One for All and All for One

I'm trying to do a bit of background reading on adaptive computer labs. I'm familiar with some of the computer tools that help people who are visually impaired or hard of hearing.

Are there specific computer tools that are useful for some aspies? Although I am a (mild) aspie, my limitations aren't the kind that would be helped in this way.

If you're an aspie student, does your college or university have an adaptive computer lab that you use? What do you use there?

Many thanks.

Let it be known that I love my husband dearly and I know that I'm extremely lucky to have him for countless reasons.

That said, he is driving me crazy. He has always viewed me as being on the fragile side, but this has escalated tremendously during the past year as we gained new additions to the family through adoption and a twin pregnancy. My husband has been such an amazing help... and I would now really like to enjoy motherhood without being told that I need to nap or otherwise de-stress when I do not. I find it sad that I am often asleep when our babies are awake! I'm their mother. I don't want my children to grow up thinking of their mother as someone who cannot take care of them, when I indeed can. It is wonderful that they have bonded so well with their father, but I'm not exactly keen on accidentally having there be an unfavorite parent. It is wonderful that my husband devotes himself to keeping me as relaxed as possible with all that's going on, but I feel like I'm missing a good chunk of this experience and that unnerves me in itself.

Every little thing seems to be about him wanting to do ... every little thing. I start dinner, he takes dinner out of the oven, resets the oven the way he likes it, restarts dinner while multitasking with other things, then serves dinner like that meal was all his idea in the first place. That was just this past night. It's been nearly every night these days.

I tell him what is bothering me, and his response is "I know" or "Don't worry" or something else completely direct, sincere and simple (which is just the way he is) that still seems to mean "Don't stress your pretty screwy fragile head over anything while I am here, because I am here and I can do everything and by the way, you're cute when you're harmlessly dysfunctional, but if you try to use the oven, you will burn the house down, because that's what I'm concerned about so it will happen because I think it will happen"... or something like that.

Trying to talk to him about this both makes me seem ungrateful and sends us in conversational loops. He'll start caressing me and asking me if I need help with [insert any barely relevant things here that I do need help with], to which I'll say that I do but that he knows I can do [insert whatever it was I actually was trying to do that he has seen me do many times before December 2008, including most things involving childcare], to which he'll continue to caress me while either bringing up the one time the whole year I overworked myself or did something careless while performing the task at hand, or he'll say that he knows but that I need all the rest I can get. While that's true, I don't want to feel useless!

Also of note, I was diagnosed as on the autistic spectrum shortly after giving birth this summer. The diagnosis came at an ironic time, after suspecting as much for years, though that's another story. I think this confirmed in my husband's mind that I am something helpless to help myself.

I start working again soon, at a part-time job as a private tutor. My husband will be home when I am gone, though he isn't enthusiastic about my working again after my being a stay-at-home mother for a little over a year. This job is so small, but I think he was hoping I would love the domestic life so much that I would lose all desire to work outside the home. I do love the domestic life and I'm not crazy about tutoring, but he's taken over domesticity and I ultimately feel similar to how I used to feel in workplaces. The word I'm looking for here is "invisible".

I don't want to end up confined to our bed with him opening letters for me because one time I randomly got a papercut opening letters. That sounds ridiculous, but that seems like what's going to happen in a year or two at this pace. Love him, appreciate him, and he's driving me absolutely crazy.

Lately I've noticed that whenever I adjust the tv volume at home I increase/decrease it to the nearest 5 or 0 (45, 70, etc). Then at work if someone is dropping off film to be developed at my photo lab, I almost always put the pick-up time as #:00, #:15, #:30, or #:45.

Is this an Aspie thing?

I thought a lot of you would like to know about this.


One of my Giftmas presents was a new blanket, because my dad wanted to get me things emblazoned with my new university's logo (I start grad school classes in three weeks and I'm super happy about it), and he knows I like blankets a lot. But he also wanted to get me a new sweatshirt, because the one I've had for the last five years or so is losing its softness and getting really thin. But he couldn't find one in a color/design he liked. So he compromised and got me a sweatshirt blanket.

