Prepare to enter the wild and wooly world of an adult with Aspergers Syndrome, a form of autism characterized by intellignce, quirks, social difficulties and downright strange and oddish behaviours.

People with Aspergers generally are high functioning in everyday life but have great difficulty connecting with others due to the inability to read faces, body language and subtle verbal clues. They also tend to take words literally and have a hard time multi-tasking.

Oversensitivity to touch (clothing has to be soft and often the tags removed), light (do not leave home without the sunglasses), sound (loud noises and noisey places are avoided), taste (many Aspies have quite a limited diet and are frequently very picky eaters) and smells makes the everyday existence more of a challenge.

Fasten your seatbelts and come on in...
To find out more about what Aspergers is..please check out my earliest blog entries

Saturday, December 31, 2011

Some Days I Have More Autism...Special Interests


Thank you, Maureen for the title! Yes, some days I am much more autistic than others.
For the better part of the last three days, I have been sorting out the Legos from the riff-raff and putting them into segregated containers so that I can more easily build/ play.
As the photo shows, I figured out a formula for said organization. The tub bottom right are still unsorted. I take a handful at a time, put them on the beige towel and sort them into one of the following subgroups.....greys, black/tan/brown (these two groups are the ones I will abscond with ;), non Legos, bionicals, Legos that are odd and don't belong...strange pieces, and then all the others, mostly red, blue, green, yellow and white. The latter will be for Younglinks use.
Oh, top right is the beginnings of my Rapa Nui/ Easter Island....map. Yup, Legos!
This is a task I have wanted to complete for quite some time...so I have been the happy little autistic, sitting on the floor, listening to Pandora and Black Eyed Peas, rocking and smiling until 3 am last night Big :)

So, how does it feel? To be more autistic?
Feels different. Like I'm me self. I'm happier, much happier. There is more of an order to things or a need to organize, categorize....right and wrong is different and more direct (some of the Legos that do not conform...ie, those of odd, unusual shapes, specialty pieces, are Wrong, with the big W.)
Um, hope Im saying this right...I have much more sensory issues. Everything is brighter, much louder(to the point where I put my "ear", noise-canceling headphones on more often for things that usually dont bother me...the vacuum, blender, etc., smells are much more intense..I went out to see my horses and the barn smelled..different. Sure, there was great familiarity, but the usual smell had three or four different "elements", characteristics to it. All the senses are more intense, thats fer sure.
Visually, it's like I'm walking a straight path and as I go I am casually picking up rocks/ bricks, simultaneously (which is odd) and placing them on the border of the path, quite casually and as a matter of course.mim not trying to keep people out, per se, rather I am more defining myself better.
When I am focused...I am Really focused. Did you ever see "Close Encounters of the Third Kind"? When The Richard Dreyfus character becomes obsessed with building the mountain, Devils Tower? He is consumed by this task so much so that he because ignorant to others around him and anything else. He even goes so far as to building the form of the Tower out of mashed potatoes at the dinner table completely oblivious to his family around him.
That kind of Focus is up and running. Nothing can sway me from my intended course.
My thoughts are quicker, sharper...I give longer textbook, informative answers to little questions.
I am plucking words from conversation, putting them in a separate space and analyzing the hell out of them.
I talk...a whole lot more, especially about what interests me. And me manner of speaking is...well...different:0 Not sure how to explain that one..but trust me, it be different:)
I am much more regimented in diet and routine. I think I'm going on at least three weeks of two meals a day of burger, spinach, cheeses and Nothing else tastes "right".
My evening, lengthy routine which was...oh, this, this and then maybe that is now A, B, C followed by a short course of specific D.
I'm having more problems finding the "right" clothes to where so I am going with my fallback monochromatic colors, because I can't pick.
I am more linear and precise.
Not sure why I am like this...but, you know what? I am okay with my autism. Funny, that rarely happens, and usually it's for short, uncomfortable bits.
Old rules don't necessarily apply and I talk about my interests and fixations with relative ease. I really like this.
Things change...who knows what tomorrow brings, but I'm enjoying today:)