Updates, at least a few…..

 I’m not sure if I am doing this right.  Web sites like to redesign stuff but I’m sure I’ll figure it out.  Lots of stuff has happened in the last several years both to me and mine and to the rest of the world.  Don’t even get me started about politics or COVID.  

As a nurse I know more than I want to know.  Heck when I was last posting stuff we had swine flu hanging over our heads.  My youngest had a teacher who gave her an F in study hall because she didn’t attend Study hall that day as she was home sick.  I realize this teacher was told to figure out a way to grade each kid, but how do you earn a grade for Study hall?  All I had to do was ask her if she really wanted my kid to come to school when she felt bad and could spread the flu around just to keep up her grades.  I actually saw the light bulb going off in her head.  

Oh well. We are officially done with high school and college.  Katie, luckily, had enough AP (advanced placement) classes to graduate a semester early.  She was all done before COVID took hold.  She even managed to get a job before it caused most places to go on lockdown.  After a number of zoom meetings they called everyone back to work.  Mr Mike is working from home until at least September.

The Aspie meltdowns are still with us, but for the most part we muddle through them.  Usually they are due to being overwhelmed.  Katie had one just last week when she was supposed to relieve her co workers for their lunch break.  Usually this is a piece of cake for her, but this last time, she didn’t get a copy of the schedule so she didn’t know who to relieve and when.  She found a quiet place to calm down and gave me a call.  Thank the maker for cell phones. 

I had a meltdown myself and kinda surprised myself that it was the Aspergers that was the cause of my discomfort.  Let me ‘splain.  I have a condition that I’ll go into more detail later.  To monitor it, my doctors order MRI and CT scans every six months or so.  So needless to say I am on a first name basis with the folks in radiology and I know the procedure for these three tests.  They are usually done on one day and on the same floor of the radiology department at the hospital.  When the scheduler called she set up one MRI on a Thursday at the hospital and the other MRI the next day at the medical office building and the CT scan that same day but over at the hospital.  

The more I thought about this, the more flustered I got.  Why couldn’t they do both MRI's at the same time since both of them were of the lower part of my body. I got more and more distraught  and decided to email my doctor to see what she could do.  It took three drafts to get the dates and times typed up.  It was then that I realized that it was a change in my routine that was bothering me.  I couldn’t verbalize it until I was trying to calm Katie down, but that’s what it was.  I’d been getting these scans since 2013, no wonder this change was a problem.  The doctors office gave me the scheduler's phone number and it was changed to a more familiar schedule.

So there you have it.  The meltdowns will continue, but the way we respond to them sometimes changes.

TTFN

Tigg

Still kicking

 Hey there.  I went looking for the recipe for bagel chips that I knew was on this iPad somewhere and found a link to this blog that I had just about forgot about.  So I read all my previous posts, remembered some and realized this thing is in need of an update.

Of course it’s bedtime now, so it’s not gonna happen tonight.  If I did this right, then I'll be back tomorrow. Lots of things have happened.  The biggest in my mind is that my web site "bouncing off the wall" doesn’t exist anymore.  It was costing more than I wanted to pay, I hate web sites with ads, and my knowledge of current coding is non existent.  So hopefully this post will push me into updating you all, all six of you who follow it.  Oh well.

See ya later

Tigg

Aspies and the Butterfly effect

Katie teaches me something new on a regular basis, even when I least expect it.

She is a fan of Dr Who and has pulled me into that world with her.  Dr. Who is a long running  British series about a guy with no name and his ever changing companions who travel through time in a big blue police box, that is "bigger on the inside".

I have to stop here to tell you.  I hate time travel.  I get all caught up in it and can't figure out how anyone can keep it straight.  Back to the Future is especially mind numbing to me.  Don't even get me started.

Anyway Katie recently started blogging herself.  She fancies herself a writer and has taken to the platform like a fish to water.  Today she is writing about time travel.  She kept going on and on about stepping on butterflies and how this could alter the outcome of history should you step on one in the past.  She claims it is a well known discussion among science fiction fans and indeed if you google, like I did, butterflies and time travel, you will even see a Wikipedia article about it.

Apparently it is closely related to chaos theory which states something about how a small change  at one place in a nonlinear system can amount to an even larger change down the line.  All I remember about chaos theory is that is has to do with fractal geometry and if something is a fraction off at the start, it can be miles off down the line.  In short as my son says, it's rocket science and frankly gives me a headache.  It is also mentioned that the flapping wings of a butterfly can possible alter the atmosphere and possibly alter the path of a tornado.  This is heavy stuff.

Of course when I told her about all this we had a discussion about chaos theory and her brother piped in and we had a grand old time.  We discussed Back to the Future, Star Trek, Dr. Who and even the classic It's a Wonderful Life, where Clarence the angel shows George Bailey what life would be like if he had never been born.  Little things make a big difference i.e. the butterfly effect.

It's times like these that I marvel at the possible effects my kids and other Aspies will have on the future of the world.  There are some who are trying very hard to discover the gene that causes Autism. They want to develop a prenatal test to detect the presence of this elusive gene.  And to what end?  Termination?  How can we possibly tell if this gene will result in someone who is so profoundly affected vs someone like us?  And who can say that those profoundly affected kids won't somehow challenge those who care for them to make an even greater positive change in the world.  That's assuming they themselves won't alter time.  Talk about boggling the mind.  Each of us is a butterfly capable of changing the future, even without a time machine or a Tardis.

Templates

Templates can be good sometimes.  I use one on my web site so that all the 118 plus pages are the same and the menu buttons that took me forever to learn how to code show up consistently from page to page.  I use a very simple template on this blog because that's all Google had when I started it.  They have so many other options now.  Today, I changed the font.  I like fonts.  I have over 5000 on my computer.  I don't use them often.

The font here is called "Coming Soon".  If I compose the post with notes on my iPad and then copy it here, it comes out larger and more of a comic sans type font.  I am not sure which I like best.  I am also getting to the age where I sometimes see better without my glasses.  This is annoying if only because the dang things are not cheap.

Anyway, if anyone finds this font hard to read, please, please let me know.  Use the comment link.  I'll get it.  Promise!

Tigg

He's a good boy!

We've all seen it too many times.  A life is cut short always too soon.  The evening news reports that someone's child has been shot and killed by law enforcement in the commission of a crime.  We will never find out why he was seen climbing out of the window of a business late at night.  We'll never hear his side of the story and he'll never hear the tongue lashing from his disappointed mother.  What we do hear is his grief stricken mother blaming the authorities and her declaration that he is a "good boy".  While I am not one to automatically defend the police, it always amazes me that his mother claims he is a good boy.  A good boy would not be breaking into someone else's property.  A good boy would not do this to his mom.  Maybe she is remembering the boy he used to be.  Maybe he fell in with a bad crowd and was influenced by others.  But we will never know because he was caught doing something wrong and killed in the process.

This seems to happen every time.  You never hear the mother say anything like, He was always getting into trouble or, I've never been able to control him, or he never listens to me anymore since he started hanging around with those bad kids, or started taking drugs or dropped out of school.  Always she says, he was a good boy.

