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

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oh, I am WAY ahead of ya' , dear! I have pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back describing each incident (just as long as I don't have to sit on the "Group W" bench)
and when I am out of here, with the deposit clutched in my hot little hand, I am gonna let rip!


Merle

who is ready for the balloons and streamers and the flashing lights of making 500 posts!

hummm. . .. none yet!

Let me close my eyes before we flash lights. Is there going to be noise?

We should have just sent my dh to clean your house.

I forgot to mention, Zanne Marie, that after I had e-mailed the landlord, I also spoke to the nice lady who lives on the other side of me. I asked her how long she had known the guy next to me, and was he likely to get nasty if I complained again. Also, once when she ran out of cooking oil in the middle of preparing a meal, I let her have the last of mine. Later, she bought me a bottle of oil and left it on the porch. I do try to get along with people and leave them with a favorable impression, even if its "That odd woman who keeps to herself, but is nice when you speak to her."

I have not disclosed about the AS, but I did mention to her that I have PTSD, and thus the sensitivity to noise.

Merle, I sympathize with your having to move. I can't think of anything I hate more, than packing, moving, and then unpacking all over again! It took me a month the heal from moving into my current place.

What? Are you really officer Obie?

I think I'm an odd Aspie about moving. I really have no sense of home and when I used to travel, I would refer to my hotel room as home. Of course, I did want the same room each time I stayed at the hotel which was once a month. I would put my clothes in the same drawers in the same way, etc. But, with my home, I'm not attached. It's a building I'm supposed to go to when I leave work so I do. Dh has a big sense of home, so he runs that. I just stay wherever he goes. Left on my own, I tend to sleep on the floor and if I get bothered to get actual food, it's something like Cheerios that I will just eat out of the box for days on end. I know this because it happens everytime I'm left to my own devices. The last time I was alone, I got a box for my computer to sit on finally and that was it. LOL I'm completely undomesticated. Houses and rentals all seem like too many commitments. They always need things that distract me from writing. I don't want them intruding into my life. I'd rather someone else deal with it. If anything, I tend to wander around when left to myself. I'll move at least every three months (also a pattern of mine before I married).

That seems to be a rarity here.

Oh I can think of something worse. We remodeled starting early last year. Nothing is done to completion. The back deck is a mass of stuff covered in tarps and has wintered over. The garage, I use that term lightly, I don't know when a car was in it last, 60's?, is even more full then ever. I never knew The Wife and I had such different tastes in things. Finally I just gave up and let her go. But, But, But she still can't mess with my cave. Although stuff got stuck in here and I can't stand it anymore, so it's really bad. Rule 1 to remodeling, leave, go to a motel till it's done. Rule 2 don't remodel, live with it. I do find the kitchen more relaxing, I can even stand to great folks for a little while while we sit around the table. The bottom stairs floors look good, got rid of the uncleanable rugs and my nose thanks that part alot. I have a coffee stand just dedicated to making coffee now and I like that a lot. So much yet to be done. The Wife got her whirlpool and she's happy and gets to nest, which makes her horny, so it has had some upsides

In the pro arch world you move a lot, live out of motels. I mean different week different state kind of thing. I would travel with a complete set up, it took forever to get my mini fridge, micro wave, coffee maker, full computer, stereo and a hell of a lot more, set up. But I had to do it to even come close to being semi comfortable, eating out was just not a thing I could do very often. Most companys respected my age, I didn't have to share with another, but that didn't always work. The main compnay I spent time with we always got a single, which worked well, becasue the wife was with me then and we actually made money on the deal. Someone wrote a book called Motel Hell, that contained a bunch of the horror storys we all had. Some were pretty bad. There's another book with the same name, not to be confused, I have no idea if it's on the net. I don't miss motels at all, one of the reasons for my meltdown out of the field. That and traveling on interstates, god what a freakin wreck I was, no wonder I started to drink again, towards the end of it. You give up a lot for that kind of life, but the rewards were certainly there too. The wild thing is, easily 50% of the crews that did that kind of work, were ladies. I admired them so much, not just because of the hard life style, but they were freakin good in the field and I mean some were even better at doing units then I was and I don't say that lightly. My ego says I was one of the best

Other than being away from dh (I don't need any reason to be "horny"), I didn't really care about living in a hotel for three weeks of the month. They brought me food because I always ate the same thing and if I had the same room, I always knew where to go. I don't like deciding anything with the places I live in. I get a feeling of claustrophobia with them very easily and I hate that. I can have a meltdown because the walls need to be painted if they seem dingy so I just force myself not to notice. Since dh is so OCD, he watches everything and I can let all that go. Saves me so much stress. It's very minimalist and clean with him. All the furniture is big and comfortable. I have my own office to spread out my books. I like it this way so much better.

