Well I wasn’t sure where to go with this article but in the past few posts I’ve sort of wandered off the main purpose for this blog (talk about life with ADD) so I’m going to talk a little about how the diagnosis has shed some light on why I’ve traveled the road that I have. One of the mysteries its solved especially pertains to my education.
I’ve been told that less than 20% of people with ADD ever graduate high school, let alone college. So I feel extremely fortunate to have graduated from both. Still school wasn’t easy for me. Learning that I have this condition has helped shed light on why I always had to work so much harder than my fellow classmates to get the same grades. It helps reaffirm to me that I am not dumb, lazy or stupid. Granted by college, I didn’t believe I was stupid, but I did believe that most everyone around me had vastly superior intelligence. Especially at Ohio Northern, where the average ACT score for most was 25-26, (mine was 21). In a world of 1.5 gigahertz processors, I felt like mine was 512 megahertz. I could do anything else they could do, it just took me much longer to get there.
One of the things my parents and I could never figure out, was why I could do so well in social studies, history, and biology, but be horrendously bad in math. My mother was a Jr. High math teacher for many years and is so good at it, she taught herself computer programming. I can’t tell you how hard she tried to help me, how many stress filled nights we spent at the kitchen table sweating out math homework. I can’t begin to describe how aggravated and frustrated she was with me when it came to math. Its not her fault and it was only natural. But this mystery was perplexing. Clearly I wasn’t stupid, how else could you explain my good grades in everything else. But at more than one point, she felt I was being undisciplined and I felt I was just stupid. But again, I don’t think it was my parents fault that it wasn’t caught sooner. The prevailing thought about ADD at the time was that it presented itself in the form of misbehavior and horrendously bad grades. While I had some issues, I was never bad enough to throw-up a flag in anyone’s mind. I rarely acted-out in school, wasn’t running around with junkies outside of school, and was in most respects a well adjusted child.
I do remember a tear filled conversation Mom had with me, when I briefly went back to college to peruse a second degree in biomedical electronics. Two weeks into a level one trigonometry course, Mom spent three hours trying to help me grasp the basic concepts. With tears in her eyes, she had to tell me, “Mike I’m sorry but since you’re struggling so badly with this stuff, you need to reconsider doing this. If you were my student, I’d have to say you probably aren’t cut out for this major. It only gets far more complicated from here. And it hurts me badly to have to tell you that”.
Even in the subjects I was good at, I had to work so hard. What took most students minutes to grasp, took me hours and days. How I even got through college, let alone managed to eek out modest success, is a mystery to me knowing what I know now. But it does explain why my GPA was so herky-jerky or erratic. Always the same cycle, I’d do extremely well one quarter only to barely scrape-by the next. When I did well, it was because I worked so intensely hard, that I had nothing left to give the following quarter. All are very typical of someone with ADD. Furthermore, I did best when I had a very heavy course load. It forced me to micromanage my time and multiple subjects helped stimulate my interests and not allow me to become bored and lethargic. If I was only taking the minimum twelve credit hours, it was very easy to procrastinate. Since I only had a few subjects, there wasn’t enough variety to keep my interest. Usually the reason I was taking a light course load, was that I was taking a difficult math or science course and didn’t want to further add to my stress. Knowing what I do now, I realize that this logic only added to my stress actually.
It also has helped me make sense of why my study methods were always so unorthodox. Look at some of my previous posts if you want to know more. But one thing that occurred to me, was why I could never study in the dorms or my apartment. If I had serious studying to do, I went to the library, or found an empty classroom in the political science building. There was too much noise in the dorms and it not only prevented me from studying, but also made me very irritable. Mouse farts can startle me and make me jump 50 feet in the air. When I got my own apartment to get away from this, there were too many distractions and time draining temptations to allow for effective studying.
ADD has also helped shed light on why I’ve had the job history that I have. In the past I’d get bored with the job after six months, and because I was daydreaming, I’d suddenly become very mistake prone which lead to overall poor performance and put me on bad standing with my employer. Granted because of poor social skills and a short-fused, super intense temper, I had usually fallen out of favor with them long ago. Now, I know to find ways to stay motivated and interested and self awareness has helped me get my temper in check. I still struggle with social skills, but I’m getting there. I’ve been very fortunate with my current employer because the last two managers I’ve had, have been very receptive and responsive to my needs. I applaud both of them in fact for being very open minded. I simply went to them and said “I have ADD this is something I was diagnosed with 6 months ago. Its not an excuse, and I don’t want the standards or expectations lowered for me. But can you help me with developing more positive relationships with my co-workers ? Its typical of people with ADD to struggle with these issues”. Both of them are extremely strong in this area and have been able to help me grow and improve. I feel very lucky to have managers who’ve been so supportive. Some co-workers have even commented that they’ve notices a big change.
Learning about my condition has helped me understand why I struggle when it comes to basic life skills. Its typical of us, to put off paying bills until we get the disconnect notice from the power or gas company even if we have the money to pay. Explain the impulsiveness when it comes to making big purchases that we can’t actually afford. And like before, with self awareness comes self improvement. My apartment is 50 times cleaner now than it once was, you’ll see note pads, pens, and calculators stationed in several strategic places to help me stay organized, and post-it notes everywhere. My computer, cell phone, and stove timers chime repeatedly throughout the day to remind me about one thing or another. I also use two alarm clocks and if I need to get-up especially early for something especially important, I’ll improvise four.
