Category: Autism

I’m Self-Centered, Poetically Speaking

I just read an article on The WEIGHT Journal and I didn’t like it one bit. No idea what I was googling (usual for me), but I came upon a piece talking about poetry format and how center-formatted poems are considered written by amateur poets and a lot of editors will reject these poems without even reading them. Like. . .what? Center-formatted poems are considered outdated and modernist or “traditional,” which are eras we are not currently in, although I personally think the eras need to be updated since “modernist” means late 1800s to mid-1900s; I guess we’re in modern (no -ist)/contemporary now. That may be a lie; I don’t really pay attention to poetic eras and movements. I just read what I like, but I digress.

I have been center-formatting poems since I started writing them back when I owned only notebooks, then briefly on a word processor that took 3-1/2″ floppies. It’s been a while, to say the least. I think it looks better to center them and makes them easier to read, and I like the shape of the poem if each line has a different word count or a graduated word count. I have two or three non-centered poems that were intentional and aesthetically pleasing to me. That’s three out of 50+. 

Rupi Kaur, for one, is all over the place with her intentional formatting. One of her poems is in a diamond format meant to represent a woman’s vagina. For one to be so arrogant as to say they refuse to read a poet’s work due to formatting is downright blasphemous and ignorant to me. It’s like, “I’m sorry, you’re an outright wordsmith, but I could not tolerate looking at your words in the center of my screen. Good luck with your endeavors.” How can you call yourself an editor or poet or professional, making statements like that? Anyway, it pissed me off and set my PDA (pathological demand avoidance) into overdrive, obviously. 

So, I was mega-banned from Reddit because of an immature left-wingnut in a sub and that doesn’t bode well for my PDA, either. They made some BS statement about how the alt-right isn’t welcome in the sub they moderate, and I asked if they had the same rule for the alt-left, so I was banned from that sub (an “inclusive” ADHD sub, btw). I’m neither alt-right nor alt-left, but the hypocritical bigotry infuriates me and my elevated sense of equality and justice. I told Adam about being banned from the sub for saying what I did, so he went to that sub and asked the same question, and that got me permanently mega-banned via fingerprinting, which means the entire household is banned from Reddit. RSD (rejection sensitive dysphoria), come join PDA! It’s even more infuriating that I care and have been crying about it and I wish I didn’t and haven’t been. 

To combat my hermitness, I’ve joined Tumblr, and I don’t know what to think of it. It doesn’t seem to be my cup of tea so far, but I am not much of a Facebook user and I don’t like X/Twitter. Instagram is pretty boring to me. I just get so bored not having anyone to talk to or relate to. I feel invisible 99% of the time in life and Reddit has ferociously reinforced that. Even my service dog-in-training prefers to be with Adam. How can one ignore that? 

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If You Build it, They Will Come

Daily writing prompt
How are you creative?
View all responses

That is a good question I’m unsure how to answer. I can get very creative when something breaks or I want to do something but don’t have the correct tools or instruments. Helping Phin (the blind one) around the house has brought out my creative side because I have to make sure he can get up where he wants to go and get down without hurting himself. One place he likes to go is on the refrigerator, and he has jumped down from it before, but I’m so afraid he is going to hit the table or chair if he miscalculates his jump. 

I’ve been taking apart furniture I want to get rid of and saving the wood in case I want to make something, so I took some shelves from an old bookshelf and got some brackets and Adam fashioned some shelves that go from the fridge around the wall and onto a cupboard. Theo loves them and gets on the fridge now, but Phin won’t use them even though we’ve spent time helping him find a safe way down using the shelves🙄. Now, when he wants down, he meows and Adams gets him. I can’t reach the top of the fridge so Phin’s stuck until his daddy comes. 

Another thing I came up with was a sling for the babies when they were tiny because they wanted held a lot, and mostly when I was working. I took a couple of Adam’s crew socks and a COVID face mask and sewed the mask to the socks. The babies loved it and I was able to work. Theo still likes to be held from time to time so I bought an actual sling for small animals, but he loved the one I made until he outgrew it. 

