Cube Farm

For once, I remembered to put the arm down on the ice maker when I used the last of the ice yesterday....

Discovered 9 hours later I'd forgotten to put the bin back in. Out avalanched 14,000 cubes of joy when My Esteemed Life Partner opened up the freezer.

I've known I'm a tad out of it...but this?

OMG. I am such a space case. No one would believe this, but I swear it's true.

I was just on the Wisconsin Historical Society website, and I saw a headline: "Babe Ruth Cracks Homer in Milwaukee" -- honest to God, I saw this several times on the site and each time, I wondered vaguely what revelations a Little League team of yore could have made about the Iliad and the Odyssey. I had this vision of kids in striped baseball pants sitting in the dugout with their heads together over these epic poems.

It finally dawned on me.

DOH!

I'll take my own problems, thank you

I'd been moaning, groaning, pulling out my hair and gnashing my teeth for a few hours over this story I'm working on. Or rather, the research for it. It's not going well, basically because I don't understand most of the information I'm reading about, and adding my lack-of-focus and other assorted neuroses to the scenario is compounding the matter.

This morphed into self-recrimination and all sorts of really mean, awful haranguing inside my head -- like little trolls were conspiring to criticize, ridicule and crucify me: :WHY ARE YOU SO BEHIND? WHY CAN'T YOU GET THIS DONE AND GET ON WITH IT? WHY ARE YOU SO MESSY? WHY ARE YOUR CLOTHES EVERYWHERE AND PILES OF LAUNDRY ALL OVER? WHY? and WHY HAVEN'T YOU DECIDED ON ANOTHER VOCATION/LIFE PLAN YET??? and WHY HAVEN'T YOU SENT YOUR FRIEND KATHY A WEDDING GIFT YET, WHEN HER WEDDING WAS TWO MONTHS AGO? and WHY AREN'T YOU GOING DOWNTOWN TO THE ART EVENT OF THE SUMMER TONIGHT, INSTEAD OF STAYING HOME AND LABORING OVER THIS STUPID STORY? WHY CAN'T YOU GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER??!

I was really getting worked up and depondent -- even  thought, "I need cognitive behavioral therapy" to shut this negativity up inside my head.

Then my friend Jaybee called and updated me on her latest job-related boss-is-a-frigging-prig saga. She's having a rough go of it and expects to be fired any day now. They want to "accompany" her on a couple of her appointments and take her to "lunch." Since corporate is four hours from here and they hardly ever come up, she's pretty sure this is curtains for the job she once loved.

I feel bad for her -- on top of that, she has no one to love her. Her parents are dead, and she's not been in a relationship in five years. I'm sorta worried about her. Like, what would a person do? Would she hurt herself?

There's a saying that goes "If everyone put their troubles out on the table, they'd take them back" rather than swap troubles with someone else. Or something like that.

I guess all things considered, I'd rather be a disorganized mess of an underpaid piddly obscure writer and behind on deadlines than to be in my friend Jaybee's spot.

Thought I got enough sleep....so what gives?

All right, this is REALLY pissing me off. I.AM.GETTING.VERY.PERTURBED.

Middle of the afternoon, am very very aware that deadlines are looming looming LOOMING next week and I have not gotten very far at all on my three stories. The one I'm working on now -- expanding broadband to rural areas -- is making me dizzy because I'm reading legislators' press stuff and researching what's already been done on this topic, and I'm seeing three different numbers as the amount our fine state received to help fund this. Did we get 25 million? 38 million? 65 million? Or is 65 supposed to be an approximated sum of 25-point-something and 38-point something? And did the money come from the Department of Agriculture or Commerce? I'm seeing both. So which is it, or did both actually give money? I'm having a hell of a time following all of these press statements. I'd call the legislator, but first I want to know what I'm asking. You know?

What's worse is I really don't care. And I'm feeling drowsy. I can't help but think that a normal person would see the forest for the trees and boil the thesis down to a couple main points and get on with their day. But I groan and struggle like a kid the night before a book report is due.

Adderall does not work

What does it mean when a person can just zonk out cold with generic ADHD meds in their bloodstream? Not to mention a pot of coffee, three cups of instant coffee and a Diet Mountain Dew.

And yet I behave as if I've taken a sedative.