He HATES to move. Hates it with a passion. OCD people do not like change at all.

Hotel Horror stories. I would love to hear some! I need something to distract me from the party noise. They have told me to let them know if they are getting too loud, but I can't face a house full of drunk, partying NT's!

no, of course not! However I do still know the chords to "Alice"

Merle

I think the opportunity to do so is more the rarity, ZanneMarie, than the desire to do so.



Merle

I guess this is the place for me? I don't want to do the introduction thing in a separate post, it's embarrassing and can potentially turn into a popularity thing. If nobody responds, I'll be sad.

Learned about Asperger's last year, from a friend who was Aspie. I didn't know what it was and he'd sent me some links. One of which is this one:
http://www.geocities.com/autistry/YMBAAI.html

It had me laughing hysterically, because I do a lot of those things. And it sounds much funnier when it's worded the way it is on that site. Like the time I realized I had my shorts on backwards AND inside out, and my underwear was on sideways. Where exactly WAS my brain when I was getting dressed that day?

Looking into more info, I realized I had experienced so much of the Aspie world, I just didn't know there were other people like me. It was good to know I wasn't an abnormal NT, but was instead a normal Aspie.

I have tried out many other social sites. The best experience was on a decorating site, that allowed me to do as much fussing over people as I wanted. Spending hours looking for things for them, which is enjoyable for me. I like puzzles and putting things together and searching for things.

The worst sites were the last two I was on. They are somewhat related, as one inspired the second one to be started. Thanks to a couple of people, both sites are ruined for me. One has a creepy-stalky NT guy that has bothered me for 7 months. The other one ruined by some creepy-pervy NT guy who is a complete idiot.

So you have a sad and broken woman arriving here, who's more than a little scared of people. I kind of expect that the creepy-stalky guy will show up here. Who would I let know about that if it occurs?

I just want a place where I can talk to people. I don't get out at all. And I get picked on too much on those other places. I just don't understand people. The NTs anyway.

Okay, let me try to get a little action going in this forum. I need some advice. I've been obsessing over this non-stop since Friday afternoon. Here is the situation:

I will be 65 years old in July. I have been employed as a secretary by a certain large healthcare organization for eight years. I work in a small office with two other women. My boss, who is 37, and her administrative assistant who is 55. Early this year I set my retirement date to be July 2nd. I chose that date to retire because my benefits advisor told me that I needed to work at least one full day of my retirement month in order to be covered by my medical benefits until medicare kicked in. On the same day my boss announced that she was pregnant with her third child & due in early July. My coworker and I had managed to carry on with the department's business twice before when our boss was on maternity leave so that didn't seem like such a big issue. The main thing was finding & training someone to replace me so the office could stay up and running while the boss was out on leave. Things got trickier when our boss told us a later that she wouldn't be coming back. My co-worker got really stressed over the prospect of losing both of us and having to adapt to two new people. To make everyone feel better I offered to stay past my retirement date if need be in case it took longer than expected to find my replacement. My boss had kind of (my opinion) patted herself on the back for being upfront with everyone about not coming back instead of taking her maternity leave, collecting everything she could collect, and then "deciding" at the last minute that it wasn't feasible" to come back. Anyway...........

Last week one of my daughters told me and my husband that she wanted to take us on a vacation to Domincan Republic with her and her family. We were thrilled of course. Who wouldn't be? It was such a loving and generous offer. We certainly couldn't afford to do anything like that on our own. The glitch was in the timing. The best time for her, because of all of the sports that she and her family are involved in, was the week before my retirement. I would be back though, in time to work that first day in July. Before saying yes difinately I talked it over with my coworker. She said she thought it would be fine, I could train my replacement the week before my vacation, or the week after my vacation. She really didn't see a problem. After all, my boss wasn't even going to be around then. She's leaving in early June. So I told my daughter okay and she made the reservations. The next day I decided that maybe I should make it official and told my boss that I would like to take my vacation the week of June 25th. I told her all the incidentals, about the vacation being a gift, how I really couldn't expect my daughter to adjust her vacation to my schedule when she was the one paying for everyting, and I told her about the conversation with my co-worker. Her reaction was not "How wonderful for you, I hope you have a great time, you deserve it." She said she would have to look into it since it was the week before my retirement.

