Whispering Frustrations Into The Ground: Dove's Vent Thread

Yeah, I'm pretty glad it's over too. And Matesprit is steadily letting go of it and relaxing and getting back to normal.

Pony Grocer appears to be getting sick again, but hopefully we won't catch what he's coming down with. The plan is for everyone to drink lots of Emergen-C and wash our hands frequently. I'm still coughing a bit - it keeps feeling like there's mucus caught right at the back of my throat, where it keeps hitting my gag reflex, and I've coughed hard enough to puke a few times now.

I had a pap smear today - I cabbed there and back, and picked up pad thai in between to reward myself for having done the thing. The doctor was very reassuring and she told me that the clinic would only call me if anything unusual turned up on the tests (and that it would be six to eight weeks for them to get the results back - they have to ship things over to Vancouver for testing), and generally did her best to try and keep me from worrying. Which is nice, because I would've worried if I'd just never heard anything from them.

I also switched my computer over to Linux the other day - turns out, the last straw was Windows fucking up the wifi drivers somehow and then crashing every time I tried to connect to wifi. The transition's mostly going well, although I'm currently having issues getting youtube videos to play.

 

Oh, awesome! I'll have to check and see if that's still going (hopefully it is!)

 

Hummingbird swung by for a visit and now her cat's here. The plan is apparently for her to work on immigrating to Canada (although I'd have assumed that she would move the cat here once she'd at least gotten applications in and stuff? Apparently not. idek what's going on, really, which is a frustrating feel).

It feels a bit like they're moving really quickly here. I don't know how much of that is just due to Hummingbird preferring one-on-one conversations.

We did a shopping trip to Value Village, and I have new clothes now. Some of them probably got washed twice, since Hummingbird pulled a load of laundry out of the washer and - as far as I can tell - set it on the table I was using to stage the laundry with. This wouldn't have been an issue if it weren't for the fact that I'd covered that table with clean, dry, folded laundry and when I picked up some of the clothes that she'd pulled out of the washer, they were still damp. So, everything got rewashed.
The new clothes are nice, though - they're warm, they look good, and they're age-appropriate (the first and last of which were...somewhat of an issue; my old wardrobe looks like it was picked out by a teenager in 1990; since I'm nearly 30 and it's 2016, there was agreement that some updating was needed). They all fit nicely, too. And it's...been a while, since I wasn't cold, even while dressed.

We're getting a bit of storm here right now - but you wouldn't be able to tell. Not inside, anyways. It's very quiet in here, and that's really nice, if somewhat weird. There's no rattling windows, no sounds of rain. Just quiet. Pony Grocer did check outside, and yeah we are getting some wind and rain - the house just has really good soundproofing as far as outside noises go.

 

ooh, that's nice! We were getting a bit of a rain down here too. Wardrobe updates are pretty nice, gotta admit. I feel the always cold thing haha, I don't think I've had a whole wardrobe update in a very long time.

 

I honestly have to recommend thrift stores. It feels terribly hipster, but uh - thinking about it? Value Village is basically just a big box thrift store. (I've got no idea if y'all have it in America.) Anyways, it's a more reliable way of finding nice, comfy clothes that look good on you, I'm finding? And it's less expensive, generally.

What I would also recommend is not getting anything from there that you're not a complete yes on - nothing where you're going "well, it mostly fits..." or "well, it looks gross but it fits". No. If you're not going "yeah, this fits comfortably and I like how it looks on me", put it back and go find something else. Also, probably don't go in with the intent of "okay, I'm going to get a completely new wardrobe"; go for "okay, I need three shirts and two pairs of pants that are good for cold weather"; update slowly, it's less expensive. (Maybe also see if the place will give store credit for stuff you hand over? It feels unlikely, but it's probably worth asking about.)
(Bonus to thrift stores: they regularly update their stock, so if you don't find anything one day, it's worth going back and checking to see if there's anything another day.)

I'm also planning on eventually getting guy clothes, so that I can change my look based on whether I feel masculine or feminine that day. But that's less urgent, really.

 

oh yeah, i've def done thrift shop hunting before. i'm just usually very low tolerance for clothes shopping.

 

Value Village exists in America! At least in OR and (I think) WA.

 

I can understand that, yeah - it's definitely not for everyone. I would probably have walked out with far fewer things if Hummingbird hadn't been leading the charge there and doing most of the searching - my main contribution was dragging stuff back to the changing rooms and seeing if I liked how it looked on me and if it was comfortable to wear.
(This is also why I'm going to have to do a whole extra trip for guy clothes, because the stuff she pulled is all more feminine stuff.)

Cool to know that Value Village is an international thing!

