Motivation...where did mine go?

ADHD is often associated with distraction.  Perhaps that is why the AD part stands for Attention Deficit.  But what the name of the disorder is missing is the fact that it is also a motivation deficit order as well.  I guess ADMDHD was too long an acronym.  Plus when you add the forgetfulness, the frustration and everything else that goes along with ADHD the acronym might be longer than the alphabet.

On days that I have a schedule or a long list of concrete to do items I do pretty well.

On other days where I know I have stuff to do, but I am either overwhelmed, don't have specific deadlines, have too many priorities or wake up on the wrong side of the bed, lack of motivation kicks in.

Yesterday was one such day.  Here is the outline of my day:

7:00am Wake up.

7:01 get up and go to the bathroom

You didn't really think I was going to draw a picture of me going to the bathroom did you?

7:03 go back to bed to wait for my medicine to kick in...I can't eat for an hour after I take my medicine so when I'm not on a schedule I figure I can hang out in bed catching up on emails, Facebook and important games on my iPad.

As soon as I show any signs of movement the cats decide it must be time for them to come attack me on the bed.

8:30ish...think about getting up (got really involved in a new game)  realize I forgot to take my medicine at 7:00.

8:31 Get up and take medicine...lay back down again.

9:00 Finally decide that I've wasted enough time today and get up to eat breakfast.

9:37  After eating a leisurely breakfast and fending off the cat all of the sudden realize I have to take oldest daughter to work in about 3 minutes.

9:38 tell oldest daughter that I will get dressed quickly and take her.  Daughter lets me know that she won't be ready for another 10-15 minutes.

9:39  Being that 10-15 minutes is too short a time to shower or start working on my project for the day I sit down to play stupid addictive game some more.

10:15  Daughter finally ready to go.  I did have time to shower...grrr

11:00 Back and finally showering

I thought about putting a drawing of me showering here, but thought it might be inappropriate.  This is a family site...cannot have any naked stick figures here :-)


11:30  Sit down at computer to work on presentation I have to give at work next month.

12:15 Presentation too overwhelming...go eat lunch.  Play more of the game.

 1:00 Time to get ready for my interview I have scheduled for 2:30.

1:30 Need to leave the house in 15 minutes...no time for anything other than stupid addictive game.  Set alarm on my phone so I leave in time...good thing because once again I lost track of time.

Rest of the day...go to interview, go to class and feel generally productive.

10:00  Get ready for bed...promise to self that I will not do this tomorrow...play stupid game some more until I'm too tired to see straight.

Time spent productively not including scheduled items = 45 minutes
Time spent on stupid game = at least 4 hours
Finishing stupid game = not worth it

**Update:  I just realized I forgot to add the most important part of this post.  The part where I share with you my secret weapon for making it look you were productive when in fact you spent the entire day playing a game on your iPad.  Here it is:

At some point during the day yesterday I realized felt guilty that my husband had been hard at work all day and I had been wasting time.  So I looked around and noticed this:

This is our sink full of dishes.  The green squares are our plates and the happy face is my favorite yellow happy face bowl that I eat yogurt out of every morning. 

I thought...a ha...I could empty and fill the dishwasher and suddenly I would look like I had been slaving away all day long.

So I spent maybe 15 minutes doing the dishes.  (Emptying the dishwasher took about 30 seconds because we had been using the dishes from there for the last few nights)  And the result was this:

Nothing like a shiny sink to make you look like you have been motivated. 

Who does that?

I have recently picked up a new annoying habit.  I say new because I don't think I have done it in the past, but maybe I did and I'm just now becoming aware of it.  I like the sound of new though, because I really don't like the thought that I may have been doing this for years.  As for the annoying part, it's not annoying to me, but if someone else did this I would be annoyed, so even though I have not been told I'm being annoying, I'll assume this is the case.

Okay, I hope that was clear and we can now move on.

So here is how the new annoying habit works.  My husband and I are getting ready to go somewhere....for this example lets say the store...and if you want to be specific let's say that big box store with lots of blue everywhere and low prices.  (We happen to live around the corner from such a store and go there pretty much daily, if not two or three times a day.  Having ADHD and living so close to such a store is both a blessing and a curse...I can go into that on some future post.)  Okay so back to my husband and I going to the store.  He will say something like, "I'm going to go change my shirt and use the restroom then I'll be ready to go."  I will say, "ok" and proceed to get my phone out and either check Facebook or kick a friend's behind in Scramble With Friends. (My two favorite app on my phone.)