ARE YOU BORED YET? HANG ON. IT'S. ALMOST OVER

After talking with whomever she came to my desk and told me if I wanted a vacation that week I would have to move my retirement up to the week before June 25th. I explained that if I did that there would be a whole month of not having medical insurance for me and my husband. Suppose something bad happened to one of us? We could amass thousands and thousands of dollars in medical expenses and lose everything we had worked for all of our lives. She didn't seem to give a damn. Her face got red. She said "Quite frankly, I'm shocked that you would ask for a vacation the week before you are due to retire. I'm truly shocked." I didn't understand why she was shocked. I asked her "Do you think I'm being unethical?" She said "Unethical? Unethical? I didn't say you were being unethical? Those are your words." That pissed me. That phrase "those are your words" implies to me that the person using it is accusing me of projecting my own feellings about myself onto them. This was not the case. It was a genuine question and I was hoping to receive a genuine answer. Why was she so shocked? What did I do that was so shocking? She asked me to come into her office and she shut the door. I don't remember what she said, she repeated the bit about being so shocked a couple of times, that's all I remember her saying. I didn't say anything. I just sat there boiling and when she was finished speaking I got up and left.

ALMOST OVER, I PROMISE.

I went to my desk and sent an email to my boss; the director of HR; my employee benefits person; and my co-worker:

I would like to change my retirement date to June 8, 2007. I hope this will not cause too much of a probloem for ayone. I decided to make the change because of a family vacation that would fall the week prior to my original retirement date. I didn't realize that asking to take a week's vacation just before retirement was not appropriate in that they are two entirely different things. I certainly wasn't attempting to obtain any kind of personal gain by doing so. I'm sorry if it appeared that way.

I heard my boss moan when she recieved her email.As of yet, no response from her.

I got an almost immediate response from my co-worker:

Carol...I feel badly about any part I played in this whole situation. I am sorry that I told you that I didn't think it would matter (at least not to me if you took the vacation)...I should have just referred you to J(Boss) and stayed out of it. I'm sorry that you are leaving earlier now, but I understand why. You know I only wish the best for you and I hope that your vacation with your family is wonderful...you deserve the vcation and a wonderful retirement too. JO

I got an immediate response from bnefits person too:

Hi Carol,
Thank you for the updeate. I had finished your paperwork earlier thi week ad it was waiting to be checked by L before mailing it to you. With the change in your retirement date, it might take an extra week to get these papers to you because I'll have to redo them but it's not a big deal.
Also, from a retirement standpoint, taking a weeks vacation before retirement wouldn't affect me in any way anad we certainly have many employees who do that, but you do have to work the actual last day that you are retiring. I hope you haven't been given a hard time about that.
Have a great weekend, Leigh

Wow. I felt so vindicated. I'm not a bad girl after all. I didn't do anything unethical, innappropriate or "SHOCKING" In fact, my boss may have. I think she was projecting.
She could have taken a paid maternity leave and didn't. Now she's kicking herself and projecting on to me. Now HR has to get their asses moving and find my replacement. Cause you know, I'm unstable and might just up and leave anytime.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE

Last edited by cosmiccat on 22 Apr 2007, 12:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Sorry, TRUE - I'm CosmicCat, or CC if you like .. and welcome. We must have been posting simultaneously. I'm going to go back and read your post.

Last edited by cosmiccat on 22 Apr 2007, 12:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Again, a warm and sincere welcome. I think you will feel at home here. I too just learned a few weeks ago, that I'm not a weirdo, I'm an Aspie. It was a wonderful revelation. My family is referring to this site as my new home, and the people on it as my new family. "Where's Mommy?"
"Oh, she's upstairs talkin' to her new family." "Again?" The people in our "cafe" are charming, brilliant, caring and funny as hell." I hope you find this to be true as well.