Third Time’s the Charm

There’s an art to getting out the door and staying married—and I discovered it. Or, I should say, my husband did.

Life in the Fast Brain | posted by Kristen Caven

I was so proud of myself, in my late 20s, that I had finally gotten my leaving-the-house foibles figured out. When my boyfriend (and-future-father-of-Enzo), "Dave," moved in with me, I remember crowing about how awesome it was that I could now get out the door with only three trips back inside.

"I remember crowing about how awesome it was that I could now get out the door with only three trips back inside."

— Kristen Caven

His reaction surprised me. It was critical, not supportive. “That’s unacceptable,” he said, glowering at me from the passenger’s seat, where he had been sitting for the past 15 minutes. Actually, I think he laughed and said, “That’s ridiculous. When it’s time to go, you go.” Whatever he said, his strict attention motivated me to start keeping my keys in the same place, to have two pairs of glasses, and to put lipstick on in the car.

I was so proud of myself in my 30s when I recognized how often I made it out of the house on the first try. When there was dressing up involved, or a small child in tow, I’d make allowances, but, by golly, I had really improved! “Dave,” however, who always knows where his stuff is, and who mystically follows the same routines at every dressing and departure, was still less than impressed.

His constant frustration became a source of enlightenment when he met my Great Uncle Zazen.

Uncle Zazen is married to Enzo’s Great Auntie Twinkle, who, when my mother asked her to be my godmother, embraced the “fairy” aspect of it and made me a wand. She is a highly sane person who knows she talks too much, has trouble keeping track of things, and needs to dance or ice skate every day in order to get anything done. (She is also of the generation that does not believe in ADHD, so we are not going to go there.) We were at a family wedding, clustered in rooms together, and all trying to get ourselves out the door. “Dave” noticed Uncle Zazen sitting calmly on the couch, reading a book. He was startled by his serenity.

My uncle explained that, as a practicing Buddhist, he had learned not to try to control her flow but to relax and let it happen. When he is ready to go, he explained, he sits down and relaxes. He does not get up off the couch until Auntie Twinkle is on the porch… or actually in the car and it is started (a sure sign she has the keys). “Dave” was agog. This moment changed his life, and our marriage. Now it doesn’t matter how many times I have to go back. He is happily engaged in a pastime of his choice, with a few more minutes to watch or play.

And I rejoice at how far we have come, each of us: Me in the realm of being more deliberate and prepared, “Dave” in the realm of being patient and peaceful. One less struggle is one more triumph.

Kristen Caven is a mother and a writer, a mover and a shaker, and a creative force in her community. To her, ADHD stands for “Awesomeness Development & Happiness Directive.” Learn more at www.kristencaven.com.

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Ablution Performance 101

Simple hygiene is sometimes beyond the ADHDer.

Life in the Fast Brain | posted by Kristen Caven

I have this amazing girlfriend, whom I shall call Gladiolus. We met in kindergarten 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, 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.

Kristen Caven is a mother and a writer, a mover and a shaker, and a creative force in her community. To her, ADHD stands for “Awesomeness Development & Happiness Directive.” Learn more at www.kristencaven.com.

You’re Not ADD (Part 6): You’re a Virgo

How many ways can you explain away your personality?

Life in the Fast Brain | posted by Kristen Caven

“I will always have this tension inside me,” I explained to my husband once, as we pushed our baby around the lake on one of our weekly walk/talks. “I’m a Leo/Leo Rising, with my moon and all my other planets in Virgo. I’m like a lion in a cage with all of this powerful artistic energy that can’t come out except through the perfectionist side of me.” This was the emotional “stuck point” that I came up against year after year… the painful feeling that I could never truly accomplish my goals. That I could never be fully understood, that I could never truly get traction because I’m always at war with myself somehow.

But when it all comes down to it, neither Astrology nor Psychiatry can help you when your glasses are on your head and you can’t find them.

