Cimorene

The importance of fresh air to health, and the importance of airing things, comes up repeatedly as I read 1920s magazines. This is left over from the late Victorian medical advice, because many diseases were treated with or (thought to be) prevented by fresh air which have since been eliminated, most notably TB. (In 1910s women's magazines the language is very much reminiscent of the miasma theory of disease, even though of course germ theory was established by then.) More so in 1910s, but into the early 1920s, I see notions like:

• it's unhealthy for any human being to ever sleep in a room with closed windows


• lower incidence of disease in babies in tropical climates is probably due to spending almost all their time outdoors (I still wonder if this notion of low infant illness in the tropics wasn't mistaken? But it might be due to HIGH infant mortality in the US, where breastfeeding was being discouraged and babies were typically fed unpasteurized and frequently spoiled or contaminated cow's milk)


• every bed in the house should be made every day and every time the housekeeper makes it, she should first air the bedding, room, and mattress, by opening the windows in the room all the way regardless of temperature, stripping the mattress to leave it bare for some hours, and airing the bedding outdoors and/or beating it before remaking the bed (I've also seen articles which only want the bedding to be aired or beaten once or twice a week)

Of course, this idea of airing bedding is also part of performative housekeeping perfection/cleanliness and cultural standards of class and gender etc, not just health.

My life is distinctly complicated by airing, because wool garments prefer to be aired, shaken, and brushed and only washed if there's no other choice. But the season when we use wool garments is also the season when it is rarely dry outside. Airing wool garments outside would mean setting up a laundry rack outdoors and clipping things to it (because it's also almost always windy through the cold months), and sometimes multiple weeks might pass before a day where I was certain they wouldn't get rained on.

waxjism points out that this is probably not a problem for people without ADHD, because the things probably only really need to be outdoors for a couple of hours, and they would perhaps notice when it started raining and be able to run out and get their laundry. Whereas in our household, putting laundry outside carries a 50% risk that everyone will forget it exists out there until the next time one of us walks outside for another reason. I guess I could use an alarm - maybe even on a day with a chance of rain if it wasn't raining yet? But so much of the autumn and winter the air just looks sodden when you look out the window, even if it isn't raining or snowing.

In constrast to our sad state, apartments almost always have covered balconies, which are ideal for the purpose of airing. I really miss that. (Our balcony is under construction right now, but it doesn't have a roof over it, anyway.) I suppose if you had to dry all your laundry outdoors (and the whole week's on one day), it would be harder to forget it was there and easier to just put the wool up at the same time. That must've been hard for the women of the period in Finland in this season though. There isn't a suitable day every week. They must've been drying things on the stoves and radiators instead.

I have been thinking about the ADHD struggle, and I decided I should buy the Barkley book on adult ADHD and also a copy of How To Keep House While Drowning; I added them to my cart at the online bookstore, then didn't order them because I didn't have the executive function to do that yet. I found some potential replacements for the charger of my laptop that just broke as well, but didn't manage to finish comparing them and decide.

Other stuff I need to do and have been unable to start includes:( Read more... )

I think a lot of what's blocking me from several of these things in the last month, anyway, is that they feel like projects that require planning and stamina, but so much of my bandwidth has been going to anxiety about the driving test (two days from now) that there wasn't space. This is extremely normal for me and obviously a fallacy, but I guess I've been feeling like the time until the test was mostly short enough that I should just try to minimize anxiety and worry about all the other stuff after. And I didn't want to take my adhd meds in between.

I have a long-term To-Do list, and last week I got this list down to two items, one of which was oiling the sewing machine so I don't really count it, and took myself quite by surprise. You wouldn't think that would be possible, and yet I found myself unexpectedly with Only One Thing On The To-Do List.

And I said to myself "Wow, this thing won't take that long! I will probably finish it quickly and easily tomorrow!" (I still haven't finished it.)

Only then the next day I woke up with a whole long list of things I suddenly needed to do first: clean the counter, paint my nails, have a bunny photoshoot, sweep the bunny cages, ink my italic pens and photograph sample writing. I thought vaguely in there, "Maybe I won't get it done today, but soon!" Except then I finished all those things in the day and also finished reading the book I was closest to the end of. (If I'd just done the last thing on the list instead of reading, I'd've finished after all.)

