I'm so not into the space shuttle.

Is that bad of me? Shouldn't I be watching this with bated breath? They could find the cure for cancer up there. They could find humanlike life. They could find some precious metal that could make the next great freaking computer chip.

I truly couldn't care less but maybe this is a good thing: It's one less thing for Mea's scattered noggen to feel obliged to try and pay attention to.

Brainfries with that?

Other than hooking up one dog to two outdoor leads and forgetting to hook up Dog #2, ye old brain has been functioning fairly well in this roiling, boiling humid heat. Which is contrary to my usual experience. (Don't worry, Humane Society, I'm outside working with them and am keeping track of the dogs' panting index.)

Today I am actually using my ADHD med, so I can't take credit for the unusual ability to focus and complete a sentence -- nor can the heat, apparently. So maybe it is the heat.

But yesterday it was 94 degrees and I didn't take the meds -- and I focused well enough to do 360 words toward my next deadline piece. In one sitting! 

I'm using this little kitchen timer I found in a clearance bin at ShopKo for 79 cents. It's the cutest little thing and can clip onto stuff, like your waistband. This seems to be helping quite a bit. I set it for 30- or 20-minute increments, and today I've been setting it to 40 minute increments. I promise to reward myself in between sessions by doing something fun -- but so far I've been working straight through and resetting the timer.

You have no idea -- this is groundbreaking for me. Who knew 79 cents could be such a good investment?

Back at it

Two hours after picking up my car from ABC Automotive, my prescription sunglasses disappeared. I went straight from the car hospital to the yard waste site to get mulch and blammo, no sunglasses.

Since then, it's been nothing but a narrow, mountainous road of lost items, with things practically flying off my body and out the window. The next day, Mother's Day, I managed to drive out of town and back with all my possessions intact, but it was exhausting. I lay flattened on my back, barely able to move after that.

Two nights ago, I met my friend Jeanne and her friend John out for wine at a piano bar and left my key in the ignition. Couldn't figure out why the car doors refused to lock. Puzzled, I walked away scratching my head and leaving the car unlocked on the street all night while inside the piano bar. Where, I might add, I promptly left behind the green sweater I'd been wearing.

Right move, wrong utensil

I just inadvertently brushed my teeth with the toothbrush reserved for scrubbing lime off faucets. I would not want to kiss me, either.

Car-less in Meattle

My jalopy's in the car hospital, and 'doctors' are telling me it may cost more to fix than it's worth. Sigh. So I've been without wheels ever since. It's really not as bad as you might imagine. If I need to get somewhere unwalkable, I schedule it around MLP's (my life partner) work schedule.
Working from home sort of facilitates this whole carefree and car-less lifestyle, so if you're not lucky enough to work from home, you're SOL in this car-ocracy called the United States.

The whole point of this blog entry is its impact on my ADHD. I still have it, it's still a Talibanic ruling force in my life, but since I've not been running around willy-nilly, getting in and out of the car and cavorting about town, I've also NOT LOST ANYTHING in 10 days.

I'm not molting, and if I am, my sheddings are here with me. At home. This is really, really nice. If you don't have ADD/ADHD and you don't have a problem with misplacing, losing, breaking, dropping, leaving behind personal valuables, you can't appreciate this little pleasure.

Easter is over so who hid my keys?

Holidays to an ADDer mean calamity, lost items, upheaval; multiple conversations going on at the same time and the need to follow them all; packing up loads of stuff into suitcases, boxes, laundry baskets, carry-alls, etc.; trying to find a home for my stock of PCSs (portable caffeine sources) which are not even optional  when I am behind the wheel; aforementioned loads of stuff falling out of aforementioned containers, leaving things behind, trying to leave destination before the caucaphony of voices and conversations starts making me twitch, etc. etc. etc.

Ah, the solace of the car. Finally. But then there's the drive home -- highways, lane changes, traffic cones, construction zones, full bladders, gas stations that seem to be magnetic places that draw possessions out of my purse, pockets, etc.

In short, every stop between Point A and Point B is a war zone, in the ADDer's mind, and Point B feels like someone has stuck a megaphone on your ear backwards so that all things loud pulverize your brain.

For women, the holiday experience gets complicated, and thus more opportunities for mishaps and misplacement  tend to occur.  Frigging Martha. I for some reason felt the need to bring not one but four loaves of homemade bread, homemade vegetarian lasagna and a huge vegetable dish, along with a gift for a bridal shower I missed and another gift for a sister-in-law's birthday.

A guy just puts on pants and shows up. What's he got to misplace?

