A Second Inside My Mind

I was thinking of doing a post on what it felt like to be me for a day, but that would take too many pages.  So next I thought of what it's like to be me for a minute and that was too long.  I decided I will attempt to do what it's like to be inside my mind for a second.

Part of being ADHD is the constant onslaught of things that pass through your head.  In the space of a second (maybe two but probably not) I will have a thought process that looks like this:

I'm riding in the car and see a bumper sticker on the car in front of me that has a unicorn on it.

It makes me think of my brother-in-law because he has a weird obsession with unicorns.

Which makes me think of my sister-in-law because she is married to him.

She has been running lately and I wonder what her running speed is because that is a current obsession of mine.

 I think of my running speed and how I am trying to make it faster by going to the gym and working out with my husband.

I think of how we will be working out tomorrow and I wonder if that guy at the gym that annoys me by all his loud grunting will be there.

I think about how he loves having people watch him work out and how ridiculous he looks.  I wonder if I look ridiculous, I don't want people watching me work out.  What should I wear to the gym so I will blend in better?

Maybe my black tank-top, but it always has so much cat hair on it.

The cat has been puking so much lately, I wonder if this is normal for a cat or if something is wrong with him.  It's weird, every time he eats he seems to need to puke.

I can't imagine puking every time I ate, I would make sure I ate things that taste good coming up.  The last time I puked we had eaten Mexican food, that did not taste good coming back up.  Chocolate chip cookies would be much better.  Speaking of which maybe we should make chocolate chip cookies tonight, it's been a while.

My comment to my husband is, "Let's stop at the grocery store and pick up chocolate chips."  When he asks what made me think of that (I secretly think he gets a kick out of my randomness) I tell him the unicorn on the bumper sticker (obviously, heh-heh).

What's that thing called?

I have trouble remembering people's names.  I know this is a common problem not restricted to people with ADHD, but for me it's just the tip of the iceberg.

Here is the scenario:  I meet someone new, they tell me their name, I tell them my name and instantly their name is out of my head.  Even if they have the same name as me, their name will escape me, I will just have that nagging thought that there is a reason I should be remembering their name.

I'd like to say I am better with faces, but often I am not.  I'd say I'm better with faces than names, but still not very good at it.  I blame it on the fact that I am very kinesthetic (that means I learn best by touching things) and since we don't go around touching people it's hard for me to remember them properly.  Maybe if I could touch everyone I would have better luck, so if I meet you and rub your arm, you will know what I'm doing and not be totally freaked out.

I feel like I am a typical person with the whole names thing though, I rarely hear a person say, I'm great at remembering names.  So I can't blame my ADHD on that so much.  But here is where I have trouble that I think other's don't have as much.  I often can't remember the names of common everyday objects.  In a conversation I will say long descriptive sentences to let the other person know what I am talking about.  For example if I want a pen I might say, "Can you hand me that long skinny thingy (I use the word thingy a lot) that writes."

It's frustrating because this happens all the time, my brain stutters and can't seem to grab the name of the object I am trying to describe.  I honestly think my brain moves so fast it can't be bothered to go back and remember the word I need.  At least that's how I like to think about it, I'm hoping it's not a sign that I am in the early stages of dementia.

One day we had picked up a grab bag of Legos at the Lego store.  Best way to buy Legos by the way, for only $8.00 we get a quart size bag full of random Legos.  Unfortunately they don't do that anymore.  Apparently they send back the random Legos to the Lego factory where they put them into the Lego kits again to sell.  At least that is what the store employee told us.  She may have been making that all up just to get out of having to make up Lego grab bags.  Anyhow, we had picked up a grab bag that had a lot of cute little mugs in it.

I thought they were the cutest thing ever and when I was pointing it out the first time I could not think of the word mug, all I could say was, "Look how cute these hot cocoa cups are" (as you can probably tell I do not drink coffee or I might have called it a coffee cup.  To me coffee is a vile smelling substance, but it makes my husband very happy so I put up with him drinking it.)  So from now on, in our family, mugs are called hot cocoa cups.

