The Hunger Games.
Just got back from watching The Hunger Games. Good movie, BUT...
OMG. Sensory torture. If you're on the spectrum, you might want to avoid it.
First of all, the filmography was enough to make a person nauseous. Loads of quick, out of focus panning around.
Secondly, and worst of all, the movie was heavily peppered with sonic warfare. Not as part of the plot, just really high pitched noises serving no purpose but to disorient the audience.
I'm not a fan of having to cover my ears at a movie we're spending a fair amount of money on, never mind having to do it repeatedly... and, for one 30-40 second stretch, having to repeatedly lift a finger to see if it was OVER yet, only to find it was still going on.
Both of us were in pain and plugging ears over that one, I was incapacitated to the point where I couldn't even see while it was happening, hubby didn't notice anyone else suffering.
Felt a little "X2"... except "Find all the Aspies....". Where's Magneto when you need him? LOL!
Withstanding Meltdown in the Face of Tornado Aftermath
While everyone I know has the next week and a half filled with family, friends, relaxation, and fun.. we're using the time off work to make a big dent in our tornado repairs / cleanup.
Porter will be working on starting the kitchen cabinets - and least the base structure. We don't have the milled/dried wood back from our fallen black walnut tree yet, but I'm going absolutely insane with NO kitchen cabinetry. We have a sink, fridge, stove, and microwave stand, as well as 3 little rubbermaid shelving units for groceries, paper plates, plastic utensils, foam cups etc.
I am so sick of the disposable plates, etc. There's no way we'd be able to handle actual dishes right now. It's so completely bizarre and maddening to not have a proper kitchen.
But then, everything about dealing with the tornado has been bizarre and maddening. Running to our house, through a sea of downed trees, decking materials, peoples ROOFS, power lines, etc - nothing was where it was supposed to be. Coming back to our house, with our giant black walnut uprooted and ON our house, water pouring through our kitchen ceiling, the kitchen ceiling on the floor.. our arborvitaes up front uprooted, one blocking the door... Trees sticking through our bedroom wall...again, NOTHING as it was supposed to be.
In the 7 months since the tornado, I've had to get used to nothing being where it's supposed to be. Aside from the kitchen issues, the front entryway, living room, and dining room have pretty much become staging areas for repair - tools and building materials and random stuff EVERYWHERE. It drives me insane to go to use the washroom, and have to step carefully over a power cord, and then move a power drill, or whatever. In the spot where a medicine cabinet should be, there's several wood stain samples, sandpaper, drill bits etc. My tooth brush and tooth paste is upstairs by the jacuzzi, because it's just easier to brush my teeth into the tub drain, than to deal with the bathroom issues. Plus, I don't want sawdust in my toothbrush!
Our two offices have basically become dumping grounds for whatever doesn't fit / needs to be easier access than the living & dining rooms. It's extremely difficult to concentrate with boxes of random crap surrounding me.
This morning is step one to actually getting RID of the tornado aftermath in the house, once and for all. The plan is to have ALL of the building materials / equipment / etc OUT of the first floor living space. We haven't been able to use the living room, dining room, or front entryway since the tornado.
I'm starting by clearing the front entry way, which has been used as both a staging area for materials (The bathroom tiles, etc), and as an all-purpose dumping ground/storage area. I'm talking, knee-to-hip deep filled with various crap. It'll be like a geological research mission, by the time I get to the bottom. I don't even know what's down there, closer to the floor.
Had a really hard time coming up with motivation this morning. I want to be able to enter the house without seeing "aftermath" anymore... but I just look at the pile, and feel totally overwhelmed. It took several attempts - each time walking over to the area, looking at the piles of random crap, pausing to work up some courage, feeling overwhelmed, and walking back to my computer - before I even started.
I had to take a few small breaks, but I was making good progress. At one point, NKOTB's "Hangin Tough" came on the radio, and I felt like I was in an 80s movie montage. Had to giggle at the feeling.
