Nerdcrow

How do I love thee, Phineas and Ferb? Let me count the ways...

If you haven't seen the spoof of The Wizard of Oz, you must check it out. "I hang in fields, wedgie -style." Funny stuff!

Well, hello there

I've been making friends with adult ADHD. Been kinda busy.

Squirt and I were "officially" diagnosed in tandem last fall. His difficulties in a regular classroom setting were back of our decision to homeschool nine (yes, NINE!) years ago. He's done well, but puberty and increasingly lengthy math computation required a trip to the local behavioral psychologist for 20 trees' worth of questionnaires. A frill-free diagnosis of ADHD-inattentive type and 25 milligrams of daily Vyvanse later, he's doing pretty well.

Me, not so much.

Apparently, you can't just take a pill and expect your brain to function normally. Bummer. Next step: higher dosages, and maybe timed-release delivery. Then, co-existing conditions like "generalized anxiety disorder" and possibly "sensory integration disorder." Finally, more questionnaires and guess what? You just hit nine out of nine markers for adult presentation of hyperactivity!

I AM grateful to have a reason -- not an excuse -- for some of my life-long struggles. I've always had major personal space issues, but I never knew people with ADHD often have poor spatial recognition. At five feet tall, I now understand why I feel assaulted during middle school worship and not during elementary worship. Why? Everyone's taller than me by middle school and they invade my personal space with their elbows, right at my face level.

Hopefully, a day will come when I don't need medication any longer because I will understand more about how I'm wired. The panic and anxiety already are lessened when I know why I react like I do. Undoing 42 years of coping may take some undoing, on the other hand, but then I'm optimistic by nature.

Read: Women With Attention Deficit Disorder by Sari Solden; ADD Ways to Organize Your Life by Judith Kolberg and Kathleen Nadeau; Delivered from Distraction by Edward M Hallowell and John J. Ratey. Watch: Escape Velocity ($1.99 at iTunes); ADD and Loving It?!

Best advice: Be prepared to re-negotiate your relationships (Solden, paraphrase) and allow yourself to watch TV because it does all the work for you (Hallowell, paraphrase).

Your Squonk-ism for today

Said Squonk, when faced with the possibility of a dairy-free diet and its effect on his most beloved food:

"Cheeseless pizza is like a featherless bird -- it serves absolutely no purpose!"

On top of Mt. Hormone...

Now that I'm finally free of Facebook, I'm noticing important stuff like my children.

Squonk turned 9 last month, and he gets funnier every day. He still battles allergies and I thought he understood some of our conversations about better food choices....until the day he conquered Mt. Hormone.

We spent part of our gorgeous Friday afternoon at Mt. Cheaha, shooting a family portrait on a very scary rock. Later, we explored less scary rocks. Squirt and Squonk made their way up to a point above us, where Squonk claimed the highest point in the name of the L. boys.

"Hey, Mom!" he shouted. "I'm up here on the top of (pause) Mt. HORMONE!"

We offended him by bursting into laughter, and he defended himself with crossed arms and a frown: "Well, all the good names like Rushmore and Everest were already taken."

I teased him again later, at home, until his sister Squish asked the dreaded question: "What is a hormone, anyway?" Geddy opened his mouth to answer but Squonk had it all under control.

"A hormone," he solemnly explained, "is something they give cows to make milk taste good."

Wisely, I think, we left it at that.

Hi, blog!

Almost forgot I had this little place. Don't get much computer time these days, so I mostly use it to check my e-mail and Facebook, and sometimes the weather and news.

Squirt and I started ADHD medication a few weeks ago and we're doing pretty well with it. I have lost 18 of the 53 pounds I need to lose to be within my "healthy" range. We are redoing all three children's rooms and just finished (mostly) organizing our new schoolroom, which is in a larger room in our basement. It is hard work, not to mention expensive, but we are hoping the long-overdue update will give everyone more room for their guitars, Legos and ballet practice.

I am not doing well in my new assignment in the church children's program. Lots of drama. Because I'm in charge of my age group, I'm about to have to flex my leader muscles and put another teacher in her place, and though it's absolutely necessary, I dread the confrontation. Still, I have an obligation to put my girls first, so I have to do some hard things.

Lots more going on, and maybe I won't wait so long to pop by my blog again.

If you're so led...

...please pray for a couple of members of our church family, Jon and Steve, and their families.

UnderStandUp! International Ministries is sponsoring a benefit concert tonight at Copeland Hall in Bowdon featuring Everthird and Echoing Angels. Proceeds will help efforts to dig wells in Kenya. Tickets are only $12 and the music will be incredible, so come on out!

My brown-eyed boy

He had a crush on me, the sweet brown-eyed boy in high school. He asked my mom how he could get me to like him. I was immature, awkward, plain, but he saw something in me. I hurt him every chance I could by dating his blue-eyed, blond Apollo of a cousin. Apollo liked to date me in between real girlfriends and toss me aside when something better came along. Kyle was always there. It was too easy. He never asked for more than my friendship, but he never even got very much of that.

Another pair of brown eyes was my downfall a few years later, but behind those eyes was cruelty, control and pure meanness. I fell immediately and hard for this one, and he made me pay dearly for the friendship I had wasted with my original brown-eyed boy. Never very confident in my looks, my personality or my worth, I now had every flaw highlighted, sharpened to a fine point and driven excruciatingly back into my heart and soul. For three years I destroyed myself to be better, nicer, smarter, thinner, blonder, prettier and sexier while he dangled an engagement ring in front of my nose like a carrot in front of a mule.

My Geddy, my hero, rescued me from that dismal pit of a relationship. He was my friend, like Kyle, and he restored me simply by being there. We had been friends for years when parallel jobs put us in constant touch. I woke up one morning and realized I could not imagine my life without him, and I wasn't going to waste a second chance to be with someone who cherished me in a way that was balm to my soul. We were married 10 months later, and Kyle was there, as always, to serenade us with "In My Life."My precious, faithful friend whom I took for granted all those years, who was content to gather the few crumbs I tossed him, sang at my wedding. And I didn't bother to keep in touch afterward.

I am hopeful that someday, somewhere, I will be able to tell Kyle that I'm sorry I didn't appreciate him more. I don't regret we were never a couple but he taught me more about real love and friendship than I have known outside of my 16-plus-year marriage. I couldn't fully understand what it meant to me then and I am ashamed I squandered a chance to reciprocate, to be to him the kind of friend he was to me. I wish I could tell him that I am blissfully happy with my forever love, and that I feel worthy of receiving his love partly because I caught a glimpse of it in his sweet brown eyes so long ago.