Tag: Autism

~*~AuDHD~*~

I learned a while back that people in other English-speaking countries pronounce Adidas much differently than people in America (the States). Here, it is pronounced Uh-dee-duss, while in other countries it is pronounced Oddy-doss. I found that interesting. Most of the time, when I see or hear Adidas, the only thing I think of is All Day I Dream About Sex 😂. Iykyk. Anywho, I am here with another poem 🙂. 

~*~AuDHD~*~

Divisible by 5
Is how it should be
The volume for my music
And the TV

It doesn’t stop there
I have to confess
The passage of time
Is part of this mess

At 1, it’s all good
And I feel alive
Then, utter chaos
‘Til it’s 1:05

2 units of insulin?
That won’t work for me
I’ll skip it altogether
Or add another 3

But that’s not all
That goes on in my brain
The mental gymnastics
Could drive one insane

My ADHD
Pops up to say “Hi!”
There are too many rules
And it wants to know why

Dinner needs washing
The laundry needs cooking
A treat for the puppy
When no one is looking

Now nothing is finished
And it’s time for bed
But I must get some work done
I’ll sleep when I’m dead

I’m still not happy with either of my instructors 😒. Poetry lady says I have “a lot of lyricists” on my reading list. Well, duh. I told her in the first week that I do not read much poetry. My last instructor was just fine with that. Lyrics are poetic; poetry can certainly be put to music if one so desires. Many, many folk songs were poems before songs were even born. But I held my tongue.

Then…I emailed my Shakespeare instructor to ask about thesis statements (she wasn’t happy with mine) and she replied that I need to address her by name in emails and to mind my tone 😡😡😤. Mind. My. Tone. I am autistic, I literally cannot “mind my tone.” What you see is what you get. I would understand if I was rude or pissy but I write how I speak and that is how it has always been. I honestly do not know how to be otherwise.

Forgiveable, perhaps, if I had not disclosed being AuDHD in my first post as I do with every class. I do not have an intentional tone and since Mom’s gone, I don’t have a filter because I would speak through her, and now I do not have that option, which would not be an option in school, really, unless I asked her to read stuff before I submitted it and she suggested changes. So, I sat there and cried for an hour or so and kept myself from replying, which was a very hard thing to do.

She also gave me a low grade on my discussion post because my answer was “vague.” I need specifics if you do not want me to be “vague” (according to you). My husband knows this, so if I am vague when I ask him something or answer a question, he lets me know or asks me questions so I can elaborate and/or explain myself. At the very least, she could have responded to my post so I had an opportunity to appease her. I am a straight-A student and a junior; I know that all my other instructors were not just handing out A’s willy-nilly and letting me coast. I am literal. I can seem obtuse or sarcastic when I am not being either of those things. I spoke to my advisor about it so at least he is aware. Work with me and I will work with you.

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The Failed Lab Experiment

What a complete and total flippin’ bust! Neville has made his choice, and it does not include me. He only wants to be with Adam except to check if I have food. He treats me like Dad’s wife treated me. I don’t get it, though. Adam and I have opposite sleeping schedules, so when I was awake, I had him, and when Adam was awake, he had him. Adam took him out to go to the bathroom but that’s just because he smokes outside so he goes out anyway. If he was sleeping, I took Nev out. If I make Neville stay in here, he sits in the doorway and whines and dings the bell until I become livid and march him to the other bedroom.

It wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for the fact that:

  • I got him to be my service dog. I’ve always had reservations about Adam having a dog and I knew it wouldn’t be good for us as a couple and I’m often thisclose to sending both of them to his mom’s.
  • I treat Neville 1000x better than Adam does. Adam sounds like a textbook abusive father in volume and phrases, and I don’t like it at all. I can’t yell like him, so my yelling is hardly alarming.
  • I do all the non-abusive training and treats and praise him even when I’m not impressed (Look at you! You picked a piece of food up off the floor and ate it! Wow. Like you’re not starving every second of the day).

I’ve never been rejected by a damned animal before.

I’ve always stuck with cats regardless of how much I wanted a dog because I knew how Adam would be and that I would not tolerate it. He thinks yelling and repeating threatening phrases is training. Obedience should not be out of fear. Mom tried to tell him, “Don’t do that around [Cari],” and he should know better by now. I don’t like loud noises, and Dad used to yell. It actually took Dad a while to lose his temper, but then he would just let it all out at my brother or me.