And that's when it occurred to me that I've been putting off the tasks on this To-Do list not simply because they are difficult or intimidating, but to avoid finishing my To-Do list.

At the end of the To-Do list lie all the other things that I should do, but don't know how to start! (Like removing a lot of wallpaper, because I've already tried several ways that don't work that well. We probably need to build scaffolding, which isn't something we are at all qualified to build.) Even worse, items like "Find more social activities and make more friends" are down there! They're things with a sense of 'should' but with no obvious first steps or convenient handles for executive function to get hold of.

What's more, I realized that I would never even have realized this (that I was trying not to finish the To-Do list) if I hadn't hurt my shoulder and had to stop knitting.

Because all this winter I've been furiously occupying myself with knitting, knitting itself has been serving me as a bottomless To-Do list.

This To-Do list dysfunction also means that anything I don't urgently or impulsively do at once - anything which then lands on the list - is in danger of being indefinitely procrastinated, even if there's nothing inherently difficult or anxiety-causing about it (like buying another batch of ebooks, so actually the list now has two things besides oiling the sewing machine again).

Knitting involves a lot of repetitive motion and can create problems, and comes with frequently recommended stretches, especially for the wrists and hands. And I HAVE experienced some discomfort sometimes in my wrists and taken a break for that. Also I stretch them a lot more. But the problem I have from knitting that I find to be unique is a specific strain - usually cramps I guess actually - under the spine-side edge of my right shoulder blade, if I've been knitting too intensively. In the past I have experimented with different kinds of daily stretches to try to limber it up but these were periods when I was working in daycares and aftercare programs (still the most fun I've had at a work practice, but I'm totally 100% unwilling to go through the professional educations for these fields) and hence moving around my whole body and doing lots of other things with my hands and arms daily - cleaning, dishwashing, and arts and crafts, for example.

So anyway, usually what happens is that I get too excited about knitting, and knit too many hours in a row and too many days in a row, and then I get cramps under the right shoulder blade, and I have to just not knit until they go away - a few days to a week. Actually this happened to me once from drawing too much as well, lol. Not usually one of my problems. ANYWAY though, THIS time...

I finished sewing all the ends in of my newest pink cabled cardigan one week ago last Friday, and I have not knitted or sewn anything since then - a few doodles, but mostly I've just been reading, staring at cats, and playing solitaire when I can't stop myself. I can't start a new knitting project until it stops hurting. So it's been over seven days and it is still uncomfortable!

Don't get me wrong: it isn't like constant cramping. I'm not needing to take painkillers (I think I did the first day maybe). It's just uncomfortable and a bit sore, like maybe there's a knot or something there? But I just don't know enough about it or these body parts. The only thing I know to do, besides gently moving around but not enough to cause pain, is taking anti-inflammatories. And I feel quite silly and annoyed about the idea of having to see a doctor for this! You can't see a physio without a referral from a doctor, so even if they might be more useful, it's doctor first and they are perhaps less likely to send you to a physio for something comparatively mild. My parents, who have both had minor annoyances from things like this in the past, agree that it sounds like the kind of thing you're supposed to treat at home, but I don't know HOW to treat it at home, and I don't even know the right search terms to investigate how (or if): heat or cold? stretches or trying to hold it immobile??? Ibuprofen or not? So maybe I have to call a doctor about this???? As mild as the discomfort now is... I know that I still can't start knitting again while it's here, and it's never stuck around this long before.

My one idea, lying in bed last night, was that I might be able to find tips by looking for posts about stretches and aches and pains specific to knitters. All the ones I've seen before have had to do mostly with the wrists and hands and maybe the neck a little bit? But there's bound to be some SOMEWHERE, right? Another issue: the position and the repetitive movements are somewhat different in continental vs. English/American standard knitting, so are all the English-language results going to be talking about English knitting and useless???

I can't throw myself into researching this at the moment, though. I was thrown into a tizzy this morning with reminders of three things I have been putting off (ADHD tax) but have to fix:

1. signing up for driving lessons,



2. cleaning another 8 months' worth of crud out of my email and trying AGAIN to unsubscribe from everything possible so that my email might be usable, instead of overwhelming me with a wall of unparsable random trash every time I try to open or use it?,



3. apparently my notification settings are messed up on one of the... I think currently SIX SEPARATE Finnish goverment websites that I have to have different accounts on and sign up and alter the settings on SEPARATELY and they DON'T EVEN ALL WORK THE SAME and thinking about dealing with them always makes me want to cry. But I digress, anyway, the last time I was at this one, it seemed to be working fine and I thought 'Oh! This was surprisingly easy!' except this morning I got a call and apparently there was a notification through it sent to me that I NEVER GOT, so somehow I managed to fuck up the notification settings I guess? So I have to go back and try to figure out how? I didn't get in trouble and the call was fine, I'm just stressed about trying to fix the website. I hate government websites. They always give me a headache and not infrequently reduce me to tears.

So this was all before breakfast (because I was sitting hanging out with Tristana in the sunbeam instead of going to eat, even though I was already hungry). And as a result I was unprepared to Cope before breakfast, but then I discovered it's Monday morning which means it's time to refill my pillbox, and I didn't feel up to filling my pillbox before breakfast. But that would mess up my routine (to do it after) so I unwisely - invoking the ADHD tax again - decided to just take the foil packets of the pills today and then fill it after breakfast, but then because I wasn't following my pillbox routine I accidentally took a whole SSRI instead of a half for the first time in over six months. This is ANOTHER ADHD tax, because I've known my old doctor retired since December, and I can't have the monthly phone calls you get to check in on your psych meds until I meet my new doctor in person, but I haven't gotten around to meeting my new doctor in person, so I've just been using up my prescription and taking half pills instead of asking for a new prescription for the smaller dose. This should not be disastrous. I'll probably get those funky sparks when you move your head, perhaps, at worse. However, I briefly panicked about it and took an entire benzo, on top of my ADHD meds, and on top of this double dose. It seems fine so far? I turned on some music and furiously dust mopped and cleaned the vacuum. But I'm still not happy because oh, also, that means:

4. I have to make an appointment with my new doctor whose name I don't know which might mean I have to call and wait in the phone queue instead of using the nice web portal like usual.

4b. This reminds me I was supposed to sign up for some blood tests in February but I was too tired. To contemplate going out of the house to be blood tested. So I didn't. I gotta do that too.

It's too many things. Yes, I took my ADHD medicine, but it doesn't fix that - like, the issue of too many things on the list - it just, as one memorable Tumblr post said, starts the Roomba. It doesn't prevent it from getting stuck under the sofa.

[On the porch]
CIM: Is that all the groceries?
WAX: Yeah.

[In the kitchen]
CIM: Where's the bag of frozen food?
WAX [looking around]: Did you do something weird with it?
CIM: I put it in the styrofoam cooler, like always.

[CIM fetches the bag of frozen stuff from the cooler.]

CIM: It was right in front of us. The lid wasn't even on the cooler, the pizza was sticking right up in our faces saying PIZZA.
WAX: I saw that but I thought it was some recycling.

[In the hall again.]
CIM: Hey, where's the bag of kitty litter?
WAX: What bag of kitty litter?
CIM: The one we talked about two times in the store?
WAX: I... don't think we actually bought it. I think we left it in the aisle.
CIM: I don't remember putting it in the car...
WAX: I think you said something about going back to get a pizza, and I put it down right then, and then we both forgot it.

[We return to the store to buy kitty litter and toilet paper, which also was forgotten in the aisle.]

Last night I put one of our favorite dinners (an aluminum pan of chicken and vegetables tossed in oil and seasonings) into the oven to roast, then went back to Sipuli-sitting duty, knitting and watching a movie in the diningroom.

I didn't hear the oven timer go off, but Wax, in the livingroom, did.

"I wonder if I should check the oven?" thought Wax to herself. "No, she must have heard it." "You have to TRUST her," thought Wax, erroneously (never trust someone with ADHD to not get tripped up by ADHD), probably because she's just watched like twenty-five seasons of the 911 franchise of silly prime time soaps and was suffering from residual sentimental conventional moral messages floating around in her head.

When I went into the kitchen the pan had cooked completely dry of juices in the bottom for the first time since we started making this dish (eight years maybe?). The fillings were distributed in artistic blobs with burnt-to-carbon bits on the edges and flat blobs of blackened aluminum in the spaces between them.

It was still edible! Mostly. There were some dried-out bits to discard. But she definitely should have checked whether I heard the alarm.

waxjism and I have too many sheets, because for a long while we just bought new duvet cover sets whenever we liked one. Later we instituted a policy that we would only buy ones with hand holes (so, no Ikea) and only sateen, percale, flannel, or jersey. And, obviously, only natural fibers, primarily cotton. (We haven't taken the plunge on linen because of cost.) And that slowed down the acquisitions, but we still had too many to fit in the TWO ENTIRE DRESSERS devoted to storing sheets, so after discussing it multiple times over the course of a few months, I got Wax to agree to get rid of:

🥑 Ancient duvet covers from her childhood that are very worn: 4 (one set of two, two orphan singles)
🥑 Duvet covers and flat sheets with holes, stains, or discoloration: 6 covers (2 matched sets: our favorite sateen covers, worn out after 20 years; one set that turned pink in the wash; one from Ikea that unraveled at the seamripped hand hole bc of low fabric quality), two flat sheets with holes

We actually failed to throw away our last three sets of Ikea duvet covers even though they have the unhemmed hand holes (I opened the tops of the side seams with a seam ripper) and aren't flannel or sateen, because we like the prints so much. Maybe they could be retired in the future still.

Apart from them, that leaves us with a percale set (magenta Marimekko), two sateen sets (Iittala Taika and a navy floral from Prisma), and two tartan flannel sets (the nicest flannel ones ARE pinkened due to washing with a red flat sheet but they're the nicest fabric ones we have and we can't bear to get rid of them). Also two sateen, four cotton, and two flannel double flat sheets, and four single flat sheets for guests.

Is that still excessive? Yes.
But will they now fit in the dressers? Yes.
But are we going to celebrate by buying a new sateen set? Also yes.

We are really going to miss our nicest sheets, the sateen ones with holes. Wax's brother gave them to us for a house warming present at our first flat together in Finland, almost exactly 20 years ago. They were from Casa Stockmann, so the store brand of Finland's posh department store, which infuriatingly really DOES have the nicest linens (our favorite flannel set is from there too, and we also have a sinfully good bathsheet). They're solid color sateen with a texture stripe, so like hotel sheets really, but saved from full hotel by not being white (they were golden yellow). We're gonna have to replace them with the nearest we can find, because none of the others feel as nice.

Clumsiness is a symptom of ADHD, I know. I seem to have spells, or days, when I'm more dangerous to myself and others (but mostly myself), completely unpredictably. In general I'm more dangerous to myself than waxjism is to herself (or others) though, and that's why she does almost all of the chopping when we cook. As it's happening it feels a bit like dissociating, but milder: like there's a slight time-lag in my brain and the, you know, hazard alert that was going to remind me how physics works ("that thing is heavy", or "that thing is hot: don't touch it", or "your finger's in the way", or "you have to swallow when you drink a liquid") somehow got delayed in the queue and so the popup didn't appear untl my mind had had time to initiate the unadvisable action, but as soon as I started, the popup arrived, and I thought, "Uh-oh, that's gonna..." but I already knew there wasn't time to avert the disaster: the "Don't touch that!" order has already been sent and I can SEE it happening and I know that it's going to tell my hand to reverse course and not touch the edge of the pan, but I also know it's going to arrive too late! And it does. So anyway, I burned three fingers on my hand earlier this week because I put frozen vegetables into a pan that was already hot and then briefly forgot that the pan was hot, because usually when I'm putting it INTO the oven I don't need a potholder. Just for example. I also cut myself slicing tomatoes about five days before that.

As I was saying, I have got in the habit of thinking "I might be having a bad day, so I'd better not try to do that" from time to time. These events seem to come in waves. But sometimes they are worse than others. Last night was one of the times when it felt like everything was just happening to me. As waxjism said, "You went full Mr Bean." (I didn't do this, though - I mean, recuse myself from proceedings - and if I had I could have saved a bunch of our dinner.)

Wax was verbally walking me through the steps of cooking one of our favorite meals, a recipe that she always makes. I was carefully squeezing a lemon with a citrus press over a vessel of cream - Wax always does this directly into the glass liquid measure, which is almost an ideal size and shape and nicely heavy, and it would also have prevented disaster, but it was dirty so I was using a steel one instead. I decided to squeeze the last little bit of juice from the lemon by hand because it was slightly bigger than the press. But I bumped the edge of the liquid measure and knocked it over, spilling two thirds of the cream all over the butcher block, over the edge of the counter, down the cabinet fronts (the corner cabinet, so also the sides of the doors and the hinges) and the floor.

It took quite a while to wipe up enough of the mess to continue, but luckily we had enough cream left to replace it. Wax had already drained the pot of pasta for me, but when I reached the point of plating it, I saw a little pool of liquid in the bottom of the pot and for some reason tried to tilt the whole pot and pour the liquid out, even though the pot was mostly full of cooked pasta and there were only a few tablespoons of this liquid there, and there were all kinds of utensils and tools lying around that I could've used. About half of the pasta flew into the air. It landed mostly in the dirty sink, but also all over the floor. Luckily there was enough uncooked pasta to make a second pot, once I stopped crying from laughter.

This was one of those evenings that I know in a few years we're going to be saying "Remember that time when?" to each other and then laughing until we cry again.

Looks like I maybe misplaced the receipt from one of my shopping trips for work. I used the company account card and the pin, and you're supposed to bring back the receipt and sign it, and put it in an envelope, and they get attached to the itemized bill when it comes. Apparently I forgot to do that and I went through my wallet and pockets (which is where I carry the receipts in between purchase and filing) and didn't find it, so it looks like I must have had a brain turned off incident at the purchase point and failed to put the receipt in the right place there already. I came home and checked in our shopping bags, but we've been shopping twice or three times since then so the odds of it being found there were very low and indeed, it wasn't.

I wonder if this means I would lose company card privileges? I mean, that would be a lot less work for me in a way..., except that experience indicates it's actually a bit more work reminding the other people to do it than it is to do it myself, because the guy who used to be in charge of the shopping kind of got sick and basically had to drop all his volunteer activities.

But the thing is... when you have ADHD the best you can do is create systems or habits or routines that are supposed to remind you. It's not that you don't know it's important to remember a thing, it's just that the IMPORTANT tags in your brain have no bearing on whether it remembers something or not. So I have this system which has worked fine every OTHER time, and I have no memory of deviating from it, but it's also a couple of weeks ago and I wouldn't probably remember after that long anyway, when it went normally enough at the time. And you can't really do anything else about that! It doesn't matter how important it is or how well you understand that; in the moment, if something upsets the routine or something distracts you or whatever, you can still forget it. And I don't really see any way to make this system more foolproof at my end. Having a special pocket where I keep the card together with the receipt seemed like a good system to me, and I think it has worked every other time and I have no idea what happened, so... ???

And legally you don't HAVE to explain that you have ADHD to your bosses, and I kind of don't want to. I mean, to the volunteer bosses. My legal boss, who works in the district office and is a professional and really nice, knows that I do. But she doesn't have any input on the day-to-day operations of our office normally.

Oops, I spent so long comparing patterns for my next knitting project (a 2-color brioche crescent shawl took precedence over the planned fair isle sweater because my brioche cowl disintegrated enough to be unwearable, and so urgently needs replaced) that I didn't actually order the yarn (and also the buttons I need which are the whole reason I need to make this order). I've known I needed the extra buttons for seven days now! Lol.