A great solution unless both babies wanted held at the same time

Otherwise, my creativity comes out through words. Words, spelling, and grammar make up my special interest, so it’s not a big surprise. I’ve been writing stories and poetry since I was very young and I’m definitely the writer in the family. I can draw if I’m looking at something (like the AristoCats below), but writing comes easily to me and is what I’m most passionate about.

The AristoCats

When I decided to return to college, I tried to major in something that would benefit work or lay the foundation for a new career path, but that just resulted in me switching majors four times. After my brother died and I started school again, I decided to stop denying myself and go with my passion. My studies in poetry class reignited my love for poetry, which I was hoping for, so I chose poetry as my concentration under an English creative writing major. I didn’t care for screenplay writing at all 😝. Oddly enough, I don’t really like reading poetry, especially modern poetry like Frost, Whitman, and Dickinson. I’m extremely unrefined. Dr. Seuss hits the spot for me, and I’ve only recently been learning how to forego the rhyming and do some free verse. I did discover Rupi Kaur and like her poetry very much. 

Speaking of, my book of poetry will be coming out in 2024!! I am so excited, scared, and proud, and kind of sad. Mom really wanted to see me published and I hate that she is missing the chance, but she is my driving force and I know she would be proud of me. I gave myself until December 2024 with the Library of Congress because I want to take more poetry classes and get some more poems written. I have a bad habit of throwing stuff away, and that includes poems I’ve written over the years, so my collection sits at around 50 poems. 

I would love to be the poetic JK Rowling, but I don’t have those expectations and am wanting to do this for myself and Mom. I keep telling Adam that my writing won’t get recognized until after I die, which is shockingly common with poets. Sometimes it feels like poetry is a lost art, but I see such great work online and really love that it’s alive and well. 

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Happy Christmas and a Merry New Year!!!

It’s winter break from school, and I am kind of bummed and then not so much. Next term, I have a poetry workshop (yay!) and literary theory (boo!). I’ve never taken a workshop before and I am a little excited and a lot scared. I don’t want feedback on my poetry! ! 😂😂 The RSD struggle is real and it certainly extends to critiquing, giving and receiving. 

I just finished up a history class and critical approaches to lit and those were no fun. I don’t take any approaches to literature because I find most of the “classics” extremely boring, and I can’t remember what I read anyway due to my severe ADHD. A lot of the time I miss what’s right in front of me and have to have someone point it out. Other times, I pick up on and obsess over the smallest things and I stay so focused on them that I miss everything else going on. I am nothing if not inconsistent 😝. 

Things are going pretty well with Neville. He is still convinced he is starving 24/7 even though we try to tell him he isn’t. I have started to introduce him to my diabetes “kit” that has my glucose tabs in it. When he is a bit older, I’m going to teach him to alert to my scent (sweat or saliva) when I’m hypoglycemic, and he will retrieve my kit and bring it to me so I can take the tabs. That should be fun. 

He is a little confused at the moment because he thinks the kit is his to grab whenever he wants a treat (too smart for his own good) or just to lie down and chew on when he’s bored. Luckily, the case is hard so he hasn’t damaged it. I’m a little foggy on how to get from point A to point B, but everything I’ve read said he should be a bit older before that kind of training, anyway.  

At the moment, I’m sharing my CGM readings with Adam via an app and he comes in and feeds me sugar whenever I’m really low, which is every time I go to bed. I have gastroparesis, aka delayed gastric emptying (I have a smorgasbord of autoimmune disorders), so I stack my insulin since my sugar won’t drop for hours and then it starts working all at once when I lie down/fall asleep. I’ve tried not stacking, but my numbers just keep rising and rising and I go into panic mode. Most of the time I don’t even remember being woken up and given candy or tablets; Adam usually asks me if I remember him giving me this or that while I’m sleeping.

