h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm supposed to take my IDs in to work today and fill out an application. After almost two months of temporary status, the company I am working for has decided to make me legitimate. And after all the REM time I spent dreaming about being fired...

Uvula and I have been going out to eat and spending a little quality time together in the midst of the usual arguing.

She has continued to leave her brain on hold.
Instead of learning how to parent, she just gripes that the child won't do anything she tells her. I think the kid's grades are still in the tank, also. Uvula received the three weeks report but I haven't seen it and I think they both would like me not to.

Uvula spent $50.00 to find out why her washing machine (a recent and apparently cheap acquisition) wouldn't work properly. Turned out it was just a kinked hot water hose. No way in hell she was going to take a look herself.

I needed to take some of her filters for the furnace with me. I opened the furnace door and there were none. I noticed on the outside of the furnace closet that she had removed a vent in the lower wall and stuck a filter in and screwed the vent back in place. I asked her why she did that. She said that's what the landlady said to do. I said it is serving no purpose, as you don't have one in the vent over here, which is also return air. Anyway, I said, if you just remove this panel on the furnace... "Why do you always have to come in and tell me things differently? I did what she told me!" remove this panel on the furnace, you will see the filter where it is supposed to be. "Oh, I didn't know that came off! Wow, the landlady didn't know what she was talking about!"



SOS, DD

So, anyway, on my job, once I become real, I will be switching over from a ten hour shift to a twelve hour one. I will supposedly be getting a dollar more an hour. Whoopee.
I am still pouring metal and trying to deal with the various maintenance problems around the place. People are such slobs.

I got a ride to work the other day with one of Uvula's friends who belongs to the same anti-MENSA group. This supposedly adult woman told me she knew where I worked and then proceeded to drive all over the county looking for a back road that she "knew" was the way to go.
Eventually she ended up on the same access road that everyone uses because there is no back road. There's about a five or six square mile patch of creek bottoms, deer brush and hillocks behind where I work.
Nothing like dealing with experts.
I found out later that day that it had been a mistake to not ride my bike at least one way. I almost went to sleep.
Riding that ten miles really wakes me up and gets my body functioning in a way that sitting in a motorized wheelchair cannot.

O Sigmund this doesn't really belong here but your place is so big I just have to put this here and hope you find it.

Now is exactly the right time for me to explain out I perceive my nephew Zachary John who is 8 or 9; and I wanted to tell you the things I think we have in common and then you can ignore it or blow it out of the water with your blunt sharp mind.

Right now I am on fire to write; it is like taking dictation not connecting the dots. I know from cognitive therapy that I'm doing everything "wrong" if I want to be cool; I am jacking myself up with music and coffee and too much reading about John Nash and feudal Japan. But I actually feel some mental equivalent of pain if I am not allowed to write when I want to. I must sit in an office and not rock back and forth with frustration; I must joke and be insightful and participant when the very sound of approaching high-heels causes my aura to try to shrink away.

This reminds me of how Zach is when he just wants Godzilla movies and chocolate cake. I lived with him and his sister (a "normal" little girl who already bumps and grinds thanks to MTV and the television machine I would like to firebomb, but that's another story) and mother for three months. Now Zach is not an easy little man to live with no no, but once you get on his wave-length, and see where he wants to go, he's just being like Gaugin; fook it all he says just let me go back to the island. His mother preposterously once overdosed him with whatever molecular concotion they feed him to make him pay attention; he had a dentist's visit and she were worried it wouldn't go right.

He became cold inside, he said, he didn't feel right, he werent' himself. I grabbed his mum by the shoulders and said "you can't FEED him this to turn him ON or OFF!! It's dangerous dear, look at his eyes; they're dilated and he's unhappy in his skin. What were you thinking!!!"

He continues to be socially innately ungovernable. He loves to be stroked and touched by the hour; but eschews conversation unless you hit on his beloved dinosaurs (of which he knows the latin names and habits of all) or Godzilla or Pokemon. I thought he were musically insensitive because he hated me singing and didn't like even soft music with dinner.
But one day while we were watching Godzilla he hummed along with the score; I hummed it outside the next day and made a mistake for which he upbraided me; "NO auntie Lynda, that's the attack music. When he's coming in from the ocean he goes .......The littel bugger had the score in his mind. I went on the internet and read about the composer of the Godzilla music. You can buy movie scores!
Godzilla suits Zachary because he's actually a complex character who has a love/hate relationship with the people of Japan lol.

