I had just finished eating a late supper, because I was outside splitting wood all evening, and was planning on taking a phone call from a ADHD online acquaintance and trying to the the kids prepped for bed all at once, and decided to multitask.

So, I was getting my 6yo son, sensoryboy, ready for bed and getting him a melatonin at the same time as getting two caffeine pills for myself, and handing my 11yo  daughter her melatonin.

In my attempt to multitask, I handed her her melatonin, got my caffiene pills, THOUGHT I handed the boy his melatonin, and then popped my caffiene pills and drank them down, while getting a drink for the kids each.

It was only when my son was standing there telling me I didn’t give him his melatonin yet that I realized that I took his small white melatonin pill that was under my large pink “wide awakes” and I never even noticed, because I was rushing, and trying to multitask.

the three of us started laughing so hard, we could not tell TMO ( theMundaneOne aka hubby) what I had done, and then just as I gathered myself to tell him while till giggling, my son “herpderped” me.

he HERP DERP-ED ME!

HAHA it was well deserved.

FYI, melatonin with 200mg of caffiene doesn’t really do much of anything.

FYI part duex. don’t get on my ass for taking 200 mg of caffiene…it’s the equivalent of a large tim horton’s coffee…with no sugar, and less shit flavour

never a dull moment around here I tell ya.

So, i had my ADHD med dose upped a few weeks ago, and it has really been an amazing difference!!!!!

For people who do not understand the struggles of dealing with forgetfulness, and scatterbrainedness, and being unable to organize your thoughts in a manner that makes getting things done easy, and stay on track, you might not appreciate just how BIG an improvement this is for me.

I have not had guests in our house since last feb when my parents came by on the way driving through to go back home from being with my uncle who died of Brain cancer last year. So i have been lax.without the pressure of company coming it is easier to say “i’ll do it later” and never get it done.

I am a shitty housekeeper. i am AWESOME in EVERY OTHER WAY in the world, but I have always been a terrible housekeeper. I have a terrible attention span to stay on track with something so boring and mundane as scrubbing floors and vacuuming. add to that two kids home all day and a disabled husband who never leaves the house except about twice a month, and a doubled list of things to do around here with only me to do them and keeping up is very difficult, especially when my ADHD meds would wear off too soon in the day.

but since my meds increase 3 weeks ago, i have managed to clean the house to a “decent” state to feel ok with allowing my daughter to have a small bday party last friday for her 10th, and the kitchen, and living room and bathroom are decluttered and relatively clean. and now, 5 day later, it is STILL clean. I’m not talking OCD clean standards. but decent. we’ll still wanna use plates and the like, no eating off the floors here, but good.

No laundry all over the couch waiting to be folded for days, the dishes are ALL WASHED and PUT AWAY, the floor has been swept, the carpet vacuumed, and just a relative overall less chaotic living space as everything finds it’s home and goes there. I’ve hung curtains and pictures in the house, cleaned the whole hallway upstairs of boxes and boxes of unpacked stuff from our move two years ago, and started on the kid den/homeschooling area, of decluttering that complete mess the kids made in there.

What’s changed? I have less anxiety and feeling overwhelmed because the meds help my brain chemistry stay on track. for the first time since before i got pregnant with my son over 6 years ago, i feel like i have the brain I had then, where the ADHD scatterbrain wasn’t so bad, that I could keep in check with routines and plans, a brain that didn’t get so overwhelmed by trying to make dinner and have people talk to it at the same time. that didn’t have so much anxiety from messing up all the time, and have panic attacks, when trying to just get a meal on the table where each component of the meal was all warm and properly cooked at the same time.

I have not had a single panic attack, emotional outburst from feeling overwhelmed in the evening starting supper and evening routines, with this new med dose. before I used to have a panic attack almost every night, get flustered, snap at people, nd end up cranky and grumpy. before my brain would just shut down and i’d be a bumbling idiot trying to not burn dinner and somehow manage to get the kids to bed in a timely fashion.

Medication/drugs is never a cure all, or the only solution, but it is a part of my better managing the debilitating ADHD I have. The meds at a proper level, along with good plans, notes, to do lists and implementing routines that become second nature to my ADHD brain mean less chaos, and a happier family over all…and I feel pretty damn good about that right now…it’s been 6 years!

