Hugs if OK.
You sure look smart here. If you are a stupid person who has somehow figured out how to fake smart well enough to fool a bunch of smart people… well, you would have to be pretty smart for that, right?
[Confuse the reactive brain]
P.S. Smart people are wrong about things sometimes too, because smart != perfect. If you were mistaken about something, you still get to be smart. Sorry, deal with that.
@d_r and @nothingfuture, you should split this thread and create a new topic based around that discussion.
[@Clifton Without naming any (other) names, I’m pretty sure @Mindysan33’s comment was referring to a disagreement on another thread]
Also,who knew that Donald Trump could be the cause of an improvement in people’s mental well-being?
It could be the clinical nature of your field. When we have a job opening, 90% of the applicants have been through some level of training/mentoring as a normal part of being a TA. Again, that doesn’t necessarily mean explicit classes, but it normally includes starting under heavy supervision with a gradual ramping up of individual classroom responsibility, and a range of classes. Of course, you can’t do that with a student who only TAs for a semester or two.
I’m not sure how much more I want to bring my day job into my down time.
I kind of got it might be something like that, but it’s still a shitty feeling and I sympathize.
Stepdad’s giving me shit about getting the dogs fixed. First it’s ‘what’s with you and dog twat.’ then ‘ok i’ll put all the bills in a hat, you get to pick out which one doesn’t get paid because YOU won’t shut up about this and just make sure they don’t get humped on.’ It’s… you knew this was a thing for MONTHS… you even promised back when the last litter got given away that they’d get fixed immediately which is why i actually spent my christmas money instead of save it, and now I’m getting shit on because I’m daring to go ‘hey remember that thing you said you were gonna do?’ Just… Jesus fucking… WHY?! WHY GODDAMNT WHY?!
Candye Kane died 
Was that your little kitty with the t-shirt? I’m so sorry for your loss. A big hug to you.
Oh no no! My cat is Katy; she’s seemingly indestructible. Candye Kane is a singer I really like who’d been sick for a long time; cancer finally got the better of her yesterday.
The Toughest Girl Alive, indeed.
Oh, shit! 
I just remembered that your cat’s name had a “K” in it.
Well, sorry about your singer, but I’m sooooo happy your kitty is doing well.
“The juvenile sea squirt wanders through the sea searching for a suitable rock or hunk of coral to cling to and make its home for life. For this task, it has a rudimentary nervous system. When it finds its spot and takes root, it doesn’t need its brain anymore, so it eats it! It’s rather like getting tenure.”
Aw, thanks; I know someday I’ll have to say goodbye, but for now she’s still truckin’.
71 points. BOOM! Only borderline!
Hope that your wife’s dog is still hanging in there.
I have a bag of small empty capsules that I got at a health store that I use for bitter pet pills – the pills usually just need to be cut in half or quarters to fit.
We had a slew of critters fall into the old and sickly category over the past few years – I am now a master piller. We had decided not to add any more new critters, but after my wife got a new kitten last summer they just started showing up. We are now almost back to our historical maximum levels of fluff.
I finally watched it again and this time made sure I had a piece of paper and a pen. I got 174 points. Or 674 points if you count the adding of 500 points because I still wasn’t sure at that point when I watched it the first time.
I just re-watched it myself. 233, not including the 35, 10 and 500 bonus points. As for my school reports, I think they all said something about applying myself. I talked with my mum last week, and apparently my primary school teacher said that I was one of the best students and could handle everything pretty easily, but I was only “there” for about one week a year. However, I am getting much better at it. I try to exercise every day, both running and taking the kids to and from school by bike. That at least provides some structure and blood flow to the brain. My son hates being late, so I’ve improved a lot just for him. I have to buy the food and cook most of the time, and since my family needs to be properly fed, I think a lot about proper nutrition. I don’t eat lunch though, as that’s too distracting. It takes me 10-15 minutes to buy food, but I am buying it for 7 people.
