ADHD inflicted people like to talk about the “up” side of having ADHD. The ability to multi-task, be creative, the ability to see the connections, and say what everyone else was thinking, are some of these traits.
But most ADHDers know we multitask because we can’t do one thing at a time, if we don’t do more then one thing we’ll get bored and abandon the thing we really want done. Our creativity is often a result of not being able to listen to the directions, or read the manual. We learn young to wing it. Seeing all the connections makes us paranoid, we suspect people of motives, and we’re often wrong. It produces a few Inventors maybe but more ADHDers are just anxious, I’m afraid this means that, the conspiracy theorists are all ADHD. The rest of us are just pretty sure no one likes us. And speaking up and saying what others have the sense to keep to themselves seldom furthers our careers.
For some reason I find myself annoyed when people (afflicted or not) try to put a positive spin on ADHD traits. To my ears it’s insincere. If you like me and like certain qualities about me, even if I consider them defects, I don’t mind you telling me so. But it’s not helpful to tell me my big mouth is an asset when I’m in the middle of telling you how it’s destroying my relationships. I’d much rather have you tell me that you’ll pray for me.
Segue.
You can have a lot of sex and not get pregnant. Of course the stories we all hear are the single act conception stories but generally you can’t pinpoint time and place. Right?
Well, when two people have managed to produce seven children together you can pretty much assume they’ve done it a lot.
My mother told me a story one time about the couple in our Catholic neighborhood who had nine children. The wife, understandably, was tired of having children. Her husband apparently found no correlation between sex and child production. She had told him no sex tonight buddy, but he chased her around and around the table. Was that the night that Judy, or Chris, or Sheila was conceived? It was probably the night before or the next night.
Anyway, sex is pretty important to me. My mother taught me sex was a beautiful thing. She said I should wait until marriage (I agree with her now that I have six daughters) and she told me more about her relationship with my father then any child should know. I’ve been accused of telling too much myself.
ADHD is not good for sex.
Adderal is good for sex.
That’s pretty much all I can say or someone (SM) will be angry with me.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
April 5th, 2011
What comes around goes around.
Many years ago I would take the wheel whenever possible when traveling with my mother. I inherited my ADHD from my mother. She was never diagnosed with ADHD though she received every other label the psych people have invented.
My father didn’t have ADHD. He got up every morning at the same time. He bathed regularly, if only once a week. He shaved everyday. He took chlorophyll tablets instead of using deodorant. His spare change went on the dresser in a cup every evening, he polished his shoes once a week.
Mom took her girdle and stockings off and dropped them on the living room floor when she got home. She remembered to make dinner when she got hungry. She often took an hour saying goodbye to her friends while her children watched from the car. We’d alternate between hope and despair as she’d descend a stoop one backward step at a time, only to re-climb to make an important point.
She was especially dangerous behind the wheel of a car. She drove often traveled roads as though she’d never passed that way before. One night I assisted her with her cleaning service. It was a new account, at least it was new to me. We came to a place in the road where traffic was directed to turn right by a meridian directly in the middle of the lane we traveled. Mom drove up onto it. “Oh shit,” she exclaimed, “I did it again”.
The reason I have a moment to write this blog is my daughter Simone is, as I type, driving my car to San Francisco. I am seated next to her. I believe she is driving to help me with the task, but whatever the reason I am reminded of my mother.
I am going to San Francisco for my birthday. Or at least tomorrow is my birthday. My mother had a birthday party for me when I was 7, generally though she wasn’t very good with gift giving or throwing parties. She was a bargain shopper, as I am, it gets in the way of buying appropriate gifts. She’d buy Christmas gifts on Christmas Eve because the toys were marked down that day.
Her gift to me this year is her memory, or rather my memories of her. I enjoy this gift very much.
I am really going to San Francisco now because she died March 22nd and I got a small inheritance from her. My daughter Martha is reading from her thesis Friday and since I have some money I can attend.
I have a laisse faire relationship with money generally. It’s an “easy come easy go – don’t get too attached” friendship. I like when it comes around but I don’t worry too much when it goes away again. This cache is different. Every little bit I spend makes me emotional. It hasn't stopped me spending it rather wildly, it's ADHD money after all.