You guys, this is one of the greatest blanket inventions I have ever seen. It's 7 × 4.5 feet big, so it's plenty large enough to use as a cover to sleep with, or to use as a wrap when curled up and watching tv or using my laptop or studying, without being too big for the latter purposes.

But the really neat part is that it's made from sweatshirt material. So it's not super thick, but it is warm and has a nice weight to it, and it's incredibly soft on one side, with a slightly rougher texture on the other. I like it better than my fleece blanket, because of the dual texture and it being thinner. (Also, my fleece one isn't true fleece because of my wool allergy, and it's old and not as soft as it used to be.)


So if you're looking for a new blanket for whatever reason, I highly recommend searching out one of these sweatshirt blankets. It's absolutely wonderful!

Crossposted to ask_an_aspie

Hi everyone.

To start off, I'll just introduce myself. I'm Mollie, I'm 18-years-old, and I'm neurotypical. My twin sister has Asperger's.

Ok, I just have a question. What is your view on the term "aspie"? My sister finds it very offensive. She always says, "You know what they call us? They call us ASPIES!" (I don't know who "they" are. She attends school in a private, mixed-age wing in a public high school. I doubt she's talking about the public high school students, most of whom probably don't know what Asperger's is.) Have you ever heard this term being used derogatorily?

I can identify to a certain extent. As a queer/genderqueerish person, I've come to embrace certain terms that have been typically used against the queer community in order to take the edge off of it and reclaim it so it can't be used against me. (Okay, I'm talking about the word "dyke". I used to be terribly offended by it and put off by people who use it- even queer women who use it jokingly or whatever. I feel differently about it now that I'm more comfortable with myself. Anyway, </rant>... this isn't about me.)

My sister is somewhat engaged in current events and the neurodiversity movement, though she has a tendency to read information and then regurgitate it without fully comprehending what it all means. Or maybe she does, but she communicates it in ways I don't fully understand. She's very talkative, but sometimes (in writing) she uses vocabulary words that just don't fit, so if that reflects her verbal communication or comprehension in any way....

Ok, sorry for all the ranting. Posing the question again: how do you (you as in each individual person reading this, not people with Asperger's in general) feel about being called/calling yourself an "Aspie"?

Thanks!

Molls

So I got diagnosed awhile ago now, and it explains so much, and I'm glad I'm not alone anymore. But my family's attitude hasn't changed. I'm still at the. bottom of the foodchain. There's three kids, I'm the oldest, but that's a joke. The two younger ones (they're not very much younger than I am) constantly gang up on me. Constantly. Sometimes I think I get it and they really are 'joking around' as they put it, but a lot of the time, when I'm really aspie ing out and it's been a long, touchy, social day, it's the last straw, and I beg, plead, for them to stop, but they get closer, and poke me, and ridicule me further I stutter through an explanation for my behavior, and they make fun of my explanation then. Anything weird and aspie that I do, they have to make fun of it. And then at dinner it's the whole family making fun of my tendencies. Maybe they are just 'joking around', but I don't think so. I'm the least able to defend myself, so they go for me first. When I was younger and it happened I would just run upstairs and slam the door to my room, nothing else works. Sometimes I feel the joking around vibe and I laugh at myself too, but mostly not (I'm a sensitive soul) and it's just a constant barrage of crap from all sides of the table. I try, these days, to verbally stop the harrassment (I thought the meaning of 'leave me alone' was obvious), but days like these, when it's already been too much, babysitting my wild cousin, and it's been all social and touchy (it's the holidays) I couldn't talk myself away from it (not that I ever really can), and it just escalated and got worse until I ran up to my room and slammed the door. At least now that I'm 21, I can sneak a beer upstairs with me. /end rant