traits

Day 51: 4 Play

| Aspergers Girls
Play

I just discovered the word fore-play can only be used in one way!

In California slang: Oh, My Gosh!

And here I was thinking I could use the word to mean: the time before I played or the time leading up to play.

(I’m hyphenating the word fore-play, in hopes of avoiding the p-er-v-s that might use the search term. No offense if you used that search term and were just looking for tips with your Honey. I don’t mean you. But maybe I do. Can’t be too sure, these days…now I’m realizing I just typed p-e-r-v-. I give up.)

Writing is an act I generally enjoy. Not so much yesterday’s post, but overall, writing is like PLAY to me. I believe I ought to be able to write fore-play to imply the play time leading up to my writing. But it looks like I’m out of luck!

I am picturing myself in a crowded room (heart beating fast) and having a small-chat-chat with a stranger (heart beating faster), and casually offering, “My writing involves a lot of foreplay.”

At this time, I would probably start obsessing about my heart beating so very fast, and start hypothesizing all the ways in which I could be dying, e.g., heart attack brought on by genetic mutation, clogged arteries, and my favorite, that Sir Brain continually obsesses about—heart suddenly explodes for unknown reason!

As I was obsessing, I’d likely miss the nonverbal clues of the person standing next to me, who was processing my statement.

I’d miss the person raise a brow or I’d miss him/her attempt to raise a brow. (I can raise my right eyebrow super high, and forget others don’t have my same skill set.) I’d miss the quizzical-who-the-heck-are-you-smile. I’d not realize a tape (CD for younger generation) was playing in the stranger’s mind.

Perhaps something like this: “Is she naïve, uneducated, bold, or just plain stupid? Or maybe trying to pick me up?”

I’d miss the follow-up smirk or wink—dependent upon interpretation. And I’d mosey along towards the food table, entirely oblivious of the person’s response to my utterance, while gorging myself on prawns and crab-cakes, in an attempt to subside Sir Brain’s rapid thinking on death.

They know what I'm talking about!

 Words like fore-play get tangled in my mind.

I love words. I am fascinated by words. They are brilliant and beautiful. And I love to paint pictures with words. Words are my primary colors blended into soothing pastels, when they merge with the white of my computer screen.

Words are my friends. And they are also my enemies. I keep words close. I watch them carefully and with awe. The slightest change, just one little letter, alters the whole meaning. Just a slight dab of painted word, a speck in the corner of the canvas, transforms the entire picture.

I still don’t comprehend why the word fore-play can’t be used in other ways.

The word fore can mean: the front, that which is in front; the future. A method of proceeding. Before. Previously.

 The word Play means: Engage in activity for enjoyment or recreation rather than practical purpose. Usually involving children.

But when I combine the two together, they don’t mean: the play you do before the play. This is confusing.

Why can’t the word combo mean the play writing I do before the writing? I love to play write before I write. I usually write a half page or more, before I find my voice and know what I want to write about. Then I delete, and begin again.

Some people, reading this post, are thinking, really? This is the best you got after you played and deleted?

Yep. This is ME!

I wanted to call this post the Origin of Fore-play. But I didn’t want to attract creeps.

Just putting that out there.

It is a funny and intriguing title, after all.

Be forewarned, don’t go digging into the word origin of fore-play, unless you want an eye-full. Neither do you want to search for images or search for examples of what p-e-r-v means. And YouTube—you know how Crazy Frog likes to find associated videos for my posts. In relation to this post, AVOID YouTube searches. LV is still hiding in shame. 

You might be wondering about the point of this here post. How this could possibly relate to Asperger’s Syndrome.

Let me point out what this post demonstrates:

  1. Words mean a lot to me.
  2. Words are confusing, especially when they have multiple meanings, or when society has combined two words to mean something different than expected and/or that don’t make logical sense.
  3. I confuse words.
  4. Confusing words can cause embarrassment.
  5. I am often unaware I ought to maybe be embarrassed.
  6. My actions confuse others.
  7. Confusing others can ostracize me (or make people like me even more).
  8. I can pretty much write about anything given a particular topic.
  9. I’m a risk taker and have a hidden talent for finding cool videos.
  10. The combo of Green Tea, chocolate cookies, and the supplement Gaba make me even more interesting.

You Tube Links You Might Enjoy

Sometimes certain words leave me feeling unsettled. If you’re like me, this is to relax you.