But then, it started. The first few, familiar strains of the crescendo of a meltdown. You know, I really have way more to worry about than to have to try and control myself through this. Here's one of the few times I wished I was a bit more neurotypical.
I don't like thinking about the tornado, and all of the mess it's caused the past 7 months... so I wasn't starting out on the best foot. Having to deal with THAT much random mess, piled that deep? Didn't help.
Then, there's just a bunch of little things that don't help. Dust everywhere, which NOW gives me allergies - a new, post-tornado thing. Nevermind the feel of it.. ugh. The skin on my hands feels like it's crawling.
Then, there's the issue of not knowing what's down there, but having a keen knowledge of the possibilities. We've had a mouse in the house since the tornado. We've had ever manner of creepy crawly awful, disgusting bug in here. That's just what happens when you have holes through your walls, and are missing a good chunk of roof for a couple of weeks.
Doesn't make it any better for me, of course. I don't mind mice so much, WHEN they are in a cage. It's the random popping-out of places they should not be that freaks me out. I'm really sensitive to sudden movement, which is why bugs and mice bother me so much. I wouldn't say I'm skittish overall, but yeah - that kind of sudden movement freaks me out. So, with every piece of material or equipment I move, I'm sort of steeling myself for something to jump out at me. It's not good on the nerves to be on that kind of guard!
Then, there is the texture thing. This may be the worst part of all, for me. Man, I wish we had workers gloves here - we tore through them all when doing the patio.
I CANNOT handle certain textures. As a kid, I couldn't touch chalk. I had to endure all sorts of ridicule for it, for having to wrap a paper towel around chalk if I was forced to use it.. a new one each time, because it would invariably pick up chalk dust from the ledge. Ugh.
As an adult, we had to be very careful picking out our bathroom tiles, for the same reason. There were a few that I just couldn't even touch, to put them in the cart. I'm not the BEST with the ones we picked out, as far as the sides/backs go - but my husband handled them for the most part, I used gloves when setting them, and now they're fine.
Well, now I have to touch the leftover tiles, along with other textures that skeeve me right out. Stuff with dust and dried dirt on them are bad enough.. but there are a bunch of leftover pieces of "Cement board" that we used for behind the shower tiles. HOLY SHIT, that stuff is just as bad as chalk. I pick up a piece, and I can feel my skin crawl. It starts at the tips, and radiates out to almost my wrists. It's a slow, creepy crawl... and it feels like the moisture just drains out, as it crawls. It's the most disgusting, nerve wracking feeling I can even imagine. By the time the "crawl" reaches my wrist, it usually sends me into a full-body shudder.
Even now, 20 minutes after lifting a few pieces, the skin on my hands doesn't feel "right". I can't explain it. I know there's absolutely NO reason for it. I'm not OCD, I don't have any kind of mental illness, and I certainly don't have any weird traumatic experiences with chalk in my childhood. It just feels AWFUL.
So, I managed to carry out 3 pieces of this cement board, and then felt the meltdown coming on pretty strong. I figured I'd rant out a blog to distract myself. It seems to be working - I think I'll go back to it now.
- Marie
Walk This Way
It probably looks dumb, how I walk. Normal step, normal step, BIG step, normal step, little step, little step, normal step… Do you pay attention to what you’re walking on? Do you care what the color is, what the texture is, what the height is? I do, but I don't think most people do.
I don’t exactly subscribe to the “step on a crack, break your Momma’s back” theory, but I don’t like stepping on them. You know how it feels when you have a little pebble stuck in your shoe, right?
Picture that, every time I take an off step. It doesn’t go away until I can balance it out, by doing something similar but to the other foot. Sometimes it take a few offset steps to undo the original off step.
I don’t know if I’m explaining it right, I don’t know if this make sense. I seem to see things that others don’t notice, I seem to care about them and they don’t.
At work they closed the entrance that I normally use, the one I like. They’re doing construction in that area. The entrance I now use is not optimal, here are a few pics.
