Mommy ADHD: Parenting a Sick Child

Hello! I know I wanted to do this vlog part every week. I think Tuesday is a good day for me. It seems like I can dedicate myself to updating this blog and the vlog on Tuesdays.
Unfortunately, last week was, well, full of life. Whatever, right? So there was no blog or vlog or really anything that looked like work.

I had the water heater fail last Thursday. Yes owning your own home is wonderful! I highly recommend everyone try homeownership. Anyway, I had no money and now other-half to come to my rescue. I admit to borrowing money from both my Mom and Dad that I had no way to repay. It is a humbling experience to ask for a "loan" you have no way to pay back. I have no "income" at the moment and I have used most of my savings over the last year as I stayed home to recover from a heart attack. I am busting my butt in all directions trying to get everything in order to take on marketing clients on my own and end my relationship with the previous Digital Agency that I was a partner in. Borrowing $1,040.00 was yucky.

On Monday of last week my business with the previous partners officially dissolved and we started the resolution process of assigning accounts and notifying clients of the changes. Fun, but not a lot of action was taken by me or the business partners, so it is still sorta unresolved and just taking up space in my mind. 

Monday I attended the Goodyear Business Alliance hosted by Networking360. To be clear this is not a networking event, but a group of other business owners at different stages in their business who come to share and learn from each other. I love it. It has really kept me motivated to keep taking steps to build the business. I also had an impromptu meeting with a potential client in need of website development.  So it was a good day and things were looking good, even if I had no hot water and needed to shower at my mothers.  

Tuesday the plumber came. It took all day. Originally I had no issue with that. But about 4:30 pm the kid that had vomited and missed school became especially cranky and needy. I just didn't have the ability to wait for the plumber and make a trip to urgent care. So I called for reinforcements and his Dad showed up and took him to urgent care for me. They discovered he had the Flu!  

Luckily, the flu was caught early and he had Tamiflu to help reduce the duration of the flu. Better still he had been given the flu shot and so had my entire household. I can attest that no other member of the family has shared in his flu experience. Which is good because I am a heart attack survivor and I need to avoid getting the flu myself.

Anti-Immunization people probably don't want to hear more about my PRO-Immunization stance, but you should get your flu shots! They help prevent the spread of the flu. Tamiflu is only good if you get a flu diagnosis in the first 48 hours, and most people don't get the diagnosis until the 3rd or 4th day. Getting the flu shot reduces the chance of getting one of the strains in the flu vaccine by up to 70%, which I think is great! Get your shots! Protect others from the spread of preventable disease.

Having a sick kid led to me sitting on the couch for 4 days! I didn't do much of anything. Not this blog, vlog or working on my business. I don't know if that is normal behavior for other parents. Is it? Do most people just tend to the ill child and ignore the rest of the world and responsibilities? I am open to learning from your experiences.  Let me know. I am curious. Seriously! Am I alone? Is this an ADHD thing? Or just a parent thing? Do parents with partners do this too? Just Moms? Just Single parents? I really don't know. Nobody shares the ugly of life. 

Another Day, another dollar...

No not earned, spent.  Still no job.  Turns out my Dad didn't remember he was going to help me watch the kids this morning so, I didn't have a sitter for my morning job interview.

Panic!

Pure panic!  I didn't know what to do.  I asked my neighbor Helen, but she had a doctors appointment.  My normal last minute sitter didn't answer her phone.  No one left to call, but my little bro who now works nights.  I know he appreciated the call 2 hours after he had gone to bed for the day!  I had no choice... Of course I could have left 3 kids completely unattended in a strange parking lot while I went to the interview....

Thanks Little Bro!  It helped a lot even if I didn't get that job, yet.  But I just might work on getting that job for next year.  Sounds good, damn bankruptcy keeps me from accepting the job today!!!!!!  Pay is was above average, and the interview went great until he said I had to be clear of a bankruptcy 3 years and one whole day.  Damn!  That is not happening until March 2nd, 2013.  Assuming the Mayans were wrong.