Early in dating my ex-husband, he lost his temper with his job when we were in the vehicle and I started packing and was ready to leave as soon as we got home. My ex never once raised his voice toward me but it doesn’t have to be aimed at me. Some people never change, I guess. I think it is extremely disrespectful that I am the one always making sacrifices and being uncomfortable in my own home. To go with that, I think you get to a certain age where you’re just not going to put up with certain things anymore and you learn to advocate for yourself as much as you can 🤷‍♀️. This post took quite a turn.

So, that’s where we are, and it’s all great. Great, great, great, great.

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~*~Pervasive Thoughts~*~

Five poems this week! I had to write five poems for class this week alone 😫😫. I know, I know, it’s a poetry workshop class, but last workshop was two a week and certain forms each week. I don’t know how poets who write poems every day do it, honestly. I don’t know if it is because there is too much going on in my head or what, but I do much better with prompts or photos or contests. I find writing very cathartic, so I usually write about painful things so I can get them out, which is exhausting.

For class, I wrote about my father refusing to see me before he died and about my grandfather having dementia and referring to me as Little One because he couldn’t remember my name. Considering he died from sepsis, I’m assuming his dementia was caused by an untreated UTI. He had not been to the doctor in over 40 years, so it took them a while to figure out why he collapsed (he never woke up). Those two poems were very draining.

On top of the four poems for the milestone, we had to write another one for the discussion post, which is a forum mainly for attendance, participation, and accreditation. We had to choose a poem from our reading list and write a poem in their “voice,” which I found weird because I don’t even know what my voice is. I did it, nonetheless, and came up with the following:

~*~Pervasive Thoughts~*~

But don’t you see?  

Once it’s in your head,

it becomes a part of you —

it wraps around your brainstem

and creeps into your DNA.  

Walking the tightrope becomes

less daunting when it’s over 

a perverse safety net of pills,

razor blades, and ropes.  

The passivity of it all creates

a sense of mundanity that leads

you to believe everyone possesses

these thoughts and feelings — 

until you realize you’re the outlier and

most would exist in the extremist

of conditions and call it surviving.

I don’t know how that will go over in such a censored society (from how it used to be — not that we are as censored as other countries), but the professor was cool with including Wanting to Die by Anne Sexton in my reading list, so I am guessing the subject matter will not be a problem.

I doubt my PW2 professor will get back on my good side since I really liked my PW1 professor and PW2 laughed and said that PW1 was very wrong. I am not cool with people talking 💩 about people I like and/or respect. So, possibly a long eight weeks.

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Poetically Pissed Off

Well, I figured my intermediate workshop was going to be a challenge, but I did not know my opinions would be invalidated and my styles and voices questioned. Firstly, I had to stop centering my poetry (which is certainly a style – my preferred style at that). Then, I had to include punctuation, a formatting choice that I used sparingly, which incidentally I am being told to reverse in the new class. Now, I am not supposed to initial capitalize the first word of each new line. Who said I wanted to be a contemporary poet? Oh, and I can’t be inspired by “pop” poets like Rupi Kaur, who is the only contemporary poet I like.

Needless to say, my workshop professor and I are clashing. And I was admonished for stating the poems we read this week made no sense. If something does not make sense to me, I am going to make that clear. Just because some stuffy editors felt otherwise does not mean other people’s opinions should conform. The Emperor’s New Clothes, anybody? Suggesting I am not reading correctly and not that the poet wrote incoherently is insulting. Yellow Submarine is catchy; it is not a top-rate, meaningful song.