— Kristen Caven

My understanding husband would laugh at the paragraph above. Not necessarily because I left out his eye-rolling, but specifically, the fifth word after the quotation—“once.” I explained this known fact about myself enough times that he would bring it up sarcastically in our arguments about incompletions. “Yeah, I know Leos can’t remember there’s laundry that needs to go in the dryer, bla bla bla…” (But he’s a Cancer/Gemini cusp, so I’m used to the different sides of his personality…)

Astrological readings have brought me a nice perspective in my life, the two or three times I’ve done them. (Learning Mars is in my house of marriage helped me stay married, since I’d probably have these spats no matter who I was with.) Astrology has helped me be more accepting of other peoples’ personalities (Capricorns, for example, don’t tend to like talking astrology), but more importantly, to be accepting of myself. The good Astrology books I’ve read have helped me understand that our stories may be somewhat sketched out, but we are free to shape them for better or worse, since every human quality can have a negative or a positive expression. These understandings have helped me strive to be a better human being.

When I began my journey to understanding ADHD in adults, I spoke to a friend whose life keeps taking those telltale turns one’s life takes when one can’t keep one’s thoughts inside one’s head…. “For me,” she said. “It’s just because my Mercury’s in Virgo and my Sun is trine with both Pluto and Uranus. Plus I’ve got Chiron conjunct North Node.” I very nearly blurted out, “I wonder if there’s a pill for that…?”

Anyone who is not Astrology-averse must wonder about its relation to modern Psychiatry—since, after all, we are talking about the same human minds that have been on the planet for millions of years. Both fields are observations on the subtleties of the mind, tied to available science (Psychiatry: Chemistry; Astrology: Astronomy), more complex than people realize, imprecise, and, I might add, mutually maligned. In Medical Astrology (yes, it’s a thing) there’s been some research into the connection between natal charts and ADD that points back to chemical sensitivities.

But when it all comes down to it, neither Astrology nor Psychiatry can help you when your glasses are on your head and you can’t find them. That’s why it’s good to have a husband.

"You're Not ADD (Part 1): You're a Blonde"

My friends had no trouble identifying what was different about me, but getting an official diagnosis was harder than I thought.

When my son was diagnosed with ADD, the inattentive kind, it put me on my own path to understanding my own attention pitfalls. As hard as it was to get him sorted out at fifteen, my own out-sorting has been even more challenging. This post begins a new, intermittent (naturally) series about trying to get to my own diagnosis.

There are those of us out there who wear our difference so naturally that it becomes part of our personality.

I hear stories all the time about how quickly doctors prescribe Adderall and Ritalin to anyone who seems a little distracted. But there are those of us out there who wear our difference so naturally that it becomes part of our personality.

Here is a list of character traits that have been assigned to me (mostly fondly, to my good fortune), and to so many others who may be secret ADHD sufferers.

1. Quirky
2. Weird
3. Chatty
4. A Social Butterfly
5. Naturally Stoned
6. Lazy
7. Unmotivated
8. Half-a*ed
9. Spontaneous
10. Flexible
11. Energetic
12. Distracted
13. Spacey
14. Space Cadet
15. A Dreamer
16. A Visionary
17. In My Own World
18. On My Own Planet
19. In La La Land
20. Moody
21. A Temperamental Female
22. A Bit Nuts
23. Bubbly
24. Ditzy
25. Dizzy
26. Scattered, and my personal favorite....
27. Blonde 

OKAY! I can own that! My blonde hair twists and curls chaotically, in every direction — not unlike the mind underneath it.

Blondes have more fun, right? And, because they help me laugh at my own moments of idiocy, I am often amused by jokes about people being dumb. Songs, too. ("Cuz I’m a blonde — B-L-A-N-D! / cuz I’m a blonde — don’t you wish you were me?" — Downtown Julie Brown)

My favorite blonde joke, for those of you who still remember Wite-Out™ and Liquid Paper®, goes like this:

Q: How can you tell a Blonde has been using your computer?
A: The little white marks on the screen.

A funny image to be sure, but the message behind this joke is actually deeply relevant to the ADD journey: until you get the right diagnosis, all the corrections you TRY to make can’t really solve the problem.