I’ve been trying routines and plans for 6 years with the wrong dose of meds, and I’d fail every time. people can be as negative as they want about ADHD and medications, but I am living proof, that without the right personalized mix of meds and behaviour modifications, nether the meds will work alone, nor will the behaviour modifications work alone.

I feel like I’ve been swimming under the surface of the water for 6 years with a rock tied to my foot, and I have been struggling to get to the top for air, and I have finally broke through the surface by breaking the ropes the rock was held on with, and am able to tread water again like I used to,with my head above water and maybe soon as I catch things back up that have fallen so far behind from all the ADHD fog, i’ll be able to actually SWIM again, and maybe even WIN the race.

If you have been trying ADHD meds with no success at finding the right combo of brain chemistry alteration and behaviour modification, it might be time to see if a change is necessary. if you’ve been struggling and are on meds,maybe a coach and some help with implementing routines is needed, or if you’ve been struggling trying to implement routines, maybe the meds need to be tweaked.

I’ve fought for 6 years to find the right combination..I’ve finally found it!!!

You don’t need to feel like your drowning anymore, don’t give up!

So planning things is helping me not have so much anxiety.

becoming more aware of my high anxiety times is helping me avoid total add/aspie meltdowns.

all my life I’ve been a sort of “fly by the seat of my pants and see where I land and deal” kind of person.I think one of the reasons I avoided it like the plague is because I fear needing to be very rigid and have strict planning to function. it’s almost like dealing with the chaos feeds my ADHD need for stimulation, and my aspie side of me is cringing, and having anxiety the whole time.

So planning things, and using a day planner/to do list has not been natural to me, nor has it it been easy to start as a habit.

I’ve finally come to some habits that are making things easier for me, though if I get interrupted/sidetracked in my routines, I forget things lose things etc.

Slowly I’m trying to fix the mess I’ve made of this place since our move and my mental burnout. Your looking at someone who has taken 11 years to remember hubby needs his bread toasted to be able to eat it ( oral sensory issues)

So, I have a day planner I write a week out in, in an overall plan, and then each day of the week after the general plan I write out info that is important as those days come, like who I called, recipes, my master to do list for the week, and next steps in those projects .. really it’s just a composition book, with blank pages, so I have no worries of needing to remain neat, or confined to a certain amount of space.  it IS my brain it holds everything.

and I have a calendar I write out meals on for a week or more to have a plan.

On Sundays I plan the weeks meals ( generally, sometimes they change)

This week, my menu plans are

Chicken taco crockpot w/home made Naan bread

Salmon Croquettes w/dill sauce

beef crock pot & gravy w/mashed potato

Veggie Lasagna

Pizza

Crock Pot Pork with orange and Videlia onions & rosemary rice.

I live on the outskirts of a small town. I used to live in the small town, and for the last 5 years attended mommy play groups with other parents. So, when I go to town, I see some people I “know” on a hello basis.

Tonight when taking the girl to her swim class in town at the rec centre, I knew I had to go and pick up milk at the store my kids call “Big Tig” ( the store has a huge tiger painted on the side)

A few weeks ago we ran into the coordinator of a mommy and me evening program called Busy feet, and we had not gone since we moved from town.

Since the programs on Wednesdays overlap by an hour, she invited us to bring the boy while the girl is at her class, and tonight he mentioned to me that he wanted to go to busy feet.

He mentioned this as we were getting back in the van from dropping off the girl, and I happily agreed that we’d stop by to see after I picked up some milk.

And the very second I agreed to go check it out, and see people we have not seen in a while, I got in the van and flipped down the sun visor and noticed something that made me want to get out of going anywhere in public.

big black chin hairs! OHHHHHH crap! As a 35 year old ADD woman, with changing hormones, I no longer worry about pimples, but I’ve started growing stray dark black chairs out of my chin….this would not be so bad, but I forget to do a good check and pluck them out, and then I notice them at really awkward times, like when I’m in town, without tweezers, and needing to go somewhere in public.

I frantically searched my backpack for a pair of tweezers. I own several pair.. and I had THOUGHT i left a pair in my back pack for just this kind of situation…but a 5 minute search resulted in nothing, and found me bargaining with my 5 year old to find a reason to NOT go to busy feet, where I’d have to talk to people, and be totally aware in my own head of the black chin hairs. I rationalized that I’m sure no one will notice, but that it didn’t matter. I’d notice, and that was enough to make me nervous and anxious. I have social anxiety enough as it is with my communication issues due to hearing processing, and also reading people’s body language, so I didn’t need this kind of extra anxiety.

