Points of Interest

(Forgive the pirated Michael Parkes Print– I’m a sucker for that faintly sinister blind jester… SO sexual…)

Anyway, some things you may want to know.

* The endless technicolor yawn has ceased, and Squish is feeling much better. The dog, however, is traumatized.

* Big T spent all night typing a paper. At one in the morning, he accidentally flushed the paper down his computer, and was cruelly informed of this fact when he awoke to print it up. The resulting brouhaha put such a weirdo crimp in my morning that I can not even begin to tell you how much I don’t know what time it is.

* Chicken is in finals too. Last night, she stayed up until eleven o’clock to watch a movie, and seemed put out when I looked at the clock in horror (my own internal clock is too fucked up right now to even explain) and said, “Tall people! Why is nobody sleeping!” Big T, of course, had an excuse, but she got all persnickety. I was like, HOW CAN I WRITE WITH ALL THIS NOISE!

Of course that wasn’t exactly fair, since I was up watching the movie too. *sigh* Being the grown up sucks.

* Zoomboy. Ah, Zoomboy. The voyage of self discovery that is Zoomboy’s journey through ADHD diagnosis has been a whole lot of fun–for me mostly. Zoomboy missed it all. I brought him to his appointment today and he was like, “Why are we here? What a nice man–can I play with your Duplos now? Excellent.”

The doctor, however, was pretty funny. He told me the following things:

–Kids with ADD often have poor social skills. When you can’t control your impulses, you’re annoying.

–Everyone has an executive function office in their head, right between the eyes. This office is like a traffic cop in your head, prioritizing stuff and making sure you know what’s more important. When you have ADD, your traffic cop is on a permanent donut break. (It figures I hate authority–even my BRAIN CHEMISTRY hates authority–it pretty much fired its executive officer when I was five and has been running the show in complete anarchy ever since.)

–People with ADD tend to forget things because it takes a minute for something in the short term storage to go to long term storage. In the meantime, the traffic cop is on donut break, and the other parts of the brain are going “Oooh! Shiny!” and that thing you were trying to remember goes bye bye. (I told him that I’d had not one but TWO break ups in college, where the guy was breaking up with me while I was doing something else, and when we were done with the conversation, I didn’t realize we’d broken up. AWKWARD!)

— People with ADD often become teachers.

–When that happens, they become the teachers that kids love but administrators hate.

–They’re also the teachers that never grade their work, they just give really exciting lectures.

–If they don’t become teachers, they do really well when they’re self-employed.

–ADD kids can have sort of difficult childhoods and adolescences.

–But if they survive until adulthood to find something they like and are good at, they do GREAT!

*blink* Uhm, yeah. Wow. Who knew–my entire life, I’ve been suffering from a disability. I just thought I was like that dog in Up–“Squirrel!” Of course, now I can go “Squirrel!” and then smile brightly and say “ADD!” like a big goofy parrot in mismatched knitwear. Same me–more material.

However, Zoomboy has a chance at a normal life (as opposed to his mother) with a little understanding, some medication, and a lot more time with his father.

*happy sigh* Silver linings abound!