I think most of all, knowing and understanding about my condition, has allowed me to be more comfortable being me. I know that I need to continue to improve in the areas where I am weak. However, I no longer feel like I’m dumb, stupid or lazy. I can accept that I’m prone to struggle when it comes to certain things and seek to get better, without feeling bad about it. I’m more comfortable with being me and wearing my own skin.
Okay, enough for now. Until next time, this is the RedHeaded Rambler, signing off.
19 December 2009
16 December 2009
14 December 2009
More stories about cleaning ADD style
Wonder whatever happened to Bookman Old Style the font ? I loved it because it was the only font that could stretch a paper typed using Times New Roman, from 4 pages long to 6 pages long, maybe even 7 if you moved the font from 12 to 12.5. Granted it made my term papers look like children’s books, but still I got the A. Before we get too much farther remember standard disclosures under the “About Me” section apply as always.
Anyhow, sorry I haven’t written in a while. Got busy with visiting dignitaries and during the confusion forgot to take my ADD medication. I’m amazed at how I am without it !! Between the super cold weather we had on my last days off, and the lack of stimulant medication, it took extreme mental effort just to roll out of bed for 4 hours and clean myself. If it weren’t for the rather extreme build-up of BO propelling my strong desire for a shower, I’d probably be full bed sores and dust mites by now. Not unlike the hibernation habits of many mammals found north of the Mason-Dixon Line I guess. It was interesting to note the differences in my personality. With the medication, I’m a relatively “normal” person, without it, I’m a walking zombie (so long as I don’t have anyone to pick a fight with) who doesn’t even want to engage in my favorite hobby: surfing the internet. Or I’m a ticking bomb spoiling for a fight, which releases adrenalin stimulating my frontal cortex. Games we ADD people play !! I once got into a yelling match because some lady called me “Sir” at the grocery store !! I had somehow convinced myself that she was implying I was old !! Don’t miss those days.
Well getting on with the topic listed, I learned about an important thing to dust while my Mother was visiting. You see I have several cream-colored lamp shades with a curved ridge texture. Who’d have thought about dust building-up in those things, and not just a little either !! I’m talking about enough to put a coal processing plant to shame !!!! Here’s how I made this discovery.
Mom and I were relaxing and sipping coco after a wonderful evening at the Columbus Zoo Light Festival (a MUST see and a perfect and low cost family event if you live in the Central Ohio Area by the way). Mom set her cup down on a end table to get something from the kitchen. While she was up, I noticed a fly of all things crawling up the lamp shade. Hark, this offensive sight must be dispatched immediately least my mother see the unsanitary conditions of my apartment !!!! So I grabbed a newspaper to swat it, little realizing I was about to put my lack of cleanliness prowess on full display. Simultaneously, I swat the fly smacking the lampshade, just as my mother returns from the kitchen and walks-up beside me. The resulting dust-explosion made Mom and I look like chimneysweeps from the 1900’s after a 16 hour day ! And yeah, the coco was contaminated beyond the point of consumption too.
To my mother’s credit, she didn’t get mad. In fact she laughed so hard, she cried ! I think she almost peed her pants and choked from uncontrollable laughter while curled-up in the fetal position of my living room !! I was confused by all these different and very unexpected calls to my brain to respond initially. Neither the dust explosion or my mother’s reaction were what I expected to come from this process, and the switchboard to my brain was overloaded. I didn’t know whether I should continue to pursue the fly, start cleaning the dust which had covered everything within ten feet of the lamp, get angry with my mother, clean off my glasses ? Decisions, decisions, decisions hhhmmm !!!
Well, it immediately became clear to me, that my eye glasses had to be cleared and a battle damage assessment taken before anything else took place. After wiping several layers of crud from them, my mom had recovered from her laughing spell long enough to show me how to use the vacuum to clean-up the dust. She also supervised my vacuuming of the rest of my dust-shades I mean lampshades to help prevent another such causality in the future. So for all you ADD bachelors out there, grab your vacuum, put the brush attachment on it, and clean the dust from those lights, next time you pull that particular device out of the shed. Better still, print off a copy of this article right now, and go tape it to the handle. You’re certain to forget it otherwise.
Until next time, this is the RedHeaded Rambler signing off.
Anyhow, sorry I haven’t written in a while. Got busy with visiting dignitaries and during the confusion forgot to take my ADD medication. I’m amazed at how I am without it !! Between the super cold weather we had on my last days off, and the lack of stimulant medication, it took extreme mental effort just to roll out of bed for 4 hours and clean myself. If it weren’t for the rather extreme build-up of BO propelling my strong desire for a shower, I’d probably be full bed sores and dust mites by now. Not unlike the hibernation habits of many mammals found north of the Mason-Dixon Line I guess. It was interesting to note the differences in my personality. With the medication, I’m a relatively “normal” person, without it, I’m a walking zombie (so long as I don’t have anyone to pick a fight with) who doesn’t even want to engage in my favorite hobby: surfing the internet. Or I’m a ticking bomb spoiling for a fight, which releases adrenalin stimulating my frontal cortex. Games we ADD people play !! I once got into a yelling match because some lady called me “Sir” at the grocery store !! I had somehow convinced myself that she was implying I was old !! Don’t miss those days.
