The Dino-Aspie Ex-Café (for Those 40+... or feeling creaky)

Post Reply New Topic

(Who made these game rules we all play by anyhoo?! It truly is a crazy world. Thankfully, I was cast as one of the outsiders. Maybe the role of people in the spectrum is to star in Act II. Or, maybe our part is to collectively exit stage left. )

Congrats Richie! That's a whole lotsa postin'!

I am soooo disappointed! I had heard that one member of the UK's brand spanking new Supreme Court is Lord Panic. But I had this compulsion to check before I passed on the good news. Then I found it's not true! It's so sad.

Lurking, lingering, laughing and reading pages and pages of posts

(phew) pg, 122 and still reading and taking notes..... I think I may need some strong tea for this!!

she's baaaaaaakkkkkkkkkk!

HHIIIIIIIIII, NAN! You'd better duck....... you're in for a HUGE "I MISSED YOU" hug!!

I just spent months living what Deacon called "external reality" and I'm hiding in the cafe indefinitely. I may never come out again!! !! ! I'll give an update when I finish reading!!

Oh, and Congrats, Grandma!! !

Welcome back to WrongPlanet!

And just in time to be revving up the Alberta Clippers....

Hi, Richie! The Alberta Clippers are rather quiet this year... not doing much to help our temperatures any. It started snowing the end of September this year.

I took some time to watch your Echoes posts.... always such interesting music!!

Time to play to catch up and apologize for my long absence. I seem to be good at quietly slipping in and out of people's lives. Not a habit I'm proud of but one to put a stop to.

OK, here goes................

From May 28 re: Ireland Thanks for the info, Nan. My Ireland dream has been put on the back burner indefinitely. There just never seems to be enough money for those little luxuries... and I'm not one to travel alone. Maybe when Lil' Girl is all grown up.

pg. 1116..... Lemon, what an adorable puppy!! ! They are such a blessing and far superior to most people! I found myself bringing home another border collie puppy, Bailey, in July. The girl that bought him decided after 6 days she couldn't handle him!! I couldn't make him stay in a home with someone who has no idea what a border collie is all about.
Congrats on your new family member, too, Deacon! Puppies are GREAT for autistic kids. My youngest son has bonded with both dogs in a way I've never seen before and they calm him like no one else can.

pg. 1117.... Deacon, I just spent the last 5 months dealing with external reality. I felt for you!! Talk about taking a beating as soon as I venture there.... EVERY TIME! I'm learning not to venture far my home unless necessary and the fewer people the better.

Gromit...... NICE to see you're still silly!!

pg. 1118.... I already said Congrats to Grandma Nan on the new babies. Sorry I missed it, the Kids lab tests, job interviews and numerous other joys and dramas.

pg. 1127.... Chuck's "Adam" trailer had me all choked up. It was great to see you again, Chuck. Nice to know some things never change!!

Merle... YAY on the weight loss! That's quite the accomplishment. I've finally lost the last 10 lbs. I wanted to lose and I feel great!! It makes a big difference, doesn't it?

Sleepy..... hope you enjoyed your visit to Canada! So sorry to read about your loss. ((Aspie hug))

Lelia... I sure hope your daughter is healed. She must have been so traumatized, and you as well.

A Surrealistic Venture Into the World of "Normal"

Back in May, I was offered an opportunity to go back to school for some training in hopes that I land a job I find somewhat enjoyable. It was a better alternative than being declared disabled... which I'm not in my eyes. The government gave me the funding to take Medical and Dental Administration Certification courses. I jumped at the opportunity.
My obsession with all things medical helped immensely and I got my certification with Honors at the end of September. The course work and Microsoft certification courses were a breeze. Dealing with 13 other REALLY loud and obnoxious women was not a breeze. Out of the 13 there were 4 of us who didn't have an opinion about everything and didn't have to air our dirty laundry everyday! At the end of each day I would come home, deal with the kids and plop myself down in front of the TV. My obsessions and friendships had to take a back seat just so I could function the next day.. and the next... and the next. I didn't knit a stitch for 4 months!! !! I was so happy when the classroom and lab portions were over and I started practicum. I worked in a physiotherapists office with 4 therapists.... incredible people....... with one nasty habit in common! They HUGGED ME EVERY TIME I WALKED IN THE DOOR, WHEN ANY ONE OF THEM LEFT, WHEN THEY LIKED MY WORK..... WHO DOES THAT??? By the time I was done, there was no way I wanted to be offered a job there. I told a friend I'd considered knitting a barbed wire sweater! Or gettting a Taser! It was an Aspie's nightmare.

While I was in class life happened. FunnyKid went the entire summer with only me and his siblings for company. It made me sad, even though I know he's happy being left to his own devices. I managed a trip to the Calgary Zoo with the kids, 2 trips to Waterton National Park, and an interesting tour of Heritage Park in Calgary. I met a fellow I'd been talking to who would fit in nicely here. When he said he was an introvert I almost laughed. We photographed and labeled wildflowers, mushrooms and various fauna for an entire weekend and he didn't get bored. Had a sense of humor like Chuck, Lau and Gromit! always wondered what meeting one of them would be like and now I have a good idea. I think he'll be a life long friend. That was the only bright spot of this summer. My oldest son started University in the fall, majoring in Anthropology. He's happy. SoccerDude broke his foot in a game in August and is still not able to play. There's nothing like an ADHD kid with no release for his energy. He took up motivational speaking with the Rotary Club Youth Leadership groups here and in Calgary. He's AMAZING. I'm not sure where he gets that from but it isn't me. He makes speaking to a room full of adult business people look like an everyday occurence in his life. And Lil' Girl is getting all growed up on me. She's blossomed over the summer and is barely shy at all now. She's still my little Aspiegirl, though.

Now here I am, searching for a job, and the economy here isn't much better than in the States. No one is hiring. I finally broke down and applied at a department store just so I have an income. I had an interview yesterday, it went well but I'm dreading actually getting a position there. The idea of all that staff and hundreds of customers makes me cringe.

So, I will be hiding in the cafe... in the corner by the plant until further notice. Please don't tell them where I am. Reality bites!!

Ewww, Mom, "huggers"! I actually had to tell people I was not comfortable with that... which didn't go well. Long story. Anyhow, yes, Reality Bites. (Sounds like the name of a sitcom/reality show? Perhaps we could start one?) I often thought, bizarrely, that the best job if I had to be around a lot of people all the time would be in a morgue or a funeral home. At least it would be quiet. But I can't stand to be around dead things, so that's out. They smell. Even when other people can't smell 'em, I can smell em. Not necessarily a rotting smell, just a "dead people" smell. Similar to what was in my grandmother's house in the days before she died. Gives me the willies.

Spike the wonder bird, AKA the Ounce of Terror, has bonded with me so completely that s/he is jealous of the Kid - clicks like a little geigercounter when she's in the room or comes near me. She came out of her cage like a rocket the other night and went straight for the Kid's face, trying to claw her eyes out. Given that Spike's only an ounce, at best, it's somewhat... well, she certainly is a gutsy little thing! S/he also looks at the other birds as not of her species (or even order!). I often wonder, does she think I'm a really funny looking bird, or does she think she looks like me? She tries to preen my feathers, she likes to snuggle up next to my neck when I'm listening to the radio at night while trying to fall asleep, and, unfortunately, she is somewhat confused about me beyond.... well, I was her mother, after all. Now she wants to date me. Oh, well. I just have to tell her, "Sorry, bird, wrong species, wrong gender, and that's just wrong!" She just ruffles her feathers and turns around on her perch and I get the "ok, I hate you - look at the back, then" for a while.

Squab the dove has grown well and is now pretty much indistinguishable from his parents, Chicken and Chickenette, on sight. I need to catch each of them and check them for gender. And then band the two that aren't Chicken. I think Squaby is still smaller than his/her mother at present. Given the other birds' in the cage delight in eating fresh eggs, we probably won't have any more baby doves for a while. Which is fine, overpopulation is never a good thing, even if they can sell for a good price.

Granny and Grandpa Zebra finch are in their twilight years now, although Grandpa still sings and tries to court Granny. Grandpa has lost almost all his neck and head feathers, which makes him rather a pathetic sight. (It's always amazing how much bird there is not under all those feathers!) Their offspring, the one who survived the poisoned birdfood fiasco (PetSmart sent me a check for the replacement cost of her siblings, but no apology whatsoever), is living in a cage under Spike's cage, with a female society finch we bought to help her calm down. She has some neurological issues and is extremely jumpy, so having a calm companion has been a godsend. Heavecliff the Zebrafinch, who also turned out to be female, lives in with the two of them, although they won't let her sit in their nest with them. The two male society finches, Thing One and Thing Two (alias, the pervert brothers), still live in "the big cage" and appear to spend a large part of their day trying to either build nests from the artificial plants in the cage or trying to figure how to get the cage door open so they can go molest Heavecliff and Nutsogirl and the girl society finch.

It's been a year, yesterday, since George the cat died. His girlfriend cat is getting noticeably older, stiffer, sleeping much more in recent weeks, needing medication to live a decent life. The blind cat that wasn't supposed to live more than a year because his lungs went fibrotic as a kitten turned 8 this spring and spent a recent night locked for several hours in the bathroom for an infraction of house rules dealing with cats not being allowed to run madly across rooms to jump over furniture to land in the middle of hot pizzas that are being served.

They still don't know what's wrong with Kid, although a new thing that's happened in the last week is causing the pendulum to veer back over into autonomic nervous system malfunction. What's causing it... well, one of the docs thinks the NIH might be the next stop, if they'll take on the case. The mtDNA samples are sitting on a shelf in San Diego, caught in a nightmare of red tape and HMO authorizations and contract negotiations between, apparently, the Mayo and the research firm that would analyze them.

Whatever. It's also two years to the day (yesterday) to the start of the last set of fires and it looks like we've made it through another year without a bad one. I love winter. It's damp. It's cold. It's dark. It won't burn your house down. Now if PBS would just put decent British dramas back on the air and the DIY channel would stop focusing almost completely on housing rehabs and "how to sell your home" shows, and start putting real how-to-do-crafts shows back on, the world would be a better place.

I would very much like to take a long trip again - I do love traveling. But Kid is working 80% time at a temp job so we want that to last as long as we can, and I can't really go unless she goes. That and airfares are not as cheap as last year. We were thinking of trying to get to Yellowstone at the holidays, since we're all being furloughed for two weeks, but it's pretty much already booked up in the park and we don't want to stay outside the park in a cheap motel. Am praying for some freak airfare sale to anywhere, but not expecting it.

Life goes on. Because the alternative doesn't work for me. Reality, though, I avoid like the plague. It's unhealthy! Work will come along for you, Mom, eventually. The kids seem to be growing well - that's one heck of an accomplishment, and you should be proud of it. Take care.

Nice to see you, Blessedmom.

hey blessedmom welcome back
(and i think you are free to walk in and walk out just as you need)