For those of you who were really hoping for more out of this post, here’s a frisky dolphin. 

And music, we have to have music!

Now I’m wondering about the words play toy! And thinking about when I was 18 years of age, a college freshman, and how one of my first college courses was all juniors and seniors, an upper division class, that I had no idea I ought not to have signed up for. And I’m thinking about the videos in that class, and the topic, and how my face was always beet-red.

Day 49: The View From Atop the Triangle

| Aspergers Girls

Last night I was up until 1:00 am worried that I wasn’t good enough.

Some of my worries:

I’m ugly

I’m fat

I’m aging

I’m weird

I’m obsessive

I’m not a good enough mother

I’m not a good enough wife

I think about me too much

I don’t do enough to help others

My blog is stupid

I care too much about what others’ think

I’m lazy

I obsessed on the computer most of the day, fluctuating between a social network page, YouTube videos, and this blog.

There is something extremely calming about my blog. I just click on the main page and stare, reread, and peruse the comments. My blog connects me to another realm, to another part of myself, and to other people who know my journey. The writing offers me a reflection of me: my uniqueness and beauty. My blog is my passion, my talent, my creativity.

Beyond the computer, I felt frightened, somewhat like a little girl running outside the protective circle of her guardian. When I pulled myself away I was nervous and I overate. I grounded chocolate-pudding brownies into mocha-almond-fudge ice cream. I had bread rolls and garlic bread, hash browns, and other carb-filled delights. All the while feeling worse and worse about myself.

I felt entirely alone and useless, despite my family being home. So much so that I googled: Why it’s okay to be lazy and Why it’s okay to do nothing.

I felt extreme guilt about being ME. I analyzed why I had this guilt, but the analysis made things worse. I knew all the things I should have been doing, such as: exercising, showering, drinking green tea, taking my supplements, getting out of the house. But I couldn’t do anything. I was immobilized, trapped, frozen. I couldn’t even change the stained shirt I was wearing or bend down to pick a crumb off the floor.

These types of days, where I am overcome by grief, fear, and fatigue, are nothing new to me. I’ve had these days since I was a teenager. The challenge is that now I’m not a teenager, I am a mother and a wife, which comes with responsibilities beyond my own needs.

These roles’ obligations add to my guilt, my feelings of low self-worth, and my inability to fully retreat, regroup, and reenergize.

Yesterday wasn’t the easiest of mornings for our family. There was some turmoil. This spike in the energy of the household left my brain sprawling. Any type of unexpected event causes me to feel unease and fear.

No amount of reasoning, cognitive tools, or talk can dissipate the fear. I have to go through the fear. Then, once on the other side—whether within minutes or a day—I have the clarity of mind to process and release.

Yesterday the fear stayed with me.

Yesterday I hated myself for starting this stupid blog. I thought for certain I’d never ever have anything to write about worth interest. I hated myself for thinking I was making a difference. I hated myself for my lack of willpower, my messed up emotions, my inability to relax, my constant, constant challenges. I hated life.

My life felt like poop, so much that I even Googled poop. I watched a YouTube on crap—and then wondered whose crap it was.

About midnight, I began preparing for the next day, hoping I’d awake in a different mindset. I wrote a poem about how I’m okay, listing everything from wearing pajamas all day to overeating. I started researching self-acceptance. Starting telling myself I am okay.

I understand with further clarity how I’m trapped in a cycle of perfectionism—always have been, and imagine I always will be. It’s something about the way my brain functions. My strong analytical ability and extreme fluid intelligence enable me to have complex thought processes and to produce quality work; however, those same abilities put me into overdrive of self-analysis, worry, and remorse.

My own thought processes set me up for failure.

I understand with further clarity how a well-balanced person experiences the ABC’s of Acceptance, Belonging, and Confidence. And how having Aspergers evokes feelings of Rejection, Not Fitting In, and Timidity.

 

I understand with further clarity how Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs relates to this female with Aspergers.

My physiological needs are being met.

My safety needs are not being met.

There is no security, stability, or freedom from fear. There are moments of relief from fear, but they are fleeting, always temporary, always changing.

My sense of belonging is limited.

