The Move, Stage 2

The new landlady called. Her mother is in the hospital 3 hours away. Apparently, it's serious. My landlady set a day and time for her husband to meet me. That was hard for her, because she made it clear that she alone manages the apartments. On social media, I never really give the exact day and time for things, except in retrospect. Like I never reported I was in San Francisco when I was there. That's all just precautionary. If I report changes or travel contemporaneously, I might as well tell people, "Hey, if you want to break into my place, now's the time." Not that I have any stuff anybody would want anyway. Still, I don't want to test it.

It's going to be good to have a human being as a landlord, rather than a heartless, soulless, brainless corporation, who I'll give the character name (again) of Corky McSwagger. When I first checked out the apartment, the Corky just gave me a key and sent me to look at it. No escort. What an efficient non-use of labor, I thought.

When I entered the apartment for the first time, it was full of gas. I overlooked the smell, thinking that there's no way they'd send me to an apartment where I could asphyxiate, or that could explode at any minute (with two other tenants in it). No way would they put my life in danger like that. I told myself it couldn't be gas, it had to have been something else.  

I thought it had to be something else like some garbage in the furnace vents that I'd have them clean out. I know, why rent an apartment that smells bad, but I loved the location, I loved the price, and I thrilled I could get an inexpensive place that didn't come with a menagerie of vermin. So, I moved in.

When I arrived, three days later, I couldn't get it out of my mind that it really did smell like gas. And nothing else. Note that it had been leaking unabated for three more days. Note it was hot outside, which could only have made it more volatile. So, I opened the windows and called Laclede to confirm that it was a gas leak. It seems that Corky didn't inspect the place himself before they put he out on the market, whether from greed, or just incompetence, nor after it was rented, just to make sure.

That's the problem with corporate landlords. They cut costs dangerously, and the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing, but not from being charitable. Corky finally got the leak corrected. He had to replace the whole furnace. In between time, it was like they forgot about the problem. I had to complain, and mention the L word (lawyer), to get them to complete it.

To add insult to injury, Corky accused me of having pirated my cat. He said I hadn't registered and paid for, and he was going to start charging me massive fees. I had to email them a copy of the check to prove I had paid the cat deposit $250, and $15 more in rent per month. 

Human landlords can be just as bad. I have to say, my expectations are low in general. But I have a good impression of the new landlady. She seems smart, and driven.

I have all non-essentials packed up and ready to move. I guess I'll soon see if I'm up to it. I'm disassembling my old computer, and seeing if I can sell some of the parts. I'm keeping the hard disks for data backup. I got a USB dock for them after finding USB docks are cheap. That way, I don't have to install them in my new computer.

The real move is ready to commence, and could last through September.

UPDATE-- TUESDAY 8/29/17: The landlady called this morning and canceled, saying her husband couldn't make it. She said she'll call tomorrow to set up a new appointment. This really does throw me off. I was totally flexible yesterday and today. Tomorrow and the rest of the week, though, are another matter.

However, I know how having a deathly sick parent (or child for that matter) can turn your whole world upside down. If I'm feeling tense about my little inconvenience, it's about a tenth of the tension she's feeling. 

 


 

The Twilight Zone of multiple concussions

I'm self/un-employed. I'm busy. I plan every day, and put every task on a timer. Here's a screen cap of tomorrow's schedule and time-table (Using ctrl + + will help for reading it:

With ADHD, I have little of what neurologists call "executive function of the brain." And what would that be? According to Webmd:

Executive function helps you:

• Manage time
• Pay attention
• Switch focus
• Plan and organize
• Remember details
• Avoid saying or doing the wrong thing
• Do things based on your experience
• Multitask

When executive function isn’t working as it should, your behavior is less controlled. This can affect your ability to:

• Work or go to school
• Do things independently
• Maintain relationships

Executive function can be divided into two groups:

Organization: Gathering information and structuring it for evaluation

Regulation: Taking stock of your surroundings and changing behavior in response to it

In practice, that means I have to spend 30-40 minutes a day assembling some artificial executive function by coming up with a schedule like the one above with a spreadsheet that I keep. Then I put it all on timers. It's like having a meeting with myself and coming to an agreement on all my tasks for the day, how much time I will spend on each one, and in what order I will do them. What you don't see on the spreadsheet sidebar is the part below, where I list every task I plan on doing, in the order of required frequency. The reason I don't show you that is I want to tell the entire world everything I'm planning.

I'm able to do this with medication. Without the medication, forget it. Even with medication, I have occasional days when I can't conform to the schedule. I call those "my days off," and almost all of those are unexpected. Like today started off as an impromptu day off because I couldn't follow the schedule. Even with all this, I have horrendous trouble getting long-term projects done, but it's not like I don't work. I can document that.

Before I had the medication and this system, I either drifted through the day, or I'd conform with other people's plans. Like I'd never prepare meals. Now I do, but I eat basically the same things every day. Grape Nuts with soy milk and tea in the morning, PBJ for lunch, and for dinner a daily rotation of homemade chili, cold chicken sandwiches, and tomato/cucumber chick pea salad for dinner.  

For writing, it's taken me forever to learn how to outline a novel. Without the outline, everyone in my writers' agree that I write up great scenes. The problem is, the scenes don't follow the same plot. As a result, I have two drafts and a few more false starts, adding up to 1,400 pages.

I have other symptoms that don't quite fit with ordinary ADHD. One is a partial speech deafness, where my native American English can sound like a foreign language. That's why in the last few years, I've speculated to myself there might be something more to this, for which ADHD is one symptom.