Raiding people’s private journals after they die and publishing them is certainly no way to set a precedent on what is the standard and now accepted. That has happened to at least two poets that I know of, Emily Dickinson being one. (She had only 10 poems published with her consent and her catalog is over 1,000.) It’s actually extremely violating and self-serving. I am here to learn, not conform or lie. This week’s reading list included the following:

coping skills lost in the flood
By CA Conrad

                   make you aching upwards of a
                             teenage broken phone
                           come to hear underwater
                                libraries up the side of
                                        the dinner plate a
                                        little too fast
                                          not ungrateful like
            some of  these bastards around here
can’t tap out a tune with you looking away
                      genies of not enough sleep
                               a happier location for
                                        the war not the
                       easiest thing you realize
                          beautiful architecture
                          refreshing beverages
       our signs read hello love us for
                                  the century of
                                  progress we
                                      gave you
                                        bombers
                                          arriving
                                    early here
                                  they are

From “Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return” 
 
          a potato
             born by
               shovel
               I am a
            bride of
          poetry in
         my orange
        and purple
       gown an
       unequaled
       extinction
        machine
         pushing
          strollers through
           ecosystems of
        concrete and plastic
we camel through the journey
  with our new playbook for
     where plunging hands go
                        don’t be weird
                     about this
                   you can be a
                 bride of
               poetry
              too

As you can see, neither poem above is left-aligned, another “rule” we were given for this week’s work. 

Third Poem for the Catastrophe
By Joyelle McSweeney

O
melting rainbow that embrace this roof
O
persistent covenant
hangs around
giving us nothing, leaves its muck in the water
expects us to be knocked out by its fine colors
weren’t you nothing too, weren’t you
sea bottom
crunched down into fuel
and when that eggshell roof busts through
mama’s gonna buy you
a rainbow ride for free
an illumination, an inflammation
hyperion flame headdress
dream pins in the fuel
balloons of Koolaid burst down to cool
the sticky baby’s head
plus a credit card a glock a new bible
a princess dress
a mermaid princess dress
so you’ll be twice submerged
or an erased Indian princess
pajama set now go to sleep

Bureau of

This is the body of,
waiting to turn on.

graced with a little tremor,
a little-known form, a fibrous hook,
a flimsy lever that makes the jar work

a lever and a clasp

:voila. The pathetic filofax
unfurls, the owl describes;
on air; makes an apse; lopes left

off the phonepole, woodenly.
we rise above the wind park,
commemorially.

our whorled fossil, pinned open.
our emergency kit
holds aspirin. digitalis. adrenalin-in-in.

So, yeah, I said they seemed drug-induced and made no sense. For one thing, the last poem starts a line with a colon 😒😒. Poetry is mainly for the poet, and I am all for that expression and them writing whatever they want, but I am certainly not required to like it or be encouraged to emulate it and “learn” from it. If I can say a movie makes no sense (and in a lot of instances, I am not the only one who feels that way), I can say a poem makes no sense, because, let’s face it; a lot of them do not. If they make sense to the one writing it, that is fine; great, even. Good for them. But do not belittle me or my intelligence and opinion solely because it does not align with yours. If this is “contemporary,” I will wholeheartedly pass.

Featured image: https://poemanalysis.com/poetry-explained/elements-of-poetry/

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Oh, Romeo — Nomeo!

I should be working, so of course another blog post! For school, dropping to half-time would halve my grant (money you don’t have to repay), so I am sticking to full-time 😒. That wouldn’t be so bad if I wasn’t required to take Shakespeare. Now, I get it; the guy (there is a debate whether Shakespeare was more than one person but we will go with the singular) was a genius and super talented and came up with the best stories and poems, but the old English just stumps me to the point that I need translation.

There are some choices for this class requirement but Shakespeare is actually the lesser of the evils offered, to me, anyway. I cannot remember what the others are, but I think one is Renaissance 😒. Plus, I was taking Shakespeare when my brother died and I could not deal at the time, so I have a UF (unfinished, I think is what that means), and retaking the class will improve my GPA.

My other class is an intermediate poetry workshop, so I am guessing it is a step up from the class I am finishing up on Sunday, and both classes are 300 level, which is for third years, so more writing and stricter grading. Adam has decided to go with fiction writing as his concentration, I believe, although he is pre-registered for a poetry workshop and a fiction workshop. I can never think of middles and ends for my stories and I have always written poetry, but not really any short stories. I’ve started “novels” that I eventually abandoned; that was mostly when I was obsessed with RL Stine.

My poetry workshop professor is giving me publishing resources and encouraging me to submit, but I am on the fence about that. Most don’t mention the royalty percentages, but one did and it was only 10%. Going my preferred route, I will get 70% or 75%. Of course, going through a publisher would give me more exposure, but it would also take away a lot of my freedom with formatting, editing, cover art, and who knows what else.