What is “Normal”, and Who’s REALLY the Disabled?
First, a quick note here: I have Aspergers, my husband has Aspergers, and I have NO experience with autism whatsoever. I don’t consider Aspergers to be Autism, and I’m not speaking for Aspergers AND Autism in what I say - so I don’t want to be told off by NT Autism parents who use it interchangeably. "Aspergers is on the Autism Spectrum!" you may say. Well, so is neurotypicality. It's all one big spectrum.
In my view, Aspergers isn’t Autism in the same way that a sprained ankle isn’t a broken ankle. There’s a lot of similarity, and one can relate to the other, but it’s not the same, and it does a disservice to each side to lump them in together.
This morning, I tweeted a mini rant:
It's amazing, how many of the things NT parents say about their Aspie kids... that we'd feel if we had an NT kid.
Wishing they were "normal", sad about the loss of potential, etc. Totally bizarre to me that some consider Aspergers a "disability”. I see neurotypicality as a disability. Not in functioning with each other, just in living. The game playing, lack of logic, inefficiency..
The first response brought up the idea of high functioning / low functioning Aspergers. I’d never actually thought in terms of high/low functioning Aspergers... from my understanding, “low functioning” would put you in the autism range, not actually Aspergers. Anyway, that got me to thinking on a bit of a tangent.
If there IS high or low functioning Aspergers, what would it be? Wouldn’t it basically just be a couple of labels to describe how well we can fit in with neurotypicals?
Aspergers is only considered a “disorder” because the NTs don’t get us, and they're currently the majority. If you plopped a bunch of aspies down on our own island somewhere (or city, or whatever), we’d get by just fine... if not FAR more efficiently and more happily than we do in the NT world. How many other “disorders” can you say that about?
I prefer to think of Aspergers more like mini super powers. My aspie super powers include a ridiculous IQ, internal compass/mental mapping, and extra sensitive touch, hearing, taste, smell, and sight senses. Other Aspies have a wide variety of other super powers, all of which are really cool.
So what if I can’t handle huge crowds and a ton of noise? No one should be “able” to, any more than one should be able to handle stabbing themself in the face. I look at it like this: If you lack the nerves/sensation in your hands to tell you that something is hot, you’re not “abled” for your ability to hold your hands down on a hot burner, are you?
So what if I frequently don’t understand neurotypicals? They are completely bizarre, usually unpredictable, frequently illogical, and at times completely incomprehensible! Why should THAT make me disabled? And why should it be “able” to fully UNDERSTAND them? Have you taken a good, hard look at what passes for “normal”?
Look at stuff like racism, homophobia, war, stupidity... those are all “diseases” that us aspies seem to be pretty immune from... and those diseases are at pandemic levels with neurotypicals. Who’s really the disabled?
Seriously, if you took every aspie on the planet, gave us our own continent, and there was to be NO outside interaction with the “normals” (ie: they keep their wars to themselves).... which world would be happier, which would get by better? Could neurotypicals even get by without the Aspies?
Why isn’t THAT the measure of normal?
Yeah, I’ll take my honest, logical, efficient, straight-talking brethren over the “normal” people any day.
- Marie
PS: Editing to add: I think "disorder" is pretty much the most ironic label you can put on Aspergers. With scheduling, pattern stuff, etc... we're the most "ordered" people out there!
An Aspie view of Thanksgiving Hell
One of the earliest memories I have is one that disturbs me to this day.
I was at the crosswalk at school - I think this was kindergarten - and looked across the road to see some kid just getting pummeled by a couple other kids. It turned out that the reason for the beating was that the victim had a small bag of candy, and the bullies wanted it.
I can’t even describe the despair I felt when I found out what had happened. Candy was such a stupid, little thing... I was mortified that these kids were willing to treat another person like THAT, for... nothing. They say we’re not supposed to feel empathy, but... man, even to this day, that image upsets me to a point where I can’t even spit out the words for it.