Woke up from mandatory nap (it was mandatory because I had no choice in the matter) feeling cold (75 degrees in here, what's up with that?), feeling mopey and depressed (no particular reason) and am now trying to work on story and think of a halfway interesting lead (or lede if you want to be snotty) for the story.

Fog hasn't lifted. Got distracted looking up annoying term "due diligence." It's wonky and four people in the last seven days have used it in my presence. Is it a noun? Verb? Vegetable? Mineral?

Feeling drunk when you are sober is not my idea of fun

If you've ever tried to email after drinking 3 or 4 glasses of wine, then you know pretty much how I feel right now. Only, I have not been dipping into the sauce, nor anywhere near said sauce.

The morning coffee never really kicked in, to begin with, so at no time today have I been operating in peak condition. Went from horizontal dead slumber in bed to up-but-asleep-while-vertical-and-talking, to the state I'm in now, which is "upright but practically falling over dead onto keypad."

You know how a bottle of wine makes the room wobble, and you start seeing double? And if you are unwise enough to log on to your media device, and you try reaaallly hard to sound sober in your communication despite the fact that your eyelids feel like they're being crushed by cement blocks. That's how I feel.

It's late afternoon and I just got off the phone with an interview subject. The source was well-spoken and quotable -- meaning he speaks like a human being, not a freaking wonky-mouthed Six Sigma trainee trying to sound edgy-cated. In other words, the dude was halfway decent to converse with, despite his status as a dull city official. Translation: it was not a tough or boring interview. Yet I feel as if someone just threw me off a Tilt-a-Whirl and I could nod off.

Maybe I'll go take a nap and sleep this off. (Although what the bleep is there to sleep off?)

11 p.m. second wind

Why does this always happen? I'm dead tired and fuzzy-headed during the day, but around 10-11 p.m., I start feeling clear-headed and focused. I soooo want to be one of those morning people who goes to bed early and leaps out of bed at 5 a.m. and gets everything done by noon.
I'm convinced that being a morning person would mean being a sane and  calm, organized person who had their sh!t together. Versus what I am: a slow-moving, lethargic possum.

Phone's on but no one's home

Couldn't find cell phone this morning. Used land line to call cell -- dialed cell number on land line, spaced out and waited on land line for someone on other end to pick up.

My Esteemed Life Partner was watching, and said to me, "Aren't you calling your cell?" (How did he know, anyway?)

I was like, "Oh."

I'd forgotten I was on phone with self and should have been hunting around, listening for ring tone. Sometimes wish I were a stoner, so would have halfway-decent excuse for constant fog and never-ending lapses.

It's occurred to me just to let people think I am one. Would you rather be thought of as stupid or a stoner?

Good thing it's not illegal to be stupid.




.

LA Times article

Focused talk therapy helps adults with ADHD, study finds

By Melissa Healy

Los Angeles Times

(MCT)

WASHINGTON — Roughly 9 million American adults (4.1 percent to 4.4 percent of the population) are thought to suffer from attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder. And even among those who have been diagnosed and medicated for the condition, life can be a continuing cycle of disorganization, procrastination, missed deadlines and unfinished business.

A form of psychotherapy that focuses on changing patterns of thought and behavior that are counterproductive can help these adults, a new study concludes.

The study, to be published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, finds that 12 sessions of “cognitive/behavioral therapy” — 50-minute sessions that aimed to educate, coach and devise strategies to improve and sustain focus — helped subjects live and work more effectively. And those subjects were better at doing so than others who spent 12 sessions learning a relaxation technique and getting general “supportive therapy.”

Nine months after getting the specialized form of cognitive behavioral therapy, the adult ADHD sufferers were still more organized and focused.

The subjects getting cognitive behavioral therapy spent several sessions learning about their disorder, and getting instruction on techniques to keep them organized, including use of calendars and task-list systems. Two sessions were spent learning techniques to reduce distractibility, such as writing down distractions while working on a task, rather than acting on them. Subjects also learned to break down overwhelming jobs into smaller tasks, and to recognize and respond more effectively to challenges that caused stress.

The study is among the first to rigorously to compare “psychosocial” methods of helping those with ADHD. Its findings suggest that this highly structured form of psychotherapy might be the best “next step” for adults who take medications for ADHD but still have problems with focus. The authors cautioned that it will take more study to determine whether the same technique might be a good first-line treatment for adults with ADHD who cannot or will not take the medications — mostly stimulants — that are typically prescribed for the condition.