I feel continually that I am not upholding to the rules, expectations, and norms of others. I question my actions, my motives, my own belief systems. I upset my spouse; I neglect my family; being a lover comes with its challenges. I have friends that love me unconditionally, but I worry that they will discover, at a deeper level, I am too odd, too strange, too much to deal with, not enough.

My self-esteem is limited.

I achieve mastery sometimes in my writing, in my thinking, in my ability to love others; but there remains an underlying doubt and fear about others’ judgment and rejection. I like ME most of the time. I would choose ME as a friend. I’d be happy with ME as a friend. Yet, at the same time I doubt my ability to be enough. I achieve recognition and even respect, but I over analyze both. I question am I worthy to receive recognition and respect? What if I disappoint, offend, and/or fall short? What if my faults are singled out? What if I am ridiculed, judged, and rejected? What if I become prideful?

My self-actualization is intriguing.

This is where my triangle is top-heavy. I do pursue my inner talents. I do pursue creative endeavors. I do feel fulfilled by my endeavors. It appears my self-actualization is reached from a different avenue than the norm. I do not progress up the triangle. Instead I take a ladder, lean it against the triangle, climb up, and bypass the center of the triangle, to reach the top. I pursue my talents because that is my refuge, my retreat, my coping mechanism. In this realm, atop the triangle, lies my freedom and power. Atop the triangle sits my obsession, fixation, passion, joy, and extreme love.

And that explains where I was yesterday. I was seated on the top-level of the triangle. High out of reach. I retreated to my place of comfort.

Today, I climb back down the ladder, back to the ground. But I carry with me a greater clarity, a clarity only found because I sat at the highest peak and viewed my world.

“We would worry less about what others think of us if we realized how seldom they do.” ~ Ethel Barrett

“I was a personality before I became a person – I am simple, complex, generous, selfish, unattractive, beautiful, lazy, and driven.” ~ Barbra Streisand

“I would step into a place of being lined up with a sense of purpose and my inner compass, and everything was going in the same direction. Then I’d get lazy and get off the track. And then things would start to fall apart, and I’d back up and get it together again.” ~ Kathy Mattea 

Kathy Mattea in 1994 Teach Your Children Well

Okay Poem Below

Continue reading →

Day 47: Ode to the Amazing Asperger’s Brain!

| Aspergers Girls

Fun Brain Musical Video  (Fun for All Ages!)

At the age of two and a half, from the backseat of the car, Joseph asked: “Who birthed God?” and “How do you know?”

Many People with Aspergers Have  a Strong Ability to:

Reason

Identify patterns

Think abstractly

Find creative solutions

Talk through problems

Adapt

 Look at old problems differently

Speak their mind irrespective of social norms and standards

Uphold an adherence to personal beliefs

Think of new ideas

Have a high focus level

Experience intrinsic reward through thought processing

 

Here’s a look inside the amazing brain of a child with Aspergers. Below are approximately 5% of the questions my thirteen-year-old son, Joseph, who has Aspergers, asked me during a week’s time. Joseph asks questions at random, seemingly from out of the blue.

This morning on a four-minute drive to school:

What if the earth was square. How would that affect gravity? Did people understand the world wasn’t flat after or before they discovered gravity? I wonder what the world would be like if we never discovered the earth was round. I probably wouldn’t even be here.

Yesterday morning, while sipping his green tea:

 I wonder how the world would have changed if we had inventions earlier? Like navigational devices for the Titanic. You never know. But then again, then Hitler would have had access to such inventions.

 Questions all in a row:

How come people are bald on their head and not on their arms? Why don’t they improve things? Like the Titanic. How come the Titanic Crashed? Why wasn’t it steal plated? Didn’t they have radar back then? What a minute. How can we be a trillion dollars in deficit? Whose job is it to make zippers? I just realized something: we need dumb people to do simple jobs. Not that all people who do simple jobs are dumb. But we need them.

A few days ago, in the car:

 If everything is digital now, are we living more in a fake reality or real reality? When you think about it we are accidentally unknowingly transferring things to different dimensions. I mean where does electricity all go? Is it in the clouds?

Fantastic Video on Genius of Autism

Quantum Physics Musical Video

Crazy Frog side note: My dog licks dishes from the dishwasher. Apparently other people’s dogs lick dishes out of dishwashers, too. Good to know!

30 Second video of dog licking dishes…Don’t ask!

Day Forty-One: To Blog or Blob? That is the Question.

| Aspergers Girls
The Blob Lives!