A big thing for me is eliminating mental load, so I have no car, work from home, set up automatic payments etc. I also noticed a while ago that if I was going to spend 30% of my time looking for things that I’d lost in any case, there was no point beating myself up about it. I have about 5 things that I take with me everywhere (depending on the season), and almost everything else is eliminated. If I leave something behind, I’ll go back and collect it if I need it (which is much easier if everything is in one building), but I refuse to feel bad about it. The same thing goes for being late or any other symptom. Interestingly enough, this helps me to eliminate or at least reduce a lot of the annoying symptoms for me and other people. I forget much less than before, and am more organised and less irritated because I’m not always correcting my mistakes. Since I started medication, I’m more engaged with other people too.
I embrace the chaos to some degree, so I try to find work that I can adjust depending on my level of engagement. Our house is almost all tiled, so it’s easy to clean and a quick sweep through is often enough if I don’t have the time to properly clean it. A number of people in the house can cook, so I don’t have to be that consistent. My family likes travel and change, so I’m not dragging them along with me if we go somewhere new. Translation actually works really well for me (apart from the taxes and other administration part). There’s very little paperwork, I can choose which projects I accept and it allows me to be a bit inconsistent without changing my job all the time. Nowadays I refuse most short projects, because they’re just distracting in large numbers and take me far too long for what they’re worth (a couple of years ago a company praised me as their best translator, then dropped me a few months later because I would forget projects and make mistakes). The best projects are something technical where I can obsess about a topic for a couple of weeks before moving on to something else. Hunting laws in different states in Germany? Great, I can learn all about different animals, kinds of guns, hunting seasons etc. Next, I’m learning about tunnel construction, then shipbuilding, then farming equipment. I impressed a project manager once by explaining the difference between different crop spraying equipment when the client had queried a term (the termbase was wrong and I was right). I can also work from anywhere with an internet connection, so sometimes I go to a few locations during the day, or take my computer touring on my bike and work half days. If I get bored, I can just learn a new language or move country.
Sometimes I wish I could be more consistent (and believe me, I’ve tried), but it is at least an interesting life. Next month I may be helping to sail a large yacht from another German port into Hamburg. We have other people in the house who can cover for me during that time, so my wife is pushing me to do it.
Have you heard about the hunter vs. farmer hypothesis? The (non-scientific) idea is that ADHD is more suited to a hunter lifestyle, where you can go for long periods of boredom before switching into hyperfocus, then go without eating and sleeping because you are so absorbed in your task. The tendency to get distracted by small details (“squirrel!”) makes much more sense when it can make the difference between eating and not eating that day, although it’s less suited to a farming lifestyle that emphasises consistency and planning for the future. It also supports a more nomadic lifestyle and less focus on social norms and organisation.
Thanks for asking. She is still hanging in there, and if I didn’t know that there is a huge cancerous lump relentlessly growing on her larynx I would almost think she was getting better. She seems to be over the pain from the exploratory procedure, so I’ve cut out the pain pills, which has brightened her outlook a bit. (She’s still on occasional anti-anxiety meds.) She even made me take her on a little extended walk today, and her tail was wagging the whole way even as she was obviously having trouble breathing.
It is still a toss-up whether she’ll make it until my wife gets back on Thursday.
Here’s a pic from today:
A side note, about giving pills to cats—just in case this might be helpful to anyone—
This short YouTube video shows a way to do it yourself, without needing another person’s assistance or props or putting it in food. The trick is opening their mouth using one of your hands positioned behind their head, AND using that same arm to press down on their back at the same time.
While caring for my neighbor’s cats for 10 days I had to pill one of them daily by myself. So I searched YouTube for techniques. This one worked like a charm for me!! I could hardly believe how simple and effective it was.
(Of course you want to make it clear that you’re in charge, and work quickly. And instead of water afterward, I gave a spoonful of plain canned pumpkin, which is a treat and apparently also good for them for the fiber it contains.)
Little triumphs! 
I miss my mom.
