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

Wednesday, November 23, 2016

Almost One-Liners

So therapist says: I don't know you well enough...should I be worried?
Me (on the inside): oh, how quaint
(On the outside): I always manage. Go on your vacation, come back, don't come back, don't flatter yourself, no skin off my nose

I had a close call. Pulled a pan with hot oil out of the oven and it splattered hard and wide. Luckily, uncharacteristically, I was wearing my glasses and the left was covered in hot oil. I was scared. I carefully used some Dawn to wipe the oil off with a rag. No blistering, so nothing more than some minor first degree burns to that side of my face. I am grateful. My sweatshirt showed how pervasive the splatter was.
Needless to say, I lost my appetite and threw my chopped potatoes in the garbage.
Bad oil. Bad, naughty pan. Almost threw that out but thought better. Not sure if or when I'll be able to cook my potatoes and onions again. Not worth the risk.

Realized why my son takes apart every show, commercial, plot, etc. I am a buzz kill and take things apart like that, show the negative, expose the impossibilities, strip off the drama and hype. Caught myself doing that as we watched a movie last night. Boy, I got issues. Need to stop taking things do seriously. Find this thing called fun.

Taught my kid to: respect parental authority; respect and honor his teachers and other adults; various chores and home responsibilities; that things aren't just going to be handed to them as he has to earn them. An hour of game time will only occur after one chore, one hour of playing and half an hour of reading so Now he does these three things Without question before asking for game.
I've taught him that his company is enjoyable as we engage in watching movies together, going for walks and playing board games. His Scrabble skills have definitely improved. He's reading Moby Dick which he is finding boring but almost finished. He knows enough to eat carrots, apple, banana or other fruit before getting one serving of chips at night.

I'm thinking of giving up my yummy sleep supplements in favor of staying up late at night and sleeping more in the morning. Yeah, back to my old schedule. I miss those four hour at night when I have the place to myself and my creativity runs high under the moon. I haven't gotten enough me time.

Oh yeah, now that I've settled in here the mask and walls of fearless momma have come falling down. I had to wear brave face until we did get comfy settled in. Now, sigh, now I can safely say that parts of my four day journey here were positively Terrifying, in a word. Just Terrifying. One topic of today's therapy session.
Yes, I've come undone but only to return to my true self with whom I am quite comfortable and at ease with.
This therapist is quite different. I kinda like her, I think.
I talked with her about a topic I've never ever spoke of....she did fine...interesting...lots to ponder.
I've changed enormously since therapy five months ago..so much new information that I need to wrangle and figure out how to time manage in a 50 minute session. What do I spend hours doing? Prioritizing topics and discussions for therapy. Yeah, hours and hours.
It's like everything I know is kinda new in an expanded sense. I accomplished tremendous insight with Mary. It was like we dug up all the gooey crap from the bottom of the sewer, spread it out and sifted through it to a high degree. Now, it's a matter of integrating this new info into a cohesive format. Mary was great and wonderful. And, yeah, now that I'm settled I'm allowed to miss her.

Oy, all the tears and fears that I've had to keep bottled these five months now are free to be released and they bubble and burst all over the surface. Not a bad thing, no, not a bad thing At All. It's all good. It's healing. This is how I roll. Life is good. I love Oregon. I have a greater appreciation of the depth of my bravery and the heights of my remarkable accomplishments.