Wednesday, September 25, 2013

ADHD in the Face


The life of an adult with ADHD is always fun!

One of the upstairs neighbors dragged their drippy garbage all down the stairs, across my doorstop, and throughout the breezeway. It bothered me deeply, so I asked management to clean it. They sent a guy with a high-powered steam cleaner to make short work of the mess. So I quickly grabbed my doormat, banged it out, dusted it off, stored it inside, then awaited my doorstep to be sparkly clean. 

Soon, their work was done, and I rushed outside to behold the wonderfulness. Everything was scrubbed and beautiful to behold except for the maintenance guy's muddy footprint right on my doorstep. Isn't that just my luck? 

That footprint bothered me even deeper than the dribbley garbage. So I grumbled and walked over to my balcony to grab my outside broom. Then I fixed myself something to eat.

About 30 minutes later I noticed there was a fly in my kitchen. Was a window open? Great. I left the balcony door wide open. I hadn't even finished scrubbing that footprint which was now drying into place. A cup of water and some scrubbing later, my doorstep was presentable again. Then I went back inside and got busy with other things.

An unknown number of minutes later I noticed that the cup of water was sitting precariously on my couch top and the broom was still resting by the door. Shaking my head at myself, I put the cup in the sink, then walked over to the balcony to put the broom away and walked straight into the screen door. You see, I shut it the last time I noticed it was open, but my brain hadn't caught up with me.

And I laughed. 

All the task lists and calendar events of the world can't protect the adult with ADHD from himself. There's no way to avoid these type of mistakes, especially on a bad ADHD day as today was for me. The best thing you can do is have a really good laugh at yourself, and hope that nobody was watching.