I’m also totally waffling with my site. I just can’t get the color scheme and image how I want it. I started out with the neon colors, which were cool, but when I decided to switch things up, I couldn’t decide what to go with. Should I use my book cover (willow tree)? Use Grandma’s painting print that I love (previous image)? Keep the image I have now? I seem to have entered a manic phase and that always involves lots of changes and me never feeling 100% satisfied. I was going to say I’m a total tweaker, but that doesn’t mean the same thing to other people as it does to me 🤣🤣. I can never leave things alone if I’m not totally “feeling” them.

Neville has started some scent training, and it is going surprisingly well. He is almost too smart for his own good. We’ve been using clove as the scent, and I take Nev into Mom’s room while Adam hides the hex bag. He then smells Adam’s hand and Adam says, “Go find it!” and he takes off and finds it. We’ve had to limit him to one room or he goes all over the house. When Adam re-hides the bag, Neville goes right to where he found it before 🤣. During potty breaks, Adam scents a stick and throws it in the yard and Neville has to find it. He has picked up the wrong stick a couple of times and knew they were the wrong ones, so put them down and grabbed the correct ones!

One day, I left my phone on the bed and came over to the computer, but I started worrying that Neville would get it and tear it up just to be a jerk (he tends to do that), so I turned my chair around, pointed to the phone on the bed, and said, “Pick it up!” and when he figured out what I was pointing to, he picked my phone up, jumped off the bed, and brought it to me without chewing on it or biting it 😊. I was so proud of him!

Once, when I was fiddling around in Mom’s bathroom, I handed him my phone so I could do something, and he sat there with it in his mouth until I asked/motioned for it back. He looked a bit confused as to why I was handing it to him but I wanted to see if he would take off with it or just hold it. I haven’t read up on teaching him to hold things yet. I know his parents have lots of ribbons and medals for retrieving, and part of that is holding what they retrieve without eating it or running away with it. I always see paintings of labs in duck hunting settings and I know they don’t get to eat the duck as a reward 🤣.

Lately, he has been ringing the potty bell in Mom’s room whenever he wants to play or leave the room. Adam comes in to talk after I wake up, and Nev will stand in the doorway and ring the bell and look up at him. I can’t help laughing when he does that, but he does it several times while we’re talking. He gets very jealous when Adam and I are in the same room.

I think I shared this before but that’s the bell. I can’t post the video because WP wants me to upgrade to do that.
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Welcome to My Electric Lab

Something is up with Neville today! I took my notebook to bed this morning so I could write but I fell asleep pretty quickly thanks to Xanax. I didn’t think to get it off the bed because Neville has not been bothering my iPad which I keep on the bed. He got a hold of my notebook and tore it to smithereens, which I thought he was chewing on one of his bones. I love that notebook. It is pink and purple and has butterflies on it. My now-deceased uncle got me two of them after my dad died in 2012.

Later, I go to pee (just feet away from Neville, who is on a long lead) and he starts screaming like someone broke all his bones, so I start yelling for Adam because I think Nev got stuck. Adam doesn’t hear me but he comes to see why Nev is crying and then starts fussing at him 🙄🙄, because that’s helpful. Neville runs into the bathroom, sits down between my legs, and is shaking like a leaf. (That’s an odd saying.) I lean over (still on the toilet) and hug him, trying to calm him down. Then, he pees while sitting there. Between my legs. While I’m on the toilet and hugging him.

When I left the room to go pee, Neville had decided to tear up another cord (he already ruined the end to my Dyson), and since there weren’t any lying around, he grabbed the heavy-duty extension cord that was plugged into the wall. It must have gotten him good because the cord was several feet away from the outlet. I ordered an outlet cover, which I didn’t know even existed for cords; I have only seen covers that plug into empty sockets so kids won’t stick their fingers in them.

I don’t know who peed in his Cheerios that morning but he was on a mission to be destructive and definitely FAFO’d. I hope he remembers what happened and stays away so something worse won’t happen. I have had the bidet plugged in before getting him and he never bothered the cord before but he was in a mood or something. Oh, he is acting fine and his usual self. His mouth and tongue look okay and he is as goofy and adorable as ever.

