Ablution Performance 101

Simple hygiene is sometimes outside the scope of ADHD.

I have this amazing girlfriend, whom I shall call Gladiolus. We met inkindergarten and became close friends in high school when we agreed that one shouldn’t wear plastic in one’s hair. (It was the ’80s.) She has a delightful sense of humor and a fully engaged mind. Over the years, we have assembled a group of delightful, engaged human beings around us, and we have, as mothers, made some more.

Whenever I travel to her house for a visit, I am in awe of her bathing sensibilities. Her various bathrooms are always clean and appointed not only with soothing colors but interesting and uncluttered arrangements of vials and doo-dahs, all of which, upon closer inspection, have interesting and meaningful and beautiful things on the labels, including organic ingredients, funny sayings, deep thoughts, or comic insights.

Gwendolyn’s bathrooms reveal the orderly thinking of a composed mind. The steps of her ablution are evident in the accessories: matching shampoo and conditioner, milled soap inside a loofa, and a neatly hung razor under a mirror in the shower. The products make it clear what one’s shower tasks are, without any distractions. Around her bathtub, beautiful containers full of scented bath products and sample packets are artfully arranged near neatly stacked jars of salt and sugar scrubs and a wooden bristle brush. All of these are emblems of her personal motto, which you find in the signature of her emails: “Be well, find joy, and exfoliate.”

Yet for all this attention to little luxuries (a bath at her house will take me hours, because I have to open every jar and smell every product), Genevieve can prepare herself in minutes flat and be ready for the day. Her ritual takes her into the bathroom for short dips between making food and getting dressed. By 7 a.m. the dogs are walked, breakfast is ready, her eyebrows and jewelry are on, and all she needs to do is take out the hot curlers and put on her shoes.

These are the thoughts that run through my head as I get out of the shower at her house and rummage under the sink for a towel. She showed me where they were when I came in, but doing things in the right order is never my strong suit; I put foundation on my face as an afterthought. I am grateful for the feminine culture we’ve shared over the years; my own ablution performance went from a loathsome childhood routine to a pursuit of pampering and rituals of self-care.

Gwyneth and I raised sons together. We both provided them with soap and toothpaste and the things boys need to grab in the shower. I tried for years to impart the “5 things” bath/shower routine that took me 34 years to come up with (shampoo, condition, wash face, shave legs, and I know there was a fifth thing, oh yeah, soap up the armpits) to Enzo, but the bottle of teenage cleanser never got any emptier, even when he swore he’d washed his face. I learned to consider it a triumph that he remembers to brush his teeth nightly and flosses when told.

At 18, though, he really does smell nice. He has finally found an ablution routine that makes his brain click. I have to give Old Spice credit for manufacturing creative, funny matching shampoo and deodorant flavors for young men. And I have to give Gardenia credit, too: It was her son who turned Enzo on to “scent layering,” a new fashion frontier for boys.

The Secret ADHD Test for Your Friends

Are your friends blessed with the Awesomeness Development & Happiness Directive? How do you tell? How do you tell them? And how can you help?

Life in the Fast Brain | posted by Kristen Caven

OK, parents, raise your hand if you have a friend who’s got a kid who is, you know, all those special things ADHD kids are, and of course so is your friend (which is probably why she is your friend, because you like the interesting ones), and you don’t exactly feel like you can say to her, “I bet you have ADHD,” because she is just like you were: She held things together.

You don’t exactly feel like you can say to her, “I bet you have ADHD,” because she is just like you were: She held things together.

— Kristen Caven

What will probably happen, though, is that by 9th or 10th grade she will be baffled by the fact her brilliant child is failing, and she will go through the same agonizing diagnostic process you did with your kid, and then find out she is in Holland, so to speak, and then go get herself figured out as well, just like you did. And then you will have another ADHD buddy!

But. You have ADHD and it’s really hard to be patient, and you hate to see your friend struggle like you did, and you want to blurt things out.

So. If you are one of the readers who raised your hand in the first paragraph, maybe you will like this secret test you can use on the sly. It’s much less confusing than the clinical tests, which ask you all sorts of irrelevant things.

1. Do you have an amazing ability to focus? Do you have an amazing intelligence that can power through a problem? Do you give things 1000%?

2. Are you happy in a highly stimulating environment where you can switch your intense focus from one person to the next, or one thing to the next? Do you feel alive when people or things are coming at you and you are connecting with each one and moving it on its way? Like at parties, in sports, or in jobs where things are never dull?

3. But you also get spaced out or overwhelmed, too?

4. Do you miss appointments sometimes? Or show up really late? (I know you do, because it’s happened to me.)

5. Is reading hard sometimes? Do you start reading and get distracted? Would you rather skim and surf and text?

6. Do you hate following directions; you’d rather figure it out on your own?

7. When you are done with one thing and into another, does that first thing fall off your radar?

8. Do you feel like a superhero sometimes? Do you think of others as mere mortals, sometimes, when you recognize how unusual these skills are? Do other people see this and think you are amazing? Or do other people find you incredibly annoying?

9. Do you have powers of observation that others don’t? Does your associative mind make you see all angles that others are missing?

10. Do people sometimes think you are a jerk? In spite of the fact you are so awesome?

11. Are you a notoriously bad sleeper?

12. Are you allergic to paperwork?

13. In yoga class, does your mind just keep clicking along when you are in savasana? Do you get your best thinking done when you’re supposed to be doing something else? Like, um, going to sleep? Do you work things out in your mind while having sex?

14. On the computer, do you work best when you have five programs running? Can you pull together a meal easily with four pots on the fire? Are you a brilliant networker, get-it-don-er, or social media natural, even though your links don't always work? Do you have more than one best friend?

15. Do you have those days when dropping one ball causes a domino effect? Or those days when you just can’t seem to get in the flow? When your mind is skipping like a scratched record or CD? Do you have those days when everything you try to do requires you to do three things first? Do you sometimes find yourself going in circles?

Now, when you are slyly administering this test, maybe one question at a time, your friend will think nothing of it, because that’s just who she is. After a while, if she answers yes to most of them, you can pretend to suddenly discover this blog and send her the link.

And at the bottom of this blog there is a link to a “real” ADHD test. And then you can teach them the secret handshake!

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