In a family setting we can all laugh about it and make jokes and all is well.  In public, not so much.  It's really embarrassing when I'm asking someone to pass the salt and I say please pass that cool glass thingy with the white stuff in it.

Can anyone relate?  Please tell me you can relate...so I can go on believing this has to do with my ADHD and not that I'm experiencing early onset of that disease where you can't remember anything.

My Love/Hate Relationship

I don't think I have too many people that hate me.  I may have some that I am unaware of, ADHD will do that, make you not realize that you are driving other people crazy.  I know that I have some people that are not fond of me, but they haven't unfriended me on Facebook yet, so I don't think of them as hating me.  But this isn't about people (I almost forgot that for a second as I am writing this post while chatting on Facebook with someone I know is a friend and also arranging a future babysitter for my youngest daughter).  This post is about calendars.

How disappointing you say?  Who even has a relationship with calendars?  I do...and it is a love/hate relationship.  I love putting together a calendar.  I love getting new ones and putting all I have to do on them.  I love looking at all the fabulous calendars in an office supply store.  (Which by the way are awesome stores.  I love love love office supplies.  And I can't explain why.  It's not like I need many of them.  I just think it would be cool to have a desk filled with every office supply imaginable...just in case someone was in need of a pink paperclip in the shape of a butterfly.)

So I'm really great at getting a calendar and starting to fill everything in.  And then a day passes.  I look at the calendar many times during the day and it helps me to remember that my children will be home from school at 3:30, I need to cook dinner for everyone at 5:00 and I have a doctors appointment in 2 weeks.

Then day 2 passes.  I see that the kids will be arriving home from school at 3:30 (like they always do...imagine that), I need to cook everyone dinner they will refuse to eat at 5:00 (I'm so excited) and I have a doctors appointment in 1 weeks and 6 days.  Even when I am busy and have a lot on the calendar, I look at it and say why am I looking at this, I know what I have to do today.

By day 3 I know what is on the calendar and I don't bother looking at it.  In two weeks I miss the doctors appointment because I forgot to look at the calendar.  After a few months I try all over again.  I want so bad to be one of those organized mom's who uses a calender and never misses an event.  But I'm not.  I've even tried putting a calendar on the fridge because I know I have to look there because I go to the fridge all the time.  That one worked for a little while, but then I forgot to look at that one as well.

Now that I am a counselor I really do need to use a calendar.  It's important that I am at the appointments when I say I am going to be.  For some reason people don't like it when they show up and I don't.  Thankfully we now have smart phones.  I don't think they are quite smart enough though.  If they were really smart I would be able to set up an appointment with a client, it would overhear me and put it on my calendar.  Then a little while before the appointment it would let me know I had an appointment.  Then I wouldn't even have to look at my calendar anymore.  See...now that is a smart phone.

I have decided what I really need is to get really rich and have a personal assistant.  The help wanted ad would look something like this:

Looking to hire a Personal Assistant.  I need someone who can keep track of my calender and remind me when I need to be places.  And by remind I mean tell me enough time in advance so I can get ready, and keep reminding me when I forget 2 minutes later...all while not being annoying about it.  And if you could drive me there too, that would be great, because I really don't like driving.  I get lost a lot.  And you get bonus points if you clean my house.  Please do not apply if you have ADHD, I have enough of that swirling around me as it is.

So now all I have to do is make lots of money, which requires me to actually show up for my counseling sessions, which requires me to keep track of my calendar...can you see the catch-22 I am in?  Maybe I will just keep blogging instead and hope lots of people love my blog and I can get rich through it.  All I have to do is remember to keep writing posts, an assistant would really help with that as well.  Hey, throw me a bone please...share my blog with some people with connections.  I will have my assistant reward you handsomely.

Racing...ADHD style

So I have been a little obsessed with running lately.  For example I looked at my last 10 posts on Facebook and they all had the word run in them.  I've read some blog posts about the race I ran last week and figured I had to get on the bandwagon and post as well.  I didn't take any pictures during the race so I will use my mad illustrating skills.