People with Aspergers incorporate different coping strategies in order to feel more comfortable. This post, I am pleased to report, is a fine example of such coping strategies, including:

  1. Humor
  2. Data Organization
  3. Tangents
  4. Analysis of Self
  5. Correction/Editing of Self
  6. Analysis of Others
  7. Research
  8. Interconnection of Data
  9. Data transformed into New Information

My original intention today was to report on how my blog has become a mind- and time-devouring entity, closely resembling the indistinct, formless entity from the movie The BLOB.


But, instead I deleted an entire, page-long list that had words such as: obsession, fixation, ice pack for shoulder pain, eyestrain, fear, and extreme anxiety. And replaced this here posting with the land of the blob. Which I know, and you know, has a much higher fascination-factor than a post about obsessive blogging.

Unfortunately, I planned on writing for only 30 minutes today, and instead I am further made blurry-eyed and pain-ridden. Once again, I was sucked in and consumed by my BLOG! The HORROR!

At this moment as I am typing, I have my computer in split-screen mode, and I’m watching the 1958 horror flick The Blob. If you are in the X Generation, there is a high probability that The Blob, (which was originally titled the Glob), rates in the top ten of all time horror flicks.  In the movie, an alien life form consumes everything in its path. As the blob devours, it continues to grow in size, until it resembles one massive lump of blood-red Jell-O. When the movie ends, the blob is dropped into the Arctic. Then a big question mark (?) appears on the screen, leaving little kids from the 1960’s and 1970’s to wonder forever, if the blog is in fact living in bedroom closets, streets, under beds, and in toilets.

Just think: if those Generation Xers had been told the blob was only a modified weather balloon and colored silicone gel, we’d have saved a lot of money on mental health therapy.

The movie makes me think of the words heebie-jeebies and jeepers-creepers, both words that Louis Armstrong has perfected, by the way.

I’m still watching the movie, and finding the scenes rather dull. Waiting for the blob to show up.

 

Here are some conclusions I reached from the data I collected from BLOB research.  

1. People who saw the Blob were scared shi*less!

I’ll need to buy tons of ice and fire extinguishers before I’ll ever feel safe again.

I saw this movie about 30 years ago, but was so scared that I ran out of the cinema before I could see the end!

I used to wonder about the question mark. I saw tons of horror movies when I was a kid, but seriously, not one of them scared me half as much as this one.

I wouldn’t call myself lucky. This movie scared the crap out of me so bad that I had to sleep with my mommy!

I was 5 years old and it knocked me out. I had nightmares for two weeks.

I saw this movie when I was a child and alone with my brother. I was so scared. I’m still having nightmares.

Saw it on TV way back in 1975 ,scared the crap outta me too! What can kill it?

I remember this movie scaring the crap out of me when I was a kid. And it was almost 30 years old by the time I saw it.

Omg, I remember this movie used to scare the hell out of me.

This movie scared me to death when I was a kid. After seeing it I couldn’t eat cherry Jell-O for weeks.

Well, for people back then, it was creepy as hell.

I think if it were real those people would run away and crap their pants.

When I saw this movie on the tv as a kid, it literally scared the piss out! of me. I woke up screaming and peed my nightgown.

2. People don’t like older men playing teenagers, even if the guy is sexy.

Looks like he’s pushing 30 and he has to sneak out of his parent’s house?

Yeah, Steve McQueen is the oldest looking ‘teenager’ I’ve ever seen.

Steve McQueen is supposed to be 17 in this movie and he was 27!

He hangs around with these teenage boys and he looks like their uncle!

McQueen is the sexiest man in history of men.

He’s supposed to play a teenager in this movie? They could have chosen someone who didn’t look 50 years old.

I like way they keep calling Steve a crazy Kid!!!.Shit he is as old as the old.

Steve McQueen was and still is ‘The Man’!

The old guy is so damn cute.

Are there nude photos of Steve?

3. People reminisce when they see old movies from the 1950’s.

In those days boys had good manners and girls behaved like well children.

Back then, when you missed something on TV that was it, until you caught it again.

Wow, 1950’s, I wish to see that day and die in the 50’s.

