Can't Hardly Wait. Actually, Can. Pretty Nervous.

Ok so I wanted to write a big huge blog about this but I haven't yet (although I've been writing a bunch of messy notes to try to catalogue this moment as best I can) but I just HAVE to get the news out there.

So, yesterday, at 6:04 pm, I got a phone call from my search consultant. I was at dinner with a friend in a loud restaurant and ran outside so I could hear the call.

She said she had just got back in town from a trip and had several messages on her machine - one of which was from my birth father, Steven. He received her letter, which, I believe also included my letter & photo, and is really excited to speak with me. We are possibly going to talk on Saturday.

Oh my god, it's actually happening.

Oh my god.

Don't ask me how I feel, because I really don't know!

FYI, the reason we haven't heard from the mom yet is that my search lady doesn't have her correct address yet. So she hasn't yet received a copy of the letter.

Anyway, nothing poetic to say today, just had to share!

SWADHDF (single white ad/hd female)

I totally came up with a great blog idea this morning and now I can't remember it. I am not making this up.

So here's my other blog idea, that I TOTALLY STOLE from an ongoing email thread between my ADHD Positive friends. I'll call them Steph and Jess. They really are named Steph and Jess but I'm going to call Jess Steph and call Steph Jess so that I can pretend that I'm being anonymous. Only I'm not going to refer to them individually at all, so it will make no difference. Besides, I think they're approximately 1/2 my reading audience.

Side note: Steph and Jess had never been introduced before and got along famously. You can say it's just the anonymity of the Internet, but I think there is some sort of common bond that makes a lot of AD/HD peeps friends at first tangent. Certainly I've met a few I've wanted to punch in the face, but for the most part it seems like a strange, whimsical sorority. (I realize that this excludes dudes, but most of my AD/HD friends are female, for some reason. Also, what dude doesn't want to crash a sorority party???)

So anyway. Jess and Steph were discussing the idea that there should be a website dedicated to men who want to date women with ADD. I actually disagree, because I think it's better to surprise them a few weeks into the relationship. Just kidding. Not that you want to "warn" someone ahead of time, but an AD/HD peep definitely wants to look for a mate who is going to, shall we say, "compliment" her personality. Here's what Jess (the real Jess, not the Stephanie Jess), whose hilarious and intelligent blog can be found on my sidebar, said the profile of her ideal man would read as such:

"I like women with random conversation tangents, who take on too many projects to ever complete, who forget things and lose things around the house 10 times a day, who ask repeatedly when an event begins because writing it down in ten places and putting it on the Google calendar isn't enough, who get so absorbed in Mah-jongg Solitaire that they lose track of time and go to bed at 2 AM instead of 11 PM, and who make impulse decisions or can't make any decisions because the options are all so intriguing."

Well, everyone has a type. I'm sure there's someone out there for ya, Jess. GOOD LUCK. (Oh man, is she screwed.)

Jk. Jess's description of herself could easily be that of myself or Stephanie (the real Stephanie, not the Jess Stephanie), just substitute Bubbletown or World of Warcraft for Mah-jongg Solitaire, respectively. Edward Hallowell, author of several AD/HD self help books and go-to guy for all things AD/HD related says in the book "Delivered from Distraction" that probably the two most important "treatments" for a person with AD/HD are to find the right job and marry the right person. Of course, we all want a job we love and to find "the right person" (if we're looking, of course - and certainly monogamy may not be for all those w/AD/HD). I think what Dr. Hallowell is saying is that choosing the right mate can be immensely helpful when it comes to managing one's AD/HD symptoms. But what is this "right person" for someone with AD/HD?

Definitely it's different for each person, but I think it's safe to say that most AD/HD peeps need a certain sort of understanding. I'm making it sound like we're damaged goods, which I don't believe we are. I guess the way I should say it is that, as people with AD/HD, we will be much happier with someone who is the type to be a little more involved in their mate's life than maybe some would prefer. Instead of trying to describe this intangible thing, let me give you a few examples from my own life, since Jason has told me several times how much he likes it when I broadcast details about our personal life on the web. Jason is a particularly nurturing person, by which I mean I think he has an innate drive within him to want to help others, especially his close loved ones. This works well for me because, as it turns out, I need a lot of help. (Including professional help.) Once I got over that big hurdle of realizing that having AD/HD meant I was going to need to start asking others for help, it was a very nice surprise to have someone waiting for me, ready to help. Sometimes it's a very small thing, like setting a reminder on his iPhone for me to give Lando his monthly flea treatment, and sometimes it's big things continually prodding me about my writing. He's a neatnick (so he cleans) but not obsessively so (so he can actually live with me). I do still have guilt over the fact that he will probably always do the dishes much, much, much more often than I do, though he tries to reassure me that this can just be "his job." I don't know what "my job" is, though. Certainly not dusting or vacuuming. I should add here that probably the best thing any AD/HD couple can do for themselves is hire a cleaning lady. Ours quit. Anyone got a good one?