I had a couple of bucks and got myself some Christmas presents 🙄🙄. I was shopping for something for Adam, but the deals were just too good to pass up! I bought Taylor Swift’s Time magazine issue, obvi, (not a deal) but then I found a ring light and 62″ (taller than me) tripod for $10 on Walmart! It’s normally $30, so I snapped that up real quick. It’s not only white light, but 3 levels of white and 12 different colors for some trippy fun. I’ve been wanting to get some decent pictures of the kiddies and pup but either the lighting is stinky or the pictures are out of focus or some other issue. I also want to record Nev’s training to show him off. He’s such a smart little guy and really tries so hard. Plus, he gets the zoomies like the cats (especially Theo) and it’s hilarious because his butt is almost dragging the floor when he gets going. He runs in a sort of horizontal split. I can’t explain it, but hopefully I can catch a video and upload it here! 

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Things We Lost in the Neville

This dog stuff, man. I don’t know how or why people do it! Firstly, around 25% of Labradors have a gene mutation where their brains don’t tell them when they are full. They are always hungry, and this was familiar to me because of a CSI episode, which was about a human, but still. So, Neville is one of the 25%, of course. He thinks he is always famished and tries to eat everything. Part puppy behavior, part gene flaw. I remember the simpler times when we just had cats and had to only worry about someone pooping on the floor. Now, we have to worry about what Neville ate.

Begging for popcorn. Note the white cheddar dustings on his nose.

It started with my MamaBear Unpapers, which are cute cloth swatches that I bought instead of using toilet paper. With the bidet, disposable toilet paper isn’t such a necessity. So, he ate one of those, threw it up with a section of his leash, ate it again (his vomitus) before Adam could get it, then threw it up a second time a few hours later. I put the remaining ones out of his reach, or so I thought, and he got a second one! I haven’t seen it since. He just tried to eat our expired debit card this morning after I missed the trash can when throwing it away.

He ate the end of my Dyson cord/plug, we are assuming, because we cannot find it anywhere. My $600 Dyson Pet ball vacuum (whatever it’s called) that I got in 2014 and still works wonderfully. I cried when I discovered that yesterday. Adam Frankenstein’d it using a section of cord and the plug from something else, so it still works, but…come on! Why? I feed this dog twice a day and he gets training treats and scraps. He has gained 25 pounds since we got him on October 14! To hear him tell it, we feed him maybe once every two weeks. He’s gotten his treat containers twice and opened them and emptied them. He’s nearly as tall as I am so I’m not great at putting things out of his reach.

We have confiscated batteries, Theo’s fuzz balls, my shorts, two rolls of paper towels, pop boxes, pop cans, bowls, lids, his brand-new pink brush, etc… He is like Superman; whenever I drop anything, he swoops in and grabs it. He got a hold of my Pillow People, Suzie, that I have had since I was 5 years old and ripped the handle off of her back. I had to perform surgery on her, and she already looked rough since I’ve slept with her since I got her.

He is still doing well with drop it and leave it if he doesn’t really want something. When he doesn’t want to part with an item, he will come to me and sit down with his back to me but still have the item. We have been working on “Give it to me,” and he does so — grudgingly — especially if it’s one of his toys, which makes sense since they are his toys.

He has chewed through his indoor leash three times. We just kept tying it to his collar and it was getting shorter and shorter until we couldn’t tie it anymore. It reminded me of Robin Hood: Men in Tights when Robin and Little John are fighting with sticks and they keep breaking, iykyk 🤣🤣. I have a new chain leash waiting at the post office, which I have a feeling I am going to enjoy seeing his shock and disappointment when he can’t break it.

Most of the time when he disappears from the room and returns with something, I can say, “Whatcha got? Give it to me,” and he brings it to me and drops it in my hand, which I find to be very impressive, especially for a 6-month-old. He has a bit of an anger management problem, which is pretty funny but I try not to laugh. When he has to give something up, he will pick up one of his toys and shake his head side to side vigorously, venting his frustration, I guess. I gave him a big wearable panda head that Adam thought I would like but I just think is super creepy, and Nev looks so funny carrying that around and shaking it. He wants for nothing and I exercise him, so I don’t know why he wants to chew/eat/destroy everything he finds.

The after-potty!

He’s too cute to stay mad at for too long but he tries his darnedest. He does really well when I’m upset or not feeling well and I sit on the floor to hug him. He gives hugs, but he also will sit there and let me hug him and kiss on him. He still wants to lick our faces, and I swear his tongue is 6 feet long. I call him Freddy Krueger because he needs his nails trimmed (nail clippers are at the post office, too) and he can really scratch without meaning to.

