It's 8:30 on Tuesday night, and I'm already in my pajamas, which is quite unusual for me. I'm sick. Nothing life-threatening, just an ugly cold, but I feel horrible.
I used to be able to say, truthfully, that I never got sick. Because I used to never get sick. My immune system was pure cast iron. Or titanium. Whatever is more impenetrable. But this is the fourth time I've been sick this year. Apparently, my immune system is now made of something squishy or porous or otherwise not akin to titanium. It's more like a sieve, or a butterfly net. I'm a runny-nose mouth-breathing mess. I think I'll go to bed (after Rachel Maddow.)
*****
So it's Friday night now. What with the round of one damn thing after another that constitutes my life (not original--P.G. Wodehouse, I think), I don't even remember most of the rest of the week. I'm not as sick as I was, but not 100% yet either. One son is at a high school football game (his school is losing 49-6), and the other son and I are watching the Houston Astros beating the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 3 of the World Series. We're rooting for Houston. We love Jose Altuve, and Houston needs a win.
My older son, now a junior in high school, is looking at colleges. He's never been a particularly good student, but he started to work harder last year, finishing the year with a 3.5 GPA, and he's working very hard this year, too, though his math and science grades are not good. He might start at the local community college, but he might start at a four-year university. Anyway, he's looking at possibilities. He's actually reading the letters he's starting to receive. We'll schedule visits next spring, because that's what people do.
A few weeks ago, I spent Sunday afternoon at a college admissions seminar for parents of students with learning disabilities. It was not especially helpful (apparently, grades are important; and colleges also consider extracurricular activities in admissions decisions). In my usual vague and scattered way of gathering information, I managed to learn that November through April of next year will be the critical window of time during which forms will be submitted, and checks will be written, and decisions will be made. That's plenty of time, so we'll figure it out.
*****
I joke sometimes about adult ADD, but that doesn't mean that I don't think it's a real thing, because I do and it is and I have it. It's only through living with my son for 16 years that I was able to figure this out. He's lucky that it's a recognized thing now, and that he's been able to learn how to manage it when he's young. I manage it by doing 20 things at a time, and somehow getting them all done, eventually.
This doesn't always work. Yesterday, I sat with the art director at my company, watching video footage that we need to edit into a two-minute video (and don't get me started on how we're going to get that done on time, but that's a story for another day). I promised that I'd transcribe my notes and send them to him as soon as I got back to my desk.
It would be not quite accurate to say that I forgot all about it five minutes later, because I think that I forgot about it before the words were even out of my mouth. I went back to my desk and finished writing a newsletter, and then wrote some proposal stuff, and then skipped blithely home, without another thought about the video. Not another thought. It was as if the whole afternoon hadn't happened.
When I did finally remember the video, and the notes, it was about 4 o'clock this morning. I was going to get up and just write the notes right away, but I decided to go back to sleep and do in the morning (because 4 o'clock in the morning is the middle of the night). And I did. And that was the end of that.
But it doesn't always end well. I'm pretty sure, for example, that I was supposed to go to the doctor's last week, but I didn't write it down, and couldn't remember for sure if it was that week or the next (meaning the coming week) and no one called me, so I didn't go. I'll find out, I suppose. The forgetting of the things and the appointments is becoming more of a problem. I have to write things down, and set reminders on my phone for everything. And I often forget to do either. And so I forget to do the thing that I would have remembered had I written it down.
*****
Well, that could go on all day. It's Sunday now, and the pointless rambling has to come to an end at some point. Several weeks ago, I finally finished reading The Crisis Years, and I also read Martha Moody's Best Friends. I had never heard of her, but I liked the book. I don't have much other than that to say about it, other than than that the protagonist, a doctor (like Moody herself), realizes at some point during her mid 40s that she is just then beginning to understand life and how to live properly. As someone who finished college at age 48 (summa cum laude, but still), I found this idea very reassuring.
Right now, I'm reading This is NPR: The First Forty Years, which I'll finish in a day or so. Fortunately, I have lots of other things to read. I went to the library book sale (a semi-annual favorite thing to do) yesterday, and bought $5 worth of books, which in library book sale terms, is a shitload of books. List to follow.
No comments:
Post a Comment