Remember when there was a vibrant healthy middle class and anyone notice the COLORFUL clothing and cars? Look at how many people wear black today and drive gray cars. And go down any Main Street USA today and see the poverty and boarded up windows…

4. People side with or personify Blob.

If I were an alien from another planet and I had an ignorant old piece of white trash poking me with a stick, I’d devour him, too!!

What kind of an idiot goes outside and pokes at a lugee?

This music leaves me with the impression that the Blob’s a suave, fun-loving guy who’d stop eating towns if you just got him a cigarette and a nice cocktail.

That Blob sure is a cool cat!

My sister had a girl friend she called the blob.

5. People theorize about the future of the Blob.

“As long as the arctic stays cold,,,” Ha ha, it’s like they we’re already setting up a sequel to be released whenever global warming thawed the arctic.

I still wonder why there was a question mark at the end.

Well, even if the ice caps were to melt, the arctic would still remain too cold.Then again, the blob could just float like a big ice-cube and drift out towards warmer waters in the sea.

Imagine that thing in the water eating whales and big, big things in the sea. It will be unstoppable.

Shit! Global warming is gonna set the blob free and it’ll either start with the Scandinavians, the Russians or the Canadians…

(These are all quotes I found under comments beneath the video clips on YouTube.)

Last thought. My Giant Question Mark:

1. I’m wondering if the search term crap will bring people to my blog now. And I’m thinking: Oh, Crap!

Day Thirty-Nine: Squirrel, Calvin and Bob

| Aspergers Girls
Click to see where image was found

Is there something wrong with me, if I get excited about looking up images of flattened squirrels?

I almost ran over a squirrel this morning. Upon seeing the little sport dash out in front of my van, I slammed on my brakes to save the critter’s life. Afterwards, I looked in my rearview mirror to make sure there was no one behind me. Nervous and preoccupied, from a near miss, I failed to make a complete stop at the stop sign, which caused a not-so-happy neighbor to honk at me.

After the honking incident, I was a bit perturbed, all the way to my sons’ school. I had wanted to stick my head out the window and shout: “I always make complete stops. But I was saving a squirrel and got nervous!”

Give me a break.

I was upset for a full five minutes about the stranger misjudging me. Upset that is, until, on the return trip home, my youngest, the only passenger still in the van, declared from the backseat, in that casual, got your number style: “Mom. You didn’t make a complete stop, again.”

Guess I’m still guilty of those California stops. Can I just blame the error on cultural upbringing?

Saving Squirrel from the grips of death is the highlight of my day thus far. That, and finally deciding to wipe the glob of toothpaste off the bathroom wall; the same minty-green glob I’d been staring down for a good two weeks. I guess I’m the only one in the family endowed with cleaning toothpaste super powers.

I did have an eventful morning. For that I give thanks. Before I was fully awake, I was serenaded by my youngest, when he screamed at the top of his little lungs: “My eye therapy treatments are a waste of your **** money!” He wrapped up his point with a grand slamming of the door.

Have I told you how I obsessively read every Calvin and Hobbs comic book that existed, when I was a young adult, and wished desperately for a brainy, precocious, and adventurous child like Calvin? Don’t’ tell me that wishes don’t come true!

I am chuckling through life, while assuming I missed some news breaking story, because four people accidentally ended up on my blog by using the search term: cheerleader sticks leg down garbage disposal. I stopped myself from Googling for details. Yet, now wondering, if you might.

I could use a good laugh. The Dean of the Education Department has yet to call back about my tuition reimbursement. It will be two weeks tomorrow. I am doing better with the whole not showing up to class thingamajig while still on the university roster. Although, last night, while in the videogame store, I did ask my husband to check my pulse (twice), as I was having heart palpitations.

I adore my husband. He is always looking after me. However, I must share that he is concerned about this Everyday Asperger’s blog. What’s he concerned about? Well, supposedly, I’ve shared way too much about him. (Pausing a moment here, because I still find this so very funny. I’m not thinking, I need to explain why.)

In fact, in scanning through the some 60 pages I’ve scribed, one could infer that my husband Bob was a science major, is a father, was born sometime in February, is turning 50, snores, can count (pulse taking), and acts like Spock. Tons of information, right?

Of course, in knowing he is married to me, you can definitely infer Bob (if that is in truth his real name) has a very high tolerance level! That or he’s on some heavy medication. Happy Birthday sometime this month, Bob!

If I’m not posting anything tomorrow, you can assume I’m on restriction.