Well getting on with the topic listed, I learned about an important thing to dust while my Mother was visiting. You see I have several cream-colored lamp shades with a curved ridge texture. Who’d have thought about dust building-up in those things, and not just a little either !! I’m talking about enough to put a coal processing plant to shame !!!! Here’s how I made this discovery.
Mom and I were relaxing and sipping coco after a wonderful evening at the Columbus Zoo Light Festival (a MUST see and a perfect and low cost family event if you live in the Central Ohio Area by the way). Mom set her cup down on a end table to get something from the kitchen. While she was up, I noticed a fly of all things crawling up the lamp shade. Hark, this offensive sight must be dispatched immediately least my mother see the unsanitary conditions of my apartment !!!! So I grabbed a newspaper to swat it, little realizing I was about to put my lack of cleanliness prowess on full display. Simultaneously, I swat the fly smacking the lampshade, just as my mother returns from the kitchen and walks-up beside me. The resulting dust-explosion made Mom and I look like chimneysweeps from the 1900’s after a 16 hour day ! And yeah, the coco was contaminated beyond the point of consumption too.
To my mother’s credit, she didn’t get mad. In fact she laughed so hard, she cried ! I think she almost peed her pants and choked from uncontrollable laughter while curled-up in the fetal position of my living room !! I was confused by all these different and very unexpected calls to my brain to respond initially. Neither the dust explosion or my mother’s reaction were what I expected to come from this process, and the switchboard to my brain was overloaded. I didn’t know whether I should continue to pursue the fly, start cleaning the dust which had covered everything within ten feet of the lamp, get angry with my mother, clean off my glasses ? Decisions, decisions, decisions hhhmmm !!!
Well, it immediately became clear to me, that my eye glasses had to be cleared and a battle damage assessment taken before anything else took place. After wiping several layers of crud from them, my mom had recovered from her laughing spell long enough to show me how to use the vacuum to clean-up the dust. She also supervised my vacuuming of the rest of my dust-shades I mean lampshades to help prevent another such causality in the future. So for all you ADD bachelors out there, grab your vacuum, put the brush attachment on it, and clean the dust from those lights, next time you pull that particular device out of the shed. Better still, print off a copy of this article right now, and go tape it to the handle. You’re certain to forget it otherwise.
Until next time, this is the RedHeaded Rambler signing off.
05 December 2009
What kind of Women I'm into
I started filling this free personals ad type thing out on my myspace account today and realized it'd make a good blog entry. It asked for an in depth answer describing what kind of women you wanted to meet. If you ever wondered: here it is. As usual remember disclaimer under "About Me" section
I love independent confident women. They don't intimidate me, well sometimes they do :) Who wants to date a wallflower anyhow ? May as well go out with a toy doll if that's what you are into. I find intelligence very sexy.
I think more so now than ever before, its very important to me to find someone who is confident and comfortable wearing the skin they are in. Confidence is VERY sexy to me. Sure we all carry some emotional baggage and have our quirks. I learned long ago no one is perfect. I don't care who you were in the past, only who you are now. While I don't have any deep dark secrets, there are things in my past that I would have handled differently if given the choice again.
I have just come off a hard patch myself, so I understand what its like. While I'm not about to raise my hand in a victory dance, it is safe to say I'm in a much better place now, than I've ever been in my life. God has blessed me greatly through all the people he's put in my life along the way. Wouldn't want to do it again, but I am much stronger and a much better person for having made the trip.
I only bring this up because its become a part of my identity and who I am. I can only be me. While I'd like to think I'm always on a quest to grow and improve as a person, whether I succeed or not, I'll still be me, Mike A. I see in many profiles about women not wanting a person who "plays games". I'm not about to give a worn out line about how I"m different. But do understand because of what I described in the paragraph before, its just not in me to engage in "reindeer games" and likewise I don't have much stomach for women playing mind games with me either. I learned I cannot lie, so I quit trying awhile ago. I've leaned through years of working in customer service how to spot most people who lie too, and that its best to steer clear of them rather than confront them.
My friends know be to be loyal to a fault, someone who is not scared to stick my neck out for someone I feel is being wronged or deserves a second chance. One of my catch phrases is "If they are going to yell at someone, let them yell at me. Besides they'll find the line long and distinguished". But I no longer walk around hanging my jaw out looking for a fight either. I've been told that I'm more sensitive than I try to appear, and that I'm a very good listener who doesn't give the impression of being so. Part of that has to do with what I mentioned a paragraph earlier. But I'll let you ask me that if you care to know and only after you've told me all there is to know about you.
As I'm swimming through these moments of reflective thought, I often enjoy listening to music. Other than a dislike for almost all things rap, my tastes in music are very diverse. The first one I've chosen has to do with where I was.
November Rain
Guns N Roses | MySpace Music Videos
Lastly Here's one that has always been a favorite of mine because I interpret it to be about new beginnings, and that's what's kind of on my mind right now. Enjoy
HERE I GO AGAIN
valentin | MySpace Video
Until next time, this is the RedHeaded Rambler Signing off.
I love independent confident women. They don't intimidate me, well sometimes they do :) Who wants to date a wallflower anyhow ? May as well go out with a toy doll if that's what you are into. I find intelligence very sexy.
I think more so now than ever before, its very important to me to find someone who is confident and comfortable wearing the skin they are in. Confidence is VERY sexy to me. Sure we all carry some emotional baggage and have our quirks. I learned long ago no one is perfect. I don't care who you were in the past, only who you are now. While I don't have any deep dark secrets, there are things in my past that I would have handled differently if given the choice again.