It seems like Jason and I have a good understanding where he is helping me but in a way that enables me to help myself rather than just smother him or use him as a crutch. Hopefully he agrees with this ascertation. He also seems to enjoy my tangents and unpredictablility, while having extra stores of patience and understanding. It seems like the AD/HD mate should help to provide a some extra structure but be flexible enough to roll with the AD/HD punches and enjoy some quality out-of-the-box thinking. What do you guys think?

Parking Tickets and Dog Barf

It’s been a strange weekend. My dog started throwing up Thursday night and, by Friday afternoon, when my dog-walking neighbor called me to tell me he was still throwing up in addition to some much smellier, harder-to-clean things, Jason and I decided that a vet appointment was definitely in order. We took him in to the Cahuenga animal hospital the next morning. We waited in the lobby with a German Shepard who had been attacked by a pit-bull and had several staples as well as a length of surgical tubing used as a drain sewed into her shaved back. There was also a cat with an ear allergy. Normally Lando would strain at his leash to check out both of these animals but he just sat under my chair, curled up in a little ball of dog, looking pathetic.

I tend to fall into the camp of overreacting to any sign of illness, my own or my dog’s. The last time I thought he was sick, I was so worried that I thought I needed to take the rest of the day off work to take him in right that instant, and then he was fine the next day. This time, though, the vet seemed more worried than I was, and named a litany of very scary things that could be wrong with him. I assumed they would poke and prod at him maybe for a few hours and then we could take him home but, because he was throwing up even water, she wanted put him on doggie I.V.s and keep him until Monday. She also wanted to charge me a sum of money that would probably buy her a new one of those Louis Vuitton bags I saw her walk in with and, because I didn’t know what the hell was wrong with my dog and didn’t want him to keep looking at me with that “Mommy, what’s wrong with me?” puppy face, I acquiesced.

AD/HD symptoms tend to get worse with stress, which, of course, creates more stress, which is why a person with AD/HD is usually either slowly trudging up a hill or falling down one at any given moment. I guess I must’ve been stressed about Lando because I managed to earn myself TWO parking tickets in two days and lock my house keys in my office. The first ticket was because of a tragically short five minutes of expired meter. I knew I had to check the meter again at 6:36 pm and I knew I should’ve set an alarm on my phone but then I started reading this REALLY funny book (This Book Will Change Your Life, which apparently has an accompanying website www.thiswebsitewillchangeyourlife.com). I mean, it was really funny. So funny that when Jason was finished with his haircut at 6:41, I looked up at the clock, swore, and ran to the car only to find that yes, I was zapped in somewhere in the five minutes that I was laughing my ass off in the salon waiting room. (Apparently there are still a few LADOT employees who have not read my pro-meter maid blog from 8/4/09.)

Thinking foolishly that LADOT lightning could only strike once, at least in one weekend, I chalked it up to bad luck. Then, the following morning I was late for work and, rather than walk the 10 minutes, I took the car so I could drive in 3 minutes, proudly sending my “in” email to attendance at 7:01 am. Since we try to keep the parking lot free for prospective students to park in, I parked outside at a meter, because it was a SUNDAY, and THEY HAVE NEVER EVER MADE YOU PAY FOR PARKING ON SUNDAYS BEFORE. So of course I didn’t look at the signs – I was running late and I had parked here without feeding the meter monster at least ten times before. How surprised was I, then, to find yet ANOTHER ticket on my windshield, and only then saw the sign that said the “2 hr parking Sunday from 11:00 – 8:00 pm.” I rescind my positive blog about meter maids.

Oh yeah, and I also left my keys in my office. These keys also included a key TO the office. Since Jason had met me at work and had keys to the car and house, I just shook my head and told him I’d get them on Monday.

Well, it’s Monday now and I’m supposed to get a call from Dr. Louis Vuitton at any minute (she’s very nice and competent, I should add) telling me I can go get Lando. And it’s a good thing that I thought of sending a text message to someone as I stood in line at the bank this morning, not because I thought of something funny to text about but because sometimes when I am bored for more than three seconds and I have nothing to knit, read, or play, I text message people, because that’s when I realize that I had left my cell phone at home. I reminded my boyfriend about 9 times last night and this morning to remind me to get Lando’s leash out of the car and then I left my phone in my apartment. (Again, Jason was with me so he was able to drive me back and let me in to my own apartment, since I had no keys.)

