LJI S10:1 - the struggle reminds me I'm alive
I have a white board in the kitchen that I ordered off Amazon on the pretense to keep me on top of household chores. It's a nice white board. It came with markers with magnets attached to the back and tiny erasers on the lids, of course in a variety of colors. Blue, black, green, and red.
The white board is as useful to me as soup on a stick. Usually it has some sort of snarky communication between myself and my husband on it. More often than not, the communication involves the proper spelling of the mop-like tool with detachable pads used to clean the tile kitchen floor. He adds a "t" where the second "f" is. I correct him still, more out of habit than anything else.
I have ADD. A few years ago, I was officially diagnosed after hearing all kinds of speculations on what exactly was wrong with me - from cerebral palsy to autistic tendencies to Aspergers, to my father's vague label of a "staying on task disorder", which basically is what ADD is. But no, he doesn't like that diagnosis. And apparently, in his mind, people with ADD can't like to read. So obviously, the psychologist who gave the diagnosis was wrong.
I'm great at starting things. I can say that I'm going to straighten up the living room, which usually looks like a tornado blew through. I grab trash bags and get to work.
There are clear plastic cups from Dunkin Donuts that once held cold brew coffee, empty bottles of America's Choice fruit flavored sparkling water from Walmart. Coffee cups and books litter the side table. The recliner, where the dog likes to sleep, is crowded with books, the overnight bag I packed when we house sat for my in laws last weekend is still there where I dropped it on Sunday when we got home.
I think I'll watch some TV while I work in here, I think to myself. I click on the remote, select one of the DVR'd episodes of "Match Game" I'm addicted to. Patti Deutsch, of the droll wit and hilarious but irrelevant answers, is one of my favorites.
Patti sits in the "dummy seat", bottom row, far right. The spot is sometimes occupied by Betty White, Fannie Flagg (one of my favorite authors, but wait, with the ADD I shouldn't like to read!) or the adorable Joyce Bulifant, ex-daughter in law of Helen Hayes and ex-mother in law of the repugnant Jenny McCarthy.
I wonder what Patti is doing now. I take my phone off the side table and look her up on Wikipedia. She has a son! I wonder what he does. His name is Max. I Google him, too. And then I wonder about the other panelists.
Help me, Obi-Wan Wikipedia, you're my only hope!
Fannie Flagg was in a relationship with Rita Mae Brown!
Betty White was married two or three times before marrying Allen Ludden in 1963.
Brett Somers was married to Robert Klein (not THAT Robert Klein) before she married Jack Klugman.
Nipsey Russell never got married.
Charles Nelson Reilly was almost killed in a circus fire when he was a little kid.
Wikipedia leads me on bunny trails. I bounce from one hyperlink to another for hours, my elbow resting on a pillow I've placed on the armrest of the couch.
And meanwhile, the open mouth of the black trash bag I've set in front of me yawns accusingly, because it's still empty. I have done absolutely nothing I set out to do. But on the up side, I now know random trivia about every Match Game panelist. You don't get to be the reigning family Trivial Pursuit champion by doing housework!
The truth is, if my house was perfectly clean and I had a husband without executive function disorder, who gets overwhelmed when he sees all the things I was going to do but didn't, I don't think I'd feel alive.
So, we live our lives in constant chaos. The dog gets into the trash in the middle of the night and I wake up every morning at seven to feed her, discovering the results of her nighttime scavenging on the couch. I can't be mad. She's just being a dog.
I look at the note on the white board that says "buy new swiffer pads" and notice the second "f" has been turned into a "t", yet again. I sigh to myself, turn it back into an f, and start the day over with grand plans I likely won't achieve.
If I lived in a perfectly clean house without spots on the beige tile floors and a sink full of dishes and a side table full of coffee cups and books, I'd think I was in heaven. But living in constant shades of chaos reminds me that overall, I'm a flawed human...and that in turn, reminds me that I'm alive.