So why does this concern me?  I think it is because, that after hearing this opinion so many times, the the general consensus becomes that a  mothers opinion of her child can't be taken seriously.  The unspoken word is that since she's his mother, her view is tainted.

This becomes a problem for us when trying to get school officials to understand the child with Aspergers.  Aspies who don't realize something they say is rude, gets punished instead of learning why their comment is inappropriate so they can alter the behavior.  When my children lash out, it is because they are over stimulated or overwhelmed.  If this happens in the classroom, there is always a reason for it.  If that reason is figured out, the whole class usually benefits.

Kids with Aspergers usually have an above average intelligence.  Past teachers have told me, that they use my kids as a sort of barometer for the rest of the class.  If the smartest kid in the class can't keep up, then chances are no one else can either.  This was brought to our attention recently when one of the kids had a substitute teacher.  When it became clear that this sub would be teaching for an extended period and have to keep the class on the same pace as the regular teacher, things got rough.  He had to get the class up to speed in a short period of time.  When Katie couldn't keep up and lashed out disrespectfully, she was called down to the office, talked to and threatened with in School suspension if the behavior was repeated.

Now I get to say it.  Katie is a good girl.  Do you believe me?  Well she is.  I rarely if ever have to discipline her.  She never deliberately misbehaves.  One time she sorta kinda misbehaved and it drove her crazy.  She came to me in some distress, worried that she had done the worst thing.  I was either taking a nap or gone and she had helped herself to a soda without asking.  She always asks and unless it is the last one and I want it, I always say yes.  It's not a big thing.  But she was convinced that since she didn't ask first, she would be in big trouble.  It bothered her so much, that she had to snitch on herself.  I never would have known.  That is the worst thing she has ever done unless she was in some Asperger induced distress, and then she can't help herself anymore than some one in a wheel chair can get up and walk.

Luckily she is attending a school, with a great principle and wonderful teachers.  After several emails back and forth, her school understands that if Katie was disrespectful. She didn't mean to be and something was wrong.  Her regular teacher is back and all is right with the world.  But it wasn't always like this.

In the past, we sometimes had trouble getting  people to realize that even though she couldn't always control her behavior, I didn't think that she should be able to behave anyway she wanted to.  But there are more effective ways to alter the behavior of some Aspies than to threaten punishment.  In Katie's case, if you can explain to her why others act the way they do and why her behavior is wrong, she can usually find a better way to make her distress known and communicate what her needs are.

Aspergers is a neurologically based  developmental delay.  Because of this and also possibly due to our style of parenting, Katie doesn't understand why her classmates act the way they do.  Sometimes it is normal teenage behavior, sometimes it is due to a cultural difference.  Sometimes I have to dig way back to my classes in sociology to explain typical teenage behavior.  She listens very carefully to my explanation and sometimes you can see the lightbulb go off.  "Oh I get it", she'll say.  "That's dumb" and usually "ok" and she'll be fine.  The problem is that i won't know what she doesn't know until the situation comes up.  If it is timed right, we can avoid a meltdown.  Luckily as I said, her school is pretty good about these things.  Yesterday she had a problem with a particularly loud and boisterous assembly.  A teacher noticed her difficulties and moved her to a quieter room.  I learned today that her principle heard the noise and her first thought was how Katie was handling it.  She told me she looked all over for her before finding out she had already been cared for.  It is good to know that they are all looking out for her.  She is a good girl

Grammar

I am  a grammar snob.

There, I said it.  It annoys me to no end when people, especially journalists, can't manage to make the subject and verb to agree.  It would seem that at least people who make their living writing would get the grammar right.  I am not perfect.  I admit that also.  But I am not a writer.  I am a nurse, mom, geek, but not a writer.  I don't expect much.  Semi-colon use eludes me.  But please, please, please, don't make me listen to another "I -me" screw up.

When we were kids,  my mother would constantly correct our grammar.  "I ain't got no homework"  was quickly corrected to "I don't have any homework."  I learned grammar, not so much by the rules but by what sounded right.  And the source of what sounded right was my mom.  So it really bothers me when I hear news readers read their copy and get it wrong.  Millions of people are hearing it, many of them are kids.  And they are hearing it wrong!!!!!

Another thing I remember from when I was young was being corrected when someone would say.  "Bobby and me are going outside."  No, it's "Bobby and I are going outside"  (Bobby is my brother.  He's a cool dude.)  That one was easy.  Even the rule was easy.  Just get rid of Bobby (sorry buddy) and see if it sounds right.  "Me am going outside" Makes me cringe just typing that.  After a while it seemed everyone decided to use "I" all the time.  It made them sound intelligent.  At least until they started using it incorrectly.  Please give Mike and I a cookie. (He's my other brother)  Arrrrrrggggggg.  Makes me crazy!!!  Would you say "Please give I a cookie"?  It happens all the time.  Even on CNN.  And you know they get everything right all the time.

Pretty soon, if it hasn't happened already, the whole world will think that rotten grammar sounds right.  Now kids will have to learn the rules if they want to speak correctly.  But I don't know if they care any more.  Already we see words spelled wrong and I don't mean just typos.  I mean using lite for light and site for sight.  I will admit occasionally typing "their" when I mean  "there".  But at least when I proofread, I know to change it.  I also don't get too annoyed when I read comments online and the spelling and grammar are so atrocious that I can't figure out what the person is trying to say.  I know you can't edit some of those pages.  But it is really annoying when reading an online news report and the actual article is full of errors and missing words.  It's OK for a while if it is breaking news, but for crying out loud, fix it before a couple hours go by.  The newspaper isn't full of missing words or typing errors.  Why is it OK for the online version to be such a mess?

I think I am raising a spelling snob.  Katie loves to look over my shoulder and watch the red lines appear as I type and can't wait to tell me I spelled something wrong.  The problem is, she usually does it before I am finished with the sentence.  I never said I was a typist.  I have to look at my fingers when I type.  But at least she notices.  Her grammar and spelling are impeccable.  So maybe I am channelling my mom.  Maybe Mom is standing over Katie's shoulder from heaven watching her write and correcting her.  I like thinking that.

Complacency?

I had what I called a computer scare this past week.  It shouldn't have been a scare but it was and I wonder if I have become complacent or if my interests have changed.  There is some background  that I need to explore

Let's take a walk down memory lane shall we.

I've been a computer nerd from way back.  Way way back.  Heck I even have a slide rule.

We purchased our first computer for the kids for Christmas (yeah right).  We got it on lay-a-way for $650.00 from a place called Mostly Closeouts in the early 80's.  It was an Apple Clone (remember those?) from Franklin Computers.  It had an Open F key where Apple once had the Open Apple key and ran on something called F dos.  Back then computers didn't come with hard drives, just a floppy drive and if you were lucky two floppy drives.  If you wanted to run a program, you had to insert a 5 1/2 inch disk and turn on the computer.  Some programs required swapping out multiple floppies.  Such fun.  But we didn't know that at the time.  We didn't know anything.  We took it into the back room, closed the door so the kids couldn't see, and turned it on.  It Beeped!!  Scared the heck out of us!  We turned it off.  The kids later told us that they heard the beep and knew they were getting a computer for Christmas.