What comes around goes around.
Many years ago I would take the wheel whenever possible when traveling with my mother. I inherited my ADHD from my mother. She was never diagnosed with ADHD though she received every other label the psych people have invented.
My father didn’t have ADHD. He got up every morning at the same time. He bathed regularly, if only once a week. He shaved everyday. He took chlorophyll tablets instead of using deodorant. His spare change went on the dresser in a cup every evening, he polished his shoes once a week.
Mom took her girdle and stockings off and dropped them on the living room floor when she got home. She remembered to make dinner when she got hungry. She often took an hour saying goodbye to her friends while her children watched from the car. We’d alternate between hope and despair as she’d descend a stoop one backward step at a time, only to re-climb to make an important point.
She was especially dangerous behind the wheel of a car. She drove often traveled roads as though she’d never passed that way before. One night I assisted her with her cleaning service. It was a new account, at least it was new to me. We came to a place in the road where traffic was directed to turn right by a meridian directly in the middle of the lane we traveled. Mom drove up onto it. “Oh shit,” she exclaimed, “I did it again”.
The reason I have a moment to write this blog is my daughter Simone is, as I type, driving my car to San Francisco. I am seated next to her. I believe she is driving to help me with the task, but whatever the reason I am reminded of my mother.
I am going to San Francisco for my birthday. Or at least tomorrow is my birthday. My mother had a birthday party for me when I was 7, generally though she wasn’t very good with gift giving or throwing parties. She was a bargain shopper, as I am, it gets in the way of buying appropriate gifts. She’d buy Christmas gifts on Christmas Eve because the toys were marked down that day.
Her gift to me this year is her memory, or rather my memories of her. I enjoy this gift very much.
I am really going to San Francisco now because she died March 22nd and I got a small inheritance from her. My daughter Martha is reading from her thesis Friday and since I have some money I can attend.
I have a laisse faire relationship with money generally. It’s an “easy come easy go – don’t get too attached” friendship. I like when it comes around but I don’t worry too much when it goes away again. This cache is different. Every little bit I spend makes me emotional. It hasn't stopped me spending it rather wildly, it's ADHD money after all.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Tonight
It’s a rare opportunity indeed to write in the moment. My mother is dying. As I sit here she may breathe her last breath. My son is playing his own composition on my father’s piano. My daughter who was dying one year ago is alive, 40 pounds lighter, and now cured, sitting 3 feet from me with her new handsome boyfriend. Zoe, another of my daughters is playing “memory” with her niece and boyfriend and celebrating acceptance into law school. My adopted daughter is planning her wedding. Ana, Sarah and Simone have left for awhile to pick up Will from work so he can join our gathering. My mother is dying.
One day it will be me, the Mother, dying.
I love this amazing family.
In my kitchen now recently arrived, Will, Martha, Sarah, Simone, John and Heidi. My son’s girlfriend Heidi, just announced,ten years his senior, long time friend of the family.
I’ve played Pictionary, maybe three or four times in my life. Tonight I play as Ana’s partner. My scribbles mean something to her.
My mother is dying but Life continues.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Office Space
I work at a small office in Portland. Realtors pay their brokerages in order to work. It’s kind of backwards. I pay to have a desk. Despite this obvious defect, I have a pretty good gig.
WRG is a family run business. My broker’s husband and two sons work for her. Cindy got me to walk the Portland Marathon. I’ve worked for her for over 10 years. I’m almost family.
As long as I’ve worked for them the office has been in a small brick building in SE Portland. We used to occupy a small space on the second floor. Even though I paid a “desk fee” I didn’t have my own desk until we moved downstairs a year and a half ago. Now I pay a little more and have my own desk. We occupy almost the whole first floor. There’s a therapeutic mattress company that occupies the other office on the first floor.
On the second floor occupying the space WRG vacated is a puzzling group of businessmen. They’re Russian, and they park nice vehicles in our small parking lot. Always nice but not always the same vehicles, and often vehicles without license plates. Often they leave cars in the parking lot overnight. They stay late. We gossip a lot about what it is they might be doing up there. Across the hall from them is the Psychologist. His patients slip in and out throughout the day.
