A Non Plugged In Day
I have a tendency to be plugged in. It allows me to hyperfocus, be distracted, and feel like I accomplished something all at once. Being a father and husband can be frustrating because you aren’t moving at your speed but at the speed of others. So as an escape I plug in. My wife, being the patient person she is, reminds me of this regularly.
Today I was not plugged in. Today I was hyperfocused on cleaning and reorganizing my basement and parts of my upstairs. I accomplished most of this. The basement and part of the kitchen has been redone to better use the space. Foods we don’t eat everyday or even every week were taken down to new shelves my nephews and I put up.
Furniture was moved around and appliances were identified that we could do without. I even put a phone on ebay for sale. Our trash day this week is going to be a nightmare. At least 6 trips up to the curb from the basement.
Now it’s the end of the day and we have accomplished much. But there is still much to do to finish. That’s the hard part. Stopping.
Impulse Control and Other Traits I Got From My Dad
Do you have good impulse control? Do you see something that interests you, zero in on it like a laser beam, and then keep on it until it’s done? Like new appliances, or maybe furnace appliances? Does this drive your spouse crazy?
The answer to those questions for myself are No, Yes, Yes, and Yes.
That sequence of responses may be wrong for others in your life, but for those taking the test there is no wrong answer.
I wish I did, but I don’t. It seems like when I get into a pattern I can’t get myself out until I come headlong into reality. Like a visit with my dad and listening to him piddle away every dime he ever made for the last 50 years of his life on the next new thing. It’s that stark look into a possible future self that brings home all that awaits you as you see yourself and all of the traits you inherited from him.
That sounds terrible. For most of my life I thought that my impulsiveness was mine alone. My Dad wasn’t really around and it was probably for the better really. I knew about his infamous brainstorms only after I was an adult. He’d have a far fetched idea and without considering his family, he’d be off. Well at least when he was younger. After he married my step mother OkJun he toned it down quite a bit because she would kick his arse all over town.
But it still exists. He goes in cycles like all people do. The funny thing is I see in him what I see in myself or vice versa as it is. There are good traits. Persistence, optimism, hope, faith, trust, and imagination. But the impulse control - man it blows. The difference now is that I know. I know what A.D.D. is. I know what I can do about it. I am doing it. I’m still working on impulse control.
Unfortunately my Dad doesn’t and he probably won’t. While I don’t listen as well as others, the last people he will listen to are his children. While his perception is that others may do things out of friendship and the like, his children on some level are obligated. Which we are, on some level. It’s too bad he doesn’t see that if he treated us as well as he treated his friends, we could be his friends too, instead of his obligated children he’s ignored for the better part of 40 years until he’s exhausted every avenue and has to ask for help.
Anger On Thanksgiving
Yesterday was Thanksgiving. The day we get together and have fun. Eat, watch a little football, talk to family, your mom critiques something about your life, you get to listen to other family members drone on and on and on…..
Today was a good day for me because I didn’t have to cook. Well actually I forgot to make my dish so my wife got to make it instead. So I didn’t do anything other than bathe the three monkey’s, get them dressed and load up the van to go to Mom’s. Almost my entire family was there with their family so it was a packed house. There was a lot of good food and the kids were having fun.
My mother made a great meal. Everyone brought additional food and there was a great spread. Departing from the traditions of her mother, Mom used paper plates instead of the good silver and China. Very wise on her part with the number of smaller children that have a tendency to drop things. Well the older ones do to. The food was great. I ate a whole plate. I think my family was surprised I didn’t go back for seconds but that’s a side effect of the meds. I haven’t told my family about being diagnosed with AD/HD because I don’t know how they’ll react. It’s met with a lot of doubts.
After the meal we dive into the pie and enjoy homemade apple and pumpkin pie. The kids finish and they’re off. Playing in the yard, running off the calories they just consumed. My wife, brother, sister in law, Mom and step-father are sitting there talking pleasantly and my 2 year old son comes in and climbs onto our laps. It was really nice. It seemed like we were getting along so nicely. (can you sense the but coming?)