It's attached, for crying out loud.
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Packing heat

I'm leaving town for 48 hours and have spent the last six packing. I'm running around in a full-court sweat. Upstairs to get this, downstairs to get that, outside to the car, inside, outside, upstairs, downstairs. You get the picture.

Actually, I am more organized and clear-headed than normal, as I have taken my ADHD meds today. But the whole upheaval stresses me out, and I'm ready to scream.

Google ADHD-sense

Well, this stinks. I have been trying to sign up for Google AdSense so I can make .0003 of a penny per decade.

But it's not working, and I am not understanding some of the stuff they're asking for. I feel like such a dork. I tried last night and again tonight, and it gave me a message that there was already a user with my name. And I know I didn't finish last night, because I fell asleep in the middle of it. And there aren't any ads on my site, so it didn't take.

They ask you repeatedly to promise that you won't sign in and click on the ads under false names, so now I'm paranoid that the Google peeps think I'm trying to do something nefarious.

I'm not smart enough to be nefarious.

RIP, Mr. Froo T. Fly

I'm feeling bad for this poor fruit fly that lost his little life by diving into my hot cocoa.

Mr. Fruit fly, I'm sorry for you and your fruit fly family, and if I had known this would be your final flight, I would have made sure to get some Irish whiskey for the cocoa, so you would have died happy.

I love a blizzard

Not the Dairy Queen kind. But the snow kind, the kind where traffic slows down (preferably stops), roads aren't plowed, and nobody dares to make a sound. It's completely silent outside, and outside is white velvet.

I love the blizzard, the storm, the fog emergency, etc. because it reflects what's going on in my brain -- a cavalcade of fog.

I'm off Cymbalta now. Doctor Tiny put me on that to help with my purported, probable and undiagnosed fibromyalgia, but it didn't do anything other than drain my wallet of $160 a month. So now I'm back on fluoxetine. I'm taking gabapentin (trade name Neurontin) for nerve pain. Apparently this is a low dose, and my new doctor, a pain specialist, says it should be doubled.

I must say, I've been operating at a functional level the last two days -- cranking out stories, thinking relatively clearly, structuring the stories ahead of time in my head in a fairly functional way. Have been taking half a tablet of generic Adderall three times a day instead of the prescribed dose, which is twice that. Maybe that's the difference.Today, for example, I spent 11 hours on a story I hadn't planned on writing. The editor just appealed to me out of desperation and I capitulated. Anyway, I'm only making $150 on the story, so the 11 hours comes out to less than $10 an hour.

Oh well, it's been lower. I wish I could crank out a story in two hours. I did when I worked for a newspaper. Then again, those stories were not of the length and depth that I'm writing now. I'm doubling and even tripling the typical word count for a newspaper story.

Still, I nay be working at top speed, but I am still too slow for my reckoning. I  wish and hope and want and aim and INTEND to be capable of writing faster. 

Over the weekend, when I was withdrawing from Cymbalta, I was a space case -- an empty hollow head on a post.

No surprise

It's been nearly two months since my last entry. (I forgot how to sign in.) :(

OK, that and I have been a tad distracted by the whole budget debate in Wisconsin. Having the radio on all day while I'm trying to work has not led to rapid writing.

Things are not going any better for me -- I'm still brain-numb and procrastinating everything. The lights are on but no one's home.

I'm walking more, and that seems to get blood flow to the brain. I need all the blood flow my brain can get. It also helps that it's been sunny the last few days. The grayness of winter had me dragging around like a bag of cement with feet.

My doctor suspects I have fibromyalgia, and so now I wonder if this whole space-cadette thing could be what they call "fibro fog." I feel like my head is hollow and has nothing in it. I have a skull, cheekbones, a nose, eyes, face....but inside my head it's just an echoing chamber, like a gourd. Every once in a while, a dried seed will rattle around.



































































































Last week I lost a mitten and a doorknob.

Medicated but still scattercated

I'm trying. Really, I'm trying.

I've got this story to finish today. It's not that hard of a story -- just involves putting together a friendly conversation I had with a new chancellor. Sort of a welcome-to-the-area, here's the new dude.
But I'm just not getting it done.

I keep checking e-mail, getting mad at people who e-mail me, looking up words, looking up terms, looking up the meaning in German of the people e-mailing me. (One is "powder maker" in German. I found that interesting. Did his ancestors make baking powder? Mineral powders? Flour? Gun powder?)
I'm using a "spy novel" simile to my story subject, because, after all, he worked in military counterintelligence as a special agent, and he's been EVERYWHERE in the world (abeit this traveling was done when he was a dull, placid little teacher) and so of course I had to research spy novelists, spy novel plots, military counterintelligence, etc. etc. AND NOT SURPRISINGLY, AFTER FOUR HOURS, I AM STILL ON THE FIRST PARAGRAPH.

