I Like Getting Mail

I got a letter from DePaul saying I made Dean's List for spring quarter. I know I've made fun of the dean's list letter in the past, but this is the first time I've made dean's list since winter quarter 2007 (and when I made fun of it then, I had gotten dean's list three out of the previous four quarters during which I was eligible). This time it felt more like a big deal, perhaps since it seemed so unlikely at the beginning of the quarter. I've been struggling academically- but I made a 4.0! Also, the letter had been amended and looks much nicer now. I think I may keep this letter.

I got a letter from the bank about my savings account. The interest paid to me for this past quarter was seventy three cents. At first I thought maybe they'd misplaced a decimal; last year I made about that much interest in dollars, not cents. But no: the letter says that my APY is now 0.05%. Gasp! When I opened the account, the APY was around 3.5%.

Today's the seventeenth of the Jewish month of Tamuz, a fast day, and the inaugeration of three weeks of mourning. I wanted to fast but I didn't make it due to low blood sugar; I then ate one packet of sugar and one very stale taco (no toppings) and haven't eaten since. I'm hungry, I think. I was thinking that I wasn't properly in the spirit of mourning but reading the OU newsletter did that job, mostly. I haven't felt very connected to God in recent months, and I don't know why, but I'm not terribly worried about it. Maybe I should be, but I'm not. Being sick usually makes me feel less connected to God- not in an angry way or anything- and I won't be sick forever, at least not the kind that I was recently. I had a mild tremor in my left hand through the afternoon; I am not convinced that my thyroid is all better.

Somebody I met and really liked at autreat this year has sent me three emails so far since I got back. I almost feel like I'm running out of things to say, but I want to say them anyways.

Currently The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For By Alison Bechdel see related

Signs

Yesterday I met with my therapist and am now remembering exactly what it is I hate about confiding in people; that afterwards I almost always feel guilty and anxious in an intense but vague way. It passes quickly, but it's a bad feeling while it lasts. Sometimes I blame it on guilt over acting needy (at least that's what I blamed it on when it was really bad in November after I talked to somebody) but I don't see why that would be an issue with somebody I'm paying to listen to me. Plus other times I can be plenty needy without feeling guilty. So maybe it's more about vulnerability.

 Fueling my paranoia, she said that I needed to find the "hell no" inside of me, and I kind of startled (this sentence is not missing a word- my body jerked). I didn't tell her about this xanga- did she find it on her own? The more I think about it, the more likely I think it is. But it could be a coincidence. Hell no is probably not an uncommon phrase. But I wrote a post once about the "hell no" inside of me. Because I got the credits enough to change the name of this blog about a year ago, then couldn't decide on a title I liked better than this one. And when I asked my readers, y'all didn't supply any name suggestions. You're still welcome to do that, by the way. How often do you all use the phrase "hell no" as a noun?

My shipment arrived, with my old medications but not the two new prescriptions. I did decide to try the meclizine, but it's not here yet. I hate being dizzy.

My environmental studies professor emailed us with time sensitive material while I was at autreat, wanting us to sign up for a conference on wetland policy making. I read the email on the deadline of the day to sign up, and decided not to, even though the professor was offering an incentive and I could have gone, because of the cost (forty dollars), the nature of the event (networking- bring resume, and eat at restaurant), and the time constraint. I hope it will be alright. I've ordered the textbook through interlibrary loan. It makes me nervous that the class website is up without a syllabus. I hope this class will be as fun as the description of it made it sound.

I listed my ASL vocabulary words and only counted 153, which looked way too low a number to me. Then I watched some ASL music videos on youtube (I do that for about an hour per week) and noticed that of the signs I recognized, there were more words that I hadn't written down than words that I had, which was a relief. My guess is that my vocabulary is closer to 500 signs.  I've been thinking about attempting my own signed song, but both the grammar and the vocabulary needed for any song I'd want to sign are daunting. Particularly because the songs I like tend to have technical science, math, or technical terms. I suppose I could also try signing a religious song- the online dictionaries for signs have a lot more religious words than they do medical ones.

