Blog Has Moved
You can now find this blog at www.myselfbetter.com. Can’t wait to see you there!
Autism Doesn’t Mean Stupid
As you may know if you’ve read my About page, my son and I both have Asperger’s syndrome (on the mild end of the Autism Spectrum). I feel like there are a ton of benefits of Asperger’s (will cover those in later posts). Unfortunately, my son is discovering the down sides of Asperger’s right now, most notably, exclusion. It’s hard to be a kid, trying to make your way in the world and figure out who you are. But it’s even harder if you’re one of the kids at school that everyone picks on. I know why he gets picked on; he is constantly emitting a stream on conversation with or without active participants (whatever he thinks seems to come out of his mouth); he notices things others don’t and usually it’s a big deal to him (singling him out from the crowd); he is ALWAYS talking about Mario and Luigi like they’re real people; and he has a hard time when people touch his person or things. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.
Today, it came up again. We were working on his entry form to the science fair. He started obsessing about it. He said there was someone in his class who said they were smarter than him and he wasn’t smart enough to enter this science fair. I reminded him that last year he got one of the top 3 prizes. He said it wouldn’t happen again this year. I said just because someone in your class says something doesn’t mean it’s true. That started the melt down into “everyone hates me” and “I hate my life” downward spiral.
I got him calmed down and I said, “let me tell you about when I was your age.” I asked him, “How many friends do you have?” He said “10.” I said,”when I was your age, I only had 2 friends. But as I got older more people began to appreciate me for my personality and not my interesting ways of doing things. How many friends do you think I have now?” He didn’t know. I said, “a whole lot more than 10!”
I explained that people think differently with Autism. They don’t go through the motions like “normal” people do. We, on the Autism Spectrum take a different mental path. On our journey we see different things. Sometimes we reach the same destination but sometimes we reach a more exciting destination full of color and insight. I told him the next time someone says you’re stupid you remember that, even though people don’t understand you now doesn’t mean they won’t later, and that being Autistic is a sign of intelligence, not stupidity.
After our conversation, The Mysterious helped craft his entry form for the science fair. That’s my boy!
Picture of The Mysterious and Mommy on Valentine’s Day. You can see why my son is referred to as The Mysterious on my About page.
Newsflash: Scientist Discovers #1 Cause of Clutter
Take a deep breath… are you sitting down?
The #1 cause of household clutter is…. STUFF!!!
Ok. Maybe a scientist didn’t discover this. Maybe it’s not breaking news. But it’s something I have been dealing with my whole life. My home has always been a cluttered place with clothes/paper/odds and ends strewn as far as the eye can see.
Recently I’ve been very good about getting rid of things I don’t need and not purchasing a lot of new stuff. I’ve been making due with what I have. My living room was completely clean AND tidy for an entire week. I should have taken a picture because, unfortunately, this week I’ve been inundated with stuff. Dare I say it, CRAP? My mother is finally dating again. It’s exciting because it’s inspiring her to be a calmer, neater person. The bad news here is that she’s sending a lot of CRAP to me. A couple of weeks ago I got about 2 hours notice that a pick-up TRUCK LOAD of both my things and her things would be showing up at my house. Last night, barring my good judgement (because I had yet to finish processing all of the previous load) I went and got more.
Here is an example of what I’m working with. It’s going to be a long week.
Yeah, that last box it tipped over.
This is definitely an exercise in NOT losing my patience.
The Magazine Says “Buy More”
Today I sat down to read my Woman’s Day magazine that I recently got in the mail. There was one thing that stood out to me more in this one issue that I had never noticed before… the amount of STUFF/CRAP that we are bombarded with when reading a magazine. If we’re not looking at paid ads then we’re being told about what trends are happening in 2011 or what the staff’s favorite cosmetics are or what are must haves for your home decor. Here’s a test to prove my point. Next time you go through a magazine, tear out all the double-sided ad pages and see what you’re left with. I did this with 3 of my magazines that target women specifically; Woman’s Day, Redbook, and Real Simple.
Redbook contained 37 double-sided pages + 48 single-sided pages = 122 single-sided pages of content devoted only to paid ads! There are only 250 pages in a Redbook… that means ALMOST HALF of Redbook is paid ads! By the way… I’ve only counted full paged ads. I haven’t included the multitude of pages that are halved by ads either on the sides or top or bottom.
Redbook with an array of torn out ads.
Real Simple contained 27 double-sided pages + 47 single-sided pages = 101 single-sided pages of content devoted only to paid ads! There are 225 pages to this magazine. Again… almost half is dedicated to paid ads. Again, I didn’t count half page ads.
Real Simple with an array of torn out ads.
Woman’s Day contained 19 double-sided pages + 37 single-sided pages = 75 single-sided pages out of 145 that are dedicated to paid ads. This is the worst at over half of the magazine. Again… I didn’t count half page ads.
Here is Woman’s Day before the ad tear out…
and here is Woman’s Day after.
But don’t worry… the magazine executives don’t seem to be worried because I found the above ad in one of the aforementioned magazines. It reads “Some people in this wired age question the fitness of the magazine business. They suspect it’s tough shape. A genre no longer in vogue. Well you might be surprised to discover that readers 18-34 actually read more issues than those 35 and older and that our overall readership is growing. In fact nearly 300 million now spend their money on magazine subscriptions.”
Hmm… ages 18-34… they say you get wiser with age. Granted, I understand the need for magazine publishers to find viable sources of ad revenue for their magazines to stay afloat. But I had no idea it was this bad! What do you think? Are we bombarded with too much?
This has been a Soapbox post. Thanks for letting me rant!
Myself Better Relaunch!
In May of last year I started this blog to make myself a better person. I wanted to start with organizing and once I felt I had a grasp of that, I would move on to something else. That is what I tried to do. I’m not going to say I failed because that would mean I’m giving up. What I will say is that I got bored. Sure, getting organized was a great idea, but I don’t live in a bubble and I can’t just work on organizing without working on other things, as well. So I’ve decided to take a new angle on this idea of making myself a better person.
I will work on and post about all aspects of my life that need improvement. I’m not saying my life is a mess but I could definitely use a tweaking in several areas; mainly being crazy thrifty, gardening, launching an Etsy store (and making it work, too), making things from scratch/”the good old-fashioned way”, my relationship with God, earning my degree at the tender age of almost 30! and PATIENCE. Patience is the really important one here. I need to remember to be patient while I file for long-term disability; while I look for a job I can do sitting down; while I transition into being one of the 10% of US citizens out of work; while I try and cut costs everywhere I can; and while my children leave their massive duck collection all over my house!
Look at my About page for more things that may make an appearance in this blog and a bit more about me!
Wish me luck on my new multitasking endeavour!
New Year, New Direction, Under Construction
Explative! I am having technical difficulties.
It’s official… this has happened to my computer:
In other words the computer has died. I’ve been having a lot of issues lately with my baby laptop. Blue screens, etc. It turns out the issue is due to some electrical flow issues so the computer is burning things out. Last time it was memory (easily fixed). This time it was the hard drive. In order to fix the electrical issue it will cost the same as getting a new computer. So it looks like I’ll be saving up for a new computer. Please expect blog posts to come even less frequently for a while. I’m sharing my husbands desktop with him and this is not easy to do.