I used to resent the doctor. My broker provides computers and printers to the non-desked Realtors. As a courtesy they’ve allowed the doctor to check his emails on our computers. He claims he can’t have a computer because he’s been addicted to computer use. I always thought he was lonely. And cheap. I don’t resent him anymore because I have my own desk now and I feel sorry for him because he’s lonely. And cheap.
Having a desk I spend a lot more time in the office. There are twenty five agents with WRG but I don’t know at least half of them. Some of those I’ve never even met. Five agents work out the Pearl office. Portland has a downtown condo-based neighborhood nicknamed “The Pearl”. I’ve never met two of the agents down there. My office lists 20 agents, but really there are only about ten agents that count. By counting I mean you come into the office enough to be known by someone who has a desk (me).
There are two co-ed restrooms in the hall. The mattress company uses them, and we use them, and occasionally the clients and agents of the upstairs offices use them. And probably people off the street come in too occasionally.
I’ve introduced these individuals and groups to present my pool of suspects.
Someone is using the restrooms and not flushing the toilet. This individual not only does not flush but does not put the seat back down. This individual has foamy pee. And pees often. I assume this individual is a man since there’s just pee and foam, no TP and even if a woman decides to hover instead of sit she certainly wouldn’t touch the toilet seat. I hope it’s only one guy but there are a lot of guys to choose from: the doctor, half a dozen Realtors, the Mattress guy or the Russians.
One afternoon it was really quiet in the office. Only Realtor A and I were in the office. He went to the restroom. About half an hour later I went to the restroom. I found pee. But was it the restroom he had used? I didn’t know. It was disconcerting to suspect him. He is such a proper looking fellow and so organized. But it was enough to broach the subject with my Broker, the only other regularly present female.
Oh yeah, she’d noticed someone was peeing without flushing. Turns out she and her husband had discussed at length the problem trying to figure out who it could be. They’d fingered another decent fellow who didn’t seem the type (whatever that might be). When she discovered I was upset by it too she decided to write a note and post it in the restroom that the standup pee-er seemed to prefer. It asked everyone to flush after using the toilet. Within an hour the note was gone and the pee was back.
War.
WRG is a family run business. My broker’s husband and two sons work for her. Cindy got me to walk the Portland Marathon. I’ve worked for her for over 10 years. I’m almost family.
As long as I’ve worked for them the office has been in a small brick building in SE Portland. We used to occupy a small space on the second floor. Even though I paid a “desk fee” I didn’t have my own desk until we moved downstairs a year and a half ago. Now I pay a little more and have my own desk. We occupy almost the whole first floor. There’s a therapeutic mattress company that occupies the other office on the first floor.
On the second floor occupying the space WRG vacated is a puzzling group of businessmen. They’re Russian, and they park nice vehicles in our small parking lot. Always nice but not always the same vehicles, and often vehicles without license plates. Often they leave cars in the parking lot overnight. They stay late. We gossip a lot about what it is they might be doing up there. Across the hall from them is the Psychologist. His patients slip in and out throughout the day.
I used to resent the doctor. My broker provides computers and printers to the non-desked Realtors. As a courtesy they’ve allowed the doctor to check his emails on our computers. He claims he can’t have a computer because he’s been addicted to computer use. I always thought he was lonely. And cheap. I don’t resent him anymore because I have my own desk now and I feel sorry for him because he’s lonely. And cheap.
Having a desk I spend a lot more time in the office. There are twenty five agents with WRG but I don’t know at least half of them. Some of those I’ve never even met. Five agents work out the Pearl office. Portland has a downtown condo-based neighborhood nicknamed “The Pearl”. I’ve never met two of the agents down there. My office lists 20 agents, but really there are only about ten agents that count. By counting I mean you come into the office enough to be known by someone who has a desk (me).
There are two co-ed restrooms in the hall. The mattress company uses them, and we use them, and occasionally the clients and agents of the upstairs offices use them. And probably people off the street come in too occasionally.
I’ve introduced these individuals and groups to present my pool of suspects.