I love the little guy regardless of how rotten he is. He is very smart and learning so much. The apps and YouTube videos are a great help but we’re getting the basics down first and haven’t started on the therapy/service part of his training. I may be singing a different tune by then!

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Evel KNeville

So, this has been a trip. The dog…Neville is smart and rotten and gangly and funny and sweet, and so much more. I think I’m in over my head with the training stuff. I’ll be dead before I get him trained as a service dog! It’s not him — he is surprisingly responsive and determined. I, however, have never trained a dog in my life and still don’t know how to approach it.

Some trainers say to teach one thing at a time, and some say to teach different things at a time. Some want me to crate the poor boy whenever I can’t have eyes on him every minute. He wasn’t too happy about being crated and whined and howled when he was in there for less than 5 minutes.

Pondering life.

The first thing I taught him was “leave it,” per Pupford Academy, and he does very well with that, but he thinks that he is supposed to leave something for a minute or two and then he gets it. That is fine when it’s treats or toys, of course, but when I dropped something and he went for it, I told him to leave it and he listened right away until I said “Good boy,” which is what I say in training to let him know he can get the item, so he picked it up 🤣🤣. I’m confusing both of us!

He gets bored, I guess (when I try to play with him, he lies down and chews on his toy) and brings me all kinds of things while I’m working. He brought me his water bowl, which I thought was because it was empty but it turned out he just dumped it while picking it up, so now his bowl is taped to a piece of wood because he did it again. I think it’s because the bowl was in the kitchen and not in the bedroom, but I don’t know; I’m not a dog. He keeps bringing me the bathroom trash can. He has chew toys and squeaky toys, yet grabbed my iPad and started gnawing on the cover 🤦‍♀️. He was going to take a gallon jugful of water somewhere; had it by the handle and everything.

Waiting for popcorn.

The other day, he learned “drop it,” and started to learn how to place his chin on my leg, which will be something I want him to do when I’m overwhelmed. Oh, and he did “drop it” so well! He grabbed the cats’ pooper scooper, and I told him to drop it. He sat down, opened his mouth, and let it fall to the floor, then sat there and looked at me, waiting for a treat. It definitely wasn’t just a startled response from me speaking, and I was so proud of him.

Adam got in on some of the training and seems to think it’s going well. Nev’s getting very good at dropping things for me and the chin command I introduced. He tries to get away with barely tapping his chin on my leg to get his treat but he will leave it there after a few attempts. The first day he was here, he knocked me over when I was sitting on the floor and got on me, which is what I want him to do for deep pressure therapy, but he did it just to hang out and be loved on. He gets pretty distracted by the cats.

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So Gratifying

Day 4: Gratitude

What Can You Do Today to Instantly Lift Your Mood?

Okay, so this is an easy one. All of my kiddies instantly lift my mood, unless they are the reason I am Captain Cranky Pants. I mean, look at Willow! When she is not on my keyboard, she is a total sweetheart. She is a Daddy’s Girl, but fortunately, all our kiddies love both of us; they just have their preferences. For some reason, my boy, Phin, has been spending a lot of time with Adam. I don’t know if it’s because I keep moving things around and making it difficult for him to navigate the home or what. He makes himself right at home on Adam’s chest after Adam gets up and wants to stay there all day. He became super attached to us after Merlin died, who was his bestest buddy.

Sweet Silly Willy
My baby boy with his lone white whisker.

Unless Adam is the reason I’m in a bad mood, he can instantly lift my mood. He hates when I am sad, upset, overwhelmed, etc., so he tries to cheer me up, usually by being funny. One time, when we hadn’t been dating very long, he was performing “surgery” on my toe and it hurt to the point that I was crying. He got up near my face and said or did something that made me laugh and I accidentally spit tears and snot right in his face. It was so embarrassing!

