Being on the Spectrum by Bonnie Le Hamilton

 

These last couple of weeks, I’ve discovered that a lot of my problems growing up, and that I’m still dealing with daily, are things that show up regularly in people on the spectrum.

The list is fairly long for just what I have seen in myself, so I’m not going to list all the ones that do not apply to me; that would take too long.

The first one is ADHD. Back when I was diagnosed, they had two kinds, ADD and ADHD; now they only have one, meaning I am ADHD, and I was diagnosed with that in the late ‘90s along with being mildly OCD, which is another condition associated with being on the spectrum. Making those two issues I do have.

Another diagnosis from that same period of time would be depression, which is also on the list, go figure.

Now let’s get into something more pervasive in my family. Insomnia. So many of us have issues with it, guess what? It can be associated with being on the spectrum.

Insomnia, along with sleep apnea, is no fun, but that is where I am.

The next two are a couple of disorders: Auditory Processing Disorder and Hypermobility Spectrum Disorder.

Auditory Processing is most evident when someone asks you to repeat a question, but the next second answers before it can be repeated. This is because the person with the disorder takes extra time to process what has just been heard. And honestly, I sometimes wait for the repeat; it’s just easier, but that’s a habit I developed because of the reaction of people around me when I asked them to repeat themselves.

The hypermobility spectrum is basically a scaled-down version of EDS. EDS is hereditary and in the family, but my mobility isn’t that extreme, though it is documented.

This next one is one I had no idea until these last couple of days could be related to being on the spectrum (though not always), and that is migraines. Go figure. But I do suffer from the occasional migraine, not as major as some members of my family, but I do get them.

I might add I have the great fortune of being sensitive to pain meds and anesthesia, which is something people on the spectrum also often have. And anyone who knows me well knows this about me.

Just ask Konnie. The last time she called me right after I had taken a couple of extra-strength Tylenol, I told her right off I just took some. Her response was, “Okay, I’ll call you back in a couple of hours.”

Konnie has lived with this not just because I am her twin, but because she has a son with the same issue.

The next one I learned about, I’ve known I’ve had issues with for some years. My doctor noted some time ago that I have a susceptibility to Vertigo. Personally, I hate Vertigo. I hate it when the room starts spinning, and I’m not moving. It’s particularly disconcerting when it happens when my eyes are closed.

And when a virus goes around with symptoms including vertigo, I always seem to get it. On Monday, my doctor reiterated my susceptibility, and the virus is making its rounds around town again. Which tells you what most of my last couple of weeks have been like on that front. It also explains why the subject came up at my annual wellness exam.

But did my susceptibility have to be connected to being on the spectrum?

The next three on the list are: Dyspraxia (stumbling and bumping into objects, uncoordinated), Dyscalculia (trouble with math, counting on fingers, and trouble reading an analog clock), and Dysgraphia (frequent spelling errors, missing words, and difficulty organizing thoughts onto paper).

All three of these have longer definitions; I just wrote down the parts that mainly applied to me but not all.

People with Dyspraxia often bump into walls, door frames, and other people because they are so busy processing the rest of what is going on around them and in their active mind that they’ve lost track of the space around them. Ergo, I often put my hand on the wall while I’m walking down a hall. My hand can tell me where things are.

This can also include learning fine motor skills more slowly than normal; yeah, that’s me.

Dyscalculia is most evident in me by my inability to read an analog clock, but I still tend to count on my fingers too. And Konnie complains about my Dysgraphia frequently.

And that’s been the last couple of weeks. Learning how many of the issues I grew up having to deal with are part of me being on the spectrum.

Anyway, happy writing, everyone.

Of Star Trek and Christmas by Konnie Enos

I woke up yesterday (Tuesday, October 27) and picked up my phone, mostly to check the time. For some reason it opened on a news screen but that was quickly covered by something trying to sell me a subscription to a newspaper.

I do not remember which one it was, because I quickly closed the screen. What I do remember was the picture and name on that article I barely saw.

It was a picture of Walter Koenig, and his name was in the headline.

Well, having not read that article, and the subject being a star from the original Star Trek, I went searching for anything mentioning him.

It did not take long to find out that he had passed.

Of the cast of the original show only George Takei was the only one younger than Walter (by about 8 months). With his passing George Takei and William Shatner are the only original cast members still alive. Also, Shatner isn’t the oldest of that original cast, but he is the oldest one still alive. (Deforest Kelley, James Doohan, and Grace Lee Whitney, who played Janice Rand, were all older than Shatner.)

I could go on and on about the cast of the original Star Trek. Obviously, I’m a fan and have been since I was a young girl. I have a vague recollection of watching in prime time. But I have a clear memory of watching it after school everyday starting at the age of about 8.

Anyway, I was still absorbing the fact that Koenig had passed so recently (Sunday) when my daughter brought her little guy to me so he could sleep curled up to a warm body and she could do her regular morning tasks.

