Sometimes, my full-spectrum studio lighting is not a good thing.

I tend to spend a lot of my waking hours at my studio table. I work on art here, and I keep my laptop here, so I’m pretty much here whenever I’m at home.

If I’m watching [...]]]>

Have you ever seen the sun look this predatory?

Sometimes, my full-spectrum studio lighting is not a good thing.

I tend to spend a lot of my waking hours at my studio table. I work on art here, and I keep my laptop here, so I’m pretty much here whenever I’m at home.

If I’m watching TV in the evening, I start feeling sleepy at 11 or 11:30, and it’s pretty easy to be in bed by midnight. When I’m working in my studio, not so much. The lights give me enough of a boost that I can do just “one more” coat of paint or glue down “one more” piece in that collage. That, of course, is if I’m paying attention to the time at all, which is no sure thing.

Sunday night I came home at about 11.  I’d spent the afternoon and evening in a movie marathon with friends, snacking on things I usually avoid eating, and sitting in a room with the shades drawn.  I sat down at my studio table “just to check my e-mail”, and an hour later I was wide awake, unable to think about sleeping.  Thanks to my nice, bright, daylit studio, I was up until 5:30 that morning.

Since I got up late the next day, I thought it would be clever to take a reduced dose of my meds so I “could go to bed early”.  Ha.  I spent the day in a fog, munching on sugary snacks, and was up until 3.  Sometimes I forget that my meds actually help me sleep.

I am slowly, slowly getting myself back on a normal schedule.

So today, I was eating my lunch, minding my own business, when I looked at the clock and [...]]]> So, I had a doctor’s appointment today. Since I always wind up being late getting to this particular doctor, I frequently mark my calendar so that the appointment reads as 15 minutes earlier than it actually is.

So today, I was eating my lunch, minding my own business, when I looked at the clock and realized it was 12:35. My appointment was for 1 pm. It takes 35 minutes to get to the doctor and deal with their parking ramp, which is so narrow that a Geo Prizm and Prius can barely pass each other in the traffic lane. So, I was already running 20 minutes late, and I still had to run around the house finding my shoes and stuff like that, so by the time I got out the door it was 12:45.

“Well,” I thought to myself, “at least I know I have an extra fifteen minutes padding my schedule!”

But no. When I arrived at my doctor’s office I was told that my appointment really, truly was for 1 pm.

Now, the weird thing about my clinic is that they actually stick to a schedule there so you know you won’t be there all day. That means that sometimes I screw myself out of my appointments. The bitch of it was that this appointment had to be made 2 months in advance, and my insurance would be changing at the end of the month (again), causing a whole new healthcare drama in my life.

Fortunately there was another practitioner with an opening at 2 pm this afternoon, so I wasn’t completely screwed.

But I clearly need to rethink this 15-minutes-early strategy.

Problem was, [...]]]> After my art lesson the other day, I stashed a few checks in my pocket like a usually do. Usually this isn’t a problem, and the checks mingle with odd receipts, and bits of cash, and my cell phone, to become what my sister terms a “pocket wad”. That’s right, we’re ladies!

Problem was, this was a new pair of jeans, and the pockets aren’t as deep as the ones in my old pair. When I went through my pockets today looking for the checks, I couldn’t find them anywhere.

It turns out that as pants get smaller, pockets likewise get smaller. I never had this problem when I was a size 18.

I had to e-mail my clients and tell them to cancel the checks because I’d lost them. This is an inconvenience to them, and I felt bad about that, and to make it worse I just felt like a total idiot. It wouldn’t have taken that much longer to put the checks in my wallet. But of course, I would have had to unzip my bag, and open my wallet, and put the checks inside it, and close the wallet, and then close my bag. That’s FOUR MORE STEPS than just stuffing them in my pocket! Damn, where will I find the time?

I’m trying to talk myself out of feeling like such a jerk. I read somewhere that people with ADHD tend to overemphasize their negative experiences and thoughts in favor of their positive ones. Maybe that’s why I’m having such a hard time telling myself that this kind of thing happens to everyone, and it’s not the end of the world, that my clients won’t suddenly think of me as an incompetent art teacher, and above all that canceling a check is really not that big a deal because banking is done online these days. It takes about 30 seconds to do a transaction, all without leaving your chair, or even picking up the phone.

Sigh.