Onward again, this time I went to the maid service, but lack of child care made me rely on my Mom and Step Dad, who were tired, so I didn't get to interview today.   Must return tomorrow, but my car is in the shop for scheduled maintenance.    GRRRRR!

Texted my husband for his truck,  he got sassy.  Not helpful as I was in the potential maid services office trying to schedule my follow up interview.  Somehow, I will get to that follow up appointment, even if I need to rent a car or walk all the way there.


Hoping for a dollar earned tomorrow. 

New Years Resolutions....

On the other things I've been thinking about since my last post back in December, or January.  I can't actually remember but I know I wanted to talk about New Years Resolutions. 

Lets start with the obvious

I want to be lighter on the scale and have a smaller pant size.  A long time ago, like the month before I became pregnant with my first kid, I was a size 8.  That is a really good size.  I admit I looked like a Barbie Doll, with my big Dolly Parton Size boobs!  But I worked at a Bikini Bar, so I guess you could say I was really into exercising.  And As for looking like Dolly Parton, that goes back to the first wish I ever made, back in the second grade.  Why an 8 year old wished for Boobs like Dolly Parton, I don't know, perhaps some crazy shrink has an answer, like I spent too much time looking at my Dad's Playboys. 

I want to be more vigilant when it comes to posting updates on my blog.  I like to write on this.  I like it.  It's a little like seeing your name in lights on the Theater Marque.  It's a bit of fun.  It's great for reliving stress.  It's also great for avoiding doing things like moping the floor or putting pants on my two year old.  I guess I am saying I would like to post each week, in my fantasy world I would post everyday, but really who would be reading that?

I also want my finances to make sense.  You know, the check book balances, and you don't overdraw your checking account on a regular basis.  I would also like to have cash in the savings account that is actually for savings and not to pay the overdraft fee.  So maybe I need a budget?  Then again that sounds oh so boring.

I want to earn money in my new career.  My new boss seems to be great.  She is organized or seems to be.  She is understanding and seems to understand my reluctance to jump right in and WIN, to quote Charley Sheen.  She also seems to understand basic math and that things like paying for child care are expensive if you are not generating an income to replace what you used. 

I want to exercise.  Before I got my crazy boss I was doing well.  Not fabulous.  I wasn't loosing 2 pounds a week or anything.  But I was feeling better.  Now, I don't know if it was all the crazy boss or a bit of the winter blues, but I stopped, and now I feel flabby.

I want to be organized.  You know like those people you admire, the ones that are never late and never need to apologize for the Linus like chaos that follows them.  I want to be prepared, I want to know what I need, what I need to do to get it, and who I need help from.  It's weird, I just want to feel like normal people do.  Normal people rarely suffer from deer in headlights syndrome. 

Adult Content:  Dude you know you want this crap.

I want to replace my Vib.  I miss my vib.  It made the kids antics less, frustrating, if only for a minute.  Lets face it I have a short attention span, and spending more than 10 minutes with the Vib or my husband leads to loss of interest.  Or maybe its just wandering interest.  I am certain my husband appreciates that in the middle of it, I am suddenly thinking about the grocery list, or that email, or the clothes that need to be mended.  Or maybe I am just in outer space, I have know idea, its sorta random, ranging from all the chores I didn't do, the kids, the car, the job, the education, my dry lips(both), the dogs, the weird shadow on the ceiling, how itchy the sheets feel, or how I need to change positions again. 

Anyway, why do people make Resolutions?  Aren't they usually forgotten by the end of January?  Is it because they don't have a plan or people to hold them accountable.  Are they even good?

So what are my steps?  Dude, you do know I have ADHD?  And maybe a bit OCD.  Yeah, I get upset when my hairspray is not in its proper place or someone moves the Paprika from the place I last put it.  Yeah, I have ideas.  No I don't have them written out. 

Oh, I also want to write out the house rules.  Ask my why.  Maybe I will write it later.  Just like the steps to finish the New Years Resolutions.....

So how

Do you convince a new boss that they are that tiny push over the edge and that it can be changed?  Don't know.  I didn't succeed, so instead I will have to figure out how to change so that is not the thing that pushes me over the edge.