So, I drove to run an errand for The Mundane One, and got stuck in traffic, then went to big tig for milk, and decided to see if they had some cheap tweezers.

Cleaning the car last week while waiting for a dr appointment I’d found a $1 coin ( called a looney in Canada) and thought perhaps it wold save me.

IT DID. they had a pair of tweezers for a dollar!!!! so I bought them, and plucked them suckers out of my chin in the parking lot, and then went off to the play group with my boy for the last 40 minutes of it. And in all of that, I almost forgot to buy the milk!

(me in total “no makeup, hair in  ponytail, not brushed today, stained sweater going to town mode”)

Being a sexy SuperADDmom is no simple task!

And I’m gonna yell at the Mundane One for letting me out the door like that!

I’m keeping the tweezers I bought today in the van from now on, for just this kind of situation!

ohhhh my… i just witnessed in myself a near meltdown from sensory overload.

This naming it to claim it stuff is draining.

Now that we’ve made the correlation of the Aspergers traits I have, I’ve been working on becoming more aware of when i’m having what I call “An Aspie Moment”

Sensory overload is a thing.. too much noise, to much light, to many colors. I am a very visual person, I see things very vivid and i notice EVERYTHING…unless I’m really hyper focused on something, I see and take in everything around me.

In the last few weeks, it has been interesting basically evaluating myself to see what is bothersome, when do things get too overwhelming, and how I deal with them, so I can deal with them better.

Being tired. Being in pain…they make it harder for me to filter, and process everything I take in. It then makes my ADHD traits worse, and I’m essentially a bumblling idiot who can’t remember what you call that thing you put things in to stay cold in the kitchen.

When I get that way, I get flustered, anxious. I have a hard time finding words to speak and I go inward. I get clumsy and trip over my own feet. I make mistakes, I get scatterbrained more. My depth perception is off, i break glasses, burn dinner, etc..the list goes on and on.

I recognize that in the past…I’ve dealt with these things, and have been avoiding actual panic attacks, or temper tantrums I guess by becoming actually moody, bitchy, cranky, sometimes even reach a boiling over point to near, if not total rage.

When I’m moody, bitchy, cranky, no one wants to be around me, and it was I guess a backward, sub conscious thing that allowed me some alone time. It gave me the time I needed to recuperate and stop the panic inside, calm down, and find a way to regroup and move on, and handle the sensory overload better.

So, with this awareness, i’ve been trying not to be cranky and be a bitch when I notice these overwhelming feelings coning on, and I’ve been trying to find a way to cope better that is healthier for the relationships with the other people in my life.

Diverting the kids to go somewhere else away from me, using my ear phones, but still being physically present etc.

But today was too much…..I’ve been this overloaded before…many times… but by now I’d always have been bitchy, cranky at people’s needs, yelled at the kids for the smallest things like how they are chewing their cookie near me ( the sound is SOOO ANNOYING and LOUD i can hardly stand it). I’d been cranky with hubby, and then this would cause strife for a while. There would be bad feelings between everyone, and then I’d need to recoup, AND get over the bad feelings, and apologize for my behaviour.

Today I fought the urge to be bitchy…It is very hard to fight the tendancy to revert to a coping stragedy I’ve used for 35 years. I managed to not flip out, but it was replaced by the urge to physically run away…I’ usually run away to the computer, and that in an of itself causes issues, because I retreat to the computer as a way to shut out the stuff that is overloading me, and then I get less done, and hubby gets mad at me for “being addicted” to the computer.

I’ve been trying not to run to the computer for a mental escape as much lately, and have been using a timer to force myself to do things that need to be done, for a certain period of time, before I go take a break.

So I didn’t run to the computer….but I got a feeling of being out of control and stuck in a situation I could not get out of, and I started to have a panic attack. Of course I put myself in the situation with my limits I’m trying to pose on myself in small ways.

But I could not run away from what I was doing to retreat to the computer, or even run away outside, because I was cooking food for people, baking cookies, and listening to hubby talk about stuff he wanted to tell me.