Cognitive behavioral therapy is enjoying a growing reputation for effectiveness for a wide range of mental disorders. In addition to the longstanding finding that the technique is effective in treating anxiety, recent studies have found the focused form of talk therapy useful in lessening the tics and accompanying anxiety and depression symptoms of Tourette’s syndrome, in improving function in children and adults with obsessive-compulsive disorder, and in adults with post-traumatic stress disorder. A form of cognitive behavioral therapy for families immediately affected by suicide was found to reduce self-blame and grief reactions that were considered unhealthy.

———

(c) 2010, Los Angeles Times.

Visit the Los Angeles Times on the Internet at http://www.latimes.com/.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

Unfinished business

It dawned on me last night that about six weeks ago, I started painting the inside of the playhouse in our backyard, to make it a usable potting shed/useful space instead of just a place to toss tomato cages and empty pots.

We had company in the interim, so I hid my painting tools and all of the stuff emptied out of the playhouse away, so we wouldn't look like squatters.

Since anything out of my sight is out of my mind, it completely slipped my mind that it needs finishing. Every day I find something else about myself to annoy me.

Thwappage

After thwapping my forehead repeatedly, groaning and cursing myself, "HOW COULD YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN YOUR 4 P.M. APPOINTMENT?" I called the person  I accidentally stood up and left a heartfelt "I am so sorry, I screwed up" message.

I'd scheduled a 4 p.m. phonecall with him and had even written 4 P.M. in two-inch block Sharpie on the back of my hand. Note the back of my hand -- where it would be visible all afternoon right under my eyeballs while I worked.

And then proceeded to forget it.

It simply stunned me that the clock said 4:30. I'm not sure if I spaced out and thought I'd made the appointment for 5 p.m. or if I simply thought it was 3:30. But just moments before I realized I'd missed the appointment by 30 minutes, I'd been thinking, "I've still got a little time before I have to make this call."

I really need to interview this guy for my story due next week. But I wouldn't blame him if he tells me to go take a walk off a short pier. He must be thinking, "What a ding bat. What a cornflake. What a scatterbrain."

This snafu so mentally discombobulated me that concentrating on research for my three upcoming deadlines wasn't not even a possibility.

So I set about picking up clutter and doing laundry, setting the egg timer for 15-minute increments. (We have an electrician coming tomorrow morning.) But frustration returned when I realized how icky and gritty basement floor was on my one bare foot.

I had only one shoe on because I'd somehow misplaced the other one. How can a grownup lose a shoe??? How?? How?

Scatterbrain rides again

I am literally thwapping myself on the forehead. DESPITE THE DARK BLACK SHARPIE message I wrote on the back of my hand, I completely forgot about my 4 p.m. phone interview with the economic development guy. 

#$$&*@#%!%*

I don't know what I was thinking -- that it was at 5? That I was waiting for people to call me back regarding other stories I am working on? I have NO idea WHAT the h#ll I was thinking.  Maybe I thought it was only 3:30 p.m. when it's actually 4:30 p.m.??? I had a vague awarenss that I had 20 minutes or so left before the interview. Then I realized the interview should have been over and done with by now.

ACK!

Trying to work

Am trying to transcribe an interview I did today but have been distracted by too many things. First it was menstrual cramps, then fatigue, then hunger, then the heat; then it was an armed robbery in our area of town (saw story about it online), then it was responding to an e-mail from someone in our historical society, then it was grinding my front teeth.

Right now it's a panic attack (or anxiety attack or something) that's occupying the space between my ears. Am flipping out that the people I most love in the world could be hit by a drunk driver or a stupid text-messaging kid and wiped right out of my life in an instant. I feel like I could throw up -- stomach is a tight little ball, like a fist, and my brain is running away with it.

Too tired to do anything

Yesterday was Sunday -- typically Attempt-To-Get-Decluttered day. This did not happen.

The necessary quantity of caffeine in parts per milliliter did not make their way into ye old bloodstream until noonish; even this provided me with so little energy that I accomplished little all day but marveling at how little energy I had. I just dragged my carcass slooowwly around like Eeyore and spent most of the day reading "Work of Art" by Sinclair Lewis (1934).

