...or, if they DO change, it's darn slowly.


You might notice that this picture looks familiar....


                                            

Art imitates life; see, my KITCHEN looks just the same today as it did when I took this picture. There's no reason for me take a new picture until Ethel adds a little color.

Once upon a time, I took an ADD test. It was an amazing test; not only did it convince me that I had ADD, but it also showed me just how powerful the disorder is. I was completely unable to stop the effects of the ADD; the symptom was completely out of my control.

So I'm sure that I have ADD. I understand it, and I've been addressing it with medication for several years now. I've learned that ADD is basically having a part of one's brain fall asleep while the rest of the brain is awake.

Ethel, however, does NOT have ADD. She'll tell you so.

But there's SOME reason that she does projects like this. She got all excited about painting the kitchen and family room, and she started out by tapeing like crazy for a few hours; then she went to Home Depot and spent a few hundred bucks on paint, then came home and painted like crazy the first day.

The second day, she got a little painting done, but then sort of lost interest.

Since then, she's spread some paint half-heartedly down close to the ground, and then just slowed down, like a wind-up toy that has gone too long. Now she won't hardly go into the room, because the paintbrushes, rollers and ladders are glaring at her, angrily.

Instead, she went out and bought a big 3-tiered fountain that needs to be reassembled and cleaned - so, of course, it's now sitting out in the yard, dirty and in pieces...

And she took the cover off the rocking chair back when she refinished the barstools and dining room chairs (that was early June); - that poor rocking chair is still sitting in our bedroom, naked, with its innards exposed to any passing stranger. 

The land is still not scaped; the cabana curtains went up (and came back down). We did finish the Pachyderm Powder Room, but Big Al the fathead mascot sticker is coming loose; every day Ethel is supposed to call and get another one sent, and every day she forgets - because, see, that's not what's on her mind now.

I reckon it's a functional dysfunction, because eventually most things do, indeed, get done. I suspect that it works this way - Ethel starts a project, Ethel loses interest, Jim says something about the unfinished project, Ethel yells at Jim that she doesn't have time to do that project because she's busy with <long list of other unfinished projects that she's started and lost interest in>, Jim backs up wide-eyed and terrified, Ethel tells Jim to go finish the project.

This is called "Teamwork".