And he used to try to help me understand Pokemon on Saturday mornings. Foul stupid git that I am I could never memorize who can morph into whom, who was a double-crosser and who a naive waif.

Oh, pardon, I have to go. Do you understand any of this? I've been thinking about you/it since we last wrote; but I am a slacker.
Affectionately
Lynda

Hi tr!

*waves to Andmymare*

Is it practical to ride your bike in one direction/ I'm assuming it's best to ride it there, so you're awake while you're working. Is it getting any better?

Did you manage to not say 'I told you so' to Uvula's friend? I bet the temptation was immense!

One of my boys is like that Lynda. He was able to accurately reproduce complex tunes before he could (or maybe that should be "would") talk but can't cope with women singing. We eventually discovered it was the high pitch he couldn't stand. I have the same problem. Could that be the case with your nephew?

Oh high pitch, maybe. He is so visceral in his irritation. I didn't mean to say in this letter to Sigmund that I think I "have" Aspberger's Syndrome; just that because of whatever I do "have"; I can relate to my nephew so much more as time goes on. I know as an adult that space-time-allowances cannae be made for him; he must fit into the world. But having experienced my own difficulties with same, I see he is brilliant and has something to offer; only that this present society will waste him.
Does that make sense?

"The world" should make an effort to fit into his.

Sadly it makes a great deal of sense.

Hello you,
what I mean to say is, in another culture, he could be a seer, or an engineer of children's games, or a shaman. "We" meaning Western culture, waste so many people. auf. I damn it and damn it again this waste; because I see the hurt and sorrow could be so easily claimed for the good of all the "sufferer" wouldn't be a sufferer atall.
Sorry if I muff it up.
Lynda and my mare

and also, who is tonsil revenge?

Sigmund Floyd, call your mom!(egnever lisnot) She found your guitar! is tonsil revenge! You have to read the words in the brackets backwards.

He's not been around the site for quite some while now. I hope he's all right.

He's still popping in to n2g2. I think it's probably just busyness.

This is the first time I've been on here in over a week.
I've been working and sleeping and staring at the TV for hours, trying to get my brain in order.
Getting into a new job is like moving to another country.
Particularly since most of my co-workers don't speak much Englich.

Uvula started throwing up again on Friday night and she managed to stop sometime Sunday. I went and got her some insulin and some test strips for her glucometer Saturday. She hadn't been testing herself or injecting herself for almost a month. She binged during the Thanksgiving week feedings and I think she got food poisoning from some cheap deli turkey. That escalated into another fit, fearfully close to ketoacidosis. I did as much as I could for her, considering her noncompliance. She's still weak today, so she took off work and is having her brother take her to the clinic.

With regards to you and your nephew, Lynda, the only thing "people of like minds" can do is seek each other out and try to help one another. "Normal" people, no matter how "well-meaning", will never entirely get it, because what we have is like being deaf or blind, but still being able to hear and see. In addition, I think we have senses that they don't.

Thank you for posting in answer, especially in the midst of getting sorted in a new job. I have a bit of a chip on my shoulder in my perceptions of aspbergers; until my own brief encounter with (perhaps) drug-induced mania I had less understanding of Zach's perceptions. I'm also under the influence of reading "A Beautiful Mind" about the genius mathematician who battled/fought/underwent/descended into schizophrenia. I have no delusions about any kind of romance
or thrill to these dis-eases.
But I am keenly aware that how we learn to understand ourselves and our world is handed down; that we have received a whole world view with our breakfast cereal. I've also read R.D. Laing's "Politics of Experience" and some articles about the difficulty of treating people from another culture under the auspices of western medicine.

Erm, Plus i realize there is a social contract; that by taking the benefits of being in a society/family, we tacitly agree to act in a certain way for the good of all. And ourselves, presumably, at the same time.

Maybe I can best illustrate this with a little story that struck me funny at the time; forgive if it is not funny to you.

After my mania subsided a bit, and the most alarming aspects were over, my sister began to visit me and voice her concern. My hair was sometimes messy; my socks didn't match; sometimes I wore no makeup; I was tremendously pre-occupied with "the internet" (which
she did not differentiate between aimless surfing or was I busting my ass to try to write a poem or was I flirting); she read my poems and thought they were very good but couldn't understand because my on-line persona was "unrecognizable". I always seemed like I wanted to be doing something else than be with my family and husband.