I've kept my suspicions from my friends and family. Until recently, I didn't think it was important to my life or the trajectory it's taken. As a child, I was very concussion prone. Eight. Two of the most severe ones I suffered before I was six-years old. I went through childhood traumatized by them. They gave me nightmares where the headache and the murderous sensation of them came back to me. I didn't receive medical attention for any of them. My parents, inadvertently, encouraged me to walk off or hide injuries, or be ashamed of how they happened. 

I had one more concussion in my mid-twenties. At the time I was depressed, wasn't taking care of myself, and thought if I could walk, it wasn't serious. 

Current medical science has found concussions are worse in the long-term than previously suspected, and multiple concussions are cumulative in their negative effects on a person's brain. It didn't occur to me until recently they might have a lifetime effect on me.

Besides childhood and that one definite concussion as an adult. There were altogether three other  incidents, adult and childhood, I suspect were concussions by how they felt. However, those were momentum injuries where the brain hits the interior of the skull without a direct blow to the head, such as with a hard, running fall, where I got up dizzy, with a headache, and my ears ring. Or being in a traffic accident where my car was spun and knocked into something.

For the ones in childhood, three were from bullying, four were caused by "playground accidents." One, as a toddler, was an in home accident. At least one of them, a vicious beating by a much older kid, left me with PTSD. I know this by the nightmares and jump scares I had. The results: if I were threatened I would freeze. So, I was known as a coward. A more minor effect: at a pool, I couldn't dive. Going headfirst was too much of a threat. I had a similar problem in the short time I took gymnastics.

I bring this up now, because I have headaches during the day as I follow my schedule, and not ordinary headaches. When they happen, it's like my thoughts seize up and cramp. I can't keep track of what I'm doing, nor can I remember what my next task is, nor my previous task. I'll look down at the list, and then I'll immediately forget what it said. I absolutely can't think, couldn't solve 2+2. Trying to work through it is like spinning my wheels in deep mud.

If I lie down quietly as soon as I notice this happening, I recover in twenty minutes. If I have to work through it, as I used to at work, I'll make error after error. Worse, my mood goes down the toilet,  angry or despondent, or both. I used to linger through work, and when I got home I'd sleep from three to twelve hours. Yes, I was having this trouble when I worked, and it's worsened through the years. My last job was very fast paced, and it could put me in a bad state quickly.

I remember these episodes being a problem, well, since childhood. I thought I just had ordinary headaches and a nasty disposition (which I hated myself for). I went to a neurologist, and this is before the more serious, chronic effects of concussions had been documented. He told me I had migraines. 

Now that I'm officially disabled, they're easier to deal with.

How is it that I didn't receive any medical care, despite in a few instances being knocked out?
Concussions just weren't taken seriously when I was a child, and during most of my adulthood. Like racism, concussions used to be great classic comedy. Remember The Three Stooges and how funny they looked when they were hit in the head with a "Clang!" Then, if it was Shemp and not Curly, he'd get this blank look to the sound of cuckoos and birds tweeting?

The "Clang!" was okay, but did bird songs get a comically association with concussions? I'd never describe a concussion as anything serene. It's more like the Beatles "Revolution 9," only more discordant. It feels like the whole world is crumbling .

As a result of too brain trauma comedy, neither myself, nor the adults in my life took the concussions seriously enough. If I wasn't completely knocked out, I got up embarrassed and tried function with the headache, despite feeling awful. Usually the accident or loss in a fight was embarrassing enough.

As for medical care, the one where I was knocked out is an example. My classmates picked me up from the blacktop, and walked me into the nurse's office. The "nurse" wasn't very good at her job, because after she had me lay down for a half hour or hour, she put me right back into class! My brains might have been scrambled at the time, but I'm still certain I wasn't given any real medical care.

Maybe I had ADHD and a mood disorder anyway, but can't help wondering how different my life would be if I didn't have those injuries, and if they definitely weren't addling me as an adult. Knowing this doesn't change any of my plans. I still want to write novels. I just have to keep coming up with workarounds.    

PS. I finally got bold and did something with the blog layout. I hope it's easy on the eyes.

The move, stage 1

On July 31st, I came home to find a note on my door from my Corporate Landlord, (I'll just call him Corky McSwagger, LLC) telling me to vacate my apartment by September 30th. They're exercising a clause in my lease, which says they can cancel my lease, at will. It wasn't because of anything I did. They're doing this to all other tenants in the building, both of them. 

Mr. McSwagger doesn't tell us why he's doing this, even though that's the law. Maybe they're selling it, maybe they're tearing it down. However, I've long noted the sidewalk outside my door that slants at an oblique angle into this building. It's possible the building is being undermined. Repairing that is going to be expensive.

And Mr. McSwagger doesn't make a lot of money off this building. There's three tenants in three apartments. The rent is rock bottom for this neighborhood, and this city, in fact. I'm going to ask Corky sometime why we're being evicted. I'm betting that's the reason.

Anyway, but the recent news is I've put a deposit down on an apartment. It's more expensive. I have to go back to being a miser, at least for a while. The apartment does have more space, which means it's going to look very empty at first.

However, I do look forward to moving. Now that I have to vacate, I've become aware of how cramped it is. Not only is it small, but it doesn't have a lot of closet space, which means things are stacked in corners, along the walls, hanging from the doors. Oh No! The walls are closing in on me!

I've been sorting and throwing things away, and putting other things aside to sell or donate. I have a lot of time to do this, and I plan to be organized and move with as few things as possible. I have plenty of time. I get the new apartment on September 1st (a little sooner, actually), and I don't have to vacate here until September 30th.

This is because days that I can move in a three day marathon are over. Trying to do that now would put me in the hospital, if not kill me outright. 

In other news, I wrote a short horror story I'm very proud of. I'm sending it out as I move.

I'm looking forward to the next forty-nine days.