I have just come off a hard patch myself, so I understand what its like. While I'm not about to raise my hand in a victory dance, it is safe to say I'm in a much better place now, than I've ever been in my life. God has blessed me greatly through all the people he's put in my life along the way. Wouldn't want to do it again, but I am much stronger and a much better person for having made the trip.
I only bring this up because its become a part of my identity and who I am. I can only be me. While I'd like to think I'm always on a quest to grow and improve as a person, whether I succeed or not, I'll still be me, Mike A. I see in many profiles about women not wanting a person who "plays games". I'm not about to give a worn out line about how I"m different. But do understand because of what I described in the paragraph before, its just not in me to engage in "reindeer games" and likewise I don't have much stomach for women playing mind games with me either. I learned I cannot lie, so I quit trying awhile ago. I've leaned through years of working in customer service how to spot most people who lie too, and that its best to steer clear of them rather than confront them.
My friends know be to be loyal to a fault, someone who is not scared to stick my neck out for someone I feel is being wronged or deserves a second chance. One of my catch phrases is "If they are going to yell at someone, let them yell at me. Besides they'll find the line long and distinguished". But I no longer walk around hanging my jaw out looking for a fight either. I've been told that I'm more sensitive than I try to appear, and that I'm a very good listener who doesn't give the impression of being so. Part of that has to do with what I mentioned a paragraph earlier. But I'll let you ask me that if you care to know and only after you've told me all there is to know about you.
As I'm swimming through these moments of reflective thought, I often enjoy listening to music. Other than a dislike for almost all things rap, my tastes in music are very diverse. The first one I've chosen has to do with where I was.
November Rain
Guns N Roses | MySpace Music Videos
Lastly Here's one that has always been a favorite of mine because I interpret it to be about new beginnings, and that's what's kind of on my mind right now. Enjoy
HERE I GO AGAIN
valentin | MySpace Video
Until next time, this is the RedHeaded Rambler Signing off.
04 December 2009
03 December 2009
ADD Humor on cleaning
First, please remember the disclaimer listed under the “About Me” section on the right side.
Finally the last of the laundry is spinning away in the dryer, the floor is nearly dry, dishwasher only has the remnants of supper’s utensils inside it, and the whole place smells of an improvised cleaning solution of cooking wine and 409. When my apartment is in a state such as this, it can only mean one thing. Mother is coming to town.
Like a lot of sons, I always spend a bit of extra time cleaning the apartment before she arrives. The whole place could smell and look like a pigsty for Dad, but for Mom, it must be clean. Its not that Mom will complain if its not, but she’ll be unable to withstand her motherly instincts and start cleaning it for me. She can’t help herself, its just how she’s wired. Also like a lot of bachelors, when it comes to cleaning, it doesn’t come naturally for me. This time, it only required about four hours of fine tuning. In times not far ago, for me this would be a three week ordeal requiring a maximum effort and nerves of steel. I hope this means things are progressing. You’d think my limited military experience would have turned me into a clean freak. Be assured it did NOT !! If anything, the Army taught me how tedious and unpleasant cleaning is, and I’ve taken every opportunity since to rebel against Green Mother’s ways. Past tales of the hygienic state of my residences have become the thing of family legend and unfortunately there is too many elements of truth to these myths. I’ll not reveal a few of those for your reading pleasure.
When it comes to hygiene its important to understand that I don’t have a very good sense of smell. Repeated bouts of flue and head colds during my early years somehow damaged my olfactory senses. If I can smell it, it is bad. Often times, I can literally feel the odor blast blow over my face and still be unable to detect the offending odor. In the course of a first aide training seminar with the Army, I manage to acquire a very large supply of smelling salts. One night, stone sober even, a group of us started huffing on them to see who could take it the longest. Granted my eyes were burning something awful, but I inhaled eight packets before giving up. The next closest soldier did three. The home I was raised in, is a mile north of a pig farm and two miles east of a turkey farm, so I really never felt the need to complain about this impaired sense. Combine that with an extreme disinterest in cleaning, and its lead to some interesting stories over the years.
One of the first has to do with a lost pumpkin. As a kid, one October, Mom took us to a pumpkin farm where we were allowed to pick out small pumpkins and gourds to paint for Halloween. After affixing my artistic impressions to these decorative squash, I put mine in a cabinet in headboard of my bed and forgot about them. I would not see them again until early summer. I never could smell what Mom and Dad were talking about, but starting in early spring they would start to detect an unpleasant odor in my room. Initially my folks thought I’d spilled something in there and ordered me to clean my room. They started getting ticked off thinking I wasn’t following orders after about the third week and inspected it for themselves. Much to their surprise, they actually found my room to be clean !! The smell progressively became worse and worse. Mom even brought over Grandparents and a friend who ran a maid cleaning service to investigate. No one could figure it out. By early summer it had become almost unbearable for them, though I never did smell it. The odor finally got to Dad one day and in a fit of frustration he went through my room opening every drawer and door in my little domicile. When he opened the cabinet over my headboard, he nearly fainted from the smell. There inside were the jellified remains of what had been a 6lb pumpkin and half a dozen gourds. It required the use of a spatula, hazmat gloves, and a wet bandanna to clear the remains. Poor Dad had to do this himself, Mom and my sister were too busy vomiting and I was too busy laughing to help. It wouldn’t be the first time my lack of olfactory ability would lead to such embarrassment or discomfort, usually for someone else.
