Why I am convinced I have ADD

Carleigh, Morgan and Chandler are all at sleepovers and I have just put Chloe to sleep. My intention is to cross off a few items on my "to do" and I set out to do so. First is to type Chandler's Halloween poems and check to see if I have any frames lying around downstairs. I just love these poems and since Chandler's dad's birthday is next week, I thought he would really enjoy them, too. In fact, I'm sure he'd love them even if it wasn't his birthday, but there's that whole "kill two birds with one stone" thing...., which, BTW, means to do two things by one action; or to get two results with just one effort. I just looked this up in my Dictionary of Idioms, which states its origin is the following:

"There was a similar expression in Latin about 2,000 years ago, and "kill two birds with one stone" became popular in English many centuries later. It comes from hunting birds by throwing stones at them or shooting stones at them with a slingshot. If you actually killed two birds with just one stone, a practically impossible feat, you'd be carrying out two tasks with just a single effort."

But I digress...so I'm downstairs poking through boxes with photos and mementos, trying to find a frame suitable for presentation when I come across a bunch of photos of my kids. I paw through them trying to remember when they were taken and which child was which. No good frames here. The next box reveals mementos from my early years, including a beautiful Hummel plaque that reminds me of a new friend and her fondness for Hummel figurines. I pull it out and study it for a moment, trying to remember where I came across this obvious gift. I am fairly certain that I did not purchase it, but simply can't recall who gave it to me. Despite my early onset dementia, I decide that I need to display this plaque and set it aside to bring upstairs. Maybe if I look at it every day, I will eventually remember where it came from...

Back on task, I continue my search and come across my results for the Keirsey Temperament Sorter II and also the results for the Career Ability Placement Survey, both of which spark my interest. You see, as of late, I have been struggling with my identity, and anything that can help me sort out those deep "Who am I?" or "What do I want to do with my life?" questions could be very helpful. And according to Keirsey, I have a temperament of Guardian, with a variant temperament of protector. Oh, really? And what does that mean? Well, let me tell you...

"Guardians, being concrete in communicating and cooperative in implementing goals, can become highly skilled in logistics. Thus their most practiced and developed intelligent operations are often supervising and inspecting, or supplying and protecting. And they would if they could be magistrates watching over these forms of social facilitation. They are confident of themselves in the degree they are respectable. In search of security as they are the "Security Seeking Personality" -- trusting in legitimacy and hungering for membership. They are usually stoical about the present, pessimistic about the future, fatalistic about the past, and their preferred time and place is the past and the gateway. ...yada, yada, yada....They tend to be enculturating as parents, helpmates as spouses, and conformity oriented as children."

Whew. These too, I set aside with the Hummel plague. More items added to my "to do" list. By now I am wondering why I came downstairs and remember the poem project. Still searching for that frame, I come across my high school year books, but resist the temptation to open them. Digging deeper into the box, I discover many cards I have received over the years and I start to read a few of them. Imagine outdated ShoeBox Cards in the Hallmark Store...they may be old, but they're still funny. I have a good laugh until I also stumble across cards from my SBE, Dave. Now I'm on a mission to find them all so that I can throw them away. At this point, I am vaguely aware that I am not accomplishing the task I had originally set out to do, but since I am already here and the cards are already in my hand, I might as well go through them all (and there are a LOT) to be sure I didn't miss any. I believe my thought process was something like "I don't want to stumble across these again, so I better take care of it now..."

Next, I notice a stack of laminated obituaries. I flip through these and am reminded of my grandparents which makes me a little sad. My grandmother had a knack for poetry and I dig deeper in the memento box for copies of her poems. I read and reread these for a while, remembering them fondly when I remember that I am supposed to be looking for a frame for Chandler's poems.

Quite some time later, I have several piles of "stuff" lying all around the floor, including the Hummel plaque, the cards from Dave, the temperament/ability tests, some old photos, and other misc. garbage. That's about the time the realization hits me... I must have ADD because what normal person sets out to accomplish a task and not only fails to complete that task, but adds 5 more tasks to her "to do" list?

Did I forget to mention that I have a new kitten? He has seven toes so we named him Lucky #7. He's really cute. One of these days I'll take some photos of him to share, but don't count on it too soon because I have ADD. Oh, yah....and dementia, which means you will probably never see photos because I will forget that I wanted to share them....