I got good at trouble shooting that Franklin.  We had purchased Word Perfect and had a heck of a time introducing the computer to the printer.  I was on first name basis with the Word Perfect help desk.  Support was free then and local.  No calls to India needed. After a lot playing with the switches on the back of the machine, we just got used to printing pages that had a solitary K in the upper right hand corner.  This was easily fixed with White Out.  We weren't that picky.

A couple years later we came into what seemed like a wind fall and bought an honest to goodness Windows PC.  It cost over 1700 dollars and had to be taken up to the check out counter on a four wheeled dolly.  We needed help getting it into the car.  OK maybe it wasn't that big but it seemed like it.  It ran Windows 3.0.  Still support was free and local as I found out when all of a sudden my Games window disappeared .  It turns out you weren't supposed to just turn it off by flipping the power switch, like we did with the Franklin.  You were actually supposed to shut it down through the file menu.  Why the heck didn't anyone tell us that?

We kept this computer for a while.  In the meantime (around the mid to late 1990's) one of the kids built a computer for school and the other got a laptop with Windows 95.  Once again, I was lost.  Where the heck was my Program Manager and all the programs and I have to turn it off by using the start button?  I didn't bother worrying about it because the company I worked for was still using dos.  Windows would have to wait.

Eventually I got introduced to Windows 95 and 98.  We had discovered Dell and could avoid the trip to the checkout with the dolly by ordering our computer on line.  I was home with my third child at the time, having resigned from the company that was STILL using dos based programs.  I was having fun. Win 98 was pretty stable and you could spend hours personalizing the thing with themes and screen savers.  I remember downloading loads and loads of free games and screen savers at my son's college because they had a fast (for the times) connection.  I had a bag full of 3 1/4 inch (not very floppy) floppies and they had loads of fun things to do on them. Viruses were not a problem and lots of geeks made lots of programs and gave everything away for free.  It was great

Still Windows wasn't perfect and I became pretty good at fixing  problems.  My little boy even had fun but sometimes he'd get into a friend's computer and change the colors around.  I remember being called by someone who was in a panic because her menu bar was blank!  She couldn't do anything because File, Edit, View etc. were gone.  I felt like a miracle worker because I knew how to access all of it by key stroke alone, and could get into control panel and change the text color back to normal.  I also learned how to fix things by simply searching the internet for fixes.  As the school computers got older, they needed more and more fixing.  Windows was prone to problems and if I wasn't fixing my own computers I was cleaning, maintaining and fixing more and more of my friends and their friends computers.

Then we got a great deal on a computer from my husband's job.  They would even give us a coupon for a free upgrade to the newest operating system- Windows ME.  Unfortunately we never had to use the coupon because it came with ME already loaded.  What a nightmare that was.  There were days when it would take 20 restarts to get the thing to work.  Thank the maker for Windows XP.

But my computer woes weren't over.  Of course by now support was no longer free nor local.  Dell, once known for excellent customer service, now became pretty crappy.  There were times when I knew more than the "expert" on the other end of the line and the world.  I swear, they must have been reading from cue cards.  Chat support was better but not great.  I got really good at reinstalling Windows.  I had one computer that had the mother board replaced four times before they gave up and replaced the whole machine.  That happened twice all within the three year warranty period.  When the third replacement machine came with Vista installed, I gave it to my kid and gave up on windows altogether.

During this time while I was getting really good at Windows troubleshooting and sometimes making money at it,  my son in law's family (from California) were singing the praises of Apple.  So what the heck, I went on Ebay and bought an Apple Power PC iBook running OSX Tiger.  It was pretty reasonable because Apple was moving to intel based machines and was soon to be releasing the Leopard OS.  I just wanted to learn a new platform.

Wow was I impressed.  I was used to setting aside a huge chunk of time setting up a new machine on our home network even as familiar with Windows as I was.  The setup of this little machine was so easy.  Open box, plug it in, turn it on.  It found my network in seconds even before I went looking for it.  It was so cool,  except.........   It never broke down.  I was used to going to my favorite download site, Major geeks, to download all the necessary freeware programs with each new Windows computer.  Disk cleaners, Unzipper programs, Spyware scanners, Registry Cleaners, Malware removal tools, Uninstallers, Virus scanners, DeFraggers, etc.  Plus the requisite helper programs:  Font managers, PDF creators,  backup programs and drivers for microphones, web cams, printers etc.  But I didn't need any of these.  I did install a virus scanner  and mac Janitor , but the thing came with a web cam and microphone and research on the web told me I didn't need to do all the maintenance I was used to.  It felt weird.  I wasn't naive enough to think Apple was immune to viruses, but the majority of the malware out there was aimed at the ubiquitous PC world so all I could do was install a virus checker and let it do it's job.

So I  waited for a problem so I could learn how to fix it........  It never came.  The only problem happened because I thought I should be doing something.  I don't know how I did it but somehow,  I managed to duplicate my entire system and started getting "startup disk full" errors.  I took it to the Apple store and even though I didn't buy it there or get an extended warranty, the guy there only took a few minutes to figure it out.  He put a bunch of stuff in the trash and told me to empty the trash when I got home because it would take awhile.  That machine is still operating well and being used by my husband.

So fast forward to this week.  I have a 2007 iMac desktop and a 2009 mac Book pro and very little knowledge of how to fix either.  They work well even if they sometimes feel a little slow when I am using Safari to wander around the internet.  Then Friday while I was working on a web site on my 2007 iMac, I decided to reboot it because since I leave it on all the time, it was getting a little slow.  It wouldn't reboot. no matter how many times I tried.

A search brought me to MacRumors and a whole page of things to try.  When none of them worked, I tried the last thing on the list,  Restore from Time machine backup.  Less than two hours later, I was back in business.  I sent my computer nerd son an email telling him to kiss his time capsule. (I had turned him into a mac convert a couple years ago).  I still don't know a whole lot about fixing a Mac.  Maybe, I'll try to learn.  But for now I am happy.  Once again, my computer just works even if I don't know just how it does.

Mr. Magoo and the La La's

I'm annoyed. My children are annoyed.  I don't know if Mike is annoyed because it is probably his turn (Words With Friends, or in his case Words with Neighbors).

We've been spending the day watching some of our 6 million and 36 movies.  Ok maybe not that many but even my big kids will tell you we have a lot of movies as well as a fair amount of christmas movies, some of them pretty obscure, but we like them.  We came across a home recording of Bah Humbug.  It is a reading of Dickens' A Christmas Carol by Darth Vader and the President, otherwise known as James Earl Jones and Martin Sheen.  We recorded it in 1994 off the local PBS station. (I still can't help but marvel at the poor quality of TV reception we tolerated, but that's another story)  It is a very good program and both the kids were glued to the show.