There was the time two years ago where I went home and wanting to do help Mom and Dad out, I spent the first half of the day cleaning dog kennels. This is something that gets done about once every few years, involves hydraulic, equipment, and very much resembles hauling manure from a livestock barn. After this, I jumped in the shower and met them and extended family for the annual Christmas gathering. I didn’t realize, nor could I detect that this manure odor usually stays on your body for the next few days regardless of how many times you shower or wash your clothes !!! Here’s how my father put it. “Son there are times a man looks into the eyes of his offspring and just can’t help but feel he’s done well. This is NOT one of them !!”.
I mentioned before that I have a love for all things garlic, some would even say its an unnatural love. At one point in my college years I lived in what basically amounted to a studio apartment that had criminally bad ventilation. While living there one winter, I discovered how amazing the combination of minced garlic and grilled chicken go together. I took eight chicken thighs and put them on my George Foreman Grill and added two heaping table spoons of minced garlic per chicken thigh and another four to the rice dish. One month latter the parents came to visit me. Dad stopped mid-stride walking in the door, involuntarily flinched and said “WOW !!! You scared of vampires son ?”. They spent the next three days trying to air-out my residence and insisting on having all of my clothes dry cleaned. Mom would latter have her revenge.
My beloved George Foreman Grill, has played a pivotal role in a lot of these stories. For some reason, the beef and pork fat that collects in the drip-tray helps generate one of the few foul orders I can smell. I’ve forgotten to empty it a few times only to come back from a 12 hour shift at work to the smell of a biology experiment gone bad. I usually empty it into the trash can, and if I let the trash build up too much before taking it out, there’s always a price to pay. My neighbor was over a few weeks ago and said something about an odor. I opened the lid to my trash can to see if things were due to be changed and it felt as if I was punched in the face. I’d estimate the grease from two weeks of cooking nothing but hamburgers was in there. I have a problem with mold in my apartment, it will start growing on anything it perceives as a food source. If I forget to empty the drip-tray and it sits out for a few days, when I do remember it, its like a Petri-dish from hell inside of it. I’m always certain to kill off anything spawning in there by dousing with a gallon of 409. I want no responsibility for creating a new biological species that man can’t control !! Despite this, George is probably one of my most favorite cooking tools second only to my gas grill. It can turn out high quality meat entries, that are cheaper and more healthy than anything you can warm-up in a microwave. It actually takes less time to make them than it does to nuke most microwave dinners too. Six months ago, Mom got her revenge on my old friend of ten years. As I was getting back on my feet from everything I’ve had to deal with this past year, the folks came down to help me out. In the course of helping me get organized Mom started cleaning again. She saw old George’s grill sitting on the counter with ten years of charred meat and seasoning hard baked onto the “non-stick” grates, knew there was no possible way to clean it well enough to meet basic standards of sanitation, and made me throw the old girl out. My new one grills things very very fast and it has taken some getting used to. Dad believes it’s because the heat doesn’t have to work its way through two inches of grit and grim before reaching the food.
Two more stories, then I’m wrapping this up. The first is actually unrelated but still funny. My first year at THE Ohio State University, I lived in your stereo-typical run- down town home on South Campus, with three other guys. All of us were prior military and not the sort of early twenty something’s who are still learning how to deal with things. It became obvious by the second day that this place had a serious mouse problem. There were mouse tracks all over the place, and any food not kept in a sealed container, ended-up a victim to their nightly patrols. We argued with the landlord for a month about the problem. They kept saying there was no problem, we were just trying to find an excuse to jip them on rent. Finally, one day we went to a hardware store and found a deal on mouse traps. It was twelve for a buck or something like that, anyhow we got a ton of them. That night, all we heard was the snapping of mouse traps, baited with peanut butter, and actually had to get-up at one point and reset most of them. In two days we caught twenty of them. It almost gagged us, we knew we had a problem, but were surprised to learn just how bad it was. When the count reached thirty with no end in sight, it occurred to us that it was only a matter of time before the mice led a successful revolt and took full control of the house. Still our calls to the real-estate company to inform them of these findings and renew our request for someone to come out and take care of the problem fell on deaf ears. So we took about twenty dead mice placed them in zip lock bags, along with our rent checks, and a letter we signed saying, “Here’s the rent, paid in full, along with proof of the vermin infestation. We request that you please send an exterminator out here. Be assured that the next request will be sent through an attorney. Thank-you”. They got someone out there latter that day, along with the company’s sincerest apologies for this “misunderstanding”. Clearly someone at the real-estate company thought we were psychopaths. We weren’t, we just felt there was a “failure to communicate” and wanted to help clarify things in such a way as to not be “misunderstood“ again.
Last one. During the same visit that Mom made me say good bye to old George, I also learned that drinking and vacuuming doesn’t mix much better than drinking and driving. My vacuum got plugged up, and while I’d been able to fix it, it wasn’t quite the same and I had to empty the dirt from the hose before it got to the tank. While we were certain something else was still plugging it up, we could not determine what or where. Dad and I pulled the whole thing apart twice, reamed out the hose and pipes with a broom handle, and anything else we could think of. The vacuum was a couple minutes away from suffering the same fate my grill had just suffered when Mom realized we hadn’t checked the coupler where the hose attaches to the vacuum tank. When we pulled that off, we found a very bent-up beer bottle cap wedged in there blocking ¾ of the opening. So kids remember, don’t drink and drive and don’t drink and vacuum, neither will end well.
