Just A Little Life Update

The last couple months have been… crazy to say the least.

After my last post on here, I got really depressed and suicidal. Luckily that only lasted a couple days, but because I was feeling suicidal my husband stayed home a couple days and we had people come stay with me while he was at work so I didn’t have to be alone with our girls. We realized my depression coincided with the week or two before my period started, and when I talked to a doctor they said it sounded like Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD). The first way they try to treat PMDD is with depression medication (which I’ve been on since 2020) and birth control, so they prescribed birth control for me and I started it right away. Unfortunately within a week I was feeling terrible and very nauseous, which stopped when I stopped taking my birth control pills, so that didn’t work out.

This month we’ve been planning A’s first birthday party and cake smash. We did the cake smash on her birthday but unfortunately we got sick this week, so we had to cancel her party.

Overall, even though it’s been a hard last few months, I love the way my life is headed and I love my family. I’m just grateful for each day I get to spend with my husband and our girls, and everyone else I care about.

I will try to post more often, but I probably won’t be posting twice a week for the foreseeable future. I want to write more about ADHD and Autism and being a mom, so if you have any ideas for blog posts in the future, comment below or on my post on Facebook!

I hope you are all having a very happy October!

Clarissa

What I Don’t Love About Habit Trackers

If you’re anything like me, you need someone (or something) to keep you on track. For me, that’s my husband, daughters, phone apps, and my bullet journal. My husband and daughters remind me of my goals or routines, my phone apps give me something concrete to check everyday, and my bullet journal allows me to be creative in my routine. It works great! Until… it doesn’t.

They put the emphasis on doing the routine or habit every day. Here’s the thing: habit trackers, especially phone apps, like to put the focus on doing your routine every single day. My mind doesn’t work like that, though. I like doing new stuff or switching things up. Beyond that, though, life gets in the way. This past weekend for example I was on my period so I took a break from exercise for a few days, I was also hormonal because again I was on my period so I really didn’t feel like doing anything productive. And so instead I spent quite a bit of the weekend playing games on my phone while I rested, and worrying about my streak for my morning routine which was up to over a month and would now be at zero days because of one bad weekend which happens every single month.

I understand that a habit is something you do all the time and that’s why it has become a habit. But I’m also the kind of person that will fall off once and not get back on because I’ll think “what’s the point? I lost all those days!” But I didn’t lose those days. I still did my routine all those days and not doing my routine a few days a month because I’m not feeling well isn’t going to change that.

Besides that, I actually really love habit trackers. I just don’t love that my streak starts over when I take a break and I have to remind myself that I didn’t lose those days. I was just using a few days to get back to a good mental health and physical health space, and that’s a good thing. It’s not a waste.

Remember, if a tracker isn’t working for you, it’s working against you and you should try something new.

And now I’ll heed that advice and decide if I really need that phone app that I use for my morning routine and places an emphasis on keeping my streak going.

Adjusting My Life To Accommodate ADHD

By Clarissa Enos Plagmann

A theme I see in a lot of groups I’m in that are full of stay at home moms is that their husbands/partners expect them to do everything in the home: finances/bills, childcare, cooking, housework/chores, etc. Not only is this unrealistic, even for neurotypicals, but it’s impossible for someone like me.

The rhetoric around stay at home moms needs to change. Obviously if the mom wants to do all the household chores and such, then that’s great. But there needs to be a discussion before one parent/partner chooses to stay home instead of work outside the home where you talk as partners about expectations, and this needs to be revisited often so you can figure out what works and what doesn’t and adjust accordingly.

When I quit my job back in 2018, my husband and I were living in a 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom house with an elderly woman. She had one bedroom, we shared the kitchen and bathroom, and my husband I had the rest of the house. I quit because being on different schedules from my husband and not sleeping with him most nights was having a negative impact on my health. I started searching for a new job, but before long I found out I was pregnant with our first baby.

Prior to becoming pregnant, we had already decided one of us would stay home with our kids while they were young. But, I had also done tons of research and we decided that whoever stayed home with the kids would be caring for the kids, not the house. While one of us worked outside the home, the other would care for the kids like a daycare or nanny or babysitter would. When we were both home, we’d split any household/yard work. Obviously we knew it wouldn’t be equal, but we wanted it to make sense for our family and not place undue pressure on either of us.