OK, that's not fair, I do have 350 words, but I wrote about 340 of them over this past week.

The frustrating thing is that I'M TAKING MY ADD MEDICATION. I should be organized and focused. Why isn't it working? I was organized and focused last night when I decided to yank everything out of the closet and paint the closet canary yellow. Now that was fun! But this? This is for the birds.

Ditzery loves company

So I finally made it back to Big Lots on Friday, slinking in and surreptitiously introducing myself, confessing that I had purchased several items four days prior and proceeded to leave them here.

My heart pounded, and my face had turned red. I expected a fight. I expected them to grill me on WHAT EXACTLY did you leave, WHERE EXACTLY was it, WHAT EXACTLY did it look like, how many ounces was the Head-On migraine relief stick, how many tablets in the two Beano packages you supposedly purchased, WHY DIDN'T YOU COME BACK WITHIN 48 HOURS and DON'T YOU KNOW WE HAD TO RESTOCK THOSE ITEMS, AS THIS IS A RETAIL ESTABLISHMENT AND WE CAN'T LET MERCHANDISE JUST SIT THERE LIKE DUST ON RODIN'S THE THINKER? Well, huh, don't you?


I expected they would need my name, phone number, four forms of I.D. and my last iTunes gift card.
But they didn't. A harried but nice brown-eyed clerk took me over to a corner, where at least a dozen other morons like myself had walked out of Big Lots sans the items they had just paid good money for, leaving their bags in a pile like toys the first day after Christmas break, in the First Grade Show and Tell lineup.

It also gratified me that over 6,000 cell phones are turned in to Disney World every year, as are 210 pairs of sunglasses per day.

Ah, yes. Ditzery DOES love company. Always good to be among comrades!
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Mea walks out of Big Lots sans her purchases

This is really getting old.

Will my head ever be screwed on straight?

Mea's Master Card turns up in her coat

I hadn't been aware that it was lost, until I looked for it Saturday at the local evangelist-church thrift store.

Mother & Father Scatternoggen were with me, so my humiliated horror had to be secreted and silenced.

Then it appeared in my coat pocket. Do you know how many times in the last few days that coat's been crumpled into balls, tossed onto chairs and thrown on dressing room floors? (OK, about one time each. But still. How that card stayed in my coat pocket is a mystery.)

Gravity is my friend.

Mea loses her keys today

OK, so they were locked in the car. I met my friend Lauryl for a three-hour lunch (meanwhile my deadline went missed, but I thought damnit, that's why I'm a freelancer: so I can put people and friends and life FIRST).

Fortunately, I had a spare door key (say it fast: dorky) in my wallet. Had the keys actually been lost, I would have been able to drive home (because I store my ignition key IN the car so my Everything Key Ring can be put in my purse immediately upon starting car) but I would not have been able to get into the house. This would not have been good, as it's 4 degrees here in Cheddarton Falls.

In hindsighting it, I see that I was distracted by carrying and remembering to carry the 10-pound jar of homemade bath salts I was bringing to Lauryl. (Keys should have been in purse immediately; this is no excuse.)

Bad, bad Mea. Good thing about that spare wallet key, though.

Highlights of the first week of 2011

• Life Partner traveled 140 miles out of his way to his mom's house to retrieve Mea Scatternoggen's scattered belongin's: a slipper sock and five gloves, none of which matched any of the others.
• Mea missed a writing deadline (is mentally incubating paragraphs at this break for diversion).
• Ma and Pa Scatternoggen are coming to visit tomorrow, to "see the Christmas tree" and the main living space of the first floor is a tsunami of notes, notebooks, unread newspapers, leftover ungifted presents, a pile of jeans inherited from friend JB (just got around to trying them on today), dog toys, two vacuum cleaners (from an ambitious Sunday afternoon of Resolving to be Orderly), more newspapers, blankets, pillows, dog blankets, dog pillows, three cans of hair-mousse whose UPCs are awaiting the finding of a lost CVS receipt for an unfinished rebate from Herbal Essence....you get the picture. Not exactly Mother Scatternoggen Material.
• Mea finally sent out first Christmas card -- actually didn't send it -- a friend came to town so she handed the card to said friend.
• Mea's fridge is empty because she didn't get around to grocery shopping.
• Mea's wine rack is empty for the same reason.