Someone is using the restrooms and not flushing the toilet. This individual not only does not flush but does not put the seat back down. This individual has foamy pee. And pees often. I assume this individual is a man since there’s just pee and foam, no TP and even if a woman decides to hover instead of sit she certainly wouldn’t touch the toilet seat. I hope it’s only one guy but there are a lot of guys to choose from: the doctor, half a dozen Realtors, the Mattress guy or the Russians.
One afternoon it was really quiet in the office. Only Realtor A and I were in the office. He went to the restroom. About half an hour later I went to the restroom. I found pee. But was it the restroom he had used? I didn’t know. It was disconcerting to suspect him. He is such a proper looking fellow and so organized. But it was enough to broach the subject with my Broker, the only other regularly present female.
Oh yeah, she’d noticed someone was peeing without flushing. Turns out she and her husband had discussed at length the problem trying to figure out who it could be. They’d fingered another decent fellow who didn’t seem the type (whatever that might be). When she discovered I was upset by it too she decided to write a note and post it in the restroom that the standup pee-er seemed to prefer. It asked everyone to flush after using the toilet. Within an hour the note was gone and the pee was back.
War.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Blogging is a feeling
Blogging is a feeling.
Saturday I attended a party celebrating my mother’s 89th birthday. She has lived in an Alzheimer’s Cottage for 9 years. My father was a twin. He and his twin are both dead. But his twin’s wife is alive and lives in the same facility as my mother. Viola doesn’t have Alzheimer’s, she lives on the non-Alzheimer’s side of the building. Viola’s birthday is in January, my mother’s birthday is in February. We have celebrated their birthdays together for several years now so the two branches of the family can also have a family reunion at the same time.
Many family members were missing this year. Lives are busy. And sometimes it’s just hard to find the emotional strength to face people with whom you share formative experience.
My dad and his brother had had a complicated relationship. They were tight. But they were competitive too. Our families spent a lot of time together. Each brother had five kids and coincidently each had 3 sons and 2 daughters. They passed that competitive “feeling” on to their children.
I feel competitive of my 57 year old cousin. It’s bizarre really.
He feels it too though I’m pretty sure.
When I was in kindergarten Harold (my dad’s name is Gerald) went through a divorce. His wife had taken off with another man. My parents let him move in with us so my mother could watch the children while Harold worked. Gail, his oldest son and I went to kindergarten together. It was fabulous having my handsome cousin in school with me. Gail and I had mutual crushes on one another.
But it was a terribly tumultuous time. Harold cried (adults are not suppose to cry), the other kids fought (Gail and I hid because we weren’t fighters), my mother carried little abandoned Susie on her hip and left my baby brother to fend for himself because he was less demanding. Eventually my mother made my father ask Harold to take his kids and leave. But our families were permanently enmeshed.
Eventually my uncle remarried Viola and had two more children. My sister tells of the time she heard our drunken fathers in a silly competition.
Harold said to Gerald. “I’m as good as you now. I have five children too.”
And my Dad replied, “That doesn’t make you as good as me. I’m still better than you.”
Wow. No wonder Gail and I were competitive.
I hadn’t seen Gail in years until this Saturday. He’s sweeter and less threatening then I remember him, and more humble. More like that five year old I once loved.
But I’m still better than he is.
Saturday I attended a party celebrating my mother’s 89th birthday. She has lived in an Alzheimer’s Cottage for 9 years. My father was a twin. He and his twin are both dead. But his twin’s wife is alive and lives in the same facility as my mother. Viola doesn’t have Alzheimer’s, she lives on the non-Alzheimer’s side of the building. Viola’s birthday is in January, my mother’s birthday is in February. We have celebrated their birthdays together for several years now so the two branches of the family can also have a family reunion at the same time.
Many family members were missing this year. Lives are busy. And sometimes it’s just hard to find the emotional strength to face people with whom you share formative experience.
My dad and his brother had had a complicated relationship. They were tight. But they were competitive too. Our families spent a lot of time together. Each brother had five kids and coincidently each had 3 sons and 2 daughters. They passed that competitive “feeling” on to their children.
I feel competitive of my 57 year old cousin. It’s bizarre really.