I asked her, purposely remaining as calm and light-hearted as possible; "These things seem really alarming to you. Perhaps you should see a psychiatrist!"
In the same conversation I raised my voice a bit and said "I don't give a flying fook if NOONE understands or values these things; I DO".

Concerning Zach, I see that just a little tweak of our fragile organisms can make, or is it allow, or invite, or is it force us to
pay attention to something else other than we are used to, or than our society is used to. Very fragile the whole thing; and the shared perceptions and the lonely ones.

Perhaps I am in the wrong place for this posting; thank you for giving me a place to vent; I hope you beging to understand the language of your new work; and that you do not get folded into an origami shape not to your liking.

Lynda

'staring at the TV for hours, trying to get my brain in order' - isn't that the last thing that TV will help you do? Zone out, yes.

Sounds like Uvula needs a parent.

'In addition, I think we have senses that they don't.' I wouldn't be at all surprised. Having listened to descriptions of brilliant people like Einstein and Tesler (who was odder than Einstein), it sounds very much as if they were somewhere on the autism/Aspergers continuum.

Talking of having senses they don't, I've been wondering ever since you said you used to be able to smell ill people too - before your nose was damaged were you able to smell water or taste the difference between taps/houses? Or identify all the ingredients in something from the taste?

Actually, I still can.
I have a bit of a dog's nose.
Uvula and I both share what is apparently the odd habit (though no one seems to mind it in wine freaks) of smelling our food before we eat it.

, I use television and movies as part of my personal therapy.
I am very visually oriented and sometimes staring at very mundane or very familiar moving images stimulates the recesses of my brain.
In the dangerous environment of my job, I can't afford to get distracted, so when I hit the house, distraction is what I need most.

Besides, some of my best drawings and writings come from looking at some piece of dreck and saying,"I can do better than that!"

Lynda,
my wife is almost unliterate. She has dyslexia and is barely able to force herself to focus on the forms she has to fill out at work. When she hits the house, she absolutely avoids any reading matter that will make her think. She has read almost nothing that I have written in the last fifteen years and so the mind of a writer or, for that matter, a drawer, is foreing territory to her.
Of course, she is also confused by this online persona thing or the idea that one can "work" on a bit of writing by staring out the window.

I don't wear any makeup myself. Have trouble understanding the attraction of putting stuff on your face you wouldn't want in your mouth...

Yeah, and why would anyone want to spend hours with fiddly brushes trying to apply expensive stuff that feels and smells horrible, aggravates their allergies and they can't see on themselves anyway?

I have to say I find the mind of a drawer foreign territory too. A wardrobe or a pair of curtains has a mind much more conducive to understanding.

I recently had a little frightening experience at work; I had been thinking about the difference between deciding to do something and involuntarily doing it.
This was not an academic excercise; I was beginning to find it more and more difficult to concentrate on my duties at work; but this I put down to a failure of will. These were duties I had done a gazillion times, and I had always been happy that I could multi-task at work and become "one-pointed" when I wanted to write; even if i was "daydreaming" it was purposeful. But feeling more and more agitated and alienated from my work, and more and more fragmented, and less and less willing/able to bend to my tasks; I started to commit errors. Finally my errors caught up with me; on this day I couldn't eve delegate my way out of the mess because I would have to have organized the duties...I finally stood up and said "I can't do this. I can't think like this."
Now because I had used the word "can't" instead of "won't" I was really upset as were others who care about me.
If I had said "won't"! it would have been different.

Sometimes I think I am just a big over-privileged baby white collar worker woman who should be glad to have a job at all in this perilous U.S., but sometimes I become angry because "unstructured" mentation or thinkin or day dreaming or whatever you want to call it is one of the MOST SATISFYING aspects of life to me; and from what I see from others (these, geniuses, these artists, these musicians etc, which I don't count myself in their company, But!)
sometimes that sort of thinking yields the most wonderful results.

This makes me think that if a person's style of being is of benefit to the society then it is cultivated; if it is not of benefit but benign, it is squashed and not encouraged. I am not talking about if someone is suffering deeply from mental illness; I am specifically talking about "non-productive" styles of being.

I like make up sometimes, because it is fun and tribal and can also feel like a little mask; there are two sides to a mask and can sometimes protect me or be like the Scottish painting their faces blue.
lol
well.
thank you very much for writing; I know I am just on the edge looking in, I know just enough to get in trouble.
Lynda/Andmymare