Upon being presented with another human being to share this news with I, of course, said, “Walter Koenig passed away.”

Folks, do you know what my daughter responded?

“I have no idea who that is.”

My own child had no clue who I was talking about. Though to her credit she did now who Chekov was. (Yes, I did explain that Walter Koenig played Chekov in the original show.)

Though it got me to thinking.

My husband barely remembers that the show existed and only because I am such a fan. My youngest is a Star Trek fan and is familiar with the later shows but he doesn’t have much knowledge of the actors, just the roles.

I know my youngest daughter isn’t a Star Trek fan even is she is familiar with the entire series. I also know my oldest son isn’t a Trek fan, he much prefers Star Wars.

Don’t worry dear Star Wars fans. I’ve been a fan of that series since I watched the very first released movie (part 4, I believe) in the theaters as a teenager back in 1977. So not nearly as long as I’ve been a Star Trek fan, but close enough.

I will not comment on the sci-fi show/movie preferences of my oldest two mostly because I’ve never known them to watch/read sci-fi.

So, there I was, wanting to share the information about Koenig passing and unable to commiserate with my spouse or children.

Of course, I called Bonnie, and of course, she heard the news before I even did.

On the plus side, she agreed my two oldest are not into sci-fi at all.

And we did get to talk for a few minutes but not very long. Apparently, I choose to call her at almost the same time her alarm went off letting her know she needed to get ready to go to her doctor’s appointment.

Which of course brought me to another issue.

None of these conversations lasted long enough, nor were interesting enough, to generate more details for my little story. I also did not meet our agreed upon word count for our posts. (Which is to say more than 2 double spaced pages.)

Which left me pondering what else I might be able to do a full post on instead of the events of yesterday morning.

The only other thing on my mind is the fact this is the very last week of October and believe it or not, I have not shopped for a single Christmas present for anybody yet. That’s right folks, I have not done my Christmas shopping for the year yet. In fact, I haven’t gotten birthday presents for my son-in-law or husband yet either. (Their birthdays are within the first 2 weeks after Christmas.)

Since my goal for finishing shopping by Thanksgiving, I’m way behind. And what reminded me of the fact that I’m late is my son and daughter were already discussing what needed to be done to put up our decorations.

Yes, I’m not ready for that either.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

 

Apologizes

 

Apparently Bonnie is not feeling well enough to type and I and barely waking up, so not enough time to figure out a post and write it up. Sorry.

Of Relative Experiences and Old Movies by Konnie Enos

Yesterday I was talking to my son about some movies. He has been finding and downloading movies so that we could watch them at home, and he asked me to suggest some of them. I was obviously suggesting movies I’m familiar with and wouldn’t mind seeing again.

He has a problem with the quality of those movies. One, for all of these older movies he mentioned that they did not have captioning capabilities. The other had something to do with the picture quality. I believe pixels were mentioned and the older films have fewer pixels than the newer ones he is more familiar with.

Anyway, while we were discussing these movies, he said that the year 2000 was twenty years ago.

I told him he was born after that year, and he is over 20 years old. Obviously. I didn’t understand his point.

He pointed out that all the movies I’d recommended were, well, ancient, and apparently that means the quality was lower. He went on to comment that one of those movies was so old that he really had to search for a digital copy and it wasn’t for sale anywhere on the internet.

In fact, most of the movies I suggested required quite an internet search simply because they are old. Folks, get this, most of the movies he was complaining about came out in the 1980s. The 80s! I was an adult when they came out.

Though I have to admit, one of them was even older than that.

In our discussion about movies that I’d like to watch again, I mentioned one that I know has a much more recent remake. One that came out in the late 90s. One I don’t happen to like. One of the things I don’t like about remakes, is they change some of the details, which the remake clearly did.

(This is also why I won’t watch Steve Martin’s versions of Cheaper by the Dozen or Father of the Bride. Particularly Cheaper by the Dozen. For that one he changed the entire story, including the number and gender of the kids. Making what was a true story, very fictional, which I really do not like.)

Anyway, I told my son I wasn’t going to watch the remake of The Parent Trap, so he had to really search for a digital version of it.

Now this is a movie I’ve known since I was a kid. I honestly don’t know the first time I watched it, but I was clearly in school, somewhere between 3^rd and 7^th grade. I’m choosing those years simply because of where I was living and the fact youth of that era had a great deal of freedom. That and I’m pretty sure the first time I saw it was in a theater.

Back then a local theater would offer a series of child friendly movies over the summer as matinees for an extremely reduced price. Some years you could get tickets for the entire season through your school, sometimes for free.

Our mother always took advantage of programs that would entertain us over the summer months that were either free, or very inexpensive. Like buying a family pass to the local swimming pool every single summer. She rarely went, but we would be at the pool most days.

