Nitpicky. Controlling. OCD. Fussy. Particular. Unreasonable. High maintenance. These are some of the words that have been used to describe me. That’s fair, for the most part. I don’t have OCD. I’m not high maintenance, unless one counts the limitations from my disorders and illnesses. All the other descriptors are the result of being undiagnosed well into adulthood and trying to cope and maintain some semblance of control in my life and situations.
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If I get too stressed over something, I immediately start cleaning and straightening items. Adam usually tries to stop me so he can comfort me, but the comfort comes from organizing. Order is something I can physically control and, frankly, keeps me from dealing with overwhelming emotions, which is something I don’t know how to do or even if I’m capable, especially pertaining to sadness, anger, and stress. Keeping things just so helps keep my world calmer, and if I neglect that, it causes stress, which has been affecting me physically more and more.
My current hyperfixation is books. Logic dictates, in my opinion, since hyperfixation (“special interests”) is an autism thing, being AuDHD mucks that up into fixating on something for a length of time, then switching to something else with the same passion and intensity. Mom tried to keep up with my fixations, so I’ve acquired books, pandas, unicorns, and tigers, to name a few, over the years. I have a pink dancing turtle and a talking Squirt from Finding Nemo from my cute turtles phase. With Adam, I’ve obsessed over Bob’s Burgers, Taylor Swift, Pon & Zi, music, crypto, magic mushrooms, and on.
For reasons unknown to me, I decided to try Apple Books/iBooks instead of the Kindle app and discovered I like Apple Books better, so I was going to transfer my 500+ books from Amazon to Apple. Well, I couldn’t. When you buy an e-book on Amazon, you don’t own that book, unlike buying paper- and hardback books. Amazon is essentially a paid library for digital media, like Vudu and other digital goods companies. If Amazon got a bug up their butt and deleted my account, like they have in the recent past, my books would be gone and I certainly wouldn’t be reimbursed. This didn’t sit well with me, and being told I could not do something, specifically that I could not own something I paid for, only fueled my little AuDHD PDA self.
For the past few days, I have spent hours downloading my books onto the computer, converting them into .epub files, backing them up on my external hard drive, and transferring copies to my phone via iTunes. This went well for most of the books, but a few were totally messed up, and of course those are the ones my brain focuses on and bothers me incessantly about. I remove all of them from the phone, fix the metadata and covers for each one on Calibre, and send them back to my phone. A few more are corrected, but there are still some problems. I Yahoogle for help, as does Adam since this is really upsetting me, and I try everything we find.
The same thing happens. All the authors are listed first name, last name in the app, but alphabetically sorted by the last name, which is correct. Except for two authors. One is listed last name, first name and his 23 books are split somehow. For the other, her initials are MZ and she is sorted under M instead of Z, although her name is in the correct order (FN, LN).
After being miserable for the past week and not getting the results that I wanted, I’m standing at the bed hugging Adam and venting about the apps, and my sweet, amazing, well-meaning husband tells me I should not worry about it because it’s just a small thing. Now, I love this man to pieces, and I know I shouldn’t stress and fret over something so small, but it’s not by choice. I don’t do this because I’m bored or want attention or I’m desperate for some internal drama and turmoil in my life. I can’t help it. I tried to “deal” with Hurricane MIL and nearly had a mental break from that.
On top of my ever-changing, fleeting interests, my lifelong solid obsession is English/language. I’m average in every other subject and above-average in language, which was included in my psych/autism assessment, but I’ve known that since I was little. I was always in gifted reading/English classes, and that was my highest-scoring subject on my ACTs. I had this terrible-paying general transcription job once, and the company’s policy was to type what was said, of course, but that included spelling words how the dictator spelled them if they happened to spell them out, including medications. Most people don’t know how to spell medications correctly because the spelling and formatting can get pretty crazy. I always spelled the drugs correctly and was ready to defend my choice to the death if necessary. I was with one company where this doctor would always say “gamipectin” and proceed to spell it: G-A-B-A-P-E-N-T-I-N. Gabapentin was the correct medication, so I don’t know where in the heck she came up with gamipectin. I correct emails when replying to them. I correct FB posts if I’m reposting. I quickly stopped reading No Country for Old Men because Cormac McCarthy refuses to use quotations when people are speaking, which could very well be a sign of the devil. That really stinks because I loved that movie and figure his books are pretty good.
I have no idea where I’ve been or am going with any of this post. I applaud your dedication (boredom?) if you have made it this far 😊👍.
Adam made me modified tequila (what we called it growing up). Eh, maybe “barebones tequila” would be more accurate; zucchini, meat sauce, and lots of mozzarella cheese 😋. I think ground chuck is more expensive than ground beef because the farmers and butchers have a hard time finding boy cows who are named Chuck. Adam said that’s a possibility but never gave a definitive answer.
Cari R Esta 