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Gratatouille

Okay, so I didn’t know the 30-Day Mindset Journal Challenge was going to focus on one theme a week at a time. I don’t know if my ADHD self has it in me to wax poetic about the same subject for seven days. Needless to say, we’re still talking about gratitude, and I’m all gratituded out. Also, I am incredibly tired of waiting for the exciting thing that is coming up and I just want it to be now. I’m failing my challenge spectacularly and not writing every day, but I am working and going to school full-time, so I expected as much. My 30-day challenge may take me 60 days but I’m cool with that 😂.

Day 3: Gratitude

What Makes You Happy?

I’m not really a happy person but some things do make me happy. Water makes me very happy. When I went to Niagara Falls with my ex when he was an OTR truck driver, it was the most awesome, peaceful experience I had ever encountered. Just standing there watching the water was crazy soothing for me. I’ve always loved water; seeing it and being in it.

Oddly, I cannot swim on top of water, like Michael Phelps, but I have been swimming underwater since my dad threw me off the diving board before I could walk. I didn’t ask him to do that but it worked 🤷‍♀️. I love watching the little waterfalls on the side of the mountains in my state when it rains, I love rivers and streams and ponds. I love the sound of water. I think I should have been a fish.

I’m not sure if it was the happiest I’ve been, but the most peaceful and exhilarating thing I’ve done was riding the Slotzilla Super-Hero Zoom Zoomline in Las Vegas. This was after Mom died and I decided to book us for the zoomline on a whim when I was planning our vacation. It’s quite odd because I don’t do well with heights at all. I get dizzy and nauseated standing on a chair or stool. Adam had to come help me off the side of Mom’s garden tub when I was painting and could not put my hand on the wall for support because I had just painted it. I hated going up in the arch in Missouri and had to go back down almost immediately after getting up there. It’s bad.

I was feeling a bit reckless after Mom died, and I was excited about the zoomline until we were halfway to the loading platform. We got strapped in, Adam was in his harness across from me, and I made the mistake of looking down while lying on my harness. (Shrek? I’m looking down!) Instant tummy rumbles and vertigo. Adam or the guy fastening me in noticed my anxiety and told me to look out in front of me and not below me, so I did and the vertigo ceased. Then, we were off!

Still having doubts before we go!

It. Was. Amazing!! It was so freeing and calming, and I’ve not experienced anything like it before or since. I could have spent the week doing nothing else but flying over Fremont Street. I was able to look down while I was in motion and could see people waving up at us but even briefly closing my eyes and taking in the feeling of flying was so cool. That was in 2015 and I still remember how it felt. I don’t know if the zipline, which is another option, would have been the same for me and I’m glad I chose the former.

The worst thing about our vacation aside from us both getting sick halfway through was flying. We flew with Spirit, and the plane was much smaller than what I had been on prior (I didn’t like that flight, either, and was wrapped around my mom’s arm until we landed) and the turbulence was worse in a smaller plane. The Spirit flights were only 4 hours each way and felt like forever. It was Adam’s first time flying and he wasn’t phased.

Other things that make me happy are Adam, the kiddies, my cousins, concerts, reading, pink, music, the smell of Febreze, and more that I can’t think of at the moment. I think falling in love is a pretty awesome feeling and it’s something people in long-term relationships kind of miss. I mean, I’m totally in love with my husband, but it will never be like it was in the beginning with the anticipation and butterflies and missing him five seconds after he leaves. It’s a different kind of happiness now.

The Taylor Swift concert movie is coming up and I haven’t started on my friendship bracelets yet! I’ve never made those before but Adam is going to make some with me and I told him he would be tying mine 😂. The kit came with fishing-line-looking line that you tie or put clasps on and it’s so slick, I don’t know how it will stay tied. I guess I should get cracking on those and not wait until the last minute. Our friend who just took us to see Blue October again is going with us. I will be pretty upset if we are the only ones with bracelets to hand out.

It seems like an unspoken rule that only concert-goers trade bracelets, but there are so many of us who couldn’t afford tickets or transportation to the closest venues. I’ve never been able to afford going to a concert because it’s not just the tickets that cost money. Our closest stadiums or amphitheaters are hours away, so there is the cost of gas, hotel rooms, any concessions, and unplanned expenses. I’ve attended concerts with my aunt since we like the same music and they were fun but she paid for me. We were lucky with Blue October because they performed very close to us both times we got to see them, and even then our friend paid our way as a wedding gift and then an anniversary gift.

