Posted by SuperADDMom on July 5, 2010
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.
Posted by SuperADDMom on May 12, 2010
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!
Posted by SuperADDMom on May 3, 2010
Uggg. I can’t find the arm pit spray! Because I have to attend the gym and swim program with the boy, I put my personal hygeine products in a travel bag to take back and forth with me, and now I’ve lost my underarm deoderant! I have b ack ups, but I didn’t want to smell like Vanilla today, I wanted to smell like Cucumbers.
Make sure you buy double,”travel” items, and leave your home stuff home.
also, when you are trying to establish a new “home” for things so you never lose them…maybe write down on a card for the fridge where you made the new home cause last night I searched for my day planner for an hour.
I finally remembered I had put in in my nap sack in one of my “i’m gonna get all organized moments”, and promptly forgot it was there. Where I intended it to always be, but have not put it there in over a year.
IT took me over 3 years to establish a “hang your keys up right away when you walk in the door” routine.. and some days I still don’t because i have to run in fast to pee…and on top of that, the kids like to steal my keys to open the workshop, or turn on the radio in the van when they are waiting for me.
Posted by SuperADDMom on April 29, 2010
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
Posted by SuperADDMom on
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaakkkkkkkk
I’m going to lose my shit! Seriously… the noise is nuts! POLLUTION to my brain.
I’m having a bad auditory day….every noise is grating on my nerves, and is amplified and making me jumpy.
I’ve been up since 8 am, with 4 hours of poor sleep due to pain. I go up today and took the boy to his dash and splash program which I have to paricipate in too. So I’ve trampolined, and swam today and coached the boy in his classes.
He loves the water, but is freaky about water on his face and ears, and that was today’s class…WOOHOO.
So he practically drowned me in the pool clinging to me, and near ripping off my bathing suit.
Anyway….I’ve somehow hurt my right rotator cuff and am in pain It feels like someone slammed my shoulder joint area with a sledge hammer. it feels bruised…i’ve never felt this kind of thing before. Anyway, physical pain always lowers my ability to filter things, and makes me more scatterbrained, and I’m a low hormone level in my monthly cycle anyway, so I am just less able to cope right now with too much sensory input. Even lights are too bright today, and the shades are drawn, and the lights are off.
I ran errands, drove home ( which always takes extra concentration effort when I’m having “bad brain” day.) and I’m exhausted mentally.
These are the current noises going on around me at seemingly IMAX theater surround sound levels:
Hubby playing a first person shooter game on the wii in the living room in surround sound sterio.
The kids arguing in the kitchen over a train set we borrowed from the toy lending library, the CAPD boy has the tendancy to talk too loud, and especially when he’s frustrated, and due to his sensory issues and exercising for 2 hours this morning, he is cranky and tired from working his gross muscles and practising his balance, and getting lots od vestibular stimulation.
the bread machine churning dough for pizza later. The Aspie girl is dressed up to be pretty today and wearing high heeled shoes she loves and they are clicking on the floor like riverdance.
Hubby yelling at the kids to not step in the wayof his game.
The dog barking in the bag porch.
And the timer beeping to warn that the cookies can come out of the oven.
I am gonna seriously freak out! I’m physically tired, I need a nap to rejuvinate my brain power to cope with this stuff, but at 2 pm, there are too many things going on and too many things I’m needed for.
It is moments like this that I think my father’s ability to turn off his hearing with his cochlear implant must be a great blessing.
Where can I sign me up for one of those..like right now….PLEASE!?
Anyone have an auger? Can I borrow it? Left ear first please.
Posted by SuperADDMom on April 26, 2010
ugggg
a half hour of actual time on the gazelle tonight.
i’m glad the thing pauses when it is not moving. I had to stop so many times to rest the aches in my feet. It has taken me about 45 minutes to go a half hour tonight.
