Motherhood-Induced A.D.D.

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Dudes. I need a new brain. One that can multitask. I don't mean multitask as in: "Let's see. Gotta take kid1 to the eye doctor and kid2 down to campus and kid3 back over to the shoe store. Wonder what I'll cook for dinner tonight. Wow, that woman's jeans are seriously painted on. I mean there's skinny, and then there's 'Hey, wanna see my deep vein thrombosis?' Whoa, dumb dog. This is a 2000 pound death machine, Fido! Wonder what frames kid1 will pick out today."

No. I mean multitask as in what my huz does. The man will go out on a 10 mile run — psychotically short for him — and come back having created his entire business strategy for the year, his personal fitness regimen, done the family budget, and figured out cold fusion. Me? I come back from a run having decided to leave the rosemary out of the chicken because it tastes like varnish. Also that Tom Cruise is getting slightly less annoying lately, so maybe I'll go see Oblivion.

I'd like to think my funky thought-rhythm is because I have been caught up in the wonder of stay-at-home-mom-hood lo these many years, and now my brain operates on a higher multidimensional plane. One where it takes varied sources of information and assimilates them into nuggets of nurture and beads of beauty. But the truth is, motherhood has just made me A.D.D.

I mean it. I have had to focus on so many schedules with so many deadlines and so many meetings, destinations, emotional/hormonal/pubescent crises, for so long that my brain has lost the ability to operate in a linear fashion. It's probably not an emergency. But I am tired of being so stinking entertaining to my family. "Mom, did you remember… Have you signed my… Have you paid the… You were supposed to take me to…

Sigh. I remember starting tasks and actually completing them. I remember feeling like I was good at something. Ah well. I guess none of this has been without accomplishment. I have nice kids who haven't run away and joined a circus yet. Whose neuroses I can take complete responsibility for because they came from me instead of someone I was paying to do the same thing. That's good, right? Plus, my husband and I like each other even after 27 years, and that counts for a lot.

Still it would be nice, once in a while, to be able to complete a simple train of tho 

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About Janiel 432 Articles
My greatest pleasure in life has been raising my four excellent children--some of whom liked me so much that they keep coming back. My second greatest pleasure has been doing whatever I can to make people laugh and create bright moments. I hope to do a bit more good in the world before I go the way of it. And if not, I'd better at least get to spend some serious time writing and singing in a castle somewhere in the UK.

2 Comments

  1. I feel your pain.  I used to be a linear thinker/doer, too.  Now I go around and around trying to get stuff done a little bit at a time.   Sometimes this means I actually stand in the middle of a room and turn around in a circle trying to decide what to do first because It's All Very Very Important Right Now.  Then there's the forgetting. Of all kinds of stuff.  I used to have an actual vocabulary.   No more. 

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