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You Need a Gratitude Adjustment

Day 2 of the 30-Day Mindset Journal Challenge from Seeking Serotonin focuses on gratitude, like Day 1. I don’t know what more I can say about gratitude but I guess that’s why it’s called a challenge! I’ve always been a Negative Nancy but that doesn’t mean I’ve never been grateful for anything. Sadly, I became more grateful for my mom after she died, but I don’t think that’s uncommon. I did learn to appreciate her once I became an adult, but the guilt and regret I feel for being a kid are still there. I know it’s irrational, I was a kid, but I still feel bad for how I treated her while growing up. I think that is a big part of why I never wanted kids. I knew how I acted and I know I couldn’t and wouldn’t tolerate a child who behaved like I did. Well, I couldn’t tolerate any children regardless of how they behaved. I don’t have the maternal chip, which I am totally okay with. Let’s get on with Day 2.

Day 2: Gratitude

What does gratitude mean to you?

Gratitude is a pretty straightforward concept. Having/showing gratitude means you are grateful for something or someone and you feel blessed to have that something or someone. It can be as simple as someone helping you up from a fall, giving you something you need, helping you out financially, giving you a compliment when you’re feeling down, and on and on. In my last post, I mentioned being grateful for my mom and my husband, but I’m grateful for many things and people.

I’m grateful for my psychiatrist for working with me and trying different medications until I no longer felt overwhelmingly suicidal. I am grateful for the medications that keep me alive and the insurance that keeps those medications free for me. I’m grateful for my professors who teach me even though they get terrible pay. I’m grateful for SNHU allowing me to continue school after I had to take breaks due to my brother dying and my depression. I’m grateful for my three jobs. I’m grateful for each and every kiddie that chose Adam and me to be their parents. I’m grateful for my family. I have had a hard go of it since Mom died but I’m grateful to still be here to fight through another day.

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The Great Fool

I saw something called shadow work journaling online (I have no idea what I was searching for) and decided to give it a shot. I used to have a therapist whom I loved, but she dropped me after I missed three appointments, which kind of irked me because I was seeing her for major depressive disorder and ADHD. Missing/forgetting/canceling appointments tends to happen with those disorders. It was right after my brother died, too, so that was really helpful 😒.

Anyway, I want to try the journaling here so I can pretend there is an audience and maybe stick to doing it. No promises! I’ll be using some prompts I found online, although I have the worst memory and the prompts concentrate on the past and memories, so I don’t know how that will go. Seeking Serotonin seems like a great resource and I’m going to start with the 30-day Mindset Journal Challenge. That being said, I started this post two weeks ago 😂.

Day 1: Gratitude

What am I grateful for today?

Today’s prompt is an easy one. I am overwhelmingly grateful for my husband. This guy survived a nightmare of a childhood full of violence and neglect, and he is one of the sweetest, most caring people I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing. Mom was not wrong when she called him a Godsend. He has always said that it was love at first sight when he saw me. I challenged this claim because I’ve never really believed in such a thing, but we dug my senior yearbook out, and in his note he left in the back pages, he wrote, “I will always love you.” Well, color me wrong!

Easy on the eyes, hard on the heart.

We knew each other for a school year of lunch periods — I was a senior when he was a freshman — and then reconnected nine years later on MySpace (I wasn’t a fan of Facebook). In school, he was just my friend’s dorky little brother; I was the same age as my friend, whom I had a bit of a crush on. Mom was thrilled when Adam started coming around in 2009 because he made me happy and made me laugh so much, which Mom said she had not heard in a long time. For four-and-a-half years, I was Adam’s and Mom’s world, which was pretty awesome.

Now, I can walk through the living room with a basket of clothes or a package that was delivered and this man won’t notice me walking by him. However, just today, I was getting ready to take a shower, so I turned the exhaust fan on in the bathroom, then left the bathroom to get towels, and Adam was walking through the living room with towels for me because he heard me turn the fan on. He turns the air on when he hears me get in the shower because I don’t like getting sweaty after I get out of the shower, which I tend to do.