He will come downstairs and say something to the effect of, "Ok, I'm ready".  I will then shut off my phone and start heading out the door with him.  And then the new annoying habit kicks in.  I will think of a hundred things I have to do before I leave, such as go to the restroom, find my purse, keys, wallet or sunglasses, turn off some lights, start the dishwasher or any number of small activities.  My sweet husband will stand by the door whip out his phone and never say a word as to how I could have been doing all this while he was getting ready.  I do everything I need to do before heading out the door for our run to the store and half-way to the car I will realize that I do not have my phone.  I cannot possibly go to the store around the corner without my phone so he again waits while I go find where on earth I put down my phone.  And he never complains...ever.  (Reason number 5,326 why I love him so much.)

So I have been slowly noticing that I have this new annoying habit, but it usually only delays us 5 minutes or less so I haven't been worried about it.  Plus my amazing husband doesn't complain so I haven't seen the need to change my ways.  Until this weekend.  Same routine...we were going somewhere and my husband stated he was going to go get ready to go.  I messed around, I believe on the computer this time, until he stated he was ready to go.  This time I said, "sure I'm ready, but do you mind if I take a shower first?"

Really?  Who says that?  (Well...me I guess)  I had had plenty of time to shower while my husband was getting ready.  I had had plenty of time to shower all day long.  I waited until he was ready to go before I decided that I might want to shower for the day.  It was about 6pm by this time.  And you know what he said?  He said, "okay" and patiently waited for me.  Amazing.

So now being aware of my new annoying habit I'm going to consciously try to get ready while my husband is getting ready.  Because I would like my new annoying habit to become the old annoying habit I used to have but no longer have anymore.

The Jacket

I'm not exactly sure if this post has anything to do with ADHD, but I'm thinking it has to tie in somehow.

I have a teenage son who wears a jacket every day to school.  And when I say every day, I mean every.single.day.  From the 100+ degree days to the below freezing days.  And it's the same jacket every single day.  It's kind of a mid-weight jacket much too hot for the 100 degree days and not near warm enough for the freezing days.  And he doesn't carry it to and from school on the hot days.  He wears it. 

I did see him take it off for tennis practice, but it went back on after practice for the walk from the courts to the car.  One advantage of him wearing the jacket was I could find him easily in the yearbook because he was wearing The Jacket in every picture.

Notice that his head wasn't even in some of the shots and I could tell it was him by The Jacket.

A few weeks ago he went to scout camp and The Jacket went with him.  I was unpacking his camp trunk last night (that part is probably due to ADHD...I let the trunk sit in my living room for over a week).  I found The Jacket...it was my golden opportunity to get it in the washer because he was at his dad's house.

Before The Jacket went anywhere near my washer I wanted to empty the pockets.  Little did I realize that process would take much longer than anticipated.  Here are the contents of The Jacket.  Two very squished protein bars, a variety I haven't purchased since last fall, several bags of crushed goldfish crackers, lots and lots of folded up paper, about 20 assorted pens and pencils, 2 erasers, some money, a sand like substance I had to dump out that I'm guessing was animal cracker crumbs, and something I absolutely could not identify.  One pocket was filled with short sticks of an unknown substance.  They were about an inch long and about as thick as a crayon.  No one in the house could identify them.  I'm surprised The Jacket was not infested with bugs for all the food that was in the pockets.

I have to say I was very close to throwing away The Jacket and not subjecting my washer to it's leftover contents, but I could not bring myself to do that without my son at home.  Being as attached to The Jacket as he is, it could be very detrimental to our relationship if he came home to a missing jacket.

So I washed The Jacket and also went out and bought him a new jacket.  Of course with it being 100+ degrees out all I could find was a very lightweight workout jacket, but hopefully that will do until the temperature drops a bit and I can find him a replacement jacket.

The Art of Saying Thank You

My oldest daughter graduated from high school about six weeks ago.

We were very proud of her and did what most parents of graduating seniors do...we sent out graduation announcements. These weren't just your ordinary announcements, we painstakingly sorta custom designed them and had them printed.

 They were extra special because Coleen from coleenhauthphotography.com took her senior pictures. (Coleen is not paying for this endorsement...I just think she is super awesome.) Coleen almost moved to Alaska recently and I was panicked about how I was going to be able to afford a trip to Alaska for our family pictures. But she isn't moving to Alaska so all is well for me.

Sorry, ADHD tangent...back to graduation. So we sent out the announcements and several really thoughtful people sent my daughter graduation gifts.

Immediately I let her know that she would need to send out thank you notes because I figure if people are kind enough to take the time to send you a gift the least you can do is send a thank you note right?

