Caffeine? Hi!

I get migraines from time to time and when that happens I generally take 2 excedrine, take a 20 minute nap and it goes away. I would say about 10 percent of the time the nap doesn't happen but instead it is replaced with 2 hours of walking around in circles with insanely fast thoughts moving through my head. My roommate affectionately calls me during this high "Excedrine Dave" he always gets a kick out of it because I will generally jump on things and make funny noises and am pretty ridiculous. This morning I woke up at 5 because I had another migraine. It was particularly bad and I had no medicine because I spent the night at my cousin's in Salt Lake City. I decided the only way I could take care of myself was to run to the store down the street and buy some Excedrine. So I rolled into the parking lot of the drugstore and stumbled into the store, bought my meds took 2 right there and then stumbled back to my car to go take a nap at my cousin's. Instead of napping however it was was of those "Excedrine Dave" days. I have been trying to stay quiet so that i don't wake my cousin who is still in repose and so I went online to take care of some things for the coming semester. I have felt a lot of pent up energy but on the other hand have been quite effective in getting things done online. I can see why people like coffee in the morning. It really does give you a jump start, although I am not a huge fan of the smell or the stains on the teeth that comes from it. I guess its good that my coffee comes in pill form.

(Hey look cousin, I put a picture up for you.)

Self Defense

I took a long walk today in my bare feet. When I got home my feet hurt a little but I noticed that I had developed blisters. As I felt them and thought back to previous blisters it occurred to me that some of the bodies self-defense mechanisms are kinda dumb. I mean what in the world makes the body think that because it is getting damaged by something rubbing against it to separate the outer layers of skin and fill with a clear liquid that will hurt like crazy whenever you touch it? It just doesn't make sense.

Coca Cola in India

I decided that Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is a perfect parallel for Coca Cola's disastrous start in India. When they built their plant and dug a well deeper than the local rural farmer's wells the local farmer's wells ran dry. I don't know if Coca Cola ever abducted the villagers children or physically ripped peoples hearts out with their bare hands and lowered them into a lava pit still alive. But I could so see the head of Coca Cola India wearing those horns and chanting as he goes to rip the money out of Indians pockets selling them a drink that will bring them a slow painful death. Ok so it isn't a perfect analogy but close enough. I hope today is the last day that I am stuck in my apartment...

Why Do We Hate?

As I have been very sick the last couple of days I have had a lot of time to reflect on the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. What I can't understand is why the Elves and the Dwarfs hate each other so much. I mean really? You would think an enlightened immortal group of people who love nature and spend most of their time in the trees would have no qualms with a people who love rocks and spend all of their time underground. Why can't they just be happy in their own spheres of influence? ...wow I am really sick... :)

The Kissing Disease

I decided to stop into the Urgent care facility close to my apartment this morning because of what looked and felt like strep. I went in and the doctor gagged me with a long q-tip and then came back 45 minutes later telling me what I had was not strep but possibly Mono or Adenovirus. I really hope it is Adenovirus because if it is Mono I will have it for about 35 days from when I first had a sore throat. That is a long time to be sick. Also, isn't mono generally contracted by kissing someone who has Mono? That is what I was always taught. Maybe that was just my mom's way of keeping me from kissing too much. She also used to tell me that if you kiss too much you could get pregnant. I just assumed she would know since she got pregnant 7 times.

Popsicle Sticks

Whoever thought it was a good idea to put jokes on popsicle sticks was a genius. I find that if I read the first part of the joke before I eat the popsicle I eat it twice as fast in order to find out the answer to the riddle. Almost every time I am disappointed. Partly because I didn't get to enjoy the flavor of the popsicle and partly because the jokes are never very funny. At any rate I almost always reach for a second popsicle just to fulfill my need for cold delicious fruit in my mouth. Brilliant marketing technique popsicle guys.... Brilliant!!

Gifted AND Talented

For those of you that don't know, I was recently diagnosed with ADHD. I have had it all of my life and to find out so late in life is rare but not unheard of. As I look back at my childhood under the light of this new knowledge I have started to have so many things that I have done or not done make sense. School was always difficult for me. I had a hard time meeting deadlines and finishing projects. I remember having my parents come in to meet with the kindergarten teacher and she pulled out my bin which was full of half-made projects. It was a bumpy start and I always had teachers point out my obvious under achievement. It wasn't that I was stupid I just had a hard time seeing things through.

One year in elementary school my teacher decided that I was too distracted and was having too much trouble getting my assignments in on time and that I should go to the remedial class for an hour a day for a week to see if that would help me to become a better student. This group was called "gifted and talented." Now I don't know what made anyone think that it was a good idea to take me out of my class and put me in a room with 4 misfits from the other classes in my same grade and then have us talk through our feelings. It wasn't like I was disturbing other children in my daydreams and it was like the teachers were saying, "You are having trouble doing your work so we are going to send you to a class for an hour where you wont have to do any work at all." It is just like suspending someone for ditching too. "You don't want to go to class? Here! Have a whole day off...that'll teach him a lesson." (I was never suspended...just thought it was funny that it was the punishment for ditching too much.) :) So anyways, I hated being in Gifted and Talented, I felt like I was a misfit too because I was there. I wasn't slow. I wasn't bad. In fact, I was a very smart child who just had a neurological disorder that made it hard to do assignments.

I was telling Estee about being in the remedial class called "gifted and talented" and she asked if I was sure that was the remedial class. Apparently she got placed in the "gifted and talented" class at her school. Fortunately for her it was really for the gifted and talented children and instead of sitting around in a room with the misfits talking about why someone punched that kid at lunch and how we felt about being abandoned at birth by our fathers, she actually got to do fun, exciting things with all the smart kids at her school, that is really where I would have excelled and I could never understand why I didn't get to do those types of things...I guess it was because of all of my emotional problems from my poor upbringing. (that was sarcasm my parents were awesome.) Do I sound bitter?...I hated that class!

The funny thing was that my mother was so proud of me for being in gifted and talented for a week and I didn't have the heart to tell her it wasn't really a class for the "gifted" and "talented." Unless stealing lunch money from little kids is considered a talent now.

Finding out that I have ADHD was one of the most, if not the most, life changing things that has ever happened to me. I used to cry out of frustration because of the the unexplainable failure I faced every day. You cannot imagine unless you go through it, the agony of feeling like you will never amount to anything while having the intelligence to understand exactly what that means. I cry now with joy as I begin treatment for this disorder and realize what I can become. I hope that more people will become aware of Attention Deficit Disorder so that many more children wont have to go through what I did. I don't blame anyone, there is no one to blame. My parents and teachers were just trying to do their best with what they knew.