My brother gets up and brings back a piece of pecan pie. Then my sister in law gets one. The second they sit down my mother very nicely says explains that we weren’t going to eat that until after my family left. My son is allergic to all nuts. DEATHLY allergic to them. The same son that is sitting across the table from them. My wife, mother, and I try to be very polite about explaining it’s not a good idea to eat that right now. They keep eating.
My wife gets up with our son and storms out. My brother asks me if she left because they are eating that pie. I explain again it’s a life threatening allergy for my son and go find my wife. She and my 2 year old are locked in a bathroom and she’s so angry she’s practically in tears.
This is where my itch kicks in. I call it an itch because I know there’s a right and a wrong way to handle this but the closer I get to the table the less I see the right and my itch is an inflammation and I’m wondering how I’m going to scratch this so it’s not bad. Then I’m thinking how am I going to keep myself from walking into the room and not rip my brother and sister-in-law’s head off. I wasn’t but that’s what it felt like. This entire conversation happened in my head in the space of 1.5 seconds.
I walk in the room and sit down. That’s good. I didn’t do explode. I start out calm, but I think they could see I was upset. I explained that my wife and son were in the bathroom because they can’t be around it. My brother and sister in law at this time start to denounce the reality of the allergy and that it wasn’t anything. ”There’s no way it can be that bad. Do you know how many things are made on equipment that is processed on peanuts.” That’s what he says. I am trying to explain rationally that for every package of food we buy that comes in a bag, box, container, wrapper, we read the labels. They have to print if it was processed on equipment that was processed on nuts.
For the uninitiated nut allergies account for approximately 80% of all food allergy deaths in the world. My son has a reaction if he breathes dust from a grinder. At this point I make a motion with my hand as if I was laying something down on the table and yell “You eating that pie is like putting a loaded gun on the table and point it at my son.” I am enraged. I am thinking that if this goes on I’m going to beat him. He still denies anything is going to happen. That there’s nothing to worry about. How can someone not see that all it takes is for him to pick up his plate put it with the rest of the pie and eat it when we leave in 15 minutes.
I am screaming that if he touches my son, or if the kids pick up the crumbs, or he picks up the crumbs and is exposed it could kill my son. Would you want me doing something around your children that would kill them? My sister in law at this point says “Come on. We don’t have to take this.” They get up and leave.
WOW.
I am so full of rage and anger that I am shaking. I can taste the bitterness in my mouth. I am looking around trying to understand how they didn’t get it. How they couldn’t just show some courtesy for someone other than themselves and put it away. As he’s denying anything is going to happen there were crumbs falling off his plate onto the floor and he didn’t see them.
My poor mother is beside herself. She doesn’t know what to say. I immediately apologize. I ask if what we originally said and asked them was unreasonable. It wasn’t. Now I’ve ruined Thanksgiving. Now it’s my fault. They left because of me. I’m in the family counselor office as a teenager being blamed for all of the problems my siblings have all over again. Why does this always land on me? I’m not the one arguing that nuts aren’t life threatening. I know they are. We’ve already been to the ER once. But it’s still my fault.
I can’t breathe and I all I can feel is rage. After a few minutes I get up and walk outside to smoke. I can’t taste it and it does nothing to calm me down. But my mind is racing. Did I overreact? Was this a by product of my ADD?
In some ways it was. The frustration had been building all day with the kids and the chaos at home. My oldest has ad/hd and in the mornings he’s all go. I was reading the book “Delivered from Distraction” by Ned Halloway and John Ratey. It’s an updated version of their first book “Driven to Distraction”. It’s a good book but it was not as encouraging as their first one. So now I’m a loaded shotgun with no way to unload that is not going to cause damage. Sitting there with my brother every word that came out of his mouth was one more bullet in the chamber and it just blew.
Eventually we made it home and I was still loaded. I tried to relax but I couldn’t get this out of my system. Finally I said I need to do something to channel this energy positively. So I sat down and wrote a post on one of my other blogs, then on a forum I belong to. I needed to feel connected. I needed validation that I wasn’t going off the deep end. Finally after getting it all out I felt so much better. I felt relieved. I could breathe. Now I’m here. It’s 1:20 in the morning and I think I can go to bed.
Funny thing is the people on the forum couldn’t understand their behavior either.