I’ve said before... I grew up not only being treated like an alien, but sometimes seriously wondering if I got dropped off on the wrong planet. That morning? Had I actually been an alien, that would have been the point I radioed back home and told “my people” that there was no hope for this planet. Seriously.
Anyway, I bring this up because Black Friday reminds me of that morning. People pepper spraying each other, shoving, trampling, a couple people getting shot... over what? Saving some money on a TV? Just seems like a widespread, adult version of those kids with the candy. Ridiculous. I’ll never understand people.
Anyway, let’s talk about last night. By “talk”, I mean “I have to rant”
I’ll be frank here - when you’re an Aspie, family gatherings SUCK. Too much noise, hysteria, people are in your space, nothing’s where it is supposed to be, and it’s just not FUN. There’s an increased pressure to be “normal”, while you’re feeling like crawling under the bed and hiding until the chaos disappears.
My adult aspie friends, some of whom have spawned little jr aspies - they get this. Watching twitter last night, I saw a lot of mentions of hiding in a room, hanging out in the basement... even one guy who took his aspie kid out to his truck and watched netflix on his phone. That? That is awesome.
Unfortunately, twitter was also full of neurotypical “advocate” parents of aspies who were less than cool about it. One woman went so far as to call her aspie son “passive aggressive” for hiding in his room.
What. The. Hell?!
People, you can’t be all pro-acceptance for 98% of the year, then turn on your poor kid and TORTURE THEM. You want to be an advocate? Fucking let your kid hide in his room if he wants. Would it be “passive aggressive” if YOUR parents tried to guilt trip you into stabbing yourself in the face repeatedly, and you declined? No? Then stop doing it to your kid. Oh, and if you force your aspie / autie kid to do something they’re not comfortable with, it’ll be at LEAST 2x as bad the next time. Chill!
By the way, tweeting your disappointment in your kid last night? (This is directed at SEVERAL people) You realize you’re on a public account, right? Ugh. My mother would have said a lot of the same things that some of you did last night, but at least when I was a kid, there wasn’t Twitter. There wasn’t written evidence of my mother broadcasting her disappointment in me being WHO I AM to the entire fucking planet, that I could easily happen upon someday.
I am beyond disgusted with a good handful of people, and (no offense intended to the sane ones!) - NTs in general right now.
Parents of Aspie/Autie kids: This time of year really sucks for us. There is a ton of noise, lights, noise, people stressed out, noise, pressure, and more noise. What is fun for you, sometimes is tantamount to outright torture for your kid. CHILL OUT already.
If your kid wants to hide in his/her room, or the basement, or WHATEVER during family gatherings, let him/her. Contrary to what you may believe, they’re not “missing out” on anything. If left to their own devices, they’re not going to wake up the next morning and regret not spending more time playing with their insane neurotypical cousins, or whatever. Left to their own devices, they’ll wake up that next morning short of the trauma that their NT parents could have put them through, for their own selfish purposes.
I can’t emphasize this enough: Forcing your aspie/autie kid to participate in holiday festivities that they’re not comfortable with - you’re not doing it for them. You’re doing it for yourself. Subjecting them to holiday gatherings they don’t want to be a part of isn’t going to give them some warm, gushy, Hallmark-type holiday memories. All it will do is show them that you are more concerned with what other people think, than the well-being of your kid.
Trust me. I’m in my early 30s, and none of the holiday-induced forced socialization of my childhood has magically morphed into anything other than just wishing my parents had accepted me for who I am. I’m guessing that most of my adult-aspie friends who holed up away from the racket yesterday feel the same!
Ok, so that probably all came off really negative and bitchy. Let me try to balance it with a bit of positive.
If you are aspie, or parent of an aspie... you should follow @aspieside on twitter. She’s a neurotypical parent of an aspie boy, and she’s pretty awesome - even if it’s a bit weird for me to read her posts.