During the ghost of christmas yet to come when Scrooge is asking the ghost about the body on the bed, I had an uncontrollable urge to sing the la la song.  Anyone familiar with Mr. Magoo's christmas Carol knows which song I mean.  I didn't sing long because Andrew had a laughing fit and told me, he loved me.  What mom can resist that, right?

Well tonight just happened to be the first time since 1967 that NBC re-broadcast this Christmas classic, so we all decided that we would watch it and sing the La La song together.  What a better way to spend an evening.  It doesn't take much to entertain us, I know but we have fun.

Things didn't look good for us when we joined the show five minutes in and Scrooge was already yelling at poor Bob.  Since this particular rendition is actually Mr. Magoo acting in the play of the Christmas Carol, there is a whole scene where he shows up at the Stage door, late and as per usual with  this near sighted little old man, manages to knock down half of the set decorations on the manager before he takes his opening bow.  But I remember them cutting that section in 1965 or so.  I didn't notice that they cut the Jingle Jingle song, but we had come in late so who knows?

The excitement was building as we got closer and closer to our favorite part and Katie assigned our parts.  Andrew would be the tall one, Katie, the one who got the sheets and I would get to be the one with the big nose.  She tried to assign Dad the part of the guy with the eye patch, but once again, it was his turn, so he announced he wouldn't be joining in on the sing a long.  After a few head bounces (it's part of the routine, honest), we started out

We're despicable.
We make ourselves 
Plain sickable. 
Berate ourselves,
Hate ourselves
Viciously
Still none us of wishes he 
Would change. 


We're slick and shifty birds,
With fingers quick
As fifty birds.
While stealing your purse
Or your ticky-tock
Just for a kick we knock
You flat!


La...la...
La-la-la-la-la...
La...la...
La-la-la-la-la 
La...la...
La-la-la-la-la....
We're just blankety-blank-blank
No good!

then........... NOTHING!!  They cut the rest of the song!!!!!  arrgggggg

The rest of the show was even worse.  This was a made for TV special not a feature length movie that has to be "modified to fit the time allotted".  Heck, they even broke for a commercial in the middle of the bathroom song.  You know, the mushy squishy slurpy love song that kids hate and use as the perfect time to go to the bath room.  All Christmas shows have them, especially the cartoons.  Remember that horrid little number Clarice sings on Rudolph's annual production,-- the bathroom song.

So in honor of Mr. Magoo, I am giving you the rest of the song.  Just imagine it a little off key (except for Katie of course) and sung by three cartoon characters, one with a big nose.

The rest of the song:

We're not tea party blokes,
No chitty-chat
Or artichokes.
We're twice as blood-thirsty
As cannibules,
And wilder than animules
Are we!

We're reprehensible.
We'll steal your pen
And pencible!
Then sneer at you,
Leer at you
Naughtily,
And really we ought to be
In jail!

La...la...
La-la-la-la-la....
La...la...
La-la-la-la-la....
La...la...
La-la-la-la-la...
We're just blankety-blank-blank
All bad!

I feel better now!

Merry Christmas

Do you want the truth or do you want me to lie?

Oh how I wish that NT's understood that.

How hard is it to just say what you mean and not play games with words.  When you ask me how I am, do you want the truth, or do you just want me to say "fine"  even if I am not "fine" at all?  When you ask me if this dress makes you look fat, why are you so shocked when I answer truthfully?  I sure wish someone would have told me the truth before I wore that hideous dress to my son's wedding.  It took my Aspie younger son to tell me that I should never wear a backless dress.  It seems I have way too many moles on my back.  It also made me look like an elephant but that's another story.

My Youngest had a melt down at school yesterday.  Now these are to be expected, she hasn't been at a brick and mortar school since sixth grade.  But yesterday the routine was disturbed more than she had expected.  She was expecting the class routine to be interrupted because she was a part of the Pit for the play her school is putting on.  But what she wasn't expecting was for the whole school to be together for lunch.  (the school is large enough that there are three lunch periods)  Anyway, the cafeteria was crowded and much louder than usual, so that by the time she got to her next class, she was in a little bit of distress.  Now to her teachers credit, they noticed her with her hands on her ears, sitting on the floor and separated her from the class.  The problem started when they took her to the nurse.

Normally this would be the perfect thing to do, but Katie is just uncomfortable with this person.  She gives me the willys too.  Katie also has trouble with tactile issues.  She doesn't like just anyone touching her and she can only handle a certain kind of touch.  It took many years for her to even let me hug her.  Naturally when the nurse, who Katie has had very limited contact with, started putting her arm on Katie's shoulder, Katie bristled and told her she didn't like to be touched.  Consequently when Katie's favorite teacher came in and put her hand on Katie's shoulder, like she does every day, the nurse jumped in and told the teacher not to do that.  Now here's where things get complicated. Katie, who was getting calmer said, "Oh that's OK, I like Mrs. C" (the teacher).  Pretty innocent to my ears.  The nurse didn't think so.  Immediately she got defensive and proceeded to bombard Katie with questions.  Why don't you like me?  I've done all these things for you, but you don't like me? etc.  Instead of taking care of an upset student with a disability, she turned it all around to herself.

Well you can guess what happened next.  Katie started crying and three times said, "that came out wrong", but the questioning continued. And she was told she shouldn't have said that.  It's hard enough interpreting what others are saying when you are calm, but during a meltdown, it is near impossible.  It's harder to tell the lies that people seem to want to hear, when you are upset.  Katie usually just shuts down completely, this time she started to cry harder and they finally left her alone.

I can't quite put my finger on why this lady makes me uncomfortable.  It's probably a bunch of things.  She always makes me feel like she is just too busy to talk to me about Katie.  She is condescending and critical.  I am a nurse too and she knows this, but she acts like she should be the one who knows best what Katie needs.  Katie tells me that when she told her that it wasn't her medication that was causing her stomach to hurt, the nurse responded "yes Doctor" in a sarcastic way.  Good Grief, this is a high school girl.  Did she not consider that the kid just had cramps?  So needless to say, Katie is not comfortable with the lady, and yes, she doesn't like her.  But does she really want to know why we don't like her?  I doubt it.  So I am sure that when she asks Katie how she is, Katie will lie and answer "fine" even though that's not what health care professionals are for, now is it?

Obsessions

I mentioned the other day that I got caught up with the whole Casey Anthony Trial. Just writing that sentence will probably boost my blog up in the ratings on google. It seems a whole lot of people have become entangled in her mess.

I know why it fascinates me. I love crime drama. When I am not reading novels from the likes of Steve Martini, I'm watching it on TV. We own several whole TV series related to crime drama on DVD-- JAG, NCIS, Law and Order in all it's varied forms, CSI from coast to coast and my most recent favorite Criminal Minds. I swear there is an Aspie representative in all of these shows. Grissom and Sara Sidle (CSI) and Bobby Gorem (LNO Criminal Intent) are about as Aspie as it gets. And the young Dr. Reid on the FBI centered drama, Criminal Intent, has an IQ above 180 and is introduced as "our expert on ..... well everything" He is constantly coming up with exacting detail about endless topics. Finally there is our family favorite Abby Sciuto from NCIS. Katie calls her eccentric and says she talks like we do. I guess she is right.