In practice, it has been difficult. While my husband is at work, I just focus on surviving and keeping the kids alive. Basically, I make sure I change diapers, feed them, give them naps or put them to bed… anything I need to do for the kids. If chores like dishes or picking up the living room get done then that’s a bonus, but that’s not my focus and if it doesn’t happen it’s not a big deal. My husband works 4:30pm-3:00am so when we’re both awake we figure out what needs done and do it.

However, my ADHD does mess with things. For example: some days I can’t make myself get up and do stuff. I’m so worn out I just have to sit and do nothing or play mindless games on my phone. I try to combat this by figuring out my triggers and avoiding them or preventing them, but it doesn’t always work. When this happens, we’ve started to realize we really need to communicate more. My husband is definitely the kind of person who likes to get work out of the way and then play, but my ADHD sometimes necessitates me starting with play to get that dopamine hit and then doing chores/work. Another thing that helps me is listening to and singing and dancing to music while I work. This gives me that dopamine and distracts me while I do something I don’t enjoy.

Other things we’ve implemented:

1. My husband does the vast majority of the cooking. Occasionally when I’m feeling up to it I’ll plan a meal and cook, otherwise he does most of it because I just don’t like cooking.

2. We try to communicate when we’re not feeling great and just need to do nothing all day. However, we also understand that the other might not always be able to or think to let the other know, and we try to stay attuned to each other. We’re definitely still working on this one, but we’re slowly getting there.

3. I like to set up visual cues or reminders around the house. That means various alarms and notifications on my phone and fitbit, sticky notes around the house, notes in my bullet journal, a printed schedule of my workout and my morning routine next to my bed so that’s the first thing I see when I wake up, etc.

I’m always finding new ways to make our home more neurodivergent friendly. How do you make your home neurodivergent friendly? I’d love to hear in the comments below!

Making Life Easier For Those Who Struggle

Today, my husband told our daughter E (3yo) that she needed to share the tv with other members of the family. She wanted to watch a movie and he reminded her what they discussed about taking turns and asked me if I wanted to watch something first. I said it was fine if she watched something but reminded her a few times that it was my turn after her movie ended.

When her movie ended, I got on YouTube and found a video by Jubilee (amazing YouTube channel by the way) called “Do all Blind People Think The Same?” which is part of a series. One of the blind people they had on the show is another YouTuber I follow, Molly Burke, so of course I had to watch it. It was interesting hearing their opinions about dating, life, disability, discrimination, etc.

What really stuck out to me was something Molly shared about the medical versus social model of disability. I had never heard of this before so of course I had to immediately look it up (hello ADHD). I was thinking about what it could mean to me as an ADHD and possibly Autistic woman.

According to the University of Oregon accessibile education center webpage: “The Medical Model views disability as resulting from an individual person’s physical or mental limitations, and is not connected to the social or geographical environments. The Medical Model focuses on finding a “cure” or making a person more “normal.”” The social model “views disability as a consequence of environmental, social and attitudinal barriers that may prevent people from fully participating in society.”

This idea completely changed the way I view disability. Not that I wasn’t already leaning toward the idea that we should be making our world more accessible to those with disabilities, but more because I hadn’t realized this was a model of disability that has been studied and had papers written about it.

I am firmly in the camp of making our world more accessible so that those of us who think or experience the world around us differently can fully participate in society. I don’t know about others, but I don’t feel like I need to be “cured” of my differences. They are as much a part of me as my hair and eye colors are. They just are. There’s nothing wrong with being neurodivergent. What’s wrong is how the world and society as a whole are set up.

Set up to support the majority rather than help the minority.

I’ve heard the term “survival of the fittest” thrown around for years (though thankfully never in the context of disability). I disagree with this mentality. Doesn’t it make us no better than animals? We should be smarter as a society and realize that we evolve, we’re all different and think differently. That doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with us, it just makes us different. We should be helping the people around us in the world to survive and thrive in our world.

Set the world up for the minority… it just makes sense.

I Need To Focus On Myself

I am struggling.

I’m struggling with society’s expectations of me. I’m struggling with my knee which still hurts when I do too much or bend it too far. I’m struggling with keeping my house tidy.

Essentially I’m struggling with everything society tells me I need to be doing, and in the process I’m filling my “free time” with things I think will make me happy while ignoring the really important things and especially ignoring what I really need.

The truth is, I don’t know what I need. But I know if I don’t figure it out soon it won’t be good.

I don’t know what taking care of myself means for this blog, but for the time being I’m not going to be on social media. I may post here less often for awhile to focus on myself and my family.

Something needs to change. I hope you all understand.

My Morning Routine

Lately I’ve been focusing a lot on my physical and mental health. For the last month, that has meant figuring out the best way for me to start my day. I still have a lot of work to do, but I thought I’d share my current morning routine.

I like to start my morning by drinking a glass of water and taking my pills, which is currently for my depression and ADHD.

Next, I eat breakfast. I get really sick if I don’t eat right away when I wake up, so I like to either keep a protein bar on my nightstand or make a quick breakfast in the kitchen. Recently, my husband chopped up veggies and meat and put them in containers in the fridge that could be microwaved, then I just take one out, crack an egg, mix it all up together, and microwave it for a minute. Quick, easy, healthy, and filling!

While I eat breakfast, I like to pray and read the scriptures. This sets me up for a good day and puts me in a good mindset. I try not to use my phone too much first thing in the morning, but usually I do use my phone for this part of my morning routine, as I listen to or read the scriptures on it while I eat. I might also use this time to write down my to-do list in my bullet journal or write in my journal about the previous day or answer a journal prompt about myself.

Once I’m done eating and journaling, I get dressed in my workout clothes (if I haven’t already put them on) and do my PT exercises for my knee. It helps me to do them first thing in the morning and get them out of the way. I do still do some of the exercises throughout the day as I feel like it or I have time, but this way I know I did them at least once that day before my day has even really begun.

After exercises, I get ready for the day by brushing my teeth, taking a shower, whatever I need to do that day. If I’m not showering, I comb my hair and use dry shampoo if necessary, and then I get dressed for the day.

Ideally, I’d do all of this before my girls woke up, but thankfully if the girls wake up before me or during my routine, my husband will watch them and get them breakfast and change their diapers or whatever needs done until I’m ready for the day.

What does your morning look like? Do you work outside the home like my husband? Or inside the home (as a work at home parent or a stay at home parent) like me? I’d love to hear about your morning routine in the comments below!

Keeping Home

As a neurodivergent homemaker, something I have always struggled with is keeping a tidy home. I’m fairly good at picking up toys, and loading and running the dishwasher at the end of the day, but anything more time consuming or involving more steps seems to fall by the wayside. Some of my bigger struggles: sweeping and mopping the kitchen floor on a schedule, wiping down any and all surfaces, vacuuming, dusting, watering plants, and sweeping or vacuuming off the rug on our back patio. Because we struggle getting them done regularly, we end up scrambling to get it all done the few hours before we’re expecting company and then because we’re in a rush it ends up being just a surface clean rather than a full, deep clean.

The last year has especially made all this much harder. We’ve added a baby to our family, I’ve dislocated my knee twice, and now I am recovering from MPFL Reconstruction Surgery. On top of all that, I’ve dealt with depression and my ADHD, but I’ve also increased or started medication for both my depression and my ADHD. Basically, a lot has happened that has completely changed our lives (for better and worse) and we haven’t been able to keep up.

Recently, I’ve decided I want this to change. My depression is manageable, my ADHD is medicated, my baby is now crawling and entertaining herself for small amounts of time, my 3 year old is good about entertaining herself for the most part, and I’m beginning to have more energy and more range of motion in my knee to allow me to do more chores around the house. However, when I looked around to see what needed done… I felt overwhelmed. There was so much we’ve been putting off. I realized we need to set up a chore rotation or schedule, but I’ve never been very good at those, so rather than jump in head first, I asked how other parents do it. A lot of them said they have a weekly schedule they follow or they have lists of chores that need done each day. One person said they use an app to track chores.

I decided to write a list of chores we’ve been putting off that need done, and share it with my husband to start. Then we can mark them off as we have time or energy to do them. I made each job small, something that could be done in ten minutes or less (preferably less than five). We can cross things off as we do them and add small jobs as we notice they need done. These jobs are things like cleaning windows or mirrors, wiping down surface areas, wiping down the shower, sweeping/mopping/vacuuming areas of the house, etc.