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Pick it Up

Well, Nev and I have made up for the moment. He’s been carrying around and chewing on a 1- to 2-inch piece of bone that’s all that is left of a ham bone I got him, so I ordered three bones from Tractor Supply. I thought they might last him a while. They get here, and Adam wants me to come see one of them and wonders if I knew the size when I ordered it.

This bone is huge!! 😂😂 It is called a mammoth bone, but with shrinkflation and companies being so untruthful, I wasn’t expecting much. It is a foot (12 inches) long and the ends are bigger than Nev’s head. He has already removed the ends and cleaned them of meat and tissue so they are white as a bleached bone. I really hate that he feels hungry all the time. I know it must feel awful for him to think he is starving when he’s not. Hopefully, the bones will help him feel full.

We started working on “pick it up” yesterday, in which he picks up whatever I point to and gives it to me. He is doing really well at not running off with it or chewing it. Adam has been giving him things to bring to me and says, “Take it to Mommy,” and he is doing great with that, too. He even brought me a big soft pretzel stick in an open paper bag and didn’t try to keep it or eat it. Twice! He did this without knowing he was going to get to eat them. He brings me my insulin after Adam gets it out of the fridge.

So, with “pick it up,” that’s been fun 🤣🤣. He has been getting steak or steak fat that I don’t eat as a treat during training. When we are done with the session, he gets out of his chair and finds things on the floor to give me. He has given me my socks at least ten times. I take them off and put them on the floor beside my chair. He usually does not see me do this, so he must think I am supposed to have them.

I try not to give him a treat when he does this, but he looks so cute and proud of himself and just looks at me and patiently waits. How can I not? If it’s trash, like receipts I ball up for the cats, he just gets thanked and patted on the head. He also looks around on my desk and hands me things from it 🤣. He gave me a screwdriver I had on the desk, which I did give him a treat for because he didn’t try to eat it. He is a very smart cookie.

Two more weeks left of classes, then I think I have another poetry workshop, which is intermediate 😬. I dropped back down to one class for next term because the workshop is pretty intense and time-consuming. My literary theory professor really liked my PowerPoint presentation, which I was nervous about and did not check the feedback for over a week. Adam is switching majors to my major (English and creative writing). I don’t know if he is going to concentrate in poetry like me or go with general fiction.

I did tell him I would not tolerate it if he published before I do, which I was very serious about. I have wanted to be a published author since I was little, and if he just turns around and does it ahead of me I will be furious. I’m not sure why he is switching from computer science to English. The boy can’t even touch type! He is a total hunt-and-pecker. My publication deadline is in November of this year. I wanted to make sure I had enough time for school and revisions.

She Thinks I’m Cute!!

I got last week’s homework back; two free verse poems, and inserting line breaks in an unknown poem that had the formatting stripped, the latter of which included my all-over-the-place “reflection.” My professor said my reflection was exemplary 😂😂. She also said one of my poems, In the Garden of Remorse, was beautiful, which surprised me a bit because it was rather dark. She once again mentioned experimenting with structure and punctuation, which I don’t completely grasp yet. I have started experimenting with em dashes (long hyphens), something Emily Dickinson was very fond of, and I’m not even a fan of her work. 

Poems with weird spacing and punctuation really throw me off, which I feel is because of autism, ADHD, or a combination of both. I really like the movie No Country for Old Men and was excited to read the book when I found out the movie was based on the book, but the author is not a fan of commas or quotation marks. I could not discern when people were speaking, and the lack of comma usage was so annoying that I stopped reading the book. 

Another author did the same thing with quotation marks (what is up with that?) and I had to stop reading it which really stunk because I was enjoying the book aside from getting completely confused. Oh, it was 13 Reasons Why. I never watched the show so I’m in the dark about why the girl killed herself. Anyway, with poems, it really takes me out of what I’m reading when I am presented with weird, artsy formatting. 

I forgot to write about what Neville did! I got rid of most of my stuffed animals, which I really regret now, but I kept a few that are important to me. I love pandas and tigers, so I have some of each. I dog-proofed the living room before Neville got here and it’s nearly empty, but I have some stuffed animals in there because the room’s theme is safari and pandas (weird combination, I know). I have some pandas on the entertainment center since removing the TV. I take so long to tell stories. 