We were in Florida at Disney World when the jury was being picked. Prior to this, I didn't know who she was. But in Orlando, you couldn't turn on the TV and not hear about this true crime story. Florida, it seems, has an open records law. Everything, and I do mean everything, from the first 911 call to the autopsy report is public record. And the TV stations and local newspapers petitioned the court for anything they could get their hands on. I've even seen transcripts of the sidebar conversations the lawyers had with the judge on the internet. It was just like Law and Order -- intensified. Just those few times watching the news in our hotel room while waiting for the next days weather report and I was hooked. We missed the coverage that occurred as we drove home after our four days at Disney World ended, but the very next day, I could tell you the channel numbers assigned to HLN, CNN and both the eastern and pacific versions of Insession/tru TV. The last time I had watched a real life trial was when Court TV chronicled the whole OJ Simpson debacle several years ago.

I admit it was entertaining. Judge Perry was great and had amazing facial expressions. Jose Baez was such a fumbling idiot next to my hero's on JAG or Law & Order. Even the forensics, that most people found boring, were fascinating to me. The prosecutions main witness, Dr. Vass from the Body Farm was as geeky as they come. He obviously loved his area of expertise, even calling it "really cool" at one point. He knew all kinds of the stuff, I also found interesting and spoke with a slight speech difference that made him seem so approachable.

So it was obvious to me, why I was hooked, but why was everybody else acting so off the charts? Some say it is because the players were attractive, white and middle class. Unfortunately, I have seen cases where poor /non white kids go missing and they barely make a blurb on even the local news. But there have been other attractive white kids missing or murdered, even in my home town, that don't take off like this one did. The blogs that have devoted themselves to missing or exploited kids mention these kids and write a lot about them, but the main stream news barely acknowledges them. On any given day, I could google Casey Anthony and there will be at least two news articles from within the past week. Why?

Most of the articles/blogs I have read have a very loyal group of commenters who discuss this case unceasingly. Their feelings either pro casey or anti casey are strong and obvious. Many express love for the victim and extreme hatred for Casey, her lawyer, her family and her supporters. Others attack the haters and pledge their loyalty to the suspect (who has since been acquitted.) There are very few without strong strong feelings one way or the other.

I remember such strong feelings during the OJ Simpson case. It was understandable. This man was a wealthy celebrity and a very charismatic character. Plus the two issues of sex and race were very present. The defendant was black, the victims were his white ex wife and her white male companion. Plus the fact that it was held in LA with it's long history of racial troubles and a police department known among some as being racist, didn't help. Mix all those things together, celebrity, wealth, race and sex and you get strong feelings. I get that. But what about Casey? Why did she evoke such strong feeling? The only racial issue I could find was never mentioned in the press. I saw one account in one book that Casey's mom, didn't care for hispanics. This was from one of Casey's childhood friends who said she wasn't welcome in Casey's home if her mother was home. If this was true, it seemed Casey played it to annoy her mother. She chose an hispanic lawyer, blamed a woman she described as half black and half Puerto Rican, and dated at least one hispanic man and one Italian. But again, I never heard this mentioned on the main stream media. Plus the family wasn't rich and were in fact struggling financially. There was a bit of an element of Sex abuse, but few details and that wasn't brought up until trial. So compared to OJ, the emotional components weren't there from what I could see.

Which takes us to the location. Orlando has been called an entertainment center but not a high crime area like Miami might be. BUT there are those pesky Florida Sunshine laws. We have access to everything. There was always something to report on no matter how small or insignificant. We knew who the witnesses were going to be, we knew about all the evidence, even some that never made it to trial. We even knew what Casey bought from the jail store, from snacks to cosmetics. We saw every picture her parents ever took of her and her child. We saw the video tapes of the visits she had in the jail. All of these things fall under Florida's public records law.

Could this be the reason everyone was hooked on Casey? It is certainly part of the reason I watched. Could it be that I am not so different from everyone else, at least as far as obsessions go.

Something to ponder. Maybe later. NCIS is almost on ;-)

Why can't blue always be blue?

A few things happened in the last few days that help illustrate the difficulties some Aspies have in translating from neural typical speak.

I was sautéing some mushrooms, onions, red bell peppers and dill in margarine today to eat with my baked potato. (it was really good, you should try it). My 14 year old Aspie came in and stated, "That smell is much more tolerable than what Dad used to make for breakfast". She immediately followed this up with, "That wasn't insulting was it?" She does this a lot. She enjoys having a larger than average vocabulary but so desperately wants to avoid hurting anyones feelings.

So I asked her what her intent was with a series of questions. On a scale of one to ten, one being awful, how did she rate the smell of my mushroom, (a four) and how did dad's smell rate, (a one) This I knew. We all hated the smell of his one time favorite breakfast. Was she trying to say that she liked my mushroom smell or was she saying that it was barely tolerable but still better than dad's?

I assured her that while she could say anything to me, she might want to follow her grandmother's advice: If you can't think of something nice to say, don't say anything at all. I also told her that if she complimented something she really didn't like , she needed to be prepared to have that person, make that dish for her in the future. She wrinkled up her nose at that one.

A bit frustrated now, she said, but isn't the truth always the best option? Wow, how to answer that question coming from your teen. Then I remembered something. We had just watched an episode of Star Trek, Next Generation. The crew was watching Dr. Crusher and Lieutenant Barclay perform a scene from Cyrano D'Bergerac. It wasn't going well for Barclay as he stumbled with his lines. When the scene mercifully ended, the crew all clapped enthusiastically and yelled Bravo. Cmdr. Data (an android who strives to be more human for you non-trekkies) looked on with a puzzled look on his face. He turned to Cmdr. Riker and stated something on the order of, why are you all clapping, his performance was barely adequate. Riker responded, "Data, it's Polite"

I also relayed to her a conversation I recently had with her dad. He was wearing a pair of parachute pants and a white Tee shirt. I told him, they made him look like a clown and he should never wear them again. Normally that would be considered extremely rude and I am sure my inlaws would point to it as further proof that I am a sub-standard wife. But my dear husband has been married to me for over 36 years and knows more about Aspies than most people. We have long since come to the understanding that we will be honest with each other when the old question, "Does this outfit make me look fat?" comes up. If you don't want the truth, don't ask the question. We both appreciate, knowing what not to wear out in public.

So what to tell her about telling the truth. I wish it were an easy question. I told her to ask herself, what she was trying to achieve with her statement. If she was trying to compliment someone, then by all means say something. But that brought up another problem. As stated, she has a large vocabulary and it is growing everyday, but sometimes, she uses her new word improperly. This means that her statement can come out several different ways
1. She could be using the word properly and the person she is talking to might also know the proper definition of her word (a good thing)
2. She could be using the word wrong and the other person may know the proper usage. (bad thing)
3. She may be using the word correctly but the other person may not know the word. Which could lead to the other person being hurt because they have the wrong impression of the word, or they could feel like she is trying to show off how smart she is and trying to insult the other person's intelligence. That one bothered her the most because she never wants to hurt someone's feelings.

