Lorie, Six Months Later

Man! It's been six months since I wrote my last post! That's because I've been seriously brain dead most of that time. (Skip the next few paragraphs if you're not in the mood for Sturm und Drang (i.e. self pity and woe) Just scroll on down to “Fun Stuff!” After all, I have half a year of zombie-ism to make up for.

You see, last summer I was part of an Adult ADHD study at the U of U. Yep! ADHD-R-Me! Which explains a lot of things about my weirdness: Tons of energy, lots of forgetfulness and insensitivity to what others are feeling because I'm concentrating on something else. The doc gave me Ritalin, which made me cry a lot and want to die. It only got worse till they finally they took me off everything, and I went through some pretty bazaar withdrawal. But at long last I felt and acted fairly acceptable and good natured, except that I had no memory, no organization, few useful skills, and could stand for half an hour looking at a funnel, wondering what I should do with it (Answer: put it away). I verged on institutionalization due to utter senility.

There are other meds for ADHD, but they are stimulants. Because I have Tourettes syndrome (light but persistent) I can't have stimulants, or my Tourette's symptoms twitch away like a dozen roaches on electro-shock.

But then, Ahhhhh! A little Strattera, (Only $297 per month!) and a quarter of a no-doze 3 times a day, and I’m finally happy and reasonably calm, plus able to keep away the boogey-man of wishing to dive off a cliff. I can even sleep at night!

OK, end of tale of woe. That's what I did from July to December.

FUN STUFF!!

I've been called on a mission! I am now Sister Davis, an employment missionary for the church, which I enjoy a great deal. I don’t have to be reverent. I spend two afternoons a week "intaking" people with no jobs and dwindling hope, and showing them a dozen places to look for income and fulfillment. On alternate weeks I spent two full days teaching a professional career workshop to unemployed, underemployed, or career-changing professionals who range from city managers to chefs to would-be professors to office managers, and everything in-between. These are usually salaried-type people, rather than less-educated hourly workers.

It's lots of fun to let my personality fly and alternately charm and browbeat them into trying new and uncomfortable things to get better jobs. It's deeply satisfying that the people I teach give me ratings of "fun, delightful, motivating, intelligent, well-informed, humorous, fabulous teacher etc." These are not the reviews I get from my children, though we love each other anyway. Too bad our kids will never get to meet the scintillating, ebullient, (verbose) personalities we had in our hay-days. Yes, my YOUNG friends, as I am, you WILL become.

OTHERWISE I am fine and dandy. I have very low rent here in Salt Lake, even though Jennie's family and 6 kids (whom I moved here to help) abandoned me for Austin. I am out of debt, have a year's supply of food, several very close friends in the ward, and a few minor callings. I also work in the temple Saturday evenings. I spend one day a week with daughter Arianne in American Fork so we can hang out some, and she can have a much-needed break and run away from home. (Aren't you other moms JEALOUS?) She would like me to move there, but I can’t' afford it and still enjoy the luxury of frequent visits to Ben's family in Portland or Jennie and her hoard in Austen. I visit each for 2 to 3 week vacations a few times a year, during which time I do a lot of recovering furniture, baby sitting, making curtains, building shelves, baby sitting, cleaning, cooking, baby-sitting, and creating princess dresses. My grandkids think I'm the greatest.

CHRISTMAS!!

I spent Christmas Eve in American Fork with Arianne's family. We gorged on Schnitzel with Noodles (Spaezle noodles, our family's favorite "special-occasion" meal) lemon meringue pie and treats, made the yummiest sugar cookies with the children for Santa, and ate too many of them. Although we had planned to watch a fun movie, we all stayed up past midnight wrapping presents, then fell into bed.

Up again at 8 a.m. for the traditional breakfast of scrambled eggs with chunks of kielbasa. After baths and dressing up for photo ops, the kids opened presents for an hour, getting stuck on whichever thing they opened last, and having to be moved along to the next gift by coercion.