My feet are sore today, i’ve drug a lot of heavy stuff around this weekend, and it was a busy week. having a lot of things i need to be “on” for wears my mental stamina out with my neurodiversities, so i’m exhausted.
i hauled a play house made of skids home for the kids this weekend, and have been trying to clean the yard and paint outside etc.
I didn’t get in 10 klm for the week. i only got in 9.3. i wish i could have made it the whole, way, it seems like such a small amount to go for left, but i totally pushed myself to even go much farther past the first 10 minutes tonight.
I’m glad i did it though, i need to stay in the habit. I’ve been missing it all week, and wishing I was not so busy or tired from everything else i was dong. The emotional habit is there… so i have to make sure i keep up with the physical habit of doing it.
Thankyou to everyone on twitter and facebook who cheers me on. sometimes it really helps to know people are watching…cause sometimes I’d just talk myself out of it if no one was paying attention.
#tired #sore #gazelle
Posted by SuperADDMom on August 23, 2009
*I* should know better…I had a nephew from my first marriage die from fatigue driving 3 months before our wedding. He was supposed to be our groomsmen. Driving home after a long shift at work, and visiting his girlfriend, at 5 am, he fell alseep. Just like that… Gone.
*I* SHOULD know better…In our rural area, last year a well respected, well known business man, driving in the wee hours of the morning along a straight stretch, getting close to home, fell asleep, and hit a tree. Just like that…Gone.
I have family who are long haul truckers, who have to follow rules to stop and rest….I’ve driven from Nova Scotia to Ontario straight through MANY times, sharing shifts at the wheel when we each got tired…so if anybody should….*I* SHOULD KNOW BETTER.
I would never dream of drinking and driving…but when you’re tired…eh, who’s NOT tired this day and age right?
It’s been 3 busy days for me…during a very hot spell this summer, and I’ve had a terrible time going to sleep, and getting terrible sleep at best of the 6 to 7 hours I’ve gotten the last 2 nights. I could give you all the reasons WHY I’m tired, but we all have them. I’m on my period, so I’m more scatter brained, the joys of ADD to add to the whole situation.
But, even when you are tired you do what you need to do, and we needed bread,milk and eggs,some other essentials, and a new door for our house that we need to install before winter.
Home Depot had a door on sale, and we new it was ‘now or never” purchase opportunity. I was tired before we left around supper time. I was cranky, and hot…the kids were driving me nuts all day, being tired and cranky and hot too.
The city is about 35 minute drive from where we live. Due to my husband’s illness, I’m the driver in our family. Shopping under the stress of tired whiny kids, while I am tired just wears me out more. But this is usual, and we knew this ahead of time, but we went, because we had to. We did what we needed to do hopping at 4 different stores over a 4 hour time period or so. On the way out of the city we grabbed some fast food to eat on the way home.
We sat in the van to eat it, and then I started our 35 or so minute drive home on dark two lane rural roads on a Friday night after 11 pm
My husband mentions to me that he hates driving home at this hour because you never know what kind of idiot is out trying to drive home drunk. This is a fact I’d considered based on the fact that the drive into the city during daylight hours didn’t inspire any confidence by the way the oncoming traffic was being reckless trying to pass in badly chosen places, tail gating and speeding etc.
Traffic is not heavy, but for a Friday night in a rural/tourist area, it is steady enough with oncoming cars.
Some people are forgetting to turn off their high beams at the right time and are practically blinding me, making my already exhausted brain need to concentrate more to not be drawn to their lights like a moth to a flame. That really aggravates me, too, it’ is not like they don’t know I’m coming.
So, I pay attention to the corner of the pavement I’m driving on in my lane to avoid looking right at the headlights, to ensure I pass safely. I’m aware than I move a little to the right each time an oncoming car passes me. I’m trying to be safe.
I drive half way home sipping warm coke from a can, eating sweets and talking to my husband, shifting positions, doing what I need to to stay alert and awake. He hardly drives these days due to his disability, and he’s in a lot of pain today. I don’t want to ask him to drive. He’s tweeting on his Black Berry to a friend and telling me about the conversation to keep me alert.
