on me and no gasoline. Stupid, stupid mom.

This Moment Brought to You by Minimal Brain Dysfunction

The following things have happened to me in the last two weeks: I have walked into a midterm I didn't know I had, because I didn't check the syllabus for two weeks because I don't really like the class that much and didn't feel like thinking about it; I suddenly "realized" that I had a paper due Wednesday afternoon that I hadn't written, thought about, or otherwise done anything for besides pick up the assignment; I wrote said paper, consciously not studying much for the midterm I did know I was having; I walked into class and discovered the professor had changed the due date of aforesaid paper when I was late to the previous class/midterm. Somewhere in there I frantically called both my professor and my adviser to tell them I might need to drop the course; the adviser basically left me a long, unintelligible message telling me procedurally what I needed to do ("You may end up with a failure on your transcript." Yeah, sign me up for that! How about actually advising me? But I digress).

Excellent. I will make an excellent teacher.

Another Entry in the Ritalin Diaries
Yesterday, I noticed the idiot light was showing up on my dash, so I made a mental note to get more gas in the car before teaching this AM. So this AM I was kind of running late, and also it was pouring, so I decided to take my chances getting to Hempstead for my class. And the light hadn't gone on when I turned the car on, and my gauge is fairly temperamental anyway, so maybe it wasn't that low. Although shortly before the Meadowbrook the light went back on, but I proceeded to get there on fumes and figured I could find a gas station on Hempstead Turnpike. And indeed there was the gas station, so I pulled in, feeling relieved, reached behind for my wallet and credit cards....and realized I'd left without my purse. Doh! to the fifth power.

So I had to call the spousal unit to come fill my car with gas, b/c I then had to drive another two miles or so to my car. He was surprisingly good-natured about it. (Props to my best friend for being willing to drive over with money as a backup if I couldn't find the spousal unit.)

I don't do things this stupid all that often, but I do seem to have a lot of cutting-it-close moments.

Sitting here watching the wheels go round, in that state of ADHD/Inattentive stasis that is my normal waking state.

Was talking to my father a few days ago, about a relative who had started out working making moulds in a foundry. I know this story, sort of, so I said, "Because his wife's parents didn't encourage him to go to college."

"Yes," he said. "There were very leftwing, almost Communists, and they believed in the dignity of the working man." Now, there's a sentiment that's fallen way out of fashion. Which reminded me of another relative, whose parents also told him not to go to college, because "a man should work." Which isn't all that different, just a few words, and I always made the lame joke, "Are you sure these people are Jewish? We're supposed to be the people of the book." We also used to be the people of the left. Does that even show up in mainstream American Jewish literature? The kind that gets taught? Only in Philip Roth's I Married a Communist, which was much more about payback for Claire Bloom writing a memoir.

Imagine a transition. The kids are finishing camp this week. I can't get Primera to read much: she decodes quite fluently and her comprehension is just about average, but she doesn't have much interest in reading on her own. Last night I hooked her in by reading the Reader's Digest version of Heidi to her and Secundo. Predictably, I got all teary when Heidi cried over Peter the goatherd's blind grandmother.* Secundo is hypersensitive and, like his father, doesn't like to hear about things that upset him. Primera, though, was riveted and did a pretty nice job of interpreting what was happening. She even made a good guess about who the "ghost" was going to be: she thought maybe it was Heidi's grandfather, sneaking back to visit her.

She keeps doing the camp handclapping games by herself, and it's turned into a kind of stim. In my infinite maternal wisdom I keep swooping over and saying, "It looks inappropriate!" Behavioral lesson # 1: replace it with another more appropriate behavior. I think I need "Sniffy the Rat" version 2.1.

*I, Victorianist. I will retain to my dying day my love for Victorian deathbed scenes and angelic but sickly girl-children. Which reminds me that today (Saturday, as I'm editing this) there was an asinine article in, say, the Times, by Laura Miller arguing that "classic" children's literature that you are supposed to like (by implication, few children actually do like--where do the nostalgic grownups she describes come from?) is full of such deathbed scenes. Um, Laura, lots of children like them because of the deathbed scenes (nor does the masochistic fun stop in childhood. Bette Davis movies, anyone?).

And if that's not hep enough for your seemingly po-mo-grrl-power-loving heart (would Bette's gay iconic status help?), consider that the invalided girl actually was powerful, in a subversive passive-aggressive way. In general, I've found Miller's criticism and essays to be shallow, this particularly so.

Okay, I feel better now.

Ritalin Stories
Another ADHD (Inattentive Type) moment today: I'm driving along to the community pool to get pool passes for the summer. I'm way on autopilot, cause I grew up in this town, so my mind goes Somewhere Else. I come out of my fugue state a few minutes later and I've passed it and am approaching a major intersection. I turn around, do the internal chuckle thing re my ADHD-osity, and mentally launch off into orbit again. Next thing I know I'm at the intersection past the pool the other way. We're talking about losing focus twice during a two-minute drive.

I did the following exciting things (which required multiple trips to and from my car as I kept forgetting key items I'd need for my errands, including, at one point, my purse): deposited money at bank. Dropped very slightly overdue video off at library. Proceeded to bookstore to buy grossly overdue Father's Day present for my dad (first attempt, khakhi shorts, didn't fit him). Spend forty minutes in there in another visionary haze. Go to father's house, drop off present, proceed to pool (see above). Take care o' business, go to P.O. to drop off all-important PTA bylaw revisions. Wait on line awhile, but the guy ahead of me is nice and we speculate about the bright red liquid on the floor that we're about sure is not blood--too orange. Go home, walk dog, once again lament haven't written cheesy potboiler: too much time taken up with soul-destroying errands. Original plan was to have novel be a murder mystery called "Least Restrictive Environment" re mayhem in special education. I'm thinking of broadening my palette to include general PTA: "Bake Sales, Brownies...And Blood"; "Mother-Daughter Fashion Show Mystery!" Et alia.

I hope my reader has a fab Fourth. And I promise to stop channeling Bridget Jones.