My daughter of course agreed that it would be a good thing to do.  A couple weeks later I asked if she had sent the notes. She replied, "Oh not yet, I forgot." So I went a step further and gave her a stack of thank you notes with envelopes and let her know where the stamps were.

A week or so later I noticed the cat had thrown up on the stack of untouched thank you notes that were still sitting on the counter.

I immediately got mad at both the cat and my daughter. I had handmade those notes...how dare he puke on them? And if the notes had already been written then they wouldn't be sitting on the counter for the cat to expel his lunch upon.

So I cleaned up the mess, found some new clean thank you notes and let my daughter know these notes were to be written today. I got a text at some point during the day asking who she needed to write to. When I got home from work I saw that she had written about 1 1/2 notes. As a reference she only has to write four notes so she is close to half done with the writing at this point.

Once again I reminded her the notes needed to be written and a few days later she was able to finish the other 2 1/2 notes. Fantastic I thought...thank you notes are done. I put them out of mind until this morning when I was eating breakfast...I saw all four notes hiding under some papers on the table.

So to our wonderful friends and family who sent graduation gifts, the notes are written, they really are...they might get sent out before she graduates from college. But then again...no promises.

Cleaning the house

I have this cat that pees on the carpet.

(It's actually the gray fluffy cat.  But for today's post she will be black.)  So the other day I noticed that she had once again used my living room for her litter box.  I decided to be proactive and clean my carpet immediately instead of leaving it for my husband like I usually do.  Simple right?  Just get out the carpet cleaner and clean.

I noticed the carpet hadn’t been vacuumed in a while so before I could clean the carpet I would need to vacuum the spot, but might as well vacuum the entire living room.  Still simple right?

Except I just noticed the living room floor is littered with assorted toys, papers, clothing and underwear.  

 Pretty normal for around here, but everything was too big to be sucked up into my vacuum.  No big deal I’ll clean it up.  Got that cleaned up and went upstairs to get the vacuum.  Okay ready to get this done.  Except I noticed that the floor upstairs needed vacuuming as well.  Might as well vacuum that before I bring the vacuum downstairs.  Except there were kids toys on the floor up here too.   

No problem, I pick up the toys and then proceed to vacuum the entire upstairs.

Next I bring the vacuum downstairs and notice the stairs could use some vacuuming as well.   

Pick up the toys from the stairs and proceed to vacuum the stairs.

 

Okay back to the living room.  Proceed to vacuum up the entire living room.   

Now to clean up the cat pee.  Hmmm…it seems to have dried up and I’m not sure where it was.  Again…no problem.  I will just clean up the entire area where she might have peed.

Finally…success.  That cat pee has been cleaned up.  What should have taken 2 minutes managed to take over an hour, but the amazing part is, it actually got done.  And now I have a clean living room and a cleaner upstairs.  Happy dance for me.  

 Except out of the corner of my eye I see….

Welcome to my blog

I'm a mom with moderate ADHD.

I have three children with not so moderate ADHD.

And a husband without ADHD who somehow puts up with all of us.

(By the way my husband is much better looking in real life, I just don't know how to draw muscles apparently.  And that stuff on his face is his goatee...not leftovers from lunch.)

We also have 3 cats who by nature of being cats all have ADHD.  Especially our new kitten.

We have Tigger who is the fat, but really nice cat, Abby the adorable black and white kitten, and Skye the fluffy cat aka mean cat or cat who pees on the carpet (more on her soon).

I am also almost a counselor.  I say almost because I have 49 days until I graduate (not counting down or anything).  As an almost counselor I get to see lots of clients with ADHD.**  In fact it's becoming my specialty.  I'm in the midst of researching how I can help my clients with ADHD become more productive in their daily activities.  It's a subject I'm very passionate about...but I digress...lets keep this post moving forward.

One of the things I have learned is I must laugh when I have my ADHD moments.  Otherwise I'd cry and think I was crazy.

The way ADHD affects our family can be pretty funny at times.  And I know that I have heard tons of others funny ADHD stories from other families as well.  I will attempt to illustrate our stories and if you have a good story to send to me I may illustrate it and add it to this blog.  (Being ADHD I tend to forget my funny stories...so any help would be appreciated).

Please do not judge my drawings.  I'm an almost counselor...not anywhere near an artist.  As long as you get the point that is all that matters.  I hope you enjoy.

**Disclaimer:  No stories clients tell me will ever be posted on this blog without express written consent from the client.  And even then I seriously doubt I would ever post one of their stories.  Counseling is confidential and I will never break that confidentiality.