Ideally, we will do one of these jobs per day on top of our daily and weekly chores (but daily chores come first, then weekly, then this list). And some of these jobs will end up part of the weekly chores list eventually. I think starting slow is the way to go when you’ve been out of a habit like cleaning areas of your house.

How do you keep your home tidy? I’d love to hear in the comments, or on my instagram (neurodivergent.homemaker) or facebook page (Clarissa Enos Plagmann).

Stay tuned for an update on my clean home schedule and how it’s going!

It’s time? Already?

The other day, I realized I only had a few pages left in my bullet journal and that I would need a new one before the end of September, even if I just did my weekly to-do lists and didn’t do a monthly page at all. So, I ordered a new bullet journal and started setting it up a few days later. This is a huge hyperfocus of mine. I could sit in my room in silence just setting my bullet journal up for hours and hours without realizing how quickly time is passing.

Yesterday my husband gave me time to do my own thing since I spend the work week with the kids constantly and don’t get much time to myself during the week. I got focused on setting up my bullet journal for August and lost track of time. Before I knew it I’d been in the bedroom for three hours and it was almost bedtime for the littles. Finally I stopped when I realized I was hungry and saw the time. By the time we sat down at the table as a family it was 7:30 (bedtime routine starts at 8, so we usually eat between 6:30-7pm). My husband wasn’t sure if he should come get me at dinner time or if he should wait for me to emerge. This is what it’s like to be time blind.

One pretty common (and annoying) aspect of ADHD is time blindness. This is the inability to understand how much time you have left, how fast time is passing, and how long things take to do. For example, I most commonly experience this when I’m hyperfocused on something like my bullet journal or when I’m reading a book. If I’m really invested in it, hours could pass before I realize it and I’ve missed dinner and bedtime routine.

This can be what makes some people habitually late, or even habitually early to events. Sometimes I way over plan time for activities and routines, and other times I under plan how much time something will take. And no matter how many times I learn how long something takes me, it’s like I’m learning all over again every single time.

So, what can you do if you suffer from time blindness?

I think the first step is really just realizing that’s what your problem is. Do some research (I did a quick google search as I was writing this blog post and there were quite a few good articles at the top of the web search). Learn how it affects your brain.

The next step, if you’re like me, might be setting alarms before you start doing something you know will take longer than the amount of time you have. I hate stopping in the middle of an activity, so if it takes longer than the amount of time I have, I have to set an alarm to remind me to stop because I will keep going until I’m done. Especially if it’s something I love.

My next step is to tell my husband or someone else what time I plan to be done so they can come get me if I ignore my alarm (which happens quite often for me).

If you know someone who is constantly late or doesn’t seem to understand how time is passing, what is something you can do to support them? This depends in large part on who this person is to you.

Last night, when we were eating dinner late and my husband mentioned how he wasn’t sure if he should have come in and got me earlier, he asked if he should do that in the future. We had a discussion about how I try to do my best but I can’t help it sometimes and that it would be nice if he helped me occasionally to pull me out of my hyperfixation to do other important things (like make dinner or do chores or take the littles for an hour or two so he can also have alone time).

Above all, I think the most important thing to realize, is that everybody thinks differently. While one person (with or without ADHD) may struggle with time, others may be hyperaware of the passage of time, and while alarms might work for one person they may do nothing for another. We’re all different and we all experience the world around us differently as well.

LGBTQ+ and Neurodivergent

By Clarissa Enos Plagmann

In the last year, I’ve been doing a lot of research into ADHD and Autism. More specifically I’ve been following influencers and bloggers who are ADHD and/or Autistic, especially women (and men) who were diagnosed as adults.

A few of them have talked about how common it is to be on the LGBTQ+ spectrum and Neurodivergent. On top of that, quite a few (if not most) of the Neurodivergent influencers/bloggers I’ve found are also LGBTQ+. And if you google Neurodivergence and LGBTQ+ you can find quite a few pages of information about studies people have done connecting the two.

As far back as high school, I can remember having dreams about love and family, but they rarely featured men. Instead they would feature a woman (usually vaguely resembling a close friend) and I raising kids together. I remember having a few simple crushes, but nothing major, and I never crushed on people I didn’t know. If you asked me who my celebrity crush is, even now, I’d be hard pressed to think of one because I just don’t think about it or have those kinds of thoughts or feelings about people I don’t personally know. The crushes I had growing up were all on people I had had personal contact with and knew well. I had to know them on an emotional and intellectual level to even have feelings for them of any sort.