I ran my first half-marathon last weekend with my friend Erin.  And while running helps with ADHD, my ADHD certainly hindered my pre-race preparation.  I knew we had to get up super early so I laid out everything the night before...mostly.  I stressed over the weather, it was going to be cold and windy, but what if it warmed up, what layers could I take off and throw away in the street to be given to charity.  Why is it when I have to choose something from my closet to give to charity suddenly every sweatshirt became my favorite sweatshirt, even if I had not worn it in years.  Finally my sweet husband offered up one of his.

So I had my outfit all ready, my nutrition, my new running belt, my number, my shoes and oh yeah, I had a certain pair of socks I wanted so I put them in the washer.  I was ready to go.

The alarm went off the next morning at 5am and the first thing out of my mouth was, "Why do I sign up for these things?"  But I got up and put on my running clothes (I had conveniently showered the night before...see I was prepared.)  Uh oh, my socks were still in the washer.  And I had to have those socks.  I dug them out and put them by themselves in the dryer.

I tried to continue getting ready, but this disrupted my flow.  All I could think about was my socks.  I also realized I hadn't taken my medicine I have to take an hour before eating so I could not eat at home.  I had to take breakfast on the go.  I did the best I could at getting ready, luckily I had my husband helping me out and got everything together.  Went to check on the socks and they were still wettish so he put them in the microwave for me.  I was terrified of my socks catching on fire, because without these socks I could not run.  Not really, I run in other socks all the time, but that was the state I was in. 

On a random side note....can I tell you that the stupid huge ad that pops up in the corner of my screen is really annoying because I can't see what I am typing and even though I keep running spyware and virus checks it insists on staying there.

Okay continuing on...we finally get it all together...it looks like I am going on vacation for a week, not running 13.1 miles, but I believe I have everything I need.

We were meeting friends a few miles away and all driving in together.  We just about get to our meeting spot and I realize I have forgotten my water bottle.

Now let me tell you about my water bottle.  It is a really cool water bottle.  It is shaped to follow the curve of your back and has a hooked part so you can hang it on the back of your pants.  I bought the bottle specifically to run this race with.  I am not the best runner ever (or even a fair runner) and wanted to be sure I had water with me.  So I was very distressed at the thought that I had forgotten something so important.  But I could not go back for it.  I was sad.

In real life the water bottle doesn't really look like a snake with a sombrero.  For real pics of it go to simplehydration.com.  (And no I didn't get paid to endorse this water bottle, I paid almost full price for it...it's just really great and I love it...except for the lid's a bit hard to open while running.  Almost perfect though).

Continuing on...I told everyone about my plight and my friend offered me her bottle because she probably wasn't going to run with it.  I decided that I would be fine getting water from the water stations and being that it was cold out, it should be enough.  But my ADHD had kicked in.  Even though I knew in my head that I was fine and would run without water I could not stop talking about the water bottle.  This prompted my friends to keep offering me solutions.  I did not want solutions, I already had a solution, I just could not stop talking about the problem.

Finally we get to the race...about 45 minutes earlier than we needed to be (I totally could have gone back for the water bottle).  I was afraid there was going to be crazy traffic, apparently not.  So we all sat and chatted for a while.  I'm sure it was more I chatted and they listened politely wondering if they could signal each other to have me thrown out of the car.

Now it was race time...and I'm get a little more nervous.  The furthest I have ever run is 10 miles the previous Saturday and that was really hard.  I was going to run 13.1 miles today.  We wait in line to use a porta-potty.  Side note...I hate porta-potties and will do anything to avoid them.  But when you have to go and you have 13 miles of running ahead of you, you go.

Next we went to go get in line.  There were over 10,000 people racing and we were back in corral 13.  So we had a ways to walk, in fact the race started before we got back to our corral.  Which freaked people out that were supposed to be in the front corrals.  They were pushing through the crowd to get to their spot.  I figured we all had those time thingys on our shoes, who cares when you actually cross the start line. 