With that though, this is the Redheaded Rambler signing off.
Finally the last of the laundry is spinning away in the dryer, the floor is nearly dry, dishwasher only has the remnants of supper’s utensils inside it, and the whole place smells of an improvised cleaning solution of cooking wine and 409. When my apartment is in a state such as this, it can only mean one thing. Mother is coming to town.
Like a lot of sons, I always spend a bit of extra time cleaning the apartment before she arrives. The whole place could smell and look like a pigsty for Dad, but for Mom, it must be clean. Its not that Mom will complain if its not, but she’ll be unable to withstand her motherly instincts and start cleaning it for me. She can’t help herself, its just how she’s wired. Also like a lot of bachelors, when it comes to cleaning, it doesn’t come naturally for me. This time, it only required about four hours of fine tuning. In times not far ago, for me this would be a three week ordeal requiring a maximum effort and nerves of steel. I hope this means things are progressing. You’d think my limited military experience would have turned me into a clean freak. Be assured it did NOT !! If anything, the Army taught me how tedious and unpleasant cleaning is, and I’ve taken every opportunity since to rebel against Green Mother’s ways. Past tales of the hygienic state of my residences have become the thing of family legend and unfortunately there is too many elements of truth to these myths. I’ll not reveal a few of those for your reading pleasure.
When it comes to hygiene its important to understand that I don’t have a very good sense of smell. Repeated bouts of flue and head colds during my early years somehow damaged my olfactory senses. If I can smell it, it is bad. Often times, I can literally feel the odor blast blow over my face and still be unable to detect the offending odor. In the course of a first aide training seminar with the Army, I manage to acquire a very large supply of smelling salts. One night, stone sober even, a group of us started huffing on them to see who could take it the longest. Granted my eyes were burning something awful, but I inhaled eight packets before giving up. The next closest soldier did three. The home I was raised in, is a mile north of a pig farm and two miles east of a turkey farm, so I really never felt the need to complain about this impaired sense. Combine that with an extreme disinterest in cleaning, and its lead to some interesting stories over the years.
One of the first has to do with a lost pumpkin. As a kid, one October, Mom took us to a pumpkin farm where we were allowed to pick out small pumpkins and gourds to paint for Halloween. After affixing my artistic impressions to these decorative squash, I put mine in a cabinet in headboard of my bed and forgot about them. I would not see them again until early summer. I never could smell what Mom and Dad were talking about, but starting in early spring they would start to detect an unpleasant odor in my room. Initially my folks thought I’d spilled something in there and ordered me to clean my room. They started getting ticked off thinking I wasn’t following orders after about the third week and inspected it for themselves. Much to their surprise, they actually found my room to be clean !! The smell progressively became worse and worse. Mom even brought over Grandparents and a friend who ran a maid cleaning service to investigate. No one could figure it out. By early summer it had become almost unbearable for them, though I never did smell it. The odor finally got to Dad one day and in a fit of frustration he went through my room opening every drawer and door in my little domicile. When he opened the cabinet over my headboard, he nearly fainted from the smell. There inside were the jellified remains of what had been a 6lb pumpkin and half a dozen gourds. It required the use of a spatula, hazmat gloves, and a wet bandanna to clear the remains. Poor Dad had to do this himself, Mom and my sister were too busy vomiting and I was too busy laughing to help. It wouldn’t be the first time my lack of olfactory ability would lead to such embarrassment or discomfort, usually for someone else.
There was the time two years ago where I went home and wanting to do help Mom and Dad out, I spent the first half of the day cleaning dog kennels. This is something that gets done about once every few years, involves hydraulic, equipment, and very much resembles hauling manure from a livestock barn. After this, I jumped in the shower and met them and extended family for the annual Christmas gathering. I didn’t realize, nor could I detect that this manure odor usually stays on your body for the next few days regardless of how many times you shower or wash your clothes !!! Here’s how my father put it. “Son there are times a man looks into the eyes of his offspring and just can’t help but feel he’s done well. This is NOT one of them !!”.
I mentioned before that I have a love for all things garlic, some would even say its an unnatural love. At one point in my college years I lived in what basically amounted to a studio apartment that had criminally bad ventilation. While living there one winter, I discovered how amazing the combination of minced garlic and grilled chicken go together. I took eight chicken thighs and put them on my George Foreman Grill and added two heaping table spoons of minced garlic per chicken thigh and another four to the rice dish. One month latter the parents came to visit me. Dad stopped mid-stride walking in the door, involuntarily flinched and said “WOW !!! You scared of vampires son ?”. They spent the next three days trying to air-out my residence and insisting on having all of my clothes dry cleaned. Mom would latter have her revenge.
