seasonal ineffective disorder

We ran out of ice melter after the storm, and the driveway was a sheet of ice. Ever wonder if birdseed works? You know, just to create some traction. I thought I could kill two birds with one stone -- an unfortunate use of the expression, I see now. I thought I could get rid of some reject birdseed and also make the driveway less treacherous for my clients to walk on. So I scattered birdseed from where they park by the garage all the way to the gate, making a nice little path.

It was mostly millet, the cheap stuff we couldn't get through last year because everyone except juncos and sparrows considers millet an absolute joke of an excuse for food. They spit it out, and if they had lips, they would say ptooey, like a million times over, because that's how many millet seeds come in a bag. And you knew, you knew this would happen, but the sunflower seed costs an arm and part of a leg, and so you just thought maybe you could mix it with the millet and the birds would suck it up and eat the millet because they were on a roll. Like tucking a pill into someone's oatmeal. But no, they just spit it out. By "they" I mean both the birds and the person eating the oatmeal.

FYI, millet does not create traction on ice. Millet is a tiny, round seed that actually makes ice slipperier than ice. I put down some sand once I saw the ineffectiveness of my intervention, but the seed was already down. So as people made their way from their car to the gate it looked like they were walking through a forest in a wintry fairy tale, with a dozen little juncos picking the millet out of the path.

I did not start out this post intending to talk about the birdseed snafu. But I realize it is fitting. Because I have Seasonal Ineffective Disorder. When the days are short and cold like this, I am all over the place, like a bag of frozen peas that's spilled onto the kitchen floor. There are peas everywhere, out in the hallway, under the couch. One is wedged into the tread of my boots, and one went through the dryer. And even though ten times you think you have found them all, the next day there is always another pea, shriveled, just behind the chair leg or in the cat's food.

Or beads. Beads do that, too. You think you've found them all, but you never have. Anyway, I cannot get things done at a certain point in the wintertime. Not in a straight line anyway. This morning I got almost all of my 10,000 steps while shopping at Whole Foods. I'd get a lemon, get some mushrooms, go back and get another lemon, go get milk, come back and get one more mushroom, go find the almond flour, then get a third lemon. I lost my cart every five minutes and was there forever. With SID, if a thought occurs to me, I follow its instructions. It is like obeying the monkey mind. It's exhausting.

I know there are much more efficient ways to move through time --not that efficiency is everything. But honestly, I am a kite and in the wintertime someone lets go of the string. Every year we have to figure out how to tether me down.

Laura, whose middle name actually is Effective, Effie for short, helps me through each winter's relapse. The treatment protocol is paradoxical: she orders me to sit and read for an hour a day. No computer, no phone, no multi-tasking. I am instructed to set a timer and am not allowed to get up before it goes off. I get to have a cup of tea, but I had to lobby for this, as it is distracting to reach for it, then sip.

When my ineffectiveness is truly out of control -- perhaps I have gone upstairs five times in as many minutes, each time completing one small task -- she orders me to sit down and write. Tonight, as she finally came home for winter break and walked into the pea-strewn kitchen, she hugged me hello and then made me sit at the kitchen table and blog. It worked, and now I feel tethered. Tomorrow, however -- more peas, I'm sure.