Nev likes to grab random things and bring them into the room and chew on them. He has plenty of chew toys and bones, but for some reason they aren’t preferable. He hunts for things, and I know he knows he is not supposed to have what he gets. He’s already destroyed two of my wireless mouses and the cord to my Dyson. He doesn’t seem interested in Adam’s stuff. 

So, he comes into the bedroom carrying one of my pandas and I take it from him and put it and the other ones on the entertainment center on top of the entertainment center so he can’t reach them. I see my brother’s slippers on the entertainment center, so I scoot those back against the back so he can’t reach them. Then, I return to work. Nev goes in and out of the bedroom a few times, then he lies down behind my chair and is quiet, which is when I know to look at him. He is lying there with one of Bub’s slippers just going to town on it, ripping the top to pieces. 

I can’t remember if I yelled at him or not but Adam comes into the living room where I’m standing and trying not to cry. I get very still and quiet when I’m angry or upset. I attempt to go back into the bedroom (I hate showing emotions around people) but Adam stops me and pulls me into his arms and I just lose it. I’ve had those slippers in the living room since Bub forgot them here and I like them being there so I can see them. I made it a point to move them out of the way so nothing would happen to them and they are the very next thing Neville goes after. I have my brother’s slippers and a pair of sunglasses, which he also forgot here, and that’s it. I’m not surrounded by his belongings like I am with Mom’s. 

I looked a bit worse than that.

Neville is still here, of course, but I wouldn’t have anything to do with him for several days, and he stayed in the room with Adam. He is supposed to be helping me, not making things worse! 

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The Eyes Have It

Yeah, so that was fun. I had to stay up for training, then got my second wind and wound up staying up for about 40 hours. Then, I got up again at 8 a.m., so it didn’t fix anything 😂😂. We did peer feedback in my poetry workshop, which I am not a fan of. I am in no position to give fellow students feedback. I’m learning myself and telling two of my classmates what they got right or wrong isn’t my place to say. I get all apologetic and self-deprecating which doesn’t help my classmates or me learn anything. I know that is the point of a workshop, people putting their heads together to improve, but it’s not good for someone with anxiety. 

I finally got to buy new glasses. The ones I bought a few months ago were not for me so I went back to Zenni Optical. This place is just awesome. I get regular glasses (not bifocals or progressives) there for $20, which includes my prescription and anti-reflective coating. A pair of lightweight metal frames is $6.95, the optional coating is $4.95, and the prescription is included. You really can’t beat that. 

Since I had to get progressives this time, I chose premium progressives which have a 40% bigger viewing area for the bottom (reading) part, unlike the ones I got at Lens Mart that drove me bonkers because 2/3 of the bottom was blurry on each side of each lens total – one-third of the lens is blurry on one side, the tiny middle third is the clear part, and the last third on the other side of the lens is blurry, all by design. With a 10% student discount, these glasses were only $70. The frames I chose this time were $20, which increased the price, and premium progressives add $52; regular progressives with the crap viewing area is $35, I think. 

I don’t want to pay out the wazoo for top-notch glasses (expensive frames, special additional coating, etc.) because I am bad about not wearing them (good at not wearing them, I guess). I hate wearing them when I am hot or sweaty because they get foggy and smudgy. I take them off a lot and it would just be a waste of money if I stop wearing them. I am nothing if not realistic and self-aware. 

I tried contacts once and they rubbed a blister on the inside of my eyelid of my bad eye which hurt like the dickens. It’s the eye I’ve had three surgeries on instead of two and I don’t know if that was a factor or not. I wish I could get contacts to wear for the times I’m hot but I have enough trouble with my eyes that I don’t need a sore eyelid on top of that. No, thank you! 

Adam in his glasses. 

Adam needs glasses but he won’t wear them, of course. But he looks so cute in them! Look at him! He’s all up in my health business, but when it comes to him, that’s an entirely different story. I can’t get him to get his breathing issues taken care of and it’s been a fight to keep him on blood pressure medication. He has had sleeping studies and he doesn’t have sleep apnea, but he never enters REM when he is sleeping and his pulse ox goes in the 80s while he is sleeping. He would probably be in a better mood and less angry at the world if he actually got some meaningful sleep. But what do I know? I’ve only been working in the medical field since 2006 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️🙄🙄. 