One of the things on my to [...]]]> If you’ve ever wondered why the ADD adult in your life can’t seem to get things done in a timely manner, perhaps the following tale will shed some light.  The moral, for those of you who want the Cliff’s Notes version, is that sometimes it pays NOT to optimize.

One of the things on my to do list today was to order some slides online.  There’s a cool site called iPrintFromHome that does digital slides (and prints, and giclees, and stuff like that) if you upload your jpegs.  My art teacher is requiring us to show slides this term, so I had to make some, and since I have to show them next week, I needed to place the order today.

I was uploading about a dozen high-resolution jpegs (at least, I HOPE they were the high res versions … and that can take awhile for a computer to do.  I wouldn’t have ADHD if I tolerated boredom, you know, AT ALL, so I decided to do something else with the time — namely, start building a blogroll for this blog.  I congratulated myself on taking advantage of some dead time, and started building a blogroll.

Time passed, as I clicked through the blogs I like, looking for relevant content and links to other relevant content.  Then my browser crashed (Firefox doesn’t like it when you’re running 35 tabs in two windows, apparently) and I had to restart my computer to get it running again.  Only it didn’t start running again; it rebooted and instantly froze.  I tried closing the windows several times, and eventually I guess it thawed enough to actually quit … and then I restarted my browser, again.

By that time my husband was online, and we got to discussing his upcoming job change, which reminded me that since his new job will require him to take a pay cut, I’ll need to hustle for a day job to make ends meet.  That, in turn, reminded me I should really work on my resume.  So I did that for awhile.  After saying that I possess Excellent Written and Oral Communication Skills (doesn’t everyone say that?) I went looking for a different word to use to describe my “visual and artistic skills” … and opened thesaurus.com in a new tab … and realized that I was supposed to have my slides done three hours ago.

I got my pictures uploaded and the slides ordered.  I looked up when I can expect my order to arrive.  I found out that they do same day shipping if you place your order by 6 pm Eastern.  If I’d just patiently waited while my jpegs loaded the slides would have shipped today.  I hope that that it won’t cost me too much time to have them ship tomorrow, but I’ve been burned by FedEx Ground before.

As much as I freaked out in the weeks leading up to my trip, I’m proud to say it was a well-organized success. I remembered my underwear, and my passport, and my meds. I even remembered some [...]]]> I got in from France on Saturday night. I’m still pretty jet-lagged, but I’m recovering slowly.

As much as I freaked out in the weeks leading up to my trip, I’m proud to say it was a well-organized success. I remembered my underwear, and my passport, and my meds. I even remembered some French. All in all, I had an awesome time and I can’t wait to go back.

The whole experience got me thinking about some of the tools I use to stay organized while packing and traveling. Back in the day, I would say that the most stressful part of packing was dealing with toiletries. The night before I left town, I would inevitably be running all over the house trying to look for plastic bags to put my shampoo in so that it wouldn’t spill all over my clothing. Then I got a few simple travel toiletry items, and it made all the difference.

I store these items in my luggage so I always know where they are, and when I’m ready to pack I can just refill my shampoo and conditioner and be ready to go.  The best thing about this list is that all of these items are available from under $20!

1. The Eagle Creek Pack-It Toiletry Kit at Magellan’s. In this airport-friendly kit, each bottle is clearly marked “3 oz.” and the bag itself is clearly marked “1 quart/liter”.  It’s clear plastic, so you can see what’s inside.  This is one of the best things I’ve ever bought.

2. Eagle Creek Travel Bottle Kit at Magellan’s.If you need extra bottles, or want to customize your Toiletry Kit, grab one of these. Again, all of them are clearly marked “3 oz.”

3. Eagle Creek Plastic Pack-It Sac, Xtra Small, Magellan’s I have a few of these running around. I use one for prescription meds, one for colored pencils … and I could really use another one for first-aid supplies like ibuprofen and band-aids. These are invaluable!

4. Eagle Creek Plastic Pack-It Sac, Small, Magellan’s I use one of these for make up. Since I don’t have that much make-up, nor do I wear it that often, I can just chuck the whole case into my luggage. The best thing? These are spill-proof. On the return flight, one of my eye-shadow cases broke, spilling finely-ground, slightly oily, colorful pigment all over my make up case — and it stayed inside the case, not all over my clothes.

5. Eagle Creek Mesh Laminate Pack-It Sacs, Xtra Small.So you want to see inside your bag, but you also don’t want to show all your underwear to everyone else waiting in the security line. These mesh laminate Pack-It Sacs come in various sizes, from extra small to large, and balance visibility with discretion.

