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April 1, 2010 at 4:24 am in reply to: Took me long enough to figure this out! Thought maybe I was stupid or something #92699
@DogFather, I didn’t buy the vacuum and the Steam Mop. My parents bought them for me, in the futile belief that if I had them, I’d use them. I sometimes wonder if I killed the vacuum cleaner on purpose, because of my deep-seated aversion to housework…
My dad is the one who usually buys gadgets. He recently fell for the hype and bought a Slap Chop. He was the first one to say it’s a piece of crap. By the way, if you want some real entertainment, just Google “Vince Offer” (the Sham Wow & Slap Chop guy). He’s a real piece of work, and his full name is Vince Shlomo Offer. (Really.)
The last gadget I bought was a kitchen mandolin, last year. The first time I used it, I sliced a huge chunk out of my thumb. Took me over half an hour to stop the blood that was gushing out. Fortunately, I’d recently had a tetanus booster (don’t ask), and I didn’t need stitches. I haven’t used the mandolin since.
REPORT ABUSEMy PDA is the side of my hand, between my thumb and my wrist. I just scribble a word or two on it to remind me of any urgent things I need to do.
It may not look too pretty, but at least I know I’ll never accidentally lose it!
REPORT ABUSEI know you can watch the entire documentary on the Global TV website http://news.globaltv.com/Loving/2009300/story.html. It aired on Global, not CBC. I guess our national public broadcaster has better things to do than broadcast something that could actually help people.
I think the Totally ADD team are working on making the film available for purchase.
REPORT ABUSE@wolfshades, “Art” closes on April 10th, so you don’t have long to see it.
Mondays are Pay-What-You-Can. Or, if you go on a Tuesday night or Wednesday matinee, there’s a Q&A with the cast in the lobby, after the show. Seeing one of the world’s greatest improvisers (Colin Mochrie, of “Who’s Line Is It Anyway?”) thinking on his feet as he fields questions, is amazing!
REPORT ABUSEI knew about the webinar, but I was working the matinee today, so I couldn’t get to a computer. I figure they’ll post the feed, so I can see what I missed.
Hey, they did!
REPORT ABUSEMarch 30, 2010 at 5:29 pm in reply to: Psychiatrist/psychotherapist/psychologist what is best? #92829@Squirrel, the problem isn’t with your child; it’s with the structure and chronic under-funding of the school system. Not to be confrontational with your child’s teachers, but that’s the root of the problem.
The trouble with school systems in the “civilized world” is that they’re institutions, run on an institutional model, to teach children as cheaply and efficiently as possible. It’s an assembly line, using identical methods to install identical parts to create identical finished products. The assembly-line system is highly efficient and economical for making cars or refrigerators, or other lifeless things.
However, human beings are not identical. While many people may be similar, there are also many who are very different. Their brains function differently from the majority. They feel things differently than the majority does. The assembly-line system is completely unsuitable for them. But since it costs a lot more in terms of time, money, and resources to teach those “few” who can’t function in the regular system, and the regular system is so lacking in time, money, and resources that it can’t even successfully handle the kids in the majority—then those running the system will do their utmost to try to change the minority to fit into the assembly line, because that’s all they can do. The teachers are stretched to the limit, just trying to teach the standard curriculum to all the kids in their class. They have no time to devote to the kids who can’t pick it up as quickly as the rest of the class. So all they can do is keep trying to mold all the kids to fit the system.
This is like trying to hammer a square peg into a round hole. It doesn’t work. And it invariably leads to crushed thumbs and frustration for the person wielding the hammer, and crushed edges and pain on the poor square peg as someone keeps trying to force it into a place it simply wasn’t designed to go.
But the assembly-line model is successful enough at molding people to fit into the soulless, cookie-cutter world of cubicles and offices, where everyone wears a suit in muted tones, and keeps churning out paperwork (or, the soulless, cookie-cutter world of factories, where everyone wears a uniform and keeps making identical copies of identical things) all day long. Just as it was when it was first invented, in the Industrial Revolution. Before then, education was limited to those who could afford to pay for it—so it was one-on-one (or one-on-one family), and was tailored to the needs of the individuals. When universal education was invented, it had to be cheap and mass-produced, just like everything that was being made in the factories, so that the working classes could afford it.