My beloved George Foreman Grill, has played a pivotal role in a lot of these stories. For some reason, the beef and pork fat that collects in the drip-tray helps generate one of the few foul orders I can smell. I’ve forgotten to empty it a few times only to come back from a 12 hour shift at work to the smell of a biology experiment gone bad. I usually empty it into the trash can, and if I let the trash build up too much before taking it out, there’s always a price to pay. My neighbor was over a few weeks ago and said something about an odor. I opened the lid to my trash can to see if things were due to be changed and it felt as if I was punched in the face. I’d estimate the grease from two weeks of cooking nothing but hamburgers was in there. I have a problem with mold in my apartment, it will start growing on anything it perceives as a food source. If I forget to empty the drip-tray and it sits out for a few days, when I do remember it, its like a Petri-dish from hell inside of it. I’m always certain to kill off anything spawning in there by dousing with a gallon of 409. I want no responsibility for creating a new biological species that man can’t control !! Despite this, George is probably one of my most favorite cooking tools second only to my gas grill. It can turn out high quality meat entries, that are cheaper and more healthy than anything you can warm-up in a microwave. It actually takes less time to make them than it does to nuke most microwave dinners too. Six months ago, Mom got her revenge on my old friend of ten years. As I was getting back on my feet from everything I’ve had to deal with this past year, the folks came down to help me out. In the course of helping me get organized Mom started cleaning again. She saw old George’s grill sitting on the counter with ten years of charred meat and seasoning hard baked onto the “non-stick” grates, knew there was no possible way to clean it well enough to meet basic standards of sanitation, and made me throw the old girl out. My new one grills things very very fast and it has taken some getting used to. Dad believes it’s because the heat doesn’t have to work its way through two inches of grit and grim before reaching the food.
Two more stories, then I’m wrapping this up. The first is actually unrelated but still funny. My first year at THE Ohio State University, I lived in your stereo-typical run- down town home on South Campus, with three other guys. All of us were prior military and not the sort of early twenty something’s who are still learning how to deal with things. It became obvious by the second day that this place had a serious mouse problem. There were mouse tracks all over the place, and any food not kept in a sealed container, ended-up a victim to their nightly patrols. We argued with the landlord for a month about the problem. They kept saying there was no problem, we were just trying to find an excuse to jip them on rent. Finally, one day we went to a hardware store and found a deal on mouse traps. It was twelve for a buck or something like that, anyhow we got a ton of them. That night, all we heard was the snapping of mouse traps, baited with peanut butter, and actually had to get-up at one point and reset most of them. In two days we caught twenty of them. It almost gagged us, we knew we had a problem, but were surprised to learn just how bad it was. When the count reached thirty with no end in sight, it occurred to us that it was only a matter of time before the mice led a successful revolt and took full control of the house. Still our calls to the real-estate company to inform them of these findings and renew our request for someone to come out and take care of the problem fell on deaf ears. So we took about twenty dead mice placed them in zip lock bags, along with our rent checks, and a letter we signed saying, “Here’s the rent, paid in full, along with proof of the vermin infestation. We request that you please send an exterminator out here. Be assured that the next request will be sent through an attorney. Thank-you”. They got someone out there latter that day, along with the company’s sincerest apologies for this “misunderstanding”. Clearly someone at the real-estate company thought we were psychopaths. We weren’t, we just felt there was a “failure to communicate” and wanted to help clarify things in such a way as to not be “misunderstood“ again.
Last one. During the same visit that Mom made me say good bye to old George, I also learned that drinking and vacuuming doesn’t mix much better than drinking and driving. My vacuum got plugged up, and while I’d been able to fix it, it wasn’t quite the same and I had to empty the dirt from the hose before it got to the tank. While we were certain something else was still plugging it up, we could not determine what or where. Dad and I pulled the whole thing apart twice, reamed out the hose and pipes with a broom handle, and anything else we could think of. The vacuum was a couple minutes away from suffering the same fate my grill had just suffered when Mom realized we hadn’t checked the coupler where the hose attaches to the vacuum tank. When we pulled that off, we found a very bent-up beer bottle cap wedged in there blocking ¾ of the opening. So kids remember, don’t drink and drive and don’t drink and vacuum, neither will end well.
With that though, this is the Redheaded Rambler signing off.
02 December 2009
Hear Ye, Yeah Ye, Year He ! New blog post by morning, ADD HUMOR !!
I'm busily working on preparing for my Mother's visit by trying to clean my apartment with the sort of cleaning intensity only reserved for preparation for a Sergent Major Inspection, and laughing at myself the whole time. Also I found the last post a little bit intense and I don't want to fall into that frame of thought while my Mother is here. She doesn't come down every week, so wanna be in the mind frame to laugh and joke.
Here's a bit of a teaser for you in the meant time.
Things that have happened already today while cleaning !
One of the things I have always struggled with that seems typical of ADD people is cleaning. Now as my treatment has progressed, its actually one of the improvements people have really taken notice of. Clearly things have improved dramatically, but I still have some room for improvement. See the following.
While mopping my kitchen floor, I noticed that while I'd been doing a much better job of keeping my counters wiped off, I'd neglected the cabinet and oven doors !! It hadn't occurred to me until just 45 mins ago, that my cabinet doors looked like Pigpen, Cookie Monster, The Blob, fifteen ultra muddy Labrador retrievers and 3 year-old kids had thrown a mud-pie making party in my kitchen !!! I rubbed-up against one of the doors while scrubbing something and I don't know if I'll every get the brownish gray streak out of my t-shirt !! Little bit of a detail I'll need to watch !