Does Being A Grown Up Measure Up To Expectations?

When I was five years old, I had a variety of hopes and dreams about what adulthood would be like. I've been thinking about how life has and hasn't lived up to my expectations. What did I expect?

Taste. You know how adults are always eating these foods that most kids can't stand? And how most kids have sweet teeth? Well, when I was little, I really, really, really wanted to like grown up food. Like, say, onions. Once when I was five, we had split pea soup for supper and I accidentally ate an onion and I liked it! I was thrilled. I exclaimed excitedly that my grown up taste was coming in. My mother held me down to take my temperature and -oops- I had a pretty high fever.

I so far haven't developed the adult sense of taste that my younger self was so desirous of, but I do eat and enjoy eating a much wider variety of foods. However, I don't think I'm ever going to like asparagus or tahini or peppers or any of the other things that looked adult to me then.

Candy. I'm sure I wasn't alone in my dream that one day, I was going to have so much candy, there just wouldn't be an end to it (no, this is not quite a contradiction with the dream above). My adult self does in fact get to eat a lot more candy than my 5 year old self did, but that's mostly because my 5 year old self got two pieces per week at the synagogue and that was it. I found, when I was about 10 and could buy candy if I wanted to, that eating a lot of candy made me sick, plus I like having money more than I like candy. Who would have guessed? So like the above, this wish has been lived out less than my 5 year old self was hoping, but I still live the dream more than he did.

Confidence. I hoped that once I was an adult, I would know what was what. I think that in an intellectual way, I've gotten where my preschool self wanted to go. I have a good enough understanding of how the world works. But on the emotional level, the hope of never being scared and always knowing what to do- I don't think age is going to do the trick there. I was a pretty independent kid and I'm a pretty independent adult; but I was a scared kid and I'm an equally scared adult.

Particular Skills. I wanted to learn a few things: mostly, I wanted to learn to blow a bubble in bubblegum. I also wanted to learn how to tie my shoes.  I did learn to blow a bubble; I think I was eight when that happened. I was nine when I learned to tuck my shoelaces so I didn't trip, and fourteen or so when I learned to tie my shoes.

I notice that the list above doesn't include some of the things that feature prominantly in my life today. I didn't really think much about my health or disability when I was five, other than to pretend that I couldn't walk or whatever. So that's not here. My gender I did think about when I was in preschool, and I thought about it a lot, but I didn't know back then that there was anybody at all like me in that respect, and so I didn't have much expectations in that regards. Hopes, wishes, prayers, fears- but not expectations. I did think about having children when I was very young, but this was mostly along the lines of a game. Like my brother used to say, "When I grow up, I'm going to have nine million sons and two daughters" and that was about the extent to which we thought about having kids.

Transitions

I'm back in Chicago. The bus rides back were somewhat eventful, but it was okay. The biggest snafu was that after I arrived in Chicago, I waited for the Lincoln bus for forty minutes before suspecting that there might be a holiday schedule in effect (which there was), meaning that the Lincoln bus wasn't coming. I had a hard time staying awake riding the el and the Kimball busses homewards.

On Wednesday, I attended a presentation on transitioning from childhood to adulthood as an autistic person. It made me think a lot about what I should be doing to enable myself to live as an independent adult. Two and a half years ago, I lived on my own for four months. It was a miserable failure, resultng in psychosis on my part. After I moved back in with my parents, I became far more dependent on them than I had previously been; and I've remained relatively dependent on them. This is not a good thing.

I expect that I will be moving out again in a year, give or take eight months. I've been very uncomfortable thinking about this. The presentation made me think more about it. It made me think about the advantages I will definitely have over last time, and the advantages I could have over last time. Next time, I will be older, more financially secure and able to afford a lot more. I will not have to be in school full time; just to work. I'll have a lot more time to look over apartments at my leisure, and I'll know to avoid certain things I didn't know to avoid last time.

