A Splintered Mind

Today I am sick with the flu. At first it felt as if my stomach was in the clutches of an angry dragon, but soon I just felt blah all over. I'm so glad I got my flu shot last week! Yes, indeed. It may not have worked at all, but at least I got out of the house, got to meet new people, got jabbed in the arm for no reason, and then got the flu anyway. It really couldn't have turned out any better. I also got a pneumonia shot, but it felt like I had been stabbed with a pencil. Then my arm ballooned and turned cherry red. Boy, that was a lot of fun. I bet I'll get pneumonia again, too. It's been a year since it nearly killed me before. If I'm lucky I can get the flu AND pneumonia at the same time again. Then I'll really be living it up. So while I try to mend my illness with sarcasm, and since I won't be writing the blog I had planned on for today, I wanted to share something with you that I've been experimenting with. I post a lot of mental health links...

Here's today's public service announcement. If you have ADHD, beware of operating any heavy machinery or working near windows. National Squirrel Appreciation Day  

So there I am bouncing back and forth between two apps because I have dueling checklists and not a lot of time. To make things more difficult, I had one list open on the iPhone, and another on the iPad. I was so focused on organizing the tasks that I didn't have the devices together, so I absentmindedly paced to and from the computer desk with my iPad gripped in my hands. Finally, I had everything organized and set the iPad down on the kitchen counter with a satisfying plop. That's when I noticed the fork.  "What's that doing there?" I wondered to myself. A lone fork in the middle of paper piles. Not very tidy of me. Then I remembered. Oh! I had grabbed the fork to eat with it. Somehow between grabbing the fork and turning around to the microwave where my food awaited my eager consumption, I had become distracted by organizing my tasks for the afternoon.  So I shook my head and laughed at myself.  I use to write about this all the time, but haven't in a ...

People with ADHD are known for being hyperactive, but activity isn’t the only way that they are hyper. They can be hypersensitive to all manner of sensations, like sound, touch, and taste, but they are not alone. In recent years hypersensitivity has been recognized as a positive personality trait . I read about this recently over at Lifehacker and was surprised how upbeat the coverage of the trait was. There was even a handy quiz to aid self-diagnosis . How Being Highly Sensitive Affects ADHD Are you usually accused of being too sensitive? I am constantly told I am too sensitive. I’m told I’m too picky, too thin skinned, too negative…yet over time I have found this hypersensitivity to be one of my greatest attributes. Certainly there is a detriment to being highly sensitive, especially when we allow them to control us instead of use the trait as a tool. This seems to be the problem for highly sensitive adults with ADHD . The enhanced perceptions serve as irritan...

Thursday – Entry 46: The other day I went in for my very first root canal. Because of a hiccup in the insurance I couldn’t get my face drilled that day and had to reschedule. I’ve only had one cavity in my life and it came right at the end of my marriage, so I put off taking care of it…for two years. Obviously, cavities left alone become bigger problems, but it didn’t hurt so I could ignore it and simply chew on the other side. Until my tooth was chipped last month (while eating a hard candy…sheered a corner right off!), I had never had any dental work done on my teeth. I knew nothing of needles and drills. When I related this to the friendly root canal receptionist with the voice like a young Kathleen Turner, she was flabbergasted that I had put off root canal treatment for so many years. “Haven’t you experienced any pain?” she asked. “Not very much,” I replied, and added a shrug for good measure. She told me that I was one of the lucky few. I don’t often think of myself...