5. Magellan’s Flat-Pack Toiletry Kit For longer trips, you’ll need to check a bag, and 3 oz. of shampoo might not be enough. I keep my toiletry kit stocked with shampoo, conditioner, lotion, contact lens solution, and a few first aid supplies.

6. Magellan’s Travel Jewelry Pocket OK, full disclosure — I don’t have one of these … yet. But I am going to get one. My current method of packing my earrings and necklaces in a series of nesting ziplock sandwich baggies is just. not. working.

Bon Voyage!

Adults with ADD are notorious for hanging onto clutter.  We’ve being scolded our whole lives for loosing things through our carelessness.  If we never throw anything a way, we know it’s there … somewhere.  We might not be able to find it right now, [...]]]>

Oscar has no problem with trash -- he LOVES trash!

Adults with ADD are notorious for hanging onto clutter.  We’ve being scolded our whole lives for loosing things through our carelessness.  If we never throw anything a way, we know it’s there … somewhere.  We might not be able to find it right now, but we know we didn’t lose it!  It’s just misplaced, right?  We can find it here … somewhere … even if it takes eight hours to do it.

For years, that was my major motivation in hanging on to every little worthless piece of junk.  I didn’t know what was important, and I didn’t know when I might need it, so I might as well hang onto it.  My clutter was an allergy-inducing, frustrating eyesore, but there was security in it too.  The security that whatever it was, I probably had it around here … somewhere.

And so, the hardest part of my organizing journey was the purge — getting rid of things I didn’t need.

The “give away” category was bad enough.  Intellectually, I knew that I didn’t need the cheap set of cookware I’d bought in college, but emotionally, I was convinced that if I donated them, I’d be looking for them a month later.  But with the giveaway pile, I was able to reason with myself.  I could tell myself that I hadn’t used those things in years, and that someone else would be getting good use from them.  Giving them away was a good thing for everybody.

But putting items into the “trash” category, and then actually putting them in the actual trash — that was the worst.

Items that qualified as “trash” were pretty numerous.  “Trash” included anything that was broken.   “Trash” included anything that was missing a part, and  anything that was clearly a part to something else, but I didn’t know what.  “Trash” included anything that was too dirty to use.  “Trash” included leaking, duplicate, and triplicate cleaning supplies in various states of emptiness.

So into the trash went the four bottles of different types of eco-friendly household cleaner (I kept two bottles to have on hand).  Into the trash went the non-stick cook wear that was scratched and peeling. Likewise all those coffee mugs with broken handles, that I’d been meaning to glue together for years. Then there were the cheap plastic bowls and plates and silverware that I’d inherited in college from graduating seniors, all of which was stained or cracked or even melted.

Even though these items were useless, it was hard for me to toss them.  I felt like I should be able to “come up with a use” for them.  Many of the items couldn’t even be recycled, and I felt guilty about having so much garbage.  I didn’t want to be another greedy, wasteful American, my home bursting at the seams with unused purchases that were destined for overflowing landfills.

Fortunately, I had my clutter buddy.  This was an area where really be a realty check.   She reassured me it was OK to throw things out when they’re broken and useless.  She pointed out holding onto my worthless junk would in no way solve our collective cultural problems with waste.  Most importantly, she explained that by throwing away all that garbage, I’d be able to keep better track of what I owned.  I would buy fewer things overall, and therefore I would be less wasteful overall.

We ended our day by taking several trips to the curb with my garbage.  Then we hit Goodwill with several bags full of donations.  I felt bruised.  I felt embarrassed about the years worth of junk we had found in my kitchen — in the place where I prepared and served food.  I felt guilty about the waste I had generated.  And I felt bereft, too; bereft of the items I was giving up, however useless, because of the security they represented to me.

This time was the scariest part in my organizing process.  Not only had I just undergone a Great Purge, but I would have to wait another week before really putting my kitchen back together.  Since no other part in my home was organized, it was necessary to designate an area on the kitchen floor for items that would ultimately belong in the kitchen, but wouldn’t have a “home” there until we’d organized more than the food prep area. This pile would be kept off to the side of the dining area so nothing would get stepped on.  I was terrified that it would wind up staying there forever.  But I took a deep breath, scheduled a decluttering session with my buddy for the following week, and turned to the next step in the process: the Sorting.