But what I hadn't realized is that next time, I could utilize some support. I could probably afford to pay somebody to come over to help me out once a week for a few hours, and that would probably help me a lot. And I can contact Access Living (which I have already been to a few times) and ask them for help in figuring out where to find the right sort of person, exactly what sorts of things I should ask the person to help me with, how much is appropriate to pay them, and how that works out with taxes ('cause if I have an employee, I think the tax issue is sort of complicated). I'm thinking about when the right time to start working on this would be, and whether I should look into hiring such a person while I'm still living with my parents. It could well ease some of the tension at home, I think.

In my first two years at autreat, I wasn't really sure that I had had a good time. But this year I had a much more mellow experience. I met a lot of autistic people my own age that I was more comfortable with. I didn't bother with much by way of scheduled activities, but I played a few hours' of chess, a game of apples to apples, and some ping pong. I spent time on my own, walking down to Bradford and back. I went swimming (and accidentally went into the girls' locker room!). I went to two full presentations and part of a third. I spent a lot of hours with a person I'd spent a lot of time corresponding with by email. I spent a lot of time tutoring and talking to my roommate (which wasn't actually an entirely positive experience because he's not queer friendly). I went to a wedding. I spent some time in the library reading comics and proofs of Heron's formula (very nice librarian, by the way). And just as I was starting to feel homesick, I went home.

P.S. I talked to my endocrinologist today. My thyroid numbers are all in range now !!! The T3 and T4 are edging towards the hypothyroid end and he says to make an appointment if I feel symptomatic of hypothyroidism; otherwise, he doesn't want to see me for another two or three months! That's great news. The erythrocyte sedimentation rate was below normal, whereas we had been looking to see if it was high; he says not to worry about that. The c-reactive protein was very normal. This leaves us with no explanation at all as to why I was thyrotoxic, nor with much idea of what happens next, but I guess for now I'll let it be.

Currently Go Figure!: A Totally Cool Book About Numbers (Bccb Blue Ribbon Nonfiction Book Award (Awards)) By Johnny Ball see related

I'm In Bradford, Pennsylvania!

The ride over was largely uneventful. I took the 82 bus to the blue line to the Clinton stop, from which I went to the Chicago Greyhound station. I caught a bus to Cleveland. That bus was full and I didn't get much sleep. In the Cleveland Greyhound Station, there was a guy lying on the floor. Officer, he said, I need help! Offser. Turned out he was drunk and, according to what he told the security officers, he has epilepsy and takes some medications. He was moaning and begging for medical assistance. It was a pitiful sight. When he took his shirts off (against the officers' protests), I could see a patch on his arm. Eventually a strechter came and he got on it and went off. I don't know if it was a hospital he went to; I didn't see any paramedics.

The bus from Cleveland to Buffalo was mostly empty and I took the back row's three seats, and dozed. In Buffalo, I met up with a bunch of other autreat attendees, and we talked awhile. We continued our conversations on the bus to Bradford, and on the Call-A-Bus from the Bradford drop off point to the campus. I enjoyed that. I was the first person into my suite. I was nervous about meeting people, but I'm okay.

I left Chicago in kind of a hurry and unprepared, so today I went into downtown Bradford to buy some food. Bradford is home of the Zippo Lighter Company.

And it has this wonderful little store run by Menonites. I remembered it from last year. I bought a big bag of granola, a bag of lemon snaps of the health food store type, a box of instant oatmeal (flavored vanilla) that has soymilk powder pre-added, taco shells (with hechsher), a large can of pineapple, a small can of mixed vegetables, and a small box of ginger snaps. Here it cost me $5.84.

Now of course, you all probably would like to know more about autistic specific autreat stuff, but frankly, I haven't really attended events. When people talk about autism politics, I generally walk away. Not interested. I'm mostly being social. Playing chess and pingpong, doing math. Walking into town and back. One of the presenters I wanted to talk to and did talk to for a few hours this morning, but I didn't go to his presentation.