So Jason gets the Best Boyfriend Ever award, my vet gets a new purse, and the city of Los Angeles makes an easy $100. But I won’t care; as long as Lando gets a clean bill of health I get a happy, furry ball of dog back in my possession today.

Things That Would Have Made it not as Bad that I Spilled A Full Cup of Hot Coffee On My Desk Yesterday

1) If it had already drank some of it.
2) If it had not been hot.
3) If coffee were not brown.
4) If I did not have a huge stack of documents sitting right where the coffee was spilled.
5) If the coffee had not immediately spread under the mesh desktop organizer that held more documents and which is extremely difficult to clean.
6) If I weren’t so fond of my multi-colored post-it note cube.
7) If I enjoyed having a sticky stapler.
8) If the smell of mildew and coffee mixed together were more pleasant.
9) If I had not yelled “OH SHIT!” very loudly in front of my boss.
10) If I had just not spilled the damn thing in the first place.

The Beautiful Ice Sculpture

This morning, I was in the cafe at the school I work at, and noticed, for the first time, this lovely zen fountain. The cafe has just been redone and one corner is the "Casablanca corner" and is decorated in a fun, eclectic, Afro-Mediterranean sort of way. I had seen this fountain but not really looked at it closely.

It was beautiful. While water spilled out of one main cup-looking spout in the middle, the movement of the water pushed these other small cup things floating on the surface in a circle around the center cup sculpture. Not only that, but I noticed that the cups were all made out of metal tuned to different pitches so, as the cups floated around the fountain, they gently bumped into one another making light, ethereal tinkling noises.

I was transfixed by this fountain, man. I could've started at that thing for like five minutes and must've stood there for at least a good 60-90 seconds, contemplating the fountain. Who must've picked this fountain out? How did they choose it? Did it make them as calm and happy to view it as it did me? And how many times have I or other people walked past it without even giving it a second glance?

And that's when I realized: Oh shit. I forgot to take my Ritalin today.

Fight with Meter Maid as Seen from One Block Away

So, I'm walking Lando and it's a street cleaning day which means that there are almost no cars parked on the side of the street we are coming down. About a half a block up, I see the dreaded LA DOT parking Prius next to a car which, once I walked up next to it, I would be able to see was a silver Mercedes wagon.

Next to the cars was a half-bald white dude in sweat pants arguing a black lady, the parking ticket giver, who wore black hipster glasses and had her hair back in a neat bun. Their interaction looked like it had been planned by someone directing a movie where they new no sound would be used in the final cut:

He waves his arms emphatically and angrily, points at her.

She points at the sign and shakes her head.

He waves his arms again in frustration.

She shrugs and points at the sign again.

He points to the sign and puts his hands in the air: "Well, where am I supposed to park?"

She makes a gesture, pointing around the coner.

The whole thing was pretty entertaining in that shadenfruede sort of way, but I guess I shouldn't feel too bad since the guy was making his misery extremely public. It's funny because, as I don't have a parking spot, parking can, at times, be a major sorce of stress in my life, so I should've probably taken this guy's side. I mean, where the hell are you supposed to park on a street cleaning day? What, I can't leave my car here for like FIVE SECONDS and grab a newspaper? Do you get off on this sort of thing?

But the human was actually NOT me, which, of course, made it FUNNY. It's like a scientific equation: Pain + someone else = humor. I think I'm stealing that from somewhere... but in any case, not only was it not me, but this guy was like totally losing his shit while the neat-bun black lady was totally keeping it together and not letting him ruffle her. And I have thought this before: Man, that job must suuuuuuuuck. I think of all the times I got shit from people when I was working at Starbucks or Ann Taylor just for stupid things: Why did my friend get more foam in her cappuccino? Why are the ugly green pants on sale but the pretty tan pants not on sale? (Guess why: Because no one wants the ugly green pants!)And these attacks are always personal, like I had some sort of say in which colors Ann Taylor puts on sale which week. Like they even let me decide what mannequinne gets to wear which pants. I can only put my favorite necklace on a mannequinne if we are sold out of the necklace shown in the picture and it is an acceptable substitution.

Anyway. I can't deal with stupid arguments about foam and clothing - there's no way in HELL I could ever deal with people EVERY DAY getting in my face about me giving them a ticket for something they are obviously in the wrong about. No way. That has to be on list of Most Stressful Jobs Ever, right up there with air traffic controller and person who does surgery on rich people's dogs. So yeah, kudos to you, black lady with glasses and hair bun.