Due to my AuDHD, shows and movies can confuse me, and I don’t want to get invested if I know I won’t understand what’s going on. Since Adam knows me better than I know myself, I ask him to watch it first to see if it’s too complicated. It may not be his cup of tea, but he will watch it and tell me his opinion. The same goes with comedies. I don’t like the F-word or movies that are too raunchy. He’ll watch them and let me know how “bad” they are. Just recently, I asked him to watch No Hard Feelings, as I really like Jennifer Lawrence but the movie was marketed as a raunchy comedy.

I could go on forever, but I suppose I won’t. I don’t know how I got so lucky. He’s a wonderful father to our kiddies and I love seeing this self-professed dog person being so sweet and loving towards our cats. Our youngest, Willow, is his girl, and she recently got in trouble for lying on my keyboard and hitting the keys on purpose even though I moved the keyboard out of the way like I always do with them. He lightly swatted her butt and told her “no” because I couldn’t get her to listen, and tears were in his eyes after he scolded her and she ran away. I mean, come on!

As always, I’m grateful for my mom. Thanks to her planning and always thinking of her children, I have a home and an acre of land that are paid off. The house taxes suck, but I would rather have those than a rent or mortgage payment each month. Considering I can barely work, my income is a joke and I would be homeless without Mom’s house. We had her car, too, until some jerkface mechanic broke it. I will be forever grateful for her and Adam.

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Behind the Mask

Oh, how’s school going, you ask? Well, it’s going. Now, I can sound professional, sophisticated, and scholarly easily. I’ve loved reading since I was old enough to do it, so I am articulate and have a large vocabulary. However, it is draining. There is a lot of masking going on (even with writing), and I just sit and stare at the screen when trying to write my papers and make myself come across as educated. It is really hard to unmask when you’re just used to the constant anxiety of trying to be “normal.” Mom was the only person I didn’t have to do that around. I miss that.

When I drop the act and start writing what comes to mind, I fly through my homework. I think it took me about 30 minutes to bang out a 5-page paper (which was supposed to be 3) after I started writing what came to me naturally. Sure, I sound simplistic and “young,” but that does not mean I don’t know what I’m talking about, and more importantly, people who read my papers will know what I’m talking about without needing to be familiar with the topic. That is important with essays. I have been told by several students that they enjoy reading my discussion posts, so that makes me smile 😊.

In my discussion post that asked me how Walt Whitman constructed images to express the nature of America, I wrote (in part): “I think Walt Whitman was a hippie before hippies existed.  At the very least, he had paganistic and naturalistic views and approaches to the world around him.  From his writings, he seemed to very much be a dancing-naked-under-the-full-moon type of guy.” Not exactly sophisticated, but that’s the first thing I thought of when reading Song of Myself, which is 52 pages/stanzas long and does not rhyme or make much sense (to me), btw. I’m glad we’re done with him and Dickinson. Frost, Pound, and Thomas are much more interesting to me. Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night reminds me too much of my brother, though.

I think that is why so many people think autistic people are slow and have learning disabilities. Just because we think differently and arrive at the same conclusion via another path does not mean we are slow or uneducated. On the other hand, being autistic doesn’t mean we are like Rain Man. Most of us are bright with a higher score in a particular subject/topic, though the latter is not always the case. Not surprisingly, my highest score on the IQ portion of my eval was in reading and language. My ACTs reflected the same thing when I was a junior in high school.

I do have something coming up that I’m excited about and can’t wait to share here! Actually, I have three things coming up. First, we’re going to see Blue October again as an anniversary gift from a friend. The first time we saw them, I got autographs and cried in front of Justin, so he stood up and gave me a hug 🥰🥰. The second thing is the Eras Tour concert movie, complete with friendship bracelets Adam and I make! I hope the theater isn’t full of a bunch of stuck-up people who are above swapping bracelets because it’s not a “real concert.” Then, comes the “something coming up” 😊. Unfortunately, I have to wait more than a month for the last thing, and I am not a happy camper about that. With the strings being pulled for me, I can’t complain, really.

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