 

Bluh. I think I'm coming down with something again; I've got pressure in my ears (just the right one, at the moment, but it's been on-and-off with both of them) and sort-of-pressure sort-of-just-'wrong feeling' radiating down from there to around my jaw and just under it. It's been going on for the past couple of days, and if it hasn't cleared up by next Monday, I'm gonna see if I can get up spoons to have Matesprit take me into the walk-in clinic to get it checked out.

It's cold. Like. Not cold-cold, how it would be if we still lived in Cape Breton. There's no snow. Probably won't be any at all. (There is over there, though). But I'm wishing for long-sleeved sweaters and better socks. Might knit myself some. I sorta just wanna curl up by the space heater in the living room and sort-of-nap.

 

Kinda frustrated with my body and brain rn, because it's almost 6:30 AM and I'm getting the increasing suspicion that the "but I'm not tired" I keep feeling is less to do with actually not being tired, and more to do with. Well. With my brain being entirely too damn Autistic to cope with recognizing signals for 'hey, it is time to go the fuck to sleep' right now. (The sound of Stardew Valley bird-noises in the background might not be helping, tbh.)

I've been having a lot of trouble with self-care lately and I can't really pin down why. Not sure if it's related, but Matesprit and I have started a diet recently and we're using a calorie tracker as part of that - we're not restricting ourselves from any specific foods, the goal's more "try to reduce calories, try to eat healthier". Matesprit's explicitly trying to get thinner, I just sorta want actual health-oriented things? It'd be nice to not be out of breath or achey-chested if I need to climb a lot of stairs or go for a run suddenly; the Fredericton apartment was a fourth-floor walk-up and having to go up and down for any reason would leave me a little out of breath afterwards.
I am noticing that I'm having to make an effort to meet the daily calorie intake and that I'm generally hitting significantly under the expected calorie intake unless I make that effort; I'm also noticing that I'm waking up really dehydrated and definitely not drinking nearly enough during the day. And that I'm having trouble with spoons for doing household chores. I suspect, but am not completely sure, that the insufficient spoons issue is related to the fact that I'm now needing to divert spoons into tracking everything I eat. I'm pretty sure that the insufficient eating and drinking is related to the fact that eating has now become More Effort, but I can't words sufficiently to feel like I can point this out to Matesprit; it's not even that the calorie tracker isn't working for me? It's just. My brain is broken.

I'm also trying to do Nanowrimo - with the more general goal of "okay, try and get the thing you were working on last year to the point where you can actually do a first edit of it", rather than "okay, write 50k words".

I feel frustrated a lot lately; I want to do a lot of things and it feels like I can't. Matesprit's been promising to set up a sewing corner for me since we moved in, and my sewing machine's still packed away by my desk; they've made only cursory efforts at doing the thing, and it feels like a lot of their visible efforts are more directed towards "get Dove's knitting and crafty stuff out of general view" and less "set up a designated location for that to happen". And Hummingbird's cat got moved in, and it feels like this is too fast? I feel like I don't really know why her cat's here, when she won't be moving here for a long while.
Matesprit keeps going "you need to pitch in more on the chores" - like I don't know I need to do the dishes and the laundry, like I can't see that the bathroom needs cleaning and the hallway needs sweeping - and following it up with "but I know you don't have the habits built up yet"; they keep referencing the fact that my parents didn't really either teach or require me to do chores at all (and when I was asked to do things, it was sporadically and often with little instruction as to how I was expected to do the thing), and I feel like I'm getting treated like an adult child. I don't even know how to words that verbally, and I can't help but feel like a lot of this leads back to Hummingbird.

And I like Hummingbird, I do. But. I am pretty damn sure that she does not actually understand being autistic. Seattle apparently has a very different culture from what Matesprit grew up with and what I grew up with, and on top of that, she's said stuff that implies she thinks - or has been led to believe - that autism is something you can negate if you just get to the kid early enough. That it's something you can be trained out of.
Which makes me wonder if she's thinking that I'm only this way because I'm not trying hard enough. If she's saying that, or even implying it, she's not doing it where I can see; she's said she isn't comfortable with talking to more than one person at a time (which feels dumb).

I don't know what to do.

 

Feeling very, very "this" about Jesse's post on "use your words". I didn't get told to have quiet hands. I didn't get put in ABA training (but when I expressed relief about that on Facebook, my mom casually mentioned that it was only because I was too old for it by the time I was diagnosed. There but for the grace of fucking God...). (Mom did put me on Mannatech supplements. I have no idea whether it was helpful at all; considering Mannatech's reputation, after having done research, I suspect that it was generally just a placebo.)

But "use your words"? When I was visibly (I assume visibly) struggling to try and not melt down? Oh, that was a favourite phrase for the adults to use. Matesprit still uses it.
And it was always very, painfully clear that written words weren't good enough - no, it had to be mouth-sounds or nothing. And I couldn't. There weren't any there, just effort to try not to devolve into distressed screeching.