6:00 OK I'm going to make this spaghetti. I'll put the sauce in the small burner while the water heats up.
6:15 Water's boiling, put the spaghetti in. It will take 11 minutes. The sauce will be nice and hot by then
8:20 Dinnertime
7:00 realize I've let the pot boil dry and now the sauce is burned and inedible. Spend the next hour+ trying to figure out what to eat (not really I'm doing other stuff but that's what I should be doing)
8:19 pour cereal into a bowl
Opens can of Chef-Boy-Ardee overstuffed ravioli, adds garlic powder, dried Italian seasoning, and Whatsthishere Sauce. warms to boiling, and eats out of the cooling saucepan with a soup spoon.
Duh.
For me, it is sitting at my dinner table at 6 thinking: I'll make dinner, wash up afterward, adjust the crooked picture in the back room. Make popcorn and stream the movie I want to see at 8. Take a shower, brush my teeth, get some water, and go to bed. I feel hungry so I stand up and it is 10:30.
The problem with this is that a Big Part of ADHD is executive function issues, which include wildly underestimating how long it takes *you* to do something. "It'll take me five minutes to do that" except that it take 2-4 hours to get to that 5 minutes.
every time i have a shower:
me: gotta have a quick shower this time, 5 minutes and gtfo
me, coming back to reality while still in the shower 30 minutes later: fuck
This is why I never cook without timers anymore. I ruined too much pasta as a kid.
I still get up and wander away while cooking but the loud timer calls me back.
for me it's really more of a lost time thing than lost attention. My food ends up fine but I feel like I've been abducted by aliens when I look at the clock.