For one, her son reminds me of me. He has some of the same “quirks” I had as a kid - which feels a bit bizarre to read about now, given how much of a “freak” I was at the time. It’s weird - but cool - to read about someone I’ve never met, that - OMG - sounds like me. You know?
Secondly... if there was a textbook perfect way to parent an aspie kid, she’d probably be the author of it. My own mother’s way of handling me was pretty much the opposite of “perfect”, so it gets a bit weird to read her too. I’m so happy for her kid, that SOMEONE is being raised right. I’m happy that there is this stunning example of a NT able to relate to her aspie kid - it’s such a rarity. She speaks his language so well, I sort of question her neurotypicality!
Reading her posts are also sort of bittersweet, because it does dredge up some crappy feelings about my own childhood. I wish my mom had been even HALF as good with me, as she is with her kid. Yup, I’m a bit envious!
So... if you’re one of the neurotypical parents that act like those I mention in the first half of this entry... try to learn from her before it’s too late. My mother was one of you. She never accepted me for who I am, never made any effort to understand me, and she has resented me for my whole life. While I spent 30 years wishing and hoping for her to eventually come around, I’ve recently realized that it’s a lost cause. We will never have a relationship.
The sad thing is, had she tried at ALL when I was a kid, she may not have resented me so much. Things could have been very different today, with just a little effort a couple decades ago. Had she been tweeting her disappointment in me to the world, it wouldn’t have taken me a full 30 years to resent her right back.
Maybe I’ll stop ranting now...
- Marie
I Can’t Wait to Hear Nothing.
I can’t wait to hear nothing.
Noise sucks. It’s everywhere. Sound is pressure, pressure is… well not painful really, I don’t know how to describe it. I prefer silence. If I can’t get silence, I want the noise to be pleasant. Bach made some rather pleasant stuff, but even loud music with a hard drum beat can be much more pleasant than just plain noise.
It all starts with the alarm clock. We have an alarm that plays a CD, so I don’t have to listen to that horrible beeping sound. I’m sure it’s horrible on purpose, to make you get up. The problem is, I instinctively slap it to shut it off, while I’m still half asleep. Then I fall back asleep. With a CD playing, it’s good noise, it’s music.
Next is the shower, the constant sound of water. We have a large shower head, the kind that sort of simulates rain. It’s much quieter. I do prefer the strong blast of hot water, but not the noise, so the rain effect is much more pleasant overall.
Later comes the car ride to work, the road noise is annoying. There’s not much I can do about it, but I try. The last time I bought tires for my car, I made sure to buy good ones. I found out that cheap (or perhaps harder) tires can be louder than good ones. That analysis isn’t very scientific, but I did realize that when you buy tires that are designed to last 100,000 miles (ok, that’s an exaggeration) they have to be very hard rubber, whereas softer tires wouldn’t last as long but should be quieter. Sounds logical, right? I don’t know if that’s a fact in all cases, but this last set of tires was definitely quieter than the previous set. My car was getting quite old, which was a source of pride for me (I count miles like points on a video game) but it also meant that things were really wearing down, and getting louder. The tick tick tick of the valve train is slowly getting worse, the tires that have worn down now seem to be getting louder (due to the increased surface area perhaps?). I decided to replace the car. The noise was one of the reasons why I wanted a luxury car. Oh no, I can’t afford a new one, I found a great deal on an old one that is still in great condition. It’s definitely quieter than the last.
Once at work there’s the ventilation system. It’s really loud, like seriously I have no idea why it’s so loud. Residential heating/air condition is quite loud, but this is worse. But wait, there’s more. I sit directly under a vent, so I get more noise directed at me. But wait, there’s more. There’s some sort of leak in the pipes, so there’s a WHISTLING sound about half the time. A WHISTLING SOUND. LIKE A TEAPOT.
A WHISTLING SOUND.