I remember at one point wondering if I might be bisexual, because I did still like men, but I also liked women. Eventually I discovered the word “pansexual” which means, according to webmd.com: “the romantic, emotional, and/or sexual attraction to people regardless of their gender.”

Many of you know I’m married to my best friend, a man, and therefore I am in a straight relationship. That’s why I’ve struggled for so long to share this part of my identity, because I felt like I didn’t belong since I’m married to a man. But LGBTQ+ people can still happily be married to people of the opposite sex. Nothing says they can’t be, and that doesn’t make them any less LGBTQ+. I am a pansexual woman married to a straight man and I love my husband and my daughters and my life.

I am still researching and learning and growing. I will be for the rest of my life. It’s just a part of who I am. So is this. I am pansexual. I don’t care about a person’s gender. I care about who they are as a person.

Homemaking and ADHD

Housekeeping is a struggle with ADHD. It is so hard finding a schedule for housework and sticking to it, I buy way too many decor pieces and always want more, and I just overall struggle with keeping my house clean, cozy, child-friendly, and ADHD-friendly.

As always, this is a work in progress. But, here are the five tips I can give for homemaking with ADHD.

1. More than one of certain items. This one is huge. Generally speaking I’m trying to declutter and go more minimalist. One thing minimalists always talk about is only have one of something you can feasibly get away with only having one of. However, as an ADHD mom, this just doesn’t work for me. So, I have multiple inhalers for my asthma. I keep one in my nightstand, and one in my purses. Ideally I’d keep one in each bag I use regularly, however that isn’t possible at the moment. We also have more than one diaper bag and certain items we keep in both bags, such as a thing of wipes and dispenser of bags to put dirty diapers in when we’re out and about and need to change a diaper. We also keep scissors in our kitchen and in our bedroom.

2. Assess your home and what you use most in which areas. We have a hook for keys in our entryway, a basket with hats and gloves on our shoe rack in our entryway, a basket with cloth masks next to the basket with hats and gloves. I also keep a bin I labeled “returns” on that shoe rack so we can keep items we need to return in that bin and we see it every time we leave the house. We have hooks for our diaper bags and my purses on the wall inside our coat closet. We keep a basket of diapers and wipes in our living room on our desk so we don’t have to leave the room to change a dirty or wet diaper.

3. Make a list of your family’s favorite meals, and use that to meal plan. I struggle with coming up with meals for lunch and dinner (breakfast is generally whatever we can find, and we keep a handful of options like bagels, cereal, oatmeal, protein bars, etc on hand at all times). Lunch is our “big” family meal because my husband is gone for work from 4pm-3:30am. So, we have a sit down meal for lunch and then make dinner before he leaves for work and he takes some for work and the rest I heat up for our girls and myself at dinner time. This means making two fairly big meals every day. It’s a struggle. So, early in our marriage we made a list of our favorite meals to make and eat, and I refer to that when we meal plan for the week. We may need to update it now because I believe we have a few new favorites, but I love having something I can refer to when I’m having trouble making decisions.

4. Alarms. For everything. I struggle with remembering to do things, so I try to set alarms to remind me to switch the load of laundry, give the girls a snack, heat up dinner, etc. This doesn’t always work because I’m very good at zoning alarms out, but it annoys my older daughter and if I ignore an alarm she’ll remind me so I turn it off. She’s good like that.

5. Lastly, I’m always willing to make some changes. (Probably a little too willing sometimes, especially when it means shopping). Homemaking with ADHD is tough. And something that I may struggle with now I may not struggle with in the future, and vice versa. I try to be flexible and realize that I’m always learning and growing. Therefore, my space is as well, and my routines and habits. It’s important to be willing to make adjustments as you learn new ways to do things.

I hope these tips help you as you set up your home to work with you. I’ll continue sharing more tips and hacks as I learn them and implement them in my own home. It is my ultimate goal to have an ADHD friendly home for myself and my girls (they’re too young to be diagnosed yet, but we will be having them evaluated as soon as they are old enough).

Love and light always.

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