Sometimes it's best not to say anything.

I left her to think about all this. She came to me a little later and said, "Why can't everyone speak the same language? Why can't blue always be blue?"

It never is you know. Blue is always different. Honesty isn't always the best policy. And the rules are always changing.

Yes I am stil alive

And yes it really has been a whole two years since I wrote anything here. But I have an excuse, i guess.

A while back, I decided I was spending way too much time on the computer. If I wasn't working on my website, I was chatting with my online friends. While waiting for them to read and answer my latest post, I'd search out new cool things to add to Bouncing off the Wall. Or Maybe I'd spend the day trying to figure out why Windows was doing this or that to my PC.

So I gave my PC, that I have written about to my son, stopped messing with my website, told the girls online goodbye and got off the computer. And went straight to the couch.

There I discovered reruns of JAG and CSI and NCIS and the West Wing. Every day one of my favorites had a marathon. Then of course, there was the Summer of Casey Anthony. Don't get me started about her.

My Mac got dusty. It never needed tweaking, and I had my iPod touch or my trust iPad incase I got an earth shattering email (yeah Right). I hung out with my kids, discovered Facebook and learned how to type without a keyboard. Did I tell you I love my iPad?

Well today, I fired up the mac to post some soup recipes to the girls on Facebook and I got lost. It took me a while to find the recipes (they were zipped and stashed in a file for a website I made to share graphics with a PaintShop Pro users group. I got them mixed up with the food related Graphics file). But in the search, I took a walk down Lunatic lane. I found several rants and emails from the dark days and read them all. I opened countless abandoned web pages, I had started and got lost reading Java Script. When my stomach finally told me that I had missed Lunch, it was already 3:30pm. Too late to thaw something for supper and I still wasn't done exploring my old stumping grounds.

Then I found my blog files and of course read them all once again and realized I had a lot of stuff to report on. But sadly, Mr. Mike has just come home with Supper and if I stay here much longer, I'll be in big trouble.

One of my brother's refuses to buy a computer. He says, they will suck your life right out of your body if you let them. Well Bobby, you are right.

ttfn
Tiggerr

Don't sweat the small stuff

You've heard that before haven't you. Don't sweat the small stuff. Or Go with the flow, and my favorite "punt". So easy to say, but not easy to do, especially if you have Aspergers.

My son had a test the other day covering the proper usage and punctuation of quotation marks. What he was supposed to do was pick the sentence that had incorrect punctuation. The trouble was that none of the options had any errors in punctuation. All the quotation marks and commas were in the right place. The sentences ended with periods or exclamation points. Everything was correct as taught in that unit. One word was misspelled, but that didn't fit with the objections of the lesson or the instructions for the test. But, since it was the only thing that might be considered wrong, that's the one he chose.

He called me in and I looked at it too. I agreed with him. The word they used, (your) should have been you're. After all an apostrophe could be considered punctuation even though the unit was about punctuation in written statements. Well as you might have guessed he got that one wrong. His English text didn't know when to use your or you're. An email to his teacher told us that we were right, none of the sentences were incorrect and she changed his grade to give him credit. Maybe the spell checker/grammar checker changed the incorrect option and corrected it while the teacher was creating the test. Who knows.

Small stuff? Maybe, but not for either of us. Most kids wouldn't even care to find out what question was wrong. They certainly wouldn't get up in a lather to find out that the teacher or in this case computerized test made a mistake unless it was the one point that kept them from failing. In my sons case it raised his grade from an A to .... wait for it.... an A. His percentage was high enough that he had an A no matter what.

So why sweat it? It's hard to explain but in a world of absolutes, black and white, right or wrong, there has to be something you can absolutely count on. Grey is not an option, unless it's in the color of your pants or the sky.

When I was a kid, I used to talk non-stop about what I learned in school everyday. Mrs. So and So said this or, as was more often the case in the Catholic school I attended, Sister said that. My dad would get so tired of hearing about what Sister said that day that he'd yell. "Do you believe everything Sister says?"

I was dumbfounded. If it had been popular back then I might have said "duh" Of course I believed everything that Sister said. Didn't my own parents send me to school to learn from these very same nuns and teachers? Didn't they trust them to teach me? If I wasn't supposed to believe everything they said, then why was I there.

Can you imagine as a kid what chaos would ensue if your parents as your earliest teachers had taught you that red was blue or that a triangle was actually a square. Why on earth would they send you to school to learn things that weren't true. You have to believe unequivocally at that early age that what is being written on that blank slate we call a mind is the absolute truth.

That's why we get so bent out of shape when something happens to disrupt that trust. Certain things are the way they are. Certain things are to be trusted. To upset that trust, brings about an uncertainty that is just unbearable.

I can't fathom a world where right and wrong are so interchangeable. Something is either allowed or not allowed and all exceptions need to be spelled out in advance. Killing is murder except in war time. I can handle that, but when the Catholic church suddenly changed the rules about eating meat on Friday, I had a lot of trouble with that. I still do. If it's a sin this week and I'm going to hell, then it's a sin next week and I'm going to hell. Needless to say, I am not Catholic anymore. Too confusing.


It's not that I can't take any change. I can. I worked at the Red Cross long enough to understand that change happens. But in business there is a whole process of change management that fit right in with my Aspergers. We studied change. We made special adaptations in order to make the many many changes as seamless as possible. They were discussed and explained and time was allowed to adapt to them. It was Aspie heaven.

But when things we hold as stable, like teachers, text books and computers, fail us, it gets tricky and scary. Who is monitoring these things and who is monitoring the monitors and who is responsible to tell us about the mistakes and make it all right again. And how will we know if the mistakes are caught? Will we go through life thinking that red is really blue. Where does it end. When the things we hold as unfailing, then fail us, what then can we trust.

It's a slippery slope. Obsessions are common with Aspergers as is thinking that everyone is interested in the same things we are. So when "the Small stuff", which we don't think of as small, doesn't bother the rest of the world we get frustrated. And we melt down.

On a more positive note, strict adherence to these written rules usually means we are free from the burdens of unwritten rules. While not knowing or understanding the unwritten rules can get us in trouble, it also allows us to "think outside of the box". Years ago, that wasn't a good thing, but today, it is apparently something to be cultivated. Now if only someone can tell me where that box is........

Blue Cars

My daughter Robin thinks I see Aspies everywhere. Well she used to. And maybe I do. I've gotten really good at spotting one of us. I often have to remind parents who tell me they think their kid has Aspergers that it is not a death sentence. I have to remind myself that sometimes. And just tonight I had to tell my son that other kids had problems he didn't have. That yes I understood, his anguish every time he'd cry and ask why or wished he wasn't "like this". But even when I didn't feel like it myself, I would try ever so hard to remind him that he had somethings that only our Aspergers could give us. Especially since we had each other to turn to. (4 of the 6 people in my little family are affected by Aspergers or some other form of developmental condition similar to Aspergers.)