I wear my headphones a lot, but much of the time I’m not even listening to anything, I’m just blocking the sound. There’s more sound, the common noise of people walking by, talking, and the printer. The damn printer. It squeals as it feeds the paper out. One of these days I’m going to go all Office Space on it, I swear. The conference room behind me is horrible, they often have their teleconferencing going, which of course means everyone has to yell because they think they need to for the microphone to pick up their voice. The fine people that designed the microphones have probably done a great job, you don’t need to yell. Seriously, I can hear you through the wall.
The production floor is worse, it’s a cleanroom with HEPA filters, and of course machinery and lot of people. That’s the worst, you can’t wear headphones, and it wouldn’t be a good idea anyway, since most of the time you’re talking to someone, or trying. I read lips a lot, as long as I can hear a little bit and see the person’s lips, I’m pretty good about figuring out what they’re saying. I’ll talk more about this another time, it’s not just in the cleanroom that I have a hard time understanding people. It’s exhausting though, the effort of trying to hear, and the noise, the damn noise.
The ride home, same as the ride to work. I sometimes listen to music, I sometimes don’t.
When I get home, sometimes I turn the car off, lay back and close my eyes. Just a couple minutes of quiet, it really helps. It’s sort of like recharging, makes me able to handle more noise for a bit.
Home isn’t bad, I mean, I have a say in what goes on. Going out can be a problem, a lot of restaurants are noisy. We recently went out to a noisy restaurant with friends, it was really tough. The whole time I was sitting there bouncing my legs, I do that when… well when I want. I don’t know, when I’m nervous? No, I don’t think that’s the right word. Stressed? Well perhaps, not the sort of stress that is commonly thought of, like your boss putting you on a tight deadline. It’s a pressure-relief valve. Yes, exactly. It’s taking the pressure of the situation and re-focusing it to another area. Bouncing my legs is just one way I do that. Others are wringing my hands, touch my thumb to my fingers in a rapid pattern, alternating from index to ring, then pinkie to middle. Over and over, most often both hands synchronized. Ok, so where was I… yes, the noisy restaurant. That sort of situation sticks with me for awhile. I feel pressure in my head when I get home, I need quiet. Sleep is the easiest way to get quiet, it needs no explaining that you need quiet.
We have a Jacuzzi, and it’s awesome. It’s noisy though. I HATE the jets, I don’t use them, and am quite displeased when Marie uses them. Not displeased as in mad, just, displeased. I don’t like the sound of the Jacuzzi filling up, I usually aim the faucet to the side so the water sort of runs down the side of the tub, less noise. It’s still noisy, and takes so long to fill up. That’s offset by how awesome it is to have a freaking Jacuzzi in our bedroom. Relaxation, and quiet. Sometimes we have music on, but usually softer music, calming. Ahhhh…
Talking is noise, I don’t like to talk. It’s not that I refuse to talk, it’s not that I only say a few words, I just don’t like it. I’d prefer to sit in silence, especially in loud situations. I have no idea how to describe the sensation, other people don’t seem to have any issue with it like I do. It’s a rattling that turns to pressure, I think, something like that. Whatever it is, I don’t like it much. The noisy restaurant the other day? I mostly sat there and listened to others. There was already enough noise, I didn’t need to make more.
What else makes noise? Umm, everything. I can hear the lightbulbs right now. My old TV was terrible, but now we have one that is silent. The fridge is annoying, but is pitched such that I can tolerate it.
A few months ago we were at a mall, stopped into the Bose store. I wasn’t planning to buy anything, just wanted to look around. I saw a display for noise cancelling headphones. Ooooh, cool, let me try them. WOW. Seriously, the fucking noise shut off. It was quiet. Forget the music, it was fucking quiet, in the middle of a mall. SWEEEEEET. Oh wait, the price tag wasn’t sweet, it was something like $300. I’m not really the type to spend that sort of coin on headphones.