That still doesn't mean I'm not going to be furious at you the next time I get a parking ticket.

Baby Monkey and Mama G

Today's lazy but appropriate post: A story I wrote for Mothers' Day 2007. Enjoy!

Little Monkey and Mama Giraffe

There once was a happy Little Monkey, who lived in the jungle with her mother, Mama Giraffe. Mama Giraffe and Little Monkey had all kinds of fun together. When Mama Giraffe couldn’t reach the very tops of the trees, Little Monkey would climb to the highest branches and bring her the sweetest, greenest leaves. Mama Giraffe would sit very patiently while Little Monkey climbed up and down her very long neck just like it was a tree. Sometimes she would even walk around while Little Monkey held on very very tightly, only daring to look at the ground for a split second. Little Monkey loved this!

One day, Little Monkey went to the hippo pool to take a bath. Little Monkey liked to play with Herbert and Hessia Hippo, who were twin brother and sister. Herbert Hippo asked Little Monkey: “Why don’t you have a mother?”

“Shhhhh!” Hessia Hippo said to her brother. “Don’t be rude, Herbert.” She splashed her brother.

“Hessia, you’d better stop or I’m going to throw a piranha at you,” said Herbert.

But Little Monkey wasn’t listening. She was confused. “I do have a Mother, though. Mama Giraffe is my mother. Why would you think I don’t have a mother?”

“Hah!” said Herbert. “That’s impossible! Only giraffes can have giraffes for mothers. And monkeys are supposed to have monkeys for mamas, and Hippos,” he said, drawing himself up to his full height, which was rather short, since he was a hippo, “Have hippos for mamas.”

Little Monkey didn’t know what to say. She had never thought of this before. She felt like her whole world had just been turned on its head, like the bats that hung upside down from the trees to sleep.

“I guess I don’t know WHO my mama is then!” Said Little Monkey, sadly. Hessia Hippo could tell that Little Monkey was sad, so she tried to make her feel better.

“Maybe we can help you find your mother,” Hessia Hippo said.

Little Monkey thought that was a great idea.

Little Monkey and the Hippo twins looked all over the jungle. They looked under rocks, in tall trees, in lakes, and in the sky, but they could not find Little Monkey’s mama. “I’m sorry we couldn’t find her,” said Hessia, as the sun began to go down. “Maybe we can look again tomorrow?”

“I guess,” said Little Monkey. She was very sad as she said goodbye to her friends and began to head home.



“What’s wrong?” said Mama Giraffe, as Little Monkey was getting ready for bed.

“Nothing,” said Little Monkey, because she did not want Mama Giraffe to know why she was sad.

“You can’t fool me,” said mama Giraffe, and she tickled Little Monkey. Little Monkey was very ticklish, so this made her giggle a little monkey giggle.

“Ok, fine. I’ll tell you, but you have to promise not to be mad.”

Mama Giraffe promised. “Now what’s on your mind, my little monkey?”

Little Monkey sighed a big sigh. “If you’re my mama, how come you’re a giraffe and I’m a monkey? Herbert Hippo told me that Monkeys are supposed to have Monkey Mamas.”

“Didn’t Herbert Hippo also tell you that Hippos can jump 50 feet straight up in the air?”

“Yes.”

“And was that true?” Mama Giraffe asked.

“Well, no. But it is sort of funny, isn’t it? I mean, Herbert and Hessia look just like their mama, Hosephina, but you and I are as different as a tree and a rock!”

“That is true,” Mama Giraffe said patiently. “But tell me this: who makes sure you always have enough bananas to eat?”

“You do!” said Little Monkey, thinking of all the delicious bananas she had eaten that day and all the bananas she would eat the next.

“And,” continued Mama Giraffe, “Who tucks you into bed at night and sings you a lullaby to help you get to sleep?”

“You do…” said Little Monkey, who was starting to wonder where this was all going.

“And who teaches you to be nice to all the other jungle animals, and to share your bananas?”

“You do.”

“And what would you call somebody who makes sure you have bananas, tucks you in at night, and teaches you right and wrong?”

Little Monkey thought about this for a minute. “Well, I guess I would call that a mama.” Her face lit up. “That means you ARE my mama!”

“You are right, little monkey, I am your mama, because I take care of you, and I love you just like all mothers love their little monkeys.”

“I love you too, mama giraffe!” said little monkey, wrapping her little monkey arms around mama giraffe’s neck. And then Mama Giraffe tucked Little Monkey into bed, and they both slept soundly under the Jungle Moon.



The End