I've just gotten an Ipod Touch. I really love it. Now I understand the attraction to plain IPods. The music sounds really great. So I have been spending a lot of time at the App store and adding my eclectic style of music to i Tunes to sync with my touch.

During this process, I listened to many of my favorites again. It's been a while. As I said my tastes are rather eclectic, ranging from Alice Cooper's Schools Out to May the bird of Paradise fly up your nose. It's not always the words or melody that gets to me, OK I'll admit, in the latter, the words are unique, but most important are the events th at weregoing on in my life at the time I was listening to that particular song. I have favorites from many special events, both good times and bad. They always take me back.

Tonight, I am getting ready to read Daniel Tamet's Born on a Blue Day. Not blue as in sad, but the color blue. Daniel Is a savant on the autism spectrum and Wednesday's are Blue to him. That's all I know so far. I haven't started the book yet.

Of course At the same time, I heard Dishwalla's song Counting Blue Cars start up on my computer. Hmmmm what a co-ink-i-dink as Tigger would say. Here are the lyrics


Must of been mid afternoon
I could tell by how far the child's shadow stretched out and
He walked with a purpose
In his sneakers, down the street
He had, many questions
Like children often do
He said,
Tell me all your thoughts on God?
Tell me am I very far?

Must of been late afternoon
On our way the sun broke free of the clouds
We count only blue cars
Skip the cracks, in the street
And ask many questions
Like children often do
We said,
Tell me all your thoughts on God?
'Cause I would really like to meet her.
And ask her why we're who we are.
Tell me all your thoughts on God,
Cause I am on my way to see her.
So tell me am I very far -
Am I very far now?

Its getting cold picked up the pace
How our shoes make hard noises in this place
Our clothes are stained
We pass many, cross eyed people
And ask many questions
Like children often do

Tell me all your thoughts on God?
'Cause I would really like to meet her.
And ask her why we're who we are.
Tell me all your thoughts on God?
'Cause I am on my way to see her.
So tell me am I very far?
Am I very far now
Am I very far now
Am I very far now

Anyone see the similarities:

Only Blue cars,
Repetitive behavior.
The insistence that God is a female.
The belief that if he keeps going he'll get there.
And lastly -- his persistent search to find out Why? Why we're who we are.

"Why" always gets me in trouble

Oh, He's just like that! and other platitudes

What is that supposed to mean exactly? I've heard it used often, most recently today, to excuse bad behavior.

He's Rude... Well he's like that, don't let it bother you.
She's unfriendly!.... Don't take it the wrong way, she's just like that.
He's grumpy. ... Oh it's not you, he doesn't mean anything, He's just like that.
He just shot my wife..... Yeah, well, he does that sometimes.

Just because he/she is "like" that doesn't make it right does it?

All of those platitudes really confuse me. They also annoy me.

Today, as I walked up the hall to the stairs outside the office, the door to the office suddenly closed. I've seen that happen for instance when there is a private conversation going on or someone is getting fired, but today that was not the case. Trust me. No today someone was playing a cruel joke.

It's common knowledge that I talk a lot; especially when I get excited. That's one of the side effects of my Aspergers. Some kids I know, my daughter in particular, will go on at length about their special interest. Katie's is Pokemon. She knows all their names and strengths, types, everything. I have to ask her to slow down because I can't absorb it all.

In addition to computers, mine is my thirst to know everything; every little bit of trivial and not so trivial information. If it interests me, I figure it might interest everybody else. Some times it does. Sometimes it doesn't. I can't tell which it at the time and I just can't stop. I've tried. I can't.

People I see more than a couple of times, are informed of this and I try to apologize. Sometimes that leads into a monologue about Aspergers, so it doesn't always work.

Today after the door closed , I looked in and saw that there was nothing private going on, just some of the same people who sit and talk with the assistant like I do. They all knew me well. I saw who had closed the door too. I waved hello and made a gesture trying to ask if the program I was coming to see was down stairs. They opened the door laughing and I was told yes it was downstairs.

Oh yeah This was some funny joke. Here comes Tiggerr, let's close the door quick.

Luckily I was early so I had about fifteen minutes to cry and then try to get my face looking lets like a swollen balloon. Someone did ask me if I had a cold though.

After the program I came upstairs and the assistant, called me in. She wanted to talk about a fundraiser that I had volunteered to help with. I told her that this man had hurt me. I told her that didn't they all know I'd shut up if I could.

Then I got all the same platitudes. He didn't mean anything by it, He's a good guy, He was just trying to be funny yada yada yada.

Well I responded that he did mean it and then asked
"If "K" was walking up, would he have done it."
To her "he probably would"
I answered: "No he wouldn't and you know it."
Then we changed the subject. Crying was not something I wanted to do right then.

Why do people excuse other jerks this way. Do they think it makes the victim feel better? To me it feels like I am being told, my feelings are somehow wrong. That I don't have the right to have them. Now I am the one in the wrong?

He didn't mean anything by it...

Then why did he do it, and why to this particular person (me in this case)? Was it just his turn to be a jerk that day? I have a button purchased from a store run by the father of an autistic son. It says. " I have Aspergers, what's your excuse." It never ceases to amaze me, why people think they can do things with an aspie or other similar condition that they wouldn't do to others.

If I stuttered would he get away with it. If I was blind would he put things in my path to fall over? When I tried to get some accommodations for my children, I had to remind the school administrator that she didn't make the boy with cerebral palsy run laps.

It's not that they don't know about Aspergers and the fact that we have it. Has it just become acceptable to make fun of some people but not others? I have read many articles from tall or underweight people who get comments on their height or weight. These same jerks wouldn't dream of coming up to an overweight person and saying. Gee I wish I was your size, or how much food do you eat? Were you always fat? Would they walk up to a little person and say, Are Are your parents short too? What about your kids? Of course not

He's a really a good person.... Gee I didn't know that torturing the disabled was a trait that good people have. Bet he tortures cats and squirrels too.

But you're not really disabled. Gee The government sure thinks I am, and I hear they are pretty picky.

But he does so much for the church. What, so if it's not Sunday, he can be a dolt?

Don't take it so personally. That's my favorite. How else can you take an assault on your person. He's not a jerk to everybody and if he is why are you defending him.

Somebody please explain these things to me. Why are some people so mean? and more to the point, why do other people let them get away with it, and make excuses for them? I just don't get it. It's so much easier to say. I'm sorry he hurt you. I wish he wouldn't have done that. More credible too.

Ok I'm done.

Theory of Mind

I have read about and heard about The theory of mind or mind blindness that people on the autism spectrum do not possess. I think I understand it, but have never been able to explain it in a way that makes sense to me, much less the person I am explaining it to. I found the following passages in an article at Wired.com.


Sally has a marble. She puts her marble into the box, and then she goes outside. Anne comes in, takes the marble out of the box, and puts it in her basket. When Sally comes back, where will she look for the marble?