Daphne, blond and 4, got a dollhouse with furniture, a little family, and a lot of tiny critters. Beck, age 2 a week ago, (another throwback to Jim Davis), got an electric train with all kinds of loading and unloading devices on a table with a winding track. Other friends and families gave him more toy trains of varying sizes and styles until his train board became Grand Central Station as seen by Picasso.

I received big, beautiful photos of my children’s' families -- my favorite gift, plus my very own Costco card, cause Arianne is tired of picking up my every-other-week box of baby spinach. I will never save enough on spinach to pay for a $50 card, but whatever turns her on is great with me! Tonight I went to Costco for supper, the menu of which included samples of everything they were handing out free in the store. I went home full.

(I tried to load in my new family pictures here, but somehow it didn't work. Besides, by now you are sick and tired of this blog entry -- half my life history. So I'll try again another time. Or else Jennie, Arianne and Ben will post their family shots on THEIR blogs. (COOL blogs, I might add.)

Lots of love And Happy New Year to all!

Oh YES! And a long time ago (almost 50 years) and far away (570 E. 2950 N. Provo, UT) I wanted to have some Glamour Shots taken of myself. This is one. 18 years old and 117 lbs. Is this a babe?! (We actually had waistlines in those days. Such concavities are unknown in today’s young women.) I think I had the pictures taken to bolster my abysmal self-esteem. My brother told me I was ugly as a frequent throw-away comment to keep me in my place (from about age 5 on). Nobody but dweebs asked me on dates (and pretty few of them, too. My only steady boyfriend in High School turned out not to like girls, except as friends. I appreciated that he never made moves on me, but I never thought to wonder why. It was just another proof I wasn’t pretty enough.) What could I do but believe these evidences, statistics notwithstanding?

Well, I was a dweeb, too; the ADHD social equivalent of a 12 year old. It’s a good thing Bill and Jim were hormone-soaked, or I might never have gotten married and had these fabulous kids! OR been forced to grow up!

Actually, EVERY marriage has deep problems ahead from however an auspicious beginning. It's SUPPOSED to be that way in the eternal scheme of things. Only we don’t see them with the young naïvety of love. We can’t possibly fathom the growth and development the Lord has planned for each of us through the ever-challenging problems in the marriage ahead.

It has been said by experts that the gush of hormone-juiced romance wears off after about 2 years. If, by that time, you have not built some real love based on mutual respect, enjoyable personalities, compassion, humor, commonality, sympathy, and appreciation into your marriage, it is unlikely to survive. I think that’s about right. Sex, money, and kids won’t hold a couple together. Physical beauty always degenerates. Illness and disease are inevitable. Mental problems and eventual senility come to one or the other or both of every couple. If the true-glue ain’t there, life will be misery. ESPECIALLY for the kids.

Hectic life this week! I am SOOOOOOOO wiped out from teaching workshops all day Tues and Wed. Add to that my decision to rework my lesson plans. Four hours Tuesday nite and 6 hours Wed night. I didn’t get to bed until 2 a.m., and was up again at 7:15. Bring on the no-doz! But the new plans went very well, and the students raved about my class. My students ALWAYS think I’m an incredible teacher and presenter: enthusiastic, fun, intelligent, imaginative, interesting, well-informed, inspiring, etc. etc. It’s almost worth the work to get the rush of favorable evaluations after the last class. But I’m worth exactly NOTHING the next day. So, of course, I took on the hours of another missionary sister for half the day today. (Nnnngggg. Hot shower. Good book. Chocolate [sugar-free] pudding.)

And, naturally, half an hour of exercises in my perpetual bid to actually lose ten pounds. HA. I bounce between 147 ( after a full month of starvation and exercise) to 153 (Thanksgiving & Christmas). Depressing – especially in light of the photo below. But better to work hard and stay in that 5 lb corridor throughout my 60s, than balloon up to 180, which I could do with no problem at all, plus a great deal of pleasure!

And who is this Lovely Lithe Lassie you leer upon? Why, tis MOI, of course, at age 18. I just wanted to let you know I was not always old and plump. This is what I will look like again after the resurrection (but next time with straight teeth).