Aargh!

Charlie Brown was the master of a certain expression of agony that is today largely replaced in pop-culture by reference to various forms of poop.

"Aargh!"

It always rose in shaky black font letters above his unhappy head.

Today is an aargh day for me. Today I know how he feels.

In spite of writing the event down on not one but two calendars ...

In spite of a personal phone call that I received yesterday reminding me ...

Still I went about my work this morning somehow believing that Thursday (i.e., tomorrow), not Wednesday (i.e., today), was the day of the big event.

It was no less than a very important community meeting in which I would not only represent the school district, not only make the announcement that our school district would host the next meeting, but also would receive a nice, hot lunch.

Someone called me from the meeting an hour into it. My absence had been noticed.

Not that it did any good but I drove on out there post-haste, too late to do much of anything, certainly too late for the lunch.

I missed kicking the proverbial football and I can't even blame Lucy for this one.

I sat through what was left of the meeting with my tummy rumbling. I drove back to the office in the rain and ate a cold tuna sandwich alone in the break room.

Why is there some stubborn, stupid, part of me that resists looking at my calendars, that fights so hard against the attempt of the rest of me to actually be an organized, productive human being? Why cannot I extricate that part of me, pluck it out like some kind of tapeworm, kick its sorry %$^, then throw it beaten and bloody into the cargo hold of a plane bound for Mogadishu?

Feels So Good!

It is indeed possible to turn a weakness into a strength.

Fighting with all my might against the default of my ADHD, I am slowly winning the battle to become organized. It has taken a lifetime. It will never be a job I can declare complete.

Only someone who has been where I have been, could fully understand the sweet satisfaction of being able to open a cabinet, open a file and in less than two minutes, produce upon request an obscure but critical piece of information needed by our budget department for the annual audit.