Not sure how one explains something that is all in your head to someone who doesn't have it all in their head....  Huh.  So, new job looks like it is a perfect fit, and I still believe it really is the perfect job.  It is the job I was intended to do, I know, God has been giving me clues for years, but now I am stuck in the mire of generalized anxiety disorder and an obvious dip back into the deep end of the depression pool.  Its hard to explain what you feel when just breathing seems like an overwhelming challenge when the person you want to understand seem just so perfectly capable of handling things the world has dealt.  It does not seem like my boss is the one covered in monkey pooh.  Somehow his monkey is obedient or just has really bad aim.

So I work on my plan.  If you don't have a focus problem creating a plan on the go, that deals with long term forecasting and goal setting is probably something you can handle between phone calls, dirty diapers, parent teacher conferences, and urgent family needs.  But if you have that problem of controlling Your Elephant-read that in a book called Switch, I highly recommend people in charge of others read that, maybe you need to decided what you want the elephant to do before you get on.  So that leads me to a really long drawn out business plan, with numbers, and statements about what strengths I have; at a time when I feel like I have none.  Statements about what the future could look like with a bit of effort, you know the stuff that requires you to get off the couch, maybe answer the phone, check some emails and go out and meet some new people.  Mostly it requires me to know what I want, know what that looks like and know how I will know I have achieved that.  All a tall order, but I believe critical for me to actually do what my boss desires, a smiling productive agent that is not as stressed out as I am right now.

So, I guess this was my break.  I should get back to the process of saying what I want, so I can figure out how to get it and declare when I have succeeded.  

SuperMom!?

So at this moment Blogger.com is down and my computer is acting weird and slow.  Why did Blogger.com decided to do maintenance in the middle of the evening?  Weird! 

Obviously I am busy.  I haven’t posted anything new in a long while.  Such is the way of the work world.  I am trying to balance too many things and I seem to be succeeding rarely at any of them.  So my new job is tough.  Being away from home is tough on the kids.  My husbands ever changing schedule and his lack of communication is just making everything impossible to do. 

My biggest obstacle is figuring out what to do first.  I got a phone so I could stay in tough, I got him a phone so we could communicate.  I have an iPad so I can actually check my emails and keep a calendar.  (though for the last month my new job kept trying to force me into a paper calender! That was a complete disaster!) 

I know I have ADHD and this not knowing what to do first or even where I am supposed to be at different times in confusing as all heck!  I want to check in and be be with my family.  I also need to start seeing success with my new job or I am going to need to find another new job.   

So on the days I do figure out what to do first I struggle with trying to build my business clientele and my lack of availability to reach them on their schedule.  First, most of my clients are between the ages of 50 and 70, the problem being that the majority of the clients that are over 65 are home but I can’t talk about their health care until October 1^st, 2011 due to Federal Regulations on Medicare supplement and Advantage Plans.  Most people in the over 65 bucket already know they can’t make changes so they just aren’t interested in talking.   And of their younger siblings under ages 65 are just not home during business hours!  Well I am not able to work much after I regular work hours. 

However, the more I reconnect with my old friends and family members the more I see that I know an awful lot about what peoples real options are and when I have something that they really should be taking advantage of.  I now know most of my products to a point where if only I had enough hours in the day I could make appointments to visit them and see my family.  What I need is a way to pause life so I can do all I want to and need to. 

I need to be the idealized Super Mom, somehow capable of running an independent business, making breakfast, lunch and dinner, keeping the house clean, the bills paid on time, the dogs fed and walked, exercise herself to maintain optimum health,  loose weight, recruit new business, take the kids to their activities, potty train the toddler, read the latest magazines, books, watch the latest pop culture phenomenon, catch up with old friends, make  new friends, participate in the PTO, car pool the kids, be the star in the office, lead the way, train the mentee, communicate perfectly with the husband, know everything there is to know about my industry: insurance, entertain guest, make the perfect taco and margarita, have the grocery shopping done, the laundry put away, the kid in bed and somehow not fall asleep before the husband gets his turn.  Somehow that is what I need to be.  Or is it just simply being home by 6, and managing to have a few minutes to pick up dinner in the drive thru?