I had a loud self talk in my head saying. “pay attention, pay attention, listen….don’t panic, just finish the cookies and then you can leave. hang on ok!? Don’t get mad at everyone.”

At some point, I had three people trying to tell me something all at once over each other, and I could feel the need to get mad and yell “go away from me now, you’re driving me nuts!” I answered in a snappy tone and had to take a breathe and appologize right away to not let the responses to my snapping, roll over into the same old song and dance we always end up doing when I get to feeling this way.

I don’t know how I got through finishing the things I was doing in the kitchen, but the second I was done, I HAD to go away.

I had a tight chest, heavy breathing, and a headache behind my eyes coming on from the stress, because I wasn’t reverting to just coping by getting mad.

I’m upstairs now, in the office where I usually gazelle. it’s quiet, it’s good.I txt messaged hubby to tell him where i was and why.

I started writing this to try and get it out as it is pouring out of my brain, and I’m trying to relax.

I’m still buzzing in my brain and my body feels like how it feels when you drink too much caffine in a short amount of time…jittery and jumpy. But as that slowly starts to die off, and the adrenaline from my little Aspie moment is spent, I can feel how spent of energy I am…

My brain is fried right now, and I feel like I just need to sleep for a little while. I feel guilty about that, and I’m not sure anyone here would let me sleep for a little while to get some equilibrium back.

I hate this feeling.. these are the times, when I would get mad and bitchy at everyone and say “maybe I just need to live alone on a mountain in a yurt with no one around me, cause I can’t take this crap anymore”

sigh…..

A blog of a woman with aspergers has been really insightful in allowing me to go, hey…there’s a name for that!?

It’s a good thing to be making the connections… but also…. it processing, and dealing with stuff, and THAT is tiring to.

I never made the connections before but this is why I have what I call “recoup days” after we’ve had a day out shopping, or driving far to the city etc.

I’m discovering the reasons behind elements of who I am, I never really gave a second thought to.

if you’re interested in reading it…

http://www.aspieteacher.com/2009/07/be-an-aspie/

thanks for letting me spill that

We live in a very rural area, and about 12 klm from town of about 5000. there they have a fitness and aqua center,  and this week I got the kids signed up for programs there.

We have a great community, that helps low income families like ours pay for such programs so they can attend. Honestly the gas in and of itself twice a week makes the budget tight for the next 8 weeks, but the program is covered, and the kids benefit from it tremendously in many ways.

Socially, physically, and even mentally and therapeutically for their sensory integration issues.

So for their age groups I have them in a gym and swim program, the girl had an hour of swimming ( informal swimming and water games, and some guidance, not lessons, but coaching just the same) and then an hour in the gym for a rules/lead game and some tumble and roll, trampoline gymnastics stuff.

She will be going every Wednesday evening, and then the boy will be in a similar set up on Thursday mornings for the next 8 weeks, but I need to attend with him and coach him in the pool, formal level red cross swimming lesson, with one leader/coach guiding us teaching our kid.

Anyway. her first night was tonight, and got the low down on all the boys who cheated at the games they played in the gym…ever the rules police she is Aspie kids are stickler for rules, and don’t adjust well to change. She has the added issue of being ADHD as well, and gets easily side tracked, so because of these things, she was terribly worried about going, that no one would like her, that she can’t swim very good, and she sucks at sports like soccer.

When we got there we discovered that due to pool availability, the swim portion of the 2 hour program is first. Which I think is really rather shitty, cause she’ll have to shower off the pool chemicals from her body to go to gym, and do all that in a timely fashion, AND then she’ll sweat and stink in the gym, and come home and need to shower again!
With a child who has an issues with time management, getting side tracked, and anxiety about changing in front of other girls, this could really put a major crimp in her liking this program at all. She was VERY upset…it’s different from how the program ran last year, so she was all bent out of shape over that at first….and she NEVER showers for less than 15 minutes, and THEN takes 15 minutes to dry and change….so I can’t just drop her off for a 2 hour free time in town, and then pick her up… I need to be there in the middle of the 2 hours, for the switch over, to ensure she stays on track. It is a good lesson for her to work at, and would be helpful, but still, not what we understood, not what we planned, and i can’t just take 2 hours to do errands, or maybe even enjoy a break at the library, or whatever, without needing to be back there an hour into it, and then hang around for 45 minutes left of the program.