So anyway, thanks to these free/reduced priced tickets, we were able to see a lot of movies in the theater growing up. And the kid friendly movies they were showing weren’t brand new. I’d say they were all around 10 to 20 years old.

So yeah, in the early 70s, The Parent Trap was around 10 years old. It is actually older than we are, well except our older sister affectionally known as Dictionary. She was several months old when it came out.

So, this whole discussion about the 2000 being over 20 years ago, was about these movies being made before the technology to put in captioning or use more pixel quality was available. And apparently anything, especially technology, over 20 years old is ancient.

I’d hate to point it out to my son again, but he’s over 20 years old and still born in this century.

I even watched Battle Beyond the Stars last night instead of working on this post. My son came in while I was watching it and asked me about the video quality.

Yes, it’s just as good as it ever was. His expectations are based on his experiences from this century. My expectations are based on my experiences from the 70s, roughly 30 years before he was born.

Anyway, I might watch The Parent Trap today, simply because I can.

Also, happy birthday to my youngest grandchild and her mother, my oldest child.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

 

Nothing New by Bonnie Le Hamilton

 

The hardest part about writing this post, or any post here, is that very little ever happens around here.

Konnie has a houseful of people, and honestly, something is happening at her place every day. Around here, nothing really happens most days.

Case in point, the most exciting thing that happened around here this last week was the semi-annual conference of our Church. No special travel arrangements, nothing to do except remember to open up my laptop at the right times to watch each session.

The only other thing I’ve done this week was spend several hours on Monday cutting and dicing a bunch of vegetables and making a big pot of vegetable soup.

Epic for me, ordinary for Konnie’s household. Though I admit, Konnie would be part of the team putting such a meal together. She would, in fact, be the one doing the chopping and dicing while her daughter actually does the cooking.

Here I had help with the major chore only as long as my aide was on the clock.

I had to finish the soup by myself. And as Konnie can attest, I found that extremely tiring.

What happened Tuesday?

Not much, still recovering from Monday.

Which would be another thing.

At Konnie’s house cooking happens several times a week, if not a day. At my house, the microwave gets more work than the stove does, and when I do cook something, most of the time it’s something for which I’ll have leftovers, so I can just microwave it the next time I eat it.

Yes, sometimes I do get on a kick where I have eggs for breakfast several days in a row, and I don’t fix enough for leftovers then, but any other time I’m cooking, I’m cooking for leftovers.

At Konnie’s house, they always cook from scratch, at my house I have a lot of freezer to microwave prepared foods and fresh fruits and vegetables, that way meals are quick and simple most days.

It’s just me, and I don’t have as many allergies as some members of Konnie’s family have. (They cook from scratch because it’s the only way to avoid some of my niece’s allergens, which are used way too much in commercial products. Bread is a big issue due to this.)

I have food allergies, but they are easy to avoid. Soy, and dairy are very hard to avoid unless you cook from scratch.

Which would be another reason way more cooking gets done at Konnie’s house than at mine.

Yeah, I’ve gotten lazy, but cooking for one is dang hard. Very few recipes are geared toward cooking for one. I have found a few “mug” recipes, but that’s about all. I have found a few more recipes geared toward cooking for two than any “mug” recipes, and frankly a lot of the mug recipes I’ve found call for foods I’m not supposed to have, by doctor’s orders.

Yeah, I have quite a few of those doctor’s orders that have nothing to do with allergies and everything to do with my health. Like, I can’t have soda, and I have to limit lemonade and juice of any kind (too much sugar). I also can’t have caffeine. So, I’m limited to water, milk, and herbal tea. And I have to limit the milk some (it is still carbohydrates), just not as much as juice and lemonade.

Things I can’t have include chocolate. No caffeine, and chocolate does have some caffeine. Dark chocolate is supposed to be good for everybody, but it still has caffeine in it.

That’s the problem with high blood pressure and congestive heart failure (CHF). Unfortunately, I also have diabetes, so I have to avoid sugar, except my body can’t tolerate (process) artificial sweeteners, so I can’t have the sugar-free treats intended for diabetics. I have a sweet treat, and it has to count toward my carb count for the day.

And frankly, fruits and some vegetables are carbs.

Oh, the joys of growing old.

By the way, Konnie is also counting carbs now, but she doesn’t have CHF, so she doesn’t have to cut chocolate out of her diet, and she likes dark chocolate. I’m not sure where she stands on soda, because that’s still a lot of sugar, but I do know her diet isn’t as limited as mine.

Of course, mine isn’t as limited as her daughter's, who lives at home.

We all have our own cross to bear.

And on top of that, my carpal tunnel is acting up. I’m guessing it has something to do with nearly three hours of chopping and dicing.

So, I’m cutting this short before my hands go completely numb, since I can’t type with my braces on.

Happy writing, everyone!

Of Overreