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Hello!

Once upon a time I begged my parents relentlessly to change my given name to Star Sprinkle. My father ended the irritating nagging by telling me the name was stupid and he would never, ever do it. So stop asking. I'm going to do it here though.

I am probably only one of too many women realizing they are likely autistic. I discovered this while shopping for buzz clippers for my son. There were some that met all my needs and coincidentally had a feature saying they were compatible with autistic hair cutting needs. This is where I made the connection. I'm 40 and sad I've been living like this so long and didn't know.

I'm lonely. I'd gotten used to identifying as alcoholic and that was fine for me, but at 4 years of sobriety I am not "better". In the process of trying to seek therapy I believe I was misdiagnosed with BPD and suddenly there seemed to be this huge focus on suicide and self harm prevention which was frustrating because I hadn't been doing either. I did get really paranoid about it though. Anyhow, so many things happened and now I no longer feel like I fit in a sobriety focused subculture or 12 step programs, even though they are awesome and I'd still be drunk and miserable without them. It makes me so sad to watch people progress (some that I played a major role in helping) and then have them turn around and find fault with my trajectory. I quit the unhelpful forum and 12 step program attendance and now I have no friends. I was estranged from my birth family before I got sober. So, just me and the best kids ever except they just don't talk about things I enjoy the most of the time.

The cool thing, imo, from where I am at right now is that it's like I got a fresh start and a new date of sorts to measure progress by. It was so nice to consider that I was just neurologically different, not broken. So, I've been spending a lot of time on environment adaptations I am no longer sorry about. If it's weird that my living room is full of blue Christmas lights, no furniture, and wall to wall MMA mats then maybe chilling at my place isn't what you want to be doing.

I like forums and I used to moderate (I am not suggesting I plan to do that here or think I'm extra because of it) one related to sobriety. I'm glad a non Facebook forum exists for me to see if I can have some adult interaction again. Better than that, some adults with more in common with me than I have maybe ever had before.

I believe I followed all the posting rules but if I made a mistake, totally educate me.

I look forward to getting to know you all!

How about coloured Christmas lights and a pillow fort?

That's my style.

Welcome aboard! Congrats on your discovery and your sobriety!

Well, yes. As it happens the lights have a feature where you can have it be multicolored and flashing. I don't like it like that but my kids play with the options sometimes. A fort... Yes. Sometimes the mats come up and you can make cubes as easy as you can make a flat floor. Might not quite be fort material, but it's a good square tunnel!

So nice to meet you! I thought this post would take days to be noticed the way the rules read. Lol, I also take forever to respond to a lot of things. Seriously it is only because I want to give my responses to people my full attention.

Welcome to Wrong Planet!

Welcome to WPea!

Flashing is bad. No flashes are allowed at Chateau Linton. Also I don't do multicolours all at once - I mean one at a time depending on my mood.

I think we're in sync!

The cubes sound great. I'll have to investigate!!

No kidding. The flashing reminds me mostly of the first time I was pregnant. I had just been given my prenatal horse pills. I was 19 and doing thinks like reading the labels of my meds, well, that stuff doesn't apply to me. Lol, so I take one and I'm at a friend's house. They partied a lot, even though they weren't partying at that time. The label I failed to see said "take with food". I did not take with food and half an hour later I am totally sick in a bathroom that has a flipping strobe light going in it. I almost never use bathrooms that aren't somewhere I always go, so it was weird how long we had been friends and I didn't know their bathroom was strobed. I couldn't figure it out while dealing with my problem and so for about 10 minutes I had strobe on me while I was trying to pull myself back together enough to leave and go home. I hate lights that flash to a point of strobing now. The multicolored part reminds me of Eyes Wide Shut, which I did not enjoy. Hard to explain any of that to kids so I just leave if they turn what I call the "fairy" color arrangement off and explain its because it hurts my eyes. Really it just makes me distressed feeling.

The MMA mats weren't cheap, but when I was weighing the pros and cons of a couch then the expense evened out and now I can sit anywhere I want in the room. At first I only wanted a 6X6 kind of deal because of the expense but I liked it so much we ordered more and scrapped plans to get a couch. My son loves to lay on the floor and play with his trains. Now it's soft and warm. I love watching him play with his trains. Like watching fire burn. Also, pandemic fun has become pulling a mattress down and jumping on it with the mats there to help any falling. Like a wimpy trampoline, but still fun.

To the other people who greeted me, thank you! It's nice to feel welcome places.

Are you sure you aren't me?

I also had an unfortunate incident involving a friend's bathroom floor when I was first pregnant. I wasn't on the horse pills yet but they also did me in.

I have issues with Eyes Wide Shut as well.

Anyway, cheers again - and welcome to the fray!

Hi! We joined on the same day

Welcome to WP! I think you will find some nice people here...and it appears some nice people here have already found you!

With respect to "...living room is full of blue Christmas lights...": It wouldn't be my first choice but monochromatic and not blinking would seem like a very reasonable decor to me. Please do not give my ADHD bride any ideas, though--the thought of where she might go with the idea scares me a little.

The thing that caught my attention was "autistic hair cutting needs". I was only diagnosed as being on the Spectrum in 2019 so I'm kind of new to this planet but, huh? Does that mean they're unusually quiet? Or that they don't vibrate as much as most? Or that you get to choose the tune they hum?

In any event, welcome to WP! I hope it is good for you!

Hi!! Wow, so heartwarming! I look forward to getting to know you all.

I'm not sure what kinds of links and things are allowed so I refrained from posting it on the OP but if it's not allowed maybe the mods will be chill if I mention the brand so they can google for themselves.

The scissors are from a company called Calming Clipper. They are a bit expensive-ish but my avoidance of the task was costing him in his playing and learning because his beautiful little bit curls were in his way. Bathing had become unnecessarialy hard and so was hair brushing. It was more important that he have his space for learning in, not for being nice to look at for me in. And I was afraid to cut my son's hair because of all the things and most importantly because he's always on the move and I was afraid I'd hurt him. I knew these things were important via intuition. When I saw a product matched my intuitive feelings called and called the group of them together autism, it made me do a deep dive and realize I'd found myself and all my kids in there somewhere and it: Explains. So. Much. Somewhere along the way autism was not explained to me well at all and I'd never done more than have a passing understanding that it makes kids sometimes have a very short fuse. That doesn't match my kids in a way that ends in explosive rage. I didn't know that is only one of the many ways it can look. In the end, my youngest son is the slave to free his masters by showing me this fact. It really changed my parenting goals. I feel relieved to know they really can't help it, neither can I, and I don't have to yell. I hate all yelling. Especially when I do the yelling.

I discovered I was autistic when I was shopping for bedding in a big department store. I was having rage attacks because of the overhead lighting and my fussiness about the texture of the bedding. At that point I had been searching for about four years for bedding I could touch without wanting to die of sensory overload. My daughter said "You know you're autistic, right?", assuming that I knew but didn't talk about it. Her half-brothers are autistic and she knew about the sensory issues.

From the mouths of babes ...

Your scissors story reminded me of this. It explained so much for me, too!

By the way, I still haven't found bedding I can tolerate. It's now been ... eight years?

Welcome to wrong planet , congratulations on your journey of enlightenment into the autistic world.

Welcome to WP!

When I was little my Dad cut my hair. He only knew one haircut: short. Fidgeting was not advisable.

And now I've gone more than a year without a haircut. Sigh. I believe having a strong INTJ preference and also being on the Spectrum give me a natural advantage for sheltering at home with my bride during this pandemic--though she might not think it is so wonderful. And now we have another idea you should not share with her...she has already offered to clip my hair but, so far, has let me decline.

Hahaha, let her cut your hair!

We roll with flannel or tee-shirt bottom sheets with bedbug protector underneath. Micro-plush blankets on top are the new thing we are collecting. We used to like those duvets but they poke sometimes and I think our skin reacts to them for some subtle reason. It isn't awful, just enough to notice if you slept without it for a while and then it was the next clean blanket.

I used to clean houses as my profession and I touched a lot of blankets. Recently I was having far too much panic about buying new blankets because we need some and I didn't feel prepared to make the choices through online shopping. You know, pandemic and all. Rewinding life a bit I had to emergency move once due to bedbugs. You have my sympathy if this has ever happened to you. In the process I:

1) Realized I had a serious blanket problem. Was I seriously emotionally attached to each of these numerous blankets differently? Yup.

2) I had to get rid of basically all but 3 or 4 because it all had to fit in the smallest storage unit after an hour in a high heat dryer at a laundromat because I had to move into a transitional living facility as a consequence of about five life stories converging into one season of my life. So I'd have to purge. Which to pick? Omg, the worst decision anxiety under pressure I'd ever had to do.

Fast forwarded into now, I am careful not to buy "too many" which means the ones that are here have to be amazing. I felt like I had to do PhD level research until I realized one day that it's touch mattered most and how easy it is to wash is a close second.

The criteria now is that I may thrift store find micro-plush blankets that demonstrate by being there at all how they feel when washed. It must be able to fit into my washing machine. It must be able to live through the hottest setting of wash because... Bacteria and I don't do bleach because I'm a cleanser snob. Lol, none of that is unusual, right? Only sharing because I put a lot of thought into it and it might be blanket snob compatible. You don't have to be a blanket snob to adopt my snobby agenda.