We were not far from our destination. which is “just going home from grocery and home repair supply shopping”. He’s tweeting on his cell phone. Just another shopping trip. I’m always tired anyway.
He mentions I’m swerving a bit on the road. I say “I’m fine hon, just a bit tired”. It’s a reminder for me to pay closer attention. He says, its starting to freak him out a bit.
I decide half way home to stop & try to jar some adrenaline into my system, even though adrenalin is short lived, it’s worked before, and we are closer to home. I did jumping jacks, breathed fresh air, stretched, jogged a bit back and forth, drank more caffeine…just like countless other times that always work.
I get back in the van, and it’s ok, though I still am needing to concentrate more then I usually need to.
We make it to the little town just a few more minutes from where we live rurally, and I tell myself, it’s not far now…I think my brain starts to let it’s guard down now due to this knowledge.
We drive through the one main street of our town, checking out the lack of action going on in our little town at almost midnight.
I don’t even realize I’m having a micro dose until i “wake” from one. It feels like I’m not even really ever NOT aware of what’s going on, and no one else notices. A little more adrenaline makes my heart pump a bit, and makes me more alert, and I drive past the Tim Horton’s.
When I dozed this time Just a few feet up the street, my husband screamed my name and grabbed the wheel to jerk the wheel to the left miss a parked car in front of the flower shop I just about plowed into going 50 KLM, with no ability to brake for impact because I don;t see it coming.
He tells me to pull over now.
I do.
I’m in such a mental state of shock that I dozed that long or bad, that my heart is not even pounding. I notice my state of tired, and wonder how it got to that point.
I apologize, and we take a moment for HIM to slow his heart rate. I’m grateful he’s not freaking out on me. I mean we just avoided an accident. a very serious accident.What if he had been asleep like sometimes he does on the way home. What if that had of happened while we were on the road doing 70 to 80 KLM with oncoming traffic!
I’m too tired to even have adrenaline over that jar and have my heart pound so hard I can hear my heart beat in my head.
We switch and he drives home the last 10 klm. I’m grateful he does, I’m so exhausted I doze on and off on the way home, now suddenly jarring awake here and there worrying about HIM being awake enough to drive home. He’s fine, not sleepy, just in pain from his illness. I feel out of my element in the passenger side of our van, where I rarely sit but am releived to be right then.
When we get home, I bring in everything that we bought, door included, the kids go to bed and then crash…I have sleep to catch up on and I suck much! and don’t tell me I don’t.
When I woke up this morning, the slider door on the van was open, because I’d forgotten and left i open when taking our sleeping son up to bed.
The sobering effects of this event have not Left me, and I won’t allow them to.
And I wrote this, so hopefully YOU won’t either.
Stop depriving yourself of sleep. And Don’t Drive if you are feeling that tired.
To Husband and the kids…I’m sorry.
To my husband… thankyou.
Some fatigue Driving facts
A report produced by the Highway Safety Roundtable, compiles some of the latest available research on the consequences of driver fatigue. It linked to the deaths of some 400 Canadians every year to driver fatigue.
“The message is very clear that a lot more Canadians are driving tired on our roads than anyone has ever thought before, or ever wanted to admit before, and it is a very serious road safety issue. We really have to be a lot more aware of the dangers of fatigue than we have been up until now.”
-Mark Yakabuski, president of the Insurance Bureau of Canada.
Research based on Ontario traffic data suggests a long day at work could be triggering collisions, since most accidents involving fatigue occur between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. and on Fridays.
The most fatal fatigue-related crashes occur between 1 a.m. and 7 a.m.
“Fatigue is likely being under-reported, because police don’t have a good way to determine when it is a factor in a crash – unless drivers admit they were fatigued” – Yoassry Elzohairy, senior safety research adviser for the Ontario Ministry of Transportation.
A 2005 study also found one in five drivers admitted to falling asleep behind the wheel during the previous 12 months.