But even with that…she had a good first night, and she was happy to be the first person dressed and ready for gym.

I’m glad she enjoyed it and came home with a smile on her face, and excited about it.

I’m really pleased with her instructor/leader. She eased into it well, though she was terrified and almost in tears at the beginning.

I hope that he is a sign of changes happening with a new generation of community leaders/teachers/coaches etc we are about to see more in upcoming years as my children and children with special needs are being accepted.

He’s energetic and young ( about 18/19) and great with the kids, and was receptive to my suggestions to make my girls’s experience better, to help lower her anxiety in social situations, and how to give her warnings for changing events/transitions easier. He didn’t know much about it, but he generally understood Aspergers and ADHD and was positive about her maybe needing a little extra coaching to stay on track.

I watched him interact with the kids in the pool, and with the kids in the gym, and leading the games, and He’s a positive verbal encourager, but not unfairly, and he high fives all the kids and makes them feel positive about their contributions….you can tell he is fresh in the game and loves his job.

I want more of this in my children’s future. He was a pleasure to watch coach the kids.

Tomorrow at 9:45, I’ll be back there with a great female instructor we know from my sons program last year, and last year he was very shy due to his CAPD…but he ASKED to go back this year, and is very excited about tomorrow. She’s in her mid 20′s, and she is just as great.

I rant a lot sometimes, so it is nice when I have the opportunity to share nice things

SOURCE LINK: http://www.publicnewsarchive.com/rewards-work-like-drugs-in-adhd/

Published by BBC on April 19th, 2010.

The stigma of living with ADHD is pretty negative at times. The negative impact it has on our day to day lives, and the people we live with can get pretty stressful. So stressful in fact that without help from medications to regulate brain chemistry, and being on top of RIGID routines to make life easier, we can end up being sucked down the big black ADHD holes of depression and inability to cope.

I grew up not knowing I had ADHD. I was just told I was lazy, and stupid, and bad, a daydreamer, etc. I didn’t learn to cope with my ADHD well, and now in my 30′s I’m basically teaching myself stuff i should have learned when i was younger. Kids today have advantages in the life skills with ADHD arena.But it is still not easy.

Some people think living with ADHD is a walk in the park because we get prescription drugs that are basically cousins in chemical make up to drugs that people take to get high, like Meth. ( drugs that have been around since 1955 BTW)

People see celebrities like Richard Branson, or Robin Williams ( with suspected ADHD) and think it must be a blast to have ADHD.

People make comments about being on medications for it, like we’ve somehow cheated a system to be granted legal narcotics, so we can get high.

As representatives of ADHD, you see these celebs as jovial, and friendly, and chatty. They are daredevils in racecars, or actors or comediens, business people, teachers, even doctors.

But you don’t see us ADDers among you scramble to keep a house clean, make dinner on time,get our kids out the door in a presentable fashion, With everything they need. You don’t see us struggle to  make appointments on time, and the stress it causes us internally.You don’t see us struggle to keep a job, struggle to pay for these medications that are far more expensive then any street drug.

You don’t see us search for the 10th time this week for our missing car keys because we got side tracked or interrupted in the middle of putting them away, and we laid them down someplace, and we only realize it when we are already 5 minutes late to an appointment, or lunch with you. You don’t see that we are late because we also didn’t have any clean socks.

ADDers live a life of secret embarrassment for these kinds of things. We blame the traffic, or roll our eyes and say “kids! what are ya gonna do?” or we say ” hey I thought you said  <insert what ever time is cloest to us not being late but just on time>, I’m sorry about that.”

We have to do things like set our clocks a half hour earlier and get everywhere a half hour before, just to ensure a “saftey zone” in our schedules to allow for ADHD blunders and mixups.

People with ADHD make mistakes, A LOT. Daily. hourly. We struggle to keep up in a world with standards and time tables set by people who don’t have ADHD.

So, as a person with ADHD it really pisses me off when people make jokes about my medication, or imply that I must be a “happy mommy” because I take amamphetamines to “get through the day”. Or they joke and ask me how I pulled off an ADHD diagnoasis just to “score”. They say things like ” nice deal if you can get it”

So…

Just to clarify…

An Amphetamine is a psychostimulant drug that is known to produce increased wakefulness and focus in association with decreased fatigue and appetite. Amphetamine is related to drugs such as methamphetamine and dextroamphetamine, which are a group of potent drugs that act by increasing levels of norepinephrine, serotonin and dopamine in the brain.  All chemicals, if you bothered to look into it further,that you’d know ADDers have  lower levels of.

