About Me

Who is Scattermom?

Got something to say? I’ll ignore a ringing phone, but I do answer email.

My name is Stephanie and I am a woman with adult ADHD whose Other Self* had no intention of ever having children. I was a free spirit (who worked upwards of 50 hours per week) and living an exciting life (if you count eating dinner from a bag in the living room while watching Family Guy reruns as excitement).

For all of you smart ass grammar freaks– my choice of scatter (versus scattered) is technically correct. My occassional over (or under) use of commas, dangling participles, or ending with a prepositions? Well, this a blog, not a newspaper. As a dear friend (and biblio-snob) once said, “grammar is descriptive, not proscriptive.”

From Dictionary.com

scat·ter/ˈskætər/
–verb (used without object)
4. to separate and disperse; go in different directions.
–noun
5. the act of scattering.
6. something that is scattered.

So you can infer from being a mother to multiple children means that I’m often going in different directions. Beyond that, I’m ADHD, which means that my thoughts are going in at least two different directions. In reality, I would consider having only two thoughts at a time to be a slow day. I’d guess that there are a hundred different plans/ideas/thoughts running through my mind in any given 30 minute period. And their correlation to each other makes complete sense. To me. Oh, and I’m a woman (duh, didn’t the “mom” part give that away?) and a feminist, which just adds a slew of other layers. Take those variables, plot them and there is a definite correlation between them and reliable output.

Did I mention Other Self* worked in the biostatistics department of a research company? Not that any of my examples are scientifically valid variables…because they are, you know, social statistics. Snort, silly statisticians.

*Other Self is the phrase that I use to describe the woman I was before children turned me into a mother. In retrospect, I often find her to be annoyingly judgmental and mostly wrong about a lot of life. She was also fun to be around, until the 6th tequila shot and then she was often just embarrassing. Trying to steal a lighted Pabst Blue Ribbon sign from a bar named Hell isn’t cute when you are 24. She fueled most of her productivity with moral indignation and anger. She had a “saying no” problem (see below about the first pregnancy). She worked, drank and smoked too much, and ate too little. No wonder she was always in a bad mood. But she also managed to balance a true social life sans Small People and dirty diapers. Sometimes I miss her. Mostly I don’t.

But if I could go back and visit her for a moment, I might clue her in to a bunch of things that would make it easier to not be a hypocrite later.
Co-sleeping? Other Self said NEVER. Scattermom just wanted sleep and it was just so easy to nurse a baby without having to actually get up.
Cloth diapering? Other Self said GROSS. Scattermom realized pretty quickly that she would spend the next few years elbow deep in Small People’s biological waste anyway, and disposable diapers were expensive. I mean, you can resell cloth diapers. Try doing that with a used pamper.
Housewifery? When Other Self was pregnant she promised to be the best housewife ever– how hard could it be to keep a clean house with one Small Person? Scattermom managed it for about two weeks before deciding her own happiness was far more important than dusting.
Living on a budget? Other Self did– it was called paycheck to paycheck and waste as much in between as possible. Scattermom…well, scattermom still struggles with it, but she’s getting better and now even cuts coupons and stuff.

Zach, my eldest son (November 2006), was the result of a marital fight/make-up moment. Romantic? Eh. Cliche? Definitely. He’s proof that even adult hormones make the same mistakes as teen-aged hormones–no car backseat required. Thankfully, like many of my other at-the-time-catastrophic decisions, he turned out to be one of my greatest successes. Not that I can claim much of his personality– he looks like me, but behaves like his father.

As a point of fact, he was such an easy, laid-back baby/toddler that it seemed perfectly reasonable to start trying to conceive in February 2007. I was older, fatter…it would take longer, blah-blah-blah. Yeah, it didn’t take longer, not at all. Elliot was born November 2008, just six days before Zach turned 2. Elliot’s personality I can claim entirely. He looks like his father and behaves just like me. I totally understand why I’m an only child.

That’s when the parenting fun really began. And by fun, I mean sometimes it’s fun and a lot of times it’s the very opposite.

I’ve been married for an eternity (it seems) to a lovely and patient man who supports all most of my nutso whims with grace and aplomb.  He still eats my cooking–even when I just make something up–and he’s supportive when I’m attempting to bake bread for the thousandth time. Hungry adults will eat anything. Hungry Small People will not. He gets a little nervous about bright paint colors and other creative home improvement projects. But most of my brilliant ideas haven’t been failures. Most. Well, okay–maybe half.

I’m dry and sarcastic, and if sarcasm often goes over your head…well, you probably won’t visit here much and that’s okay, really. I love my children, but I’m often pretty irreverent about the whole being-a-mom thing. Mostly because I’m pretty irreverent about everything else. So if it offends you that I might (have, actually) referred to my precious babies as dicks, this isn’t the place for you, either.

Oh, and I hate squirrels and voles.

That’s all– enjoy!