I’ve been mulling over the controversy around the upcoming DSM-5.

A friend and I were discussing the issue when she made a remarkable comment. It was one of those insights that, as soon as you hear it, the lightbulb goes on.

Having a several decades-long career as a publisher, independent bookstore owner, and book lover made her remark even more startling.

Today is the first day of the Chinese New Year. It’s the year of the Dragon.  I thought I’d celebrate by starting off with some fresh-baked peanut butter cookies for breakfast.

The Dragon made me do it…

Confession: that’s not exactly how I planned it; cookies for breakfast on Chinese New Year was serendipity, of sorts. I’d planned to make them yesterday, as a way to take a break from my work.

As a little girl, peanut butter cookies were my favorite. How hard could it be? I thought. I found a website called Simply Recipes which I mistakenly read as, “simple” recipes. With only nine ingredients, and three – 3! – steps, I thought even I could handle this cookie-making thing. Goes to show how wrong you can be.

Did someone say "Starting fires?"

Girl Guides. They had me at “fire-starting.”

Did you go to Girl Guides when you were a young ADHD girl? I did, and I loved it. Turns out a lot of the skills I learned in guiding were handy for a budding ADHDer. The camping trips didn’t hurt, either.

What’s not to love?

There was the aforementioned fire-starting (initially, the leaders and I had different ideas about that. We worked it out.)

Then there was financial management. I discovered that if I spent my dues on candy before the meeting, I’d be too hepped-up and sent home. I decided to pay my dues. Besides, I didn’t want to lie about losing my money. I actually did lose it often enough as it was.

What's Your ADHD Story?

Since I last wrote about the impending DSM-5, Dr. Ronald Pies’ blog post appeared in World of Psychology here at Psych Central. I found Pies’ post, Why Psychiatry Needs to Scrap the DSM System: An Immodest Proposal, interesting on several levels. Foremost was the fact that Pies calls for a replacement of the DSM that sounded hauntingly familiar.

Storytelling is very Canadian, eh?

Pies’ suggested approach to replace the current DSM diagnostic tool looked a lot like something already being used by Canadian psychiatrist Dr. Tim Bilkey. Bilkey has diagnosed over 3400 adolescents and adults at his ADHD clinics in Ontario.

ADHD transition triumph: solving surprise party startle!

I’ve written before about how difficult transitions can be for those of us with ADHD. In my post, 8 Gifts for ADHD Kids, gift #4 was transition time. Even ADHD adults need extra time to switch from one activity to another.

This weekend, I looked forward to being taken out to dinner for my birthday. We’d arranged to meet at my friend’s house, and proceed from there.

I arrived punctually, only to find that some of my closest friends were already assembled. There were helium-filled balloons, presents, bottles of wine, and a huge spread of incredible home-cooked food.

In short, more than a few of my favorite things. But also an unexpected and therefore overwhelming array of stimuli to take in on a moment’s notice.

Zoë Kessler, 4 months old; the beginning of a lifetime of bad hair days!

I’m celebrating not only the new year, but also my birthday (today).

Birthdays remind me that the clock is counting down. What do I want to do with the time I have left? And how do I figure out how much that is? See? Time-management is impossible!

Nonetheless, people without ADHD try to convince us otherwise, so I play along. I personally have learned how to be on time since my ADHD diagnosis, so that’s something (and I’m sure my non-ADHD employer is grateful).

Every year from January 1st to the 7th, I take time to reflect, clarify my goals, and to learn from the past years’ experiences.

A major problem with this strategy, of course, is that I can hardly remember last year. Still, I soldier on. I can still learn from what I think happened, right?

My first post for 2012 takes me full circle to one of the inaugural posts I wrote for ADHD from A to Zoë back in 2010.

At the time, my ADHD diagnosis was a mere 2 years old, and I had a bag full of questions I needed answered, not least of which was: What The #$#%! Is ADHD?

It turned out that the answer was not that straight-forward. Nor, it would seem, is it any more so today.