We finally pushed our way into our corral which was a good place to be.  Much less wind and cold when you are surrounded by thousands of people.  And 25 minutes later we were off.  I was finally working on completing this goal I had set for myself about 6 months prior.  So here is a breakdown of the miles of the race.

Mile 1:  This is so much fun, the band was good, the people running around me are about my pace, my friend is staying with me for a while, I can do this.

Mile 2:  Erin has to pee, I didn't have to, but when someone talks about having to pee then you have to pee and I might as well being as we had stopped already anyhow.  And it felt better to get that out of the way.

Mile 3:  Still doing great, the first half is up-hill, but we have been training on hills and so it's not a big deal.  I am still able to chatter away the entire time, so I know I am running an okay speed for now.  Bands are not quite as good now.  In fact we ran past what appeared to be an older Dallas socialite with lots of plastic surgery singing ZZ Top by herself while wearing a full length fur coat.  (Have I even mentioned yet that there are bands every mile?  If not, there are.)

Mile 4:  I slow down, a lot, Erin decides it's time for her to go do her own thing.  This was planned and I was surprised she stayed with me as long as she did.  Especially with my incessant chattering.  Now it's just me and the road (well and the thousands of people around me) for another 9 miles.

Mile 5:  Still feeling good, but getting warm.  I take off my sweatshirt, but can't bear to throw it away.  I know my husband will be seeing me at mile 6 so I decide to hold on to it.  By the way I'm texting and running...kinda tells you how fast I was going.

Mile 6:  Yay...here is my husband...I give him my sweatshirt (technically it's his sweatshirt) he runs with me for a second and I tell him how great I feel and how good it's going.

Mile 7:  I pass the point where the relay runners trade off.  I think I'm so glad I am running the whole thing...I'm still feeling great.

Mile 8:  We finally reach the highest point of the race...the rest is all downhill.  By the way I congratulate myself every time we go up a steepish hill...most everyone stops to walk...but not me, I've been training on hills so I keep going.

Mile 9:  I think I'm going to die.  It's kinda downhill, but suddenly my legs weigh 1000 pounds each.  I want to stop and walk so badly, but my ego will not let me.  But I kinda have to pee and if I go pee I have to wait in line and then get to sit down for a minute.  Sounds like a fantastic plan to me.  Suddenly the porta-potty is a welcomed sight.

Mile 10-13:  These are all a painful blur.  Who said the last 3 miles will just happen on race day?  I've only ran 10 miles one time in my life.  That was not enough training apparently.  I got to see my husband at mile 10...this time I was not so positive.  But I kept going.

Finally someone says we have 200 yards to the finish line.  I'm trying to work out in my head if it's 2/3 of a football field or 2 football fields.  It felt more like 100 football fields.  It seriously was the longest 200 yards ever.  To make matters worse photographers are taking my picture left and right.  I don't have it in me to even pretend like I am a champion and almost done.  My husband texts me to tell me where he is.  I don't even care that I'm close to the finish line, I don't have anything left in me to sprint for the finish.  Instead I read his text and look around at all the people.  The Dallas cheerleaders were there, looking tired as well.  Being as they had been cheering for the last 2 hours I don't blame them.

And I cross the finish line.  I did it.

Unfortunately the way it's set up I have to walk through an area with drinks and food before I can find my husband.  All I want is to see him, but I get enough clarity to realize I should take everything in sight to eat and drink.  I'm also handed my medal.  That is awesome...it's really heavy and feels like I must have done something amazing to get it.  I put it on so my hands are free to grab bananas, bagels and chocolate milk.  Finally I'm out of that mess and into my husbands arms.  I cried...partly because I did it, but mostly because I was completely and utterly spent.

Erin is there waiting as well, well sitting on the ground eating and drinking as much as she can.  We finally get slightly rested and take some pics.  In the spirit of my blog I will draw what the pics looked like.

Then we get some bad news from the husbands...the car is about a 1/2 mile away.  That was a very very very long 1/2 mile.

My favorite comment was from my son who saw my medal and asked if I had won the race...I had to let him know that no I did not win it.  He then asked if I got 6th place...how about 9000ish place.  But who cares...I did it!!