Interruptions

Having Addie here is amazing. This is the first time she’s ever been here I’ve spent a lot of time with her in MO but we were usually staying either at their house or in a hotel and my entire time was spent playing with her or reading to her or doing crafts with her. It’s different here – I have cooking to do, laundry, some minimum amount of cleaning, the garden, the chickens. I had planned to wash the sheets on Addie’s bed today and it never happened.

I’ve always said that if ADD/ADHD had been commonly diagnosed when I was a child, I would have been the poster child. I think that’s why, even as an adult, interruptions throw me totally out of whack. I told Vince today that had I been sewing alone, I would have started and finished 10 of those little shirts in one day. They are super simple but I sewed, off and on, all day and never finished the first shirt. I stop to do something for or with her . . something that should take 5 minutes and an hour or so later, I’m back at the sewing machine for 10 minutes before the next interruption.

I went out to water the garden. Addie was watching something on TV so I told her I’d be back in about half an hour. One and a half hours later, I made it back to the sewing room.

• I might have been out 5 minutes when she came out to see what I was doing and wanted to see the watermelons so we both we back to the house to get our boots. We decided to fix ourselves glasses of water to take out. She wanted a snack so I put some hash browns in the air fryer, set the timer on my phone for 10 minutes, went back out.
• On the way to the garden, she said “Granny. The chickens are screaming. It could be a snake. Let’s go check!” We diverted from the garden and went to the chicken coop. No snake, thank goodness.
• While we were out by the orchard she wanted to be sure there were no more plums and she had to see for herself so we walked around the orchard and looked at all the fruit.
• By then, the timer was going off so we went back in the house and I got her snack ready so she stayed in to eat while I went back to the garden.
• I had been out there maybe 10 minutes and she came back out. She saw a praying mantis on the other chicken coop door and told me it was the strangest bug, tried to describe it to me and wanted me to come see it. I did and we talked about the praying mantis. I told her when we got back in the house, I’d look it up on the internet.
• Back to the garden and here she comes. She’s gone in the house and retrieved the iPad and wanted me to look it up right then. The tablet doesn’t connect to the internet that far from the house so I went back in the sewing room, looked it up on the computer and left her looking at pictures while I went back out to water.

I don’t even know if I got everything in the garden watered. I didn’t get the doll shirt finished.

I’m not complaining. I’m loving having her here. She’s inquisitive and so much is new to her here. I love sharing with her but it’s so easy for me to get off track and so hard to get back on track!