By the age of 4 or so, most children who watch this scenario played out by puppets - including children with Down's syndrome and other developmental problems - know the answer. But some do not. They do not understand that what they know and what Sally knows are different, that Sally has a mind of her own. The children who expect Sally to look in the basket, because they know that's where the marble is and can't believe that she doesn't, are the ones likely to be diagnosed with autism or its relative, Asperger's syndrome.


The theory of Mind as the author writes is "an innate ability to understand other people as having feelings, intentions, and pictures of the world that are not the same as our own. A theory of mind is a basic requirement for empathy or, for that matter, deceit..... a theory of mind is what people disabled by autism and its related conditions lack.

I find this happens to me a lot. Just yesterday, I had to copy three files to a folder and put them on my husband's computer desktop. He had been complaining for some time that he couldn't get to them because they were on a shared drive and not where they were before. In other words, when he opened our recipe database, it no longer brought up the Schleicher family cookbook.

Now he knew the files were on an external hard drive, but that I had had to move all those files to my Mac. Long story. Now I am not sure if he didn't have permission to navigate to that file through our network or what, but he wanted access to those recipes and couldn't get there. So since I couldn't yet reconnect the external drive system, I got on our network and did a drag and drop of the files from the mac to his machine.

To me that was a rather first grade act. I said to him later. "you know you could have just gone to the Mac and transferred that file to a disk yourself instead of having to wait for me to do it. He looked at me as if I had asked him to hack into the government's nuclear launch codes. "Everybody can't do the things you find so easy." he said. I just don't understand that he doesn't know all the things I know. Heck I talk about it enough.

I guess that's why some people with Aspergers find it so hard to lie. If you think everyone knows what you know, of course they can see right through what ever lie you just told, or shall I say, tried to tell. Katie has such a hard time lying that when I ask her if she's finished her homework for example, she just doesn't answer. She can't say no (she didn't do it) because she doesn't want to get in trouble. However she can't say yes (a lie) because I must know she hasn't. I have to go through all sorts of maneuvers with things like this, explaining to her to just give me a yes or no, that she's not in trouble, I just need to know in order to decide what I need to do next. etc. Do I need to remind her to put her book bag away, Is she hungry, does she need help, did she get distracted etc. I think you get the point.

It also explains why Andy gets so frustrated with his classmates. Why don't they just be quiet? Don't they get how interesting ancient Egypt is? Certainly they can hear how loud their music is. They surely know he can't concentrate with anything but classical music on. Andy has supersonic hearing.

Well we may not know what you all are thinking, and according to this theory, it's not the same as what we are thinking; but at least at home with my kids, we understand each other. Of course as Katie would say, her poor dad is the "Clueless Dude" lol

Katie's Birthday

It's Katie's Birthday. My youngest daughter turns 11 today.

For most of her life Katie has talked like Sponge Bob. Seriously. She always sounded like a cartoon. Silly and very fast. Don't let anyone tell you that girl's voices don't change. She still talks fast, but the things she says are astounding. Sometimes they are just words. Other time complete sentences. But always out of character or totally new and unexpected.

We were having game night recently and she and her brother were clobbering us in Stars Wars Trivia. When Mike answered one correctly, she piped out, "The clueless dude gets one." Now Katie adores her father and we joke and kid around a lot here, but to hear Sponge Bob say this in a teenager's voice was totally unexpected.

Last week instead of answering with the word, "Right", she said "Precisely what I was thinking!" Whoa. Who is this kid. This is the kid who still has trouble writing in cursive. The kid who still names her stuffed animals and insists she knows what they are thinking. She will write a letter to Santa this year too.

Who is this kid and what has she done with my baby.?

Hair

I got a compliment the other day. Someone I admire, told me that she liked my hair this length. I normally keep my hair quite short, which I am sure makes some NTs (non Aspies) think, Why does she do that? My monster-in-law used to think that telling me I looked like a boy was an appropriate comment.

How do you tell someone that you like the way your hair LOOKS too, but you can't stand how it feels?

I don't mean you just don't like the way it feels, I mean you really can't stand it. Right now, the hair at the back of my neck is one inch long (I measured it). Last night as I struggled to get to sleep, I constantly tried to fold it up off my neck. Since it is too short for a pony tail, I don't even have that option. I tried growing it long enough for a pony tail, but not only does a pony tail look ridiculous for someone my age, but sleeping with a pony tail is quite impossible. Then of course there's those few tiny wisps of hair that come loose and fall back on the neck. It makes me shiver just to think about it

I keep my hair clean but it always feels like tiny livestock have taken up residence on my head. Trust me they haven't. My family and my doctor are getting tired of checking my head for these unwelcome guests.

Sometimes when the creepy crawlies aren't so bad, usually in the summer when I can keep my head in the pool, I am able to grow my hair just long enough for it to curl. Boy do the compliments come then. Back in high school, I had long hair. Everybody did, even the guys. That naturally curl once prompted my dad to tell me I looked like a Cocker Spaniel. He was drunk, I cried, but he was right. We called them dog ears then, when we pulled our hair to each side and tied it off with a rubber band. Mine curled just like a cocker's ears. (Don't think too badly of my dad, he joined AA and had been sober 23 years when he died earlier this year.)

You'd think the compliments would be enough for me to put up with the discomfort of long hair on my neck. After all women for years have made themselves uncomfortable in order to look good: Corsets, girdles, bras, pantyhose, pointy spike heels, fake nails (tried those a couple times. I swear those girls love to make my cuticles bleed)

Maybe I can put it in perspective: Warning: DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME.
Have you ever heard the sound of fingernails on a blackboard. Yeah -- That sound. Now imagine it never stopping. You can't grab the kid doing it and tie his arms up with duck tape, You can't hit the mute button like I do when I watch "From the Hip". All you can do is stick your head in a bucket of water or cut your hair.
So I cut my hair----short. And I look silly. And I wear a hat.. And I don't ask my friend if she likes my hair because she promised not to lie to me, she just doesn't answer.

When my dad came out of the hospital after drying out, people would come up to him and tell him how great he looked. He would wonder how bad he looked before. I think I get my Aspergers from him. When someone who sees me all the time tells me that my hair looks great at this length, I can only conclude that it didn't look as good before. Of course NT's deny that, but what can you say......

Computer update

The new Dell came today. I will admit Vista is pretty. Hey wait, it looks a lot like my mac. hmmmm.
So that makes it one month to the day from my first contact with dell. But there is something to be said about all this:

The first time this happened I had a 40 gb hard drive and 512mg of sheep.... errr.. RAM
When they exchanged that one, the second one, (the one I just told you all about) had a 80 gb hard drive and 1 gb RAM

The New Vista one has 320 gb hard drive and 2 gb RAM Heck the new keyboard and mouse look better and I got a snazzy new mouse pad.
Well at least my son is enjoying it. I'm back on my Mac.

It's a Girl

Well we sorta knew that.  But it's official.  My daughter had a girl last night.  Well actually early this morning.  The baby's name is Iris Michaela.   Isn't that a pretty name.  When she told grandpa the Michaela was after him, well Mr. Mike just couldn't contain himself.  Mom, baby and dad are doing fine.  Ivy spent the night with some friends, so all is well