Breathing Fire: My ADHD Resilience Slays Dragons
My ADHD brain finds crises interesting and compelling. Emergencies tend to pull my attention into full focus.
This week, I donned my armor to slay dragons (truth be told, I’ve been wearing it nearly a month now). And I am still upright, despite an onslaught of mishaps that triggered every ADHD cell in my brain — not to mention my natural ADHD resilience.
A sample: On the coldest night of the year, our furnace decided to churn out bone-chilling cold air instead of heat. I called my HVAC guy, who (predictably) told me that it would be 36 hours until he could get parts on Monday morning.
My ADHD resilience? I headed for Lowe’s, bought a couple of space heaters, closed off most of our first floor and hunkered down at the computer to research energy-efficient furnaces.
On Monday morning, Victor (dear husband) mentioned that the water in the shower was blazing hot. The HVAC guy confirmed that the hot water heater was leaking all over the crawl space and out the door.
Resilience response? I called a new plumber (why can’t I find a plumber I really like and who will show up when I need him/her to show up?). He said he’d be at my house in 30 minutes (oh, I may be in love!). Yep, the hot water heater was dead. And it couldn’t be replaced because the government had outlawed this short, squat gas water heater as being “dangerous.”
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More resilience? Quickly talked through the options, hoping to find a way to keep the more efficient natural gas unit. Nope. My ADHD made a transition to electric and the deal was sealed. We’ll have appropriately hot water tomorrow morning.
In the meantime, I hustled over to the retreat house to take a shower. Warm air. Warm water. I marveled at the mostly-unappreciated goodness of indoor plumbing. But then the fabulous, wonderful, amazing shower refused to stop dripping. Drippity-drip-drippity-dripppp.
Resilience? I caught the new plumber before he departed and diverted him to the retreat house. Fixed. Whew.
There were more snafus: My little green Prius wouldn’t start so it needs to visit the Prius doctor; the wireless rain gauge I bought to replace the old one registered 00.00″ in the midst of a downpour; I accidentally sent an email blast left over from December that I had intended to delete. Yikes.
I needed some respite, so last night we headed for the hot tub for a relaxing soak and some decompression conversation. But the dragons weren’t done with me yet — the water was ice cold (a completely separate issue from the hot water heater, unfortunately). I went back inside to email the hot tub guy who had replaced the old heater only weeks ago. Argh!
Surprisingly, I am pretty calm about all these fire-breathing dragons (but I sure wish they could have directed some of that heat toward my furnace, hot water heater and hot tub!). After all, ADHD steps up to the plate in a crisis.
Crises are interesting, compelling and they certainly pull my attention into full focus. And my ADHD resilience worked in my favor, too. Strange how the “transitions” issue gets out of the way in a crisis.
The net result of all this is that my furnace is now fixed (a new motor, not a new furnace, thank goodness); the hot water heater will be replaced tomorrow and the hot tub probably needs a new breaker, not another new heater.
OK, it’s a new day. Bring on those dragons. My ADHD armor is ready for battle!
What dragons have you slain lately with the help of your ADHD and accompanying resilience? Or have the dragons conquered you temporarily? Tell me about your crises management!