We chose to put these chemicals in our systems, because it alters our brain chemistry to try and put us on a par level with people who don’t struggle through life with a sleepy brain, and so we can live better among a society who sees us as “broken, annoying, and beneath the rest” that need to be fixed.

FYI the hyper activity of ADHD is CAUSED by LACK of the chemicals those drugs help our bodies produce at more “normal” levels in order to STOP the hyperactivity. To bring us UP to a level of  “normal” functioning like you have the ability to do just by breathing. We don’t take them to make us high. Bt they’d likely make YOU high.

I personally struggle in the morning to wake up because those chemicals are so low in my system. I could just sleep all the time without my ADHD medication. Did you know there are scientifically proven links between ADHD and narcolepsy

In order to be able to just walk to the bathroom upright in the morning, due to the morning haze my ADHD brain has, I have to set two alarms, one to take my meds and snooze back asleep until they start to wake me up more due to the chemicals in my brain rising from the help of the meds, and then I wake up to the second alarm, and even then STILL, it takes my brain at least an hour to feel functional. When my meds wear off toward the end of their effectivenes in the day, as a mother and wife I still have a lot of  “work ” to do to keep a family with special needs functioning, and prepared for tomorrow.

If I don’t remember my meds one day, we fall out of routines and things get way out of sync, and we all must struggle to get back on track, because I go around in a scatterbrained haze unable to accomplish much of anything.

If I take my meds too late in the day, my brain is wide awake, and I can’t get to sleep and I’ll find myself awake at 4 am, planning a menu for the month, or tweeting, or watching  movie, because my brain then won’t shut down until the chemicals dwindle down to a lower level to bring on sleep.

And, just so you understand the cycle… once my brain is FINALLY sleepy from the lack of chemicals again needed to stay awake… my brain will just want to stay sleepy, and we start the cycle the next morning all over again.

ADHD medication make us not want to eat as much and people struggle to get in the proper daily intake to remain healthy. This is especially a concern with children who are still growing.

I’m not sure what the Non ADHD world thinks, but having ADHD is not all fun and games. People with ADHD come from higher rates of divorced homes due to the chaos and stress ADHD traits cause in everyday living.  Adults with ADHD, struggle in relationships to find a balance that works, and also have a higher rate of divorce.

People with ADHD have increased risk of drug and alcohol abuse ( trying to self medicate a constant sleepy brain), have higher rates of severe low self esteem and depression than the general population, as well as debilitating anxiety problems, and higher suicide rates.

Ya! pretending to have ADHD when I was 6 months pregnant and depressed to get a diagnosis finally, just to not be able to get any help with my brain chemistry for over a year, due to breastfeeding  my son was a SURE sign I was looking for a quick cheap legal high.

HAHA YOU R FUNNY!

Oh? it is just a joke? oh. my bad…I’m such a stiff!

People with ADHD have higher rates of being in lower income levels due  to struggling through school with learning difficulties, keeping jobs due to ADHD interrupting their ability to do their job to expected standards ( late for work, poor performance on bad days, forgetting projects due etc)

People with ADHD try to be upbeat and positive because we have SO MUCH negative stuff in our lives to deal with. Prescription drugs for ADHD is not a COPING thing. We are not getting high. Shit, smoking pot in highschool didn’t make me high, it made me normal! YA that was fun! Everyone else was giddy and high as a kite, and I was able to finally focus enough to go home and do my homework for the first time in my highschool career.

Our meds are helpers to the chemicals our brain cannot produce well enough on their own.PLAIN AND SIMPLE.

You’re stigma, prejudice and “jokes”  are offensive. PLAIN AND SIMPLE.

So if you are gonna look in my face and say to me that my drugs make me hyper, or happy, or that ADHD can just be “cured or solved” with some basketball… well, sorry to be so blunt, but I’m gonna have to say…

FUCK YOU!

Plain and Simple.

YMCA Vancouver Paid Ad in a local paper. Charlene Giovannetti-King, the YMCA Vice President of Funds Development directly linked to the Advertisement said “We don’t see this really as a mistake” on a CBC radio interview with Rick Cluff.