Three hundred dollars. For headphones. I debated, I seriously debated. I thought about it off and on, thinking that maybe I should just do it. I don’t think I buy myself a lot of luxuries, so I deserve it, right? Maybe I should. No wait, it’s three hundred dollars, no way! Back and forth. I didn’t buy them.
A few days ago, I get a link to a set of noise cancelling headphones. A few minutes later, Marie sends me a message, with the same link. She’s looking out for me, that’s awesome. They were much cheaper, about seventy dollars. Some quick research showed that they should indeed work well, so I made the purchase. I’m still awaiting delivery of them, I seriously can’t wait for them to arrive. One of the cool features, you can remove the cord entirely and use them just for noise cancelling! Awww, the designers were thinking of me, isn’t that awesome?
So now I sit here and wait for silence. I can’t wait to hear nothing.
- Porter
Aspergers and Tornadoes Don’t Mix!
Tomorrow will be mark 6 months since the May 22nd tornado... that smashed our house. A news team just came to our house to interview us about our experience, and the subject of Aspergers came up.
When asked “What is the first thing you noticed?”, I blanked out. I had no idea how to answer that... everything was such a mess. I ended up blurting out “Um... I have Aspergers. I was overwhelmed, and was sitting on the front steps just screaming. I have no idea what I noticed first.”
Up until the tornado, I thought I’d managed to learn to keep things under control. Most people would never guess that I have Aspergers. (Except, apparently, other Aspies. Found THAT out the other night!). The day of the tornado? TOTAL meltdown.
I’ve already posted about what happened that day, from a matter-of-fact point of view... but I didn’t really get into the Aspie aspect.
The truth is, I completely lost my shit. Running the 3 blocks from our car to our house was the most traumatic experience of my life. I really need things to be where they’re supposed to be, and running/jumping/climbing over downed power lines, trees everywhere, and seeing a ROOF laying on the ground... I just don’t even have the words.
To add insult to injury, the police and EVERY news station in the cities had helicopters up in the air. I’d never had a problem with helicopters, but that MANY, in that situation? Totally overwhelming. Ever since, even the sound of one helicopter really frays my nerves.
Helicopters, trees on the ground everywhere, my house destroyed, not knowing where our 4 cats are, chainsaws going off in all directions, and people everywhere? Yeah. What a nightmare. On the upside, as far as overstimulation goes... I think I’ve seen the worst. I don’t think I’ll ever have to face anything THAT crazy ever again.
The first 5 months after the tornado were hard to deal with, on a daily basis. Months of chainsaws (especially bad for the first 2 weeks!).. The sound of roofing EVERYWHERE... constant banging, nailing, people everywhere... so much NOISE. There were contractors in and out of the house every day for months. I REALLY don’t like strangers in the house, or people “messing with my stuff”... and we had absolutely NO routine whatsoever.
To make matters worse, in an effort to save as much money as we could... we were in and out of different hotels for 6 weeks. Our insurance didn’t cover hotel while the house was unlivable, so we had to find the best price online... for only a few days. Then another.
At the end of 6 weeks, we just sort of gave up and stayed in the house anyway. It may have been messed up, but at least it was OURS, and we could establish a BIT of a routine. We still have a LONG way to go, but at least the worst of it is behind us.
- Marie
Well… here we are.
You know, I've put enough time fussing around with installing this blog just now, I'm not sure what all to say.
So.. "Hi!" from two Aspie adults!
Due to recent media, misinformation and hysteria out there with regards to vaccines, and bizarre notions of what it's like to live with Aspergers.. we've decided to start a blog.
As a spur of the moment idea, we're not solid on what all the blog will become. At the very least, we'd like to show you all that it's possible to live a healthy, well adjusted life as an Aspie in a neurotypical's world.
Knowing my husband, you can probably expect some "Magneto Was Right!" type rants, also 
While we get this all set up (and probably procrastinate along the way), feel free to read these two posts on Marie's other blog: Aspergers - You Can't Cure 'Awesome', and Bullying: When Did it Become Socially Acceptable to be a Bigot?