But, as we’ve seen with Wal-mart and dollar stores, mass-produced & cheap is not the best way to go. Least of all, in terms of quality and safety.
The education system is an institution, complete with bells to tell everyone to move on to the next class, and forced uniformity. Sounds a lot like a prison, doesn’t it? And for those of us who are different, that’s exactly what it is. And as long as it continues to be so under-funded, it will continue in this archaic model.
REPORT ABUSEI’ll have to look into that “brand-name vs. generic” effectiveness issue, once I start on Ritalin or whatever. I’m on the Trillium Drug Plan, which pays for all of my prescriptions, except for a quarterly deductible. I’m not sure of Trillium’s policy on covering brand-name drugs when a generic version is available.
But that’s a few weeks away. In the meantime, I’m having “fun” going through Effexor withdrawal syndrome.
REPORT ABUSE“CBT” can also be short for “Cucumber, Bacon, and Tomato”—at least, according to a movie I was in, called “Most Guys Today”, in which there was some confusion over whether a character was referring to the fetish or to the sandwiches.
REPORT ABUSEMy motivation is simple: “If I walk to where I’m going, I’ll save myself a subway token”. (Yes, a token. Toronto keeps claiming to be a world-class city, but its transit system is still stuck in 1954.) I have to get somewhere often enough that I end up going for walkies several times a week.
Walking both ways can be a bit much if it’s 2.5 miles each way. So I spend a token to get myself there, then take my time walking home. If I’m buying a lot of stuff that I have to carry, I’ll walk to my destination, and take transit home. (Unless the weather’s really hot or really cold or really crappy. Then I’ll take transit and/or cabs.)
And when there’s a transit strike, I feel oh-so-smug and superior as I breeze past all the suits who find it so hard to walk a few blocks to get to where they’re going.
On top of all that, I now have GREAT legs!
REPORT ABUSEMarch 29, 2010 at 3:42 pm in reply to: Psychiatrist/psychotherapist/psychologist what is best? #92827So much of that “rest” that may fall into place, is the result of struggling to function with ADHD. People with ADHD frequently have depression, anxiety, bipolar, etc. This is called “comorbidity”. So, yes, dealing with the ADHD probably will help with most of the “rest”. But in the meantime, you can, and should, take steps to deal with that “rest” now.
As for finding a psychiatrist who specializes in ADHD, your best bet would be to contact your provincial or state College of Physicians and Surgeons (the regulator which licenses doctors). They have listings of doctors and their specialties, and you can do a search for a doctor in your area. You may need to phone the doctors and ask specifically if they specialize in ADHD. Or you could contact your local mental health authority and ask for a list of ADHD specialists.
Do all this before you go to your doctor for a referral. Otherwise, your doctor will probably just refer you to any psychiatrist, and you may very well get one who not only doesn’t specialize in ADHD, but is openly hostile to the notion that it exists at all.
REPORT ABUSE“Just stop it, already.”
That reminds me of a “Eunice” sketch, on the “Carol Burnett Show”. Eunice, at the end of her rope, has finally gone to see a questionable psychiatrist, who tells her that when her family is driving her crazy, she should just keep saying, “I’m OK. You’re OK.” (This was a feel-good mantra from the book of the same title, which was first published in 1969.) Despite Eunice’s examples of her family’s—especially her mother’s—repeated viciousness against her, the shrink keeps telling her to just say the mantra.
Suddenly, the door bursts open, and Mama storms in. She viciously puts Eunice down for pissing money away on “this quack”, and orders her to get moving. After dumping on Eunice some more, Mama storms out, and Eunice stands up to leave. At the door, she turns to the doctor, and forcing a smile but with tears in her eyes, says, “I’m OK. You’re OK.” She knows it won’t work, and so do we.
I’ve always thought that Eunice was the sort of person who should be kidnapped for her own good.