He feels it too though I’m pretty sure.
When I was in kindergarten Harold (my dad’s name is Gerald) went through a divorce. His wife had taken off with another man. My parents let him move in with us so my mother could watch the children while Harold worked. Gail, his oldest son and I went to kindergarten together. It was fabulous having my handsome cousin in school with me. Gail and I had mutual crushes on one another.
But it was a terribly tumultuous time. Harold cried (adults are not suppose to cry), the other kids fought (Gail and I hid because we weren’t fighters), my mother carried little abandoned Susie on her hip and left my baby brother to fend for himself because he was less demanding. Eventually my mother made my father ask Harold to take his kids and leave. But our families were permanently enmeshed.
Eventually my uncle remarried Viola and had two more children. My sister tells of the time she heard our drunken fathers in a silly competition.
Harold said to Gerald. “I’m as good as you now. I have five children too.”
And my Dad replied, “That doesn’t make you as good as me. I’m still better than you.”
Wow. No wonder Gail and I were competitive.
I hadn’t seen Gail in years until this Saturday. He’s sweeter and less threatening then I remember him, and more humble. More like that five year old I once loved.
But I’m still better than he is.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Call of the Blog
I'm out of practice. It's like Dana is a client and has asked me to write up an owner carry contract. I haven't had to do that in years. But just like the call to blog, I did write up an owner carry offer this month (with Mike's help!) And I liked it.
So, yes, Dana I'm game. I'm back in the game.
But what about Facebook? Has Facebook been all bad? No. I like Facebook. But it was an addition not a substitution. I'm still not sure why we all abandoned Myspace.
Myspace is over. I actually think Blogger is a better format than Myspace ever was for blogging. But we're all going to have to practice to make this migration work.
So, yes, Dana I'm game. I'm back in the game.
But what about Facebook? Has Facebook been all bad? No. I like Facebook. But it was an addition not a substitution. I'm still not sure why we all abandoned Myspace.
Myspace is over. I actually think Blogger is a better format than Myspace ever was for blogging. But we're all going to have to practice to make this migration work.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Rambling
1960 Rambler American
Back when I first rode around in a 1960 Rambler, I didn’t think about getting married or having a family or even whether or not I’d get an education. I don’t know what I thought about, but it wasn’t those things.
The first time I rode in that Rambler M and I were spending time together in a different way then we had previously. We’d been friends for a couple of years but I had another boy friend. Now I didn’t. I remember he put his hand on my knee as he drove and we listened to his only 4 track tape, “Happy Trails” by Quick Silver Messenger Service.
I thought it was strange that he didn’t stroke or caress my knee, he just left his hand there, still. Now, I relish the memory.
The Rambler had a four track tape player in it. Four Track tape player technology had such a short life span that they were obsolete before I’d ever heard of one and people have forgotten all about them now. The eight track tape player is infamous, but this was a four track tape player. Even in 1970 I don’t think they were much available. But I remember that tape because we listened to it over and over again.
We both lived and worked at Multnomah Falls during the summer of 1971. It was the summer after my junior year and the summer after M’s graduation. The Rambler was our mode of transportation. We’d go 90 miles an hour down I-84 between Troutdale and Multnomah Falls. We were never pulled over. I guess the police just figured their radar was wrong, a Rambler couldn’t possibly be traveling that fast.
M still had the car when we married two years later. Then, it was our car. It broke down a lot. We often had to borrow cars. One reason we moved further into town was to be nearer the better bus service so M could ride the bus to work. We might still be living in that first depressing apartment that smelled like mold and dirty carpet, M and I usually need compelling reasons to move. Of course that would mean also that we’d never have had any children or been given acreage in Corbett, but you never know what the true catalyst is for the rest of your life. Maybe the Rambler was low on gas the night my oldest daughter was conceived? I don’t remember, so it could be we had sex instead of going out for dinner. Speaking of sex, the Rambler was the best car for making out. It was good too, since it was really the only car we ever really used for that purpose. Marriage tends to move that activity indoors. It had a bench front seat. That bench would lay completely flat. Cool huh? Couple that with dark country roads and well, we were too young to be out on our own.
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