Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Unexpected changes

If I have a complex but routine task to perform, I need to have an order in which I do it. The more complex and routine, the more I need that order. When I worked for the real estate agency a few years ago, I had a process for taking, entering and distributing listings. If that was interrupted or changed for any reason, even if the outcome was the same, I got very upset. Which was disturbing and probably confusing to those around me.

It can be managed. If I know that something will be changed in advance, I can game out the results, and if they'll matter or not - and how to make things work the way they should. I can also change routines if I learn a better/more efficient way of doing them. In fact, that can be fun. So long as I initiate the change or have advance knowledge of what the change will be or just that it will happen, I'm okay. A surprise is not a pleasant thing. Neither is not getting information in a timely way - or at all, as has happened. If my job needs this information, it's very frustrating when I don't get it. I want to do my job correctly.

Last week, I knew I had a shortened week because I was going on a weekend trip starting Wednesday night. I knew I had to make sure there was food to last until Monday for all the residents, especially for the diabetic individual dependent on me for everything. This, I knew, was possible.

Monday afternoon, I learned that this was not the fact. That all of the individuals would be going to the country for a vacation from Sunday to Wednesday, and therefore I would need enough of M's food to last until then. I learned this just as I was about to leave on Monday, and I was also LATE on Monday. If I'd arrived and therefore left on time, I wouldn't have found this out at all.

Now I had two days to do this sort of thing. Now, I actually was fairly on top of things, but it was still bad to learn this so late - presumably my house manager knew the week before. If not, it was really poorly done.

To make matters even worse, I got sick with a cold. My ability to function decreased. I slowed down. And I couldn't take any time off because of the trip. Tuesday was okay - just the beginnings, you know? Not bad. I was even able to drive 90 minutes to a neighbor's son's wedding. Wednesday, which was also the night we'd planned to drive to the country inn, I ran a fever plus my nose was on permadrip. I know everyone is different in this regard, but for me, that's the worst part of a cold. A runny nose just makes me totally miserable in a way that nothing else, even a bad cough or sore throat, can.

We decided to drive to the inn the next day, of course, and I took a car service to and from work instead of walking as usual. I could barely stand. My house manager merely told me to work with gloves (which I did, plus constant hand washing and purification.) And I was missing food. I'd taken out a lot of chicken to thaw the night before and it was GONE. It wasn't in the fridge, on the counter or even back in the freezer. I felt like I was going nuts.

I needed that food. I had some still frozen I could thaw in the microwave, but to lose food is just bad. I did take out the extra chicken. And then we found it. While I cook in one kitchen, there are actually two apartments, each with a kitchen. And it was in the other fridge because there wasn't room. And no one told me. And I was sick and non-functional and stressed and there was information I needed and I didn't have it.

I got through the day (I don't know if I made sufficient food for all the guys, but I did make enough for M) and got home and to bed, and was well enough (read, no fever and my nose had stopped running) to drive the several hours to the inn, and then another half hour to see my favorite Shakespeare comedy Love's Labors Lost, even if we took one of my least favorite people along with us. So it all worked well. And while we didn't get our normal room, we got a better one on the first floor. No complaints.

But I still arrived stressed and tired and determined to do nothing on Friday. And on Friday, I began to write this blog post on my phone using an app. And I lost the blog TWICE. Not only was this stressy and annoying but just writing about the events made me upset. Still happening. I've stimmed a few times while writing this. Not a relief, you see.

So, when I let this other person drive my car (and my husband and a third person) to a museum, and there were problems right away, I got very angry. I got even angrier later on, as I was helping in the kitchen, when my husband finally returned and it turned out this person got into a fender bender, scratching the car - my MOTHER'S car - and then, instead of going home, went to a second museum. I still cannot believe he did that. And he is NEVER driving my car again. He also spent all of Shabbat avoiding me, and when pressured (wanting a ride home, which he did NOT get as we had plans for dinner) gave a very unsincere apology. I'm over that anger, though.

I was very able to get a handle on that emotion.

Monday, August 12, 2013

Things in my brain

I know it's been awhile, but I realized just today that my therapist is on vacation for a couple of weeks and there are things I want to talk about. This way, I can (yes, you are ALL my therapists now. You're welcome.) talk about them so I won't be obsessing over them until she returns and so I won't forget them.

One thing happened just a couple of weeks ago, while we were having Shabbat lunch at a friend's house. We knew most of the other guests because this family has regulars. I think we currently count. However, there were two who were unfamiliar, a father and teen-age son.

As soon as the young man opened his mouth, I knew he was on the spectrum, and further along than I am, or less socialized, or both. I'm over thirty years older than he is and I'm a woman and these make a difference in how a person on the spectrum presents.

First, he was loud. He wasn't shouting, but it was at an inappropriate volume. This is a tell. It's something that those who know me also have to endure, although I hope I'm not as loud as he is. I don't know.

That's right. I do not know my actual volume, or rather most of the time, I'm not conscious of it. I can make an effort to change it if I'm in a situation when being louder or softer, but not shouting or whispering, is necessary or appropriate, and keep it up so long as I'm in that situation. I can also adjust my volume when someone else tells me I'm inappropriate (usually too loud) but that is very short term.

I am told that most of the time my volume is set on the loud side of normal. I believe them but as the difference is subtle and I can't detect it, I can't do anything about it. My hearing is just fine for a woman my age. I just don't hear the difference between my volume and someone else's.

This young man was set even louder than me. To his credit (I think) his father never criticized him for this, and everyone else took their cue from him. It is very frustrating to be told to talk softer all the time when you can't do it very long if at all, and frustration is one of those emotions that overload quickly.

The second thing I noticed was his formality. He was extremely polite - everyone was sir or ma'am, he said please and thank you. In my mind, he was following the rules of good manners in the way that the other teen-agers present (who had excellent but informal manners)did not need to. THEY had the rules internalized and knew when to be relaxed about them. HE did not, and he chose to be more formal to avoid making mistakes.

Rules are very comforting things to me and others like me. They mean you know what to do in many situations that neurotypicals may understand instinctively. They mean that either you will do the right thing OR if you are wrong, it's not your fault. You followed the rules. One of the best things I ever discovered was Miss Manners Guide to Excrutiatingly Correct Behavior. It gave rules for both formal and informal situations and made interations with other humans easier. It's also one of the reasons I love being Orthodox. There are rules for everything!

I believe he also spoke without a great deal of inflection, which is NOT a problem I have, according to people I've asked. I may be loud but I don't sound otherwise odd. However, I really don't know for sure.

I did discuss comic books with him at one point - like me, he loves them,although he prefers the humorous, not the superheroic.

This leads to another thing. I just finished reading Jim C. Hine's Libromancer,which is an urban fantasy novel which uses books as sources of magic. Which books are - this is definitely a book aimed squarely at the SFF fandom community. I was sad that one of the books he mentioned doesn't actually exist. Recommended.

One of the secondary characters in the novel was described by another, highly empathic, character as "autisitic." This surprised the main character who had worked with this person for years. The empath read autistic people's emotions differently and with more difficulty because they accessed them differently and this occured with the person in question.

This was not presented as a positive or negative for the person in question, just as an obstacle for the empath. The person in question is portrayed as highly intelligent and competent at their job, with a deep love of animals and affection for other humans, as well as a deep love of rules. In other words, it was merely another character trait along with one character's love of science fiction and fantasy and another's need to take of people. They were not less of a person, less of a human. Just different than most, but then most of the characters can also do a form of magic, and that's also different.

I really, really loved this.