I guess the topic today was eyes, although I really thought it was just going to be about school. 

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My Reflection is Turning Away From Me

My schedule is all out of whack. Do I have schedule? I don’t think so. Routine? Sleeping pattern? Whatever it is, it’s messed up, which really stinks because I start my additional duties at work tonight. In addition to my job as a medical language specialist editor, I am also performing quality assurance (QA) and something about document delivery such-and-such. 

Every hour, I tell everyone how many jobs there are, how many people are working, and the TAT (turnaround time) for those jobs. I have not done this job before and I am scared spitless. I’ve been QA’ing for a few years but not on my current platform and I think I oversee 58 or 59 accounts now on this platform, which isn’t as intuitive as the other one. Why did I say I would take this on? Companies usually love me because I’m strictly third shift, but I’ve been having trouble sleeping this week, and I got up at 8 a.m. yesterday and have training sometime after 8 a.m. today. 

My literary theory professor is a stickler for the rubric (he’s the one who gave me an initial F) and I am one who never looks at the rubrics because they confuse me so that’s been fun. I submitted this week’s assignment yesterday and had to add things to it and resubmit because I forgot something that was on the rubric 🙄😒. 

For my poetry workshop, we have weekly journals and I think I may have gotten too comfortable with this week’s journal. I didn’t mask at all while typing it up and I think it’s pretty obvious. But it’s a journal and that, to me, implies that it is more relaxed and casual than academic papers. We had to break up a poem that was in paragraph form without knowing how the author broke it up and explain our process/reasoning. I’ve not read that poem before and didn’t look it up since we were told not to so I don’t know how accurate I was. I will find out next week, I guess. I will paste my erratic “reflection” on breaking up said poem below. I’m not posting the poem because I don’t know who wrote it and can’t give credit. 

Reflection

Okay.  I don’t know what I am doing, which is why I am taking poetry classes.  I never really think about much when a poem comes to me; I just need to get it down as quickly as possible before it flies out of my head, which is a very real possibility for someone with AuDHD.  (I wrote a poem about that.)  I was taken aback when it was asked in The Poet’s Companion if I could write a poem in 20 minutes and the assumptive answer was, “probably not.”  Why not?  When I think of something, I sit down and write or Click Clack Moo it out.  I think I lost my point somewhere. 

Right – reflection.  I’m a rhymer, so I haven’t had to worry much about line breaks.  I started playing around with free verse during my Studies in Poetry class last year and I’ve discovered I don’t know squat about line breaks.  Like poems, they just come to me, but I don’t know if they are “right.”  Who decides that, anyway?  One would think the poet ought to know since it is their work but literaries can be rather pretentious about that kind of stuff. 

Lately, I’ve been experimenting with one-word lines for emphasis, which is why I chose to break up the names in the above poem –  “Kadesha./Shaniqua./This is the voice/Of Antoine./Darryl./Shaquille.”  I would have given LaTonya and Antoine their own lines, but I read that you’re not supposed to end a line with prepositions or articles (but you can start lines with them).  I would say that is an unwritten rule, but it was written somewhere by someone, obviously, because that is how I read it. 

I’ve been reading Rupi Kaur’s books, and that girl is crazy with her line breaks and indentations!  I really wanted to break up, “This is not a small voice you here.” but since this person started and ended the poem with that sentence, I figured they meant for it to be on one line.  I first thought of “This is not/A small voice you hear” or “This is/Not a small voice you hear.”  I do notice that I tended to start lines with verbs in the above poem.  “Running over waters/Navigating the hallways of our schools/Spilling out on the corners of our cities.”  Is that a thing?  Poetry readers love to come up with terms and forms; I’m guessing there is a name for that. 

I threw some dashes in there, too.  Emily Dickinson really liked using those and everyone seems to like her stuff for some reason.  Did you know she told her sister to burn all her notebooks and journals?  Can you imagine betraying your own sibling like that?  I find that appalling. Sadly, I am all over the place, and I don’t know what I am doing, so I hope what I learn sticks and can be applied to my writing going forward.  Did I even manage to answer what was asked of me?

So, there is an unmedicated ADHD answer to a simple question 😂😂. It seems I went off the deep end more than a few times there. Gah. 

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