Christmas this year is vastly different for Mom and I. For one thing, we are doing it here in Toronto. She arrives Christmas morning and I’m making brunch (must remember to get more maple syrup), we’re gonna open a couple presents and she gets some mimosas and I get plain orange juice and coffee. Christmas Eve I am spending alone at my place though. I’m trying to figure out a good new Christmas Eve tradition.

I’ve decided I am making Carol my new Christmas Eve movie to watch. Pups and I are gonna put it on the Blu-ray and resist the temptation to smoke (so many cigarettes in that flick!). Eat some snacks and light some candles. Maybe have some kind of soak in the tub too. I really wish I had someone to fool around with or even just make out with on the couch, but it’s way too late to arrange anything like that.

I’m making Christmas dinner, we’re having an organic chicken instead of a turkey. Stuffing. Potatoes. Maybe a squash. Cranberry sauce, and some Saskatoon pie for dessert which I will make on Christmas eve because sweet and savory in the same oven is a bad idea. Maybe I will even drag my table from the porch in here so we can actually sit at it instead of on the couch. We’ll see.

And that’s about it for Christmas. We are gonna relax the rest of the day and Mom will drink Baileys and I’ll probably move on to a cola. We’re gonna watch Auntie Mame which has been a Christmas tradition for a number of years ever since I discovered it as a teenage homo.

Speaking of Cola, I recently found out people with ADHD often self medicate with caffeine. And the reason I am mentioning this is because after much discussion with a close friend, I have come to realize it is most likely something I have been dealing with most if not all of my life. It wasn’t noticed by anyone else because girls with it don’t often have the hyperactivity part of the disorder. And also I didn’t have the underachieving part of ADHD because I was able to complete my Masters degree. But what if I had been treated? Would I have done better? I have a hard time following conversation sometimes because my mind will just wander off at the most random times, even if I am trying to focus and it’s important to listen. Even when I WANT to listen.

Also sometimes I’ve felt like I let myself down in terms of productivity. Sometimes I can be so good at it because I hyper-focus for hours if it’s something I like, and other times I just have such a hard time sitting down (or cleaning or whatever the task may be) that I just procrastinate for ages.

I’ve been doing things that a lot of ADHD people do to manage their lives better, like having alarms for all my appointments in my calendar, timing cooking because sometimes I’ll forget or lose track of time, writing boring shit like “I’m gonna wash the floor now” on my FB so that I have to be accountable to randoms on FB and will actually follow through on this task.

I like this idea of hyper-focus that ADHD people get, but also, I really want to be productive the rest of the time and be a little more together. My friend sent me all this information and youtube lectures about it and learning about what it does really makes me wonder how I could have thought this is normal for everybody. And I always wondered why other people could do so much that I had such a hard time doing.

So in the new year I’m going to investigate getting a diagnosis and treatment for it. It’s tricky because of the bipolar, because I don’t want amphetamines to make me manic. Strattera isn’t an amphetamine, but it costs 400 a month and probably my NIHB would get all bitchy about paying that and make me take an amphetamine anyway.

Anyway, that’s what’s on my mind this Christmas!

Mostly though, I’m excited to just have a quiet happy Christmas with my mom, at home, with my pups. It’s totally different than any other Christmas.