To my annoyance, I opened up the clothes washer to find one of my pet peeves, a damp load of launder still in there from three days prior. This is something I've gotten somewhat better about. Its typical of me for forget about a load of launder in the washer. At least now, I don't simply throw them into the dryer without rerunning it first. Before, it could be in there for who knows how long: a day ? A week ? a fiscal quarter perhaps ? and since I barely have a sense of smell, would simply throw them into the dryer without rewashing it. That this is a bad idea, actually was brought to my attention two years ago when I went home while wearing clothes from such a load. I was emanating such an overwhelming mildew smell, it nearly gagged my poor mother and sister. But that wasn't what bothered me so much. What REALLY bothered me was that since this was a fairly common practice for me at the time, who knows how many fellow co-workers it effected in the close confines of a call center !! I'm sure there were days at the office where it wasn't easy for people to be my friend. Glad it was pointed out before it became an HR issue !!!
So far today, I've misplaced my mop twice, my roll of paper towels several as well. I spent easily 15 minutes looking for the roll, only to realize I was holding them !!! Have had to re-mop twice because I forgot that the floor was wet and tracked dust across the linoleum. Reminds me of a time when I used to smoke while on active duty. I had a habit of putting the butts in my pocket so someone else wouldn't have to pick them up. Standard for me, I'd forget to empty my pockets and most guys would wear the same uniform 2-3 days in a row. So while on a work detail picking up cigarette butts, we were miffed because no matter how good of a job we did, we always found more when the sergeant inspected the area. After about 20 minutes of this, come to realize I had forgotten to btutton a cargo pocket that had about 30-40 of them in there. I'd been leaking cigarette butts from my pocket the whole time we were picking them up !! My sergeant nearly kicked my butt and can't say I blame him !!!
One of the things on my to-do list tonight is going through mail. I HATE this chore. I'd rather spend two hours cleaning toilets without gloves at the stadium after an Oakland Raiders home game, than spend 15 minutes going through my mail. This is an annoyance to some, such as the mailman and my family. Dad really got pissed with me when he got a call from Grandma asking if I had moved. Apparently I had let things build up so much, the mailman had assumed I was no longer at the address and returned the Christmas Card she'd sent me. More than once he's been unable to fit anymore in the box and left it at the rental office.
Alright, my stove timer is buzzing, more latter
RedHeaded Rambler out
Here's a bit of a teaser for you in the meant time.
Things that have happened already today while cleaning !
One of the things I have always struggled with that seems typical of ADD people is cleaning. Now as my treatment has progressed, its actually one of the improvements people have really taken notice of. Clearly things have improved dramatically, but I still have some room for improvement. See the following.
While mopping my kitchen floor, I noticed that while I'd been doing a much better job of keeping my counters wiped off, I'd neglected the cabinet and oven doors !! It hadn't occurred to me until just 45 mins ago, that my cabinet doors looked like Pigpen, Cookie Monster, The Blob, fifteen ultra muddy Labrador retrievers and 3 year-old kids had thrown a mud-pie making party in my kitchen !!! I rubbed-up against one of the doors while scrubbing something and I don't know if I'll every get the brownish gray streak out of my t-shirt !! Little bit of a detail I'll need to watch !
To my annoyance, I opened up the clothes washer to find one of my pet peeves, a damp load of launder still in there from three days prior. This is something I've gotten somewhat better about. Its typical of me for forget about a load of launder in the washer. At least now, I don't simply throw them into the dryer without rerunning it first. Before, it could be in there for who knows how long: a day ? A week ? a fiscal quarter perhaps ? and since I barely have a sense of smell, would simply throw them into the dryer without rewashing it. That this is a bad idea, actually was brought to my attention two years ago when I went home while wearing clothes from such a load. I was emanating such an overwhelming mildew smell, it nearly gagged my poor mother and sister. But that wasn't what bothered me so much. What REALLY bothered me was that since this was a fairly common practice for me at the time, who knows how many fellow co-workers it effected in the close confines of a call center !! I'm sure there were days at the office where it wasn't easy for people to be my friend. Glad it was pointed out before it became an HR issue !!!
So far today, I've misplaced my mop twice, my roll of paper towels several as well. I spent easily 15 minutes looking for the roll, only to realize I was holding them !!! Have had to re-mop twice because I forgot that the floor was wet and tracked dust across the linoleum. Reminds me of a time when I used to smoke while on active duty. I had a habit of putting the butts in my pocket so someone else wouldn't have to pick them up. Standard for me, I'd forget to empty my pockets and most guys would wear the same uniform 2-3 days in a row. So while on a work detail picking up cigarette butts, we were miffed because no matter how good of a job we did, we always found more when the sergeant inspected the area. After about 20 minutes of this, come to realize I had forgotten to btutton a cargo pocket that had about 30-40 of them in there. I'd been leaking cigarette butts from my pocket the whole time we were picking them up !! My sergeant nearly kicked my butt and can't say I blame him !!!
One of the things on my to-do list tonight is going through mail. I HATE this chore. I'd rather spend two hours cleaning toilets without gloves at the stadium after an Oakland Raiders home game, than spend 15 minutes going through my mail. This is an annoyance to some, such as the mailman and my family. Dad really got pissed with me when he got a call from Grandma asking if I had moved. Apparently I had let things build up so much, the mailman had assumed I was no longer at the address and returned the Christmas Card she'd sent me. More than once he's been unable to fit anymore in the box and left it at the rental office.
Alright, my stove timer is buzzing, more latter
RedHeaded Rambler out
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