REPORT ABUSEMarch 29, 2010 at 3:16 pm in reply to: Took me long enough to figure this out! Thought maybe I was stupid or something #92696Actually, I’m thinking seriously of taking some of those stories and trying them out in comedy clubs. I’ve always enjoyed the stand-up comics who are storytellers: Dave Allen (whom I met in 1990, the last time he played Toronto), Billy Connolly (peppered with expletives, but it works with his accent and persona), Charles Fleischer (such a wild stream-of-consciousness act, that I swear I was the only one in the room who could follow it). This requires a lot more effort than just making observations. It must be formally scripted, for maximum impact. I usually do this not by writing it down, but by telling the story to various people and keeping the wording that works the best. That’s how I come up with lines like, “This was a red flag to a bullshit artist like me.” And how I memorize these scripted stories.
As for the cleaning horror stories…
I have a vacuum cleaner somewhere. Also a Steam Mop. And one of those lobby dustpans, on a long stick so you don’t have to crouch down to use it. All of these cleaning tools are festooned with cobwebs and dust bunnies. I killed my vacuum cleaner the last time I used it, and my dad repaired it and returned it to me. I’m sure I’d kill it again if I were to use it. And the Steam Mop was recalled due to an electric shock hazard. I wrote in for the free part to fix that, but I haven’t installed it yet. And until I do install it, I’m not going to risk electrocution.
But amidst all the chaos and clutter, I do know where to find things. I know that this bunch of fabric is located in heap A; the interfacing is in heap B, etc. My patterns are in lateral filing cabinets (purchased for $50 each when a Fabricland closed), but in no real order—except that all the vintage patterns I got from my grandmother are in the bottom drawer. I have to keep them separate, because the sizes are very different from today’s sizes. You’ll often hear that “Marilyn Monroe was never smaller than a size 14”. Well, a size 14 in the 1950s was 32 – 26½ – 35. Today’s size 14 is 36 – 28 -38. Note how much the bust-waist-hip ratios have changed since then, too. Today’s women don’t wear firm foundation garments, so they don’t have the same curves. But I digress…as usual.
I would love to have an organized, neat apartment, but whenever I start working towards this, my back seizes up and I have to abandon my futile efforts. I wonder if it’s psychosomatic.
My dad keeps threatening to have my apartment declared a dump site. When he used to work at the Ministry of the Environment, he and his department filled in the formal certification for a dump site and attached it to a colleague’s perpetually chaotic desk. The colleague was quite flattered because it appears to be the only case ever of a desk being formally declared a dump.
REPORT ABUSEThat also explains why I’m so great at research. I can find the most obscure information, which nobody would ever think of looking for, amazingly quickly. Especially now that so much research is on the internet.
And I love the fact that most people are far more afraid of giving a speech in front of a crowd, than they are of dying. Me, I’ll not only get up on a stage in front of hundreds of people, but I’ll go up there without a script and just improvise. And I won’t limit myself to the stage; I’ll go right out amongst the people and interact with them one-on-one. Sure, I get a bit of the butterflies when I’m waiting to go on, but mostly, I feel like a race horse in the gate, ready to spring forward as soon as I get my cue.
That’s my “normal”, and I would never trade it for their “normal”. I’d rather have ten minutes of wonderful than a lifetime of nothing special.
REPORT ABUSEHey, don’t knock being unattached! I’m a confirmed singleton, and I love it! The lack of responsibilities is wonderful, because I’m free to do as I please, when I please. I don’t have to worry about a spouse, kids, a mortgage, or any of that stuff that seems to drive so many people crazy. When I saw how miserable and downright TRAPPED so many people felt, I chose to “live alone and like it”.
Sondheim even wrote a song about it, for the movie “DIck Tracy”:
Live alone and like it
Free as the birds in the trees
High above the briars
Live alone and like it
Doing whatever you please
When your heart desires
Free to hang around or
Fly at any old time
No equivocation
Most of all no guarantees
That can be your motto
Free of obligation
Only the murmuring breeze
As an obligato
Live alone and like it
Why is that such a crime?
Free to call the tune,
Free to say if you’re
Gonna work or play
You can have the moon
But you don’t have to have
It night and day
Anyway,
On your own with only
You to concern yourself
Doesn’t mean you’re lonely
Just that you’re free
Live and alone and like it
Don’t come down from that tree.
That’s the answer for me
That’s the answer for me
(And it’s the answer for me, too.)
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