Having no energy to do what needs to be done (like put away clutter) annoys the hell out of me.

Obscurity is bliss

I just Googled myself and am relieved as hell to find out that this blog is not easily, if at all, found.

I never claimed to be the sharpest knife in the drawer

This blog has "ADHD" in the title because that's what the psychoneurologist or neuropsychologist diagnosed me with a few years ago.

I'm not entirely sold on the idea that I have ADHD -- you might have noticed, I'm not particularly hyper -- but I am definitely aware that something's a little off.

I fit the profile -- I lose, misplace, leave behind, shed and otherwise inadvertently liberate myself from valuable personal belongings daily, if not hourly. The only reason I got a landline was to call my cell phone when it gets lost.  I'm not only a procrastinator and chronically tardy, but I even exited the womb a few weeks late. (My poor mother.)

Looking around the kitchen, I see the spice drawer open, the junk drawer and two cupboard doors standing open; today's salad debris spread out across the counter, a capless bottle of vinegar, the top of a solar yard light (in the middle of being washed and de-rusted), an open tin of *General Foods International Vanilla Caramel Latte mix (it doesn't even pay to close it because three seconds later, I'm pouring another cup); a drill bit and a chuck key from a miniblind project; the TV remote; a stack of notebooks, notes and work-related tree products; a freelance paycheck (anemic) that arrived today and five peaches that are in the stage of ripeness somewhere between hard-as-baseballs and liqueur.

In the next room sits a bin of hardware and parts from miniblinds on the floor, along with the miniblind I half-installed last week (so peeping toms would be spared of my bad-housekeeping example) before something distracted me. Oh, and a cat with half a haircut.

I can't go anywhere new without getting lost, spent my first 39 years incapable of reading maps, and simply getting ready to do leave the house takes me five times as long as it takes anyone else. A blind quadriplegic with a two-legged service hound and a wheelchair with no wheels would beat my @ss out the door. (Plus I end up coming back two or three times for forgotten sunglasses, water, etc. before actually backing the sedan out of the driveway.)

My two terriers just snicker whenever I back out the door with a 'ba-bye,' because they know damn well they'll see me bumbling back in a couple more times, muttering expletives, before actually leaving them in peace. Somethings I think they place bets on it.

So is this ADHD? Or just D?

*No graft has been taken in return for this product-placement mention. However, if you are listening, General Foods International Coffees, I will happily remove the asterisk if you care to change that.

Mental fog

Would somebody please tell me why farmers markets take place so damn EARLY? Can't they stay awake past noon? I'd even bring them a PB&J.

I understand they get up at godforsaken hours, like 3 a.m. or something -- I get that. But wouldn't they sell more cabbage (and earn more cabbage) by catering to the lazy-butt vegetarian townfolk like me who aren't bright enough to grow our own produce?

If they sold more, they could work less or even hire a second shifter to sit at their little card table peddling kohlrabi till 3 or 4 p.m. Even 2 p.m. would be feasible.

I'd love to patronize our local weekly farmers market downtown, get to know where the rural agrarian, eat local, save the planet, shrink my carbon footprint and all that happy horsepucky, but frankly, before noon, I AM A VEGETABLE. And not a very crisp one.

At some point today, I will need to summon up the energy to head to the grocery store. Right now, though, my head feels like it's stuffed with baba ganoush.

Anyone have any pita pocket bread?

Stumbling around in the dark

Yeah, that could be the general theme of my life. Found out how dependent we are on electricity tonight when a Moby Dick of a storm knocked the power out for four hours. Even internet went out -- didn't see that coming. I was working on a freelance deadline when C*R*A*S*H*
Thought lightning hit the house, because in the sudden quietness and darkness, I swore I saw the dining room filling with faint but odorless white smoke. (Turns out my glasses were just fogged up from the monsoonish rain.)
Spent most of the four power-out hours in the kitchen, scraping dirt off the solar lawn lights and putting new batteries in them, so we'd have SOME light inside the house, and the other part of the four hours down the pitch-black basement, bailing water out of the flooding sump pump. (And tripping over assorted furniture, boxes of God knows what and stuff I've been meaning to sell on eBay for the last five years.)
Now the power's back on. (Waaah -- I kind of liked being disconnected.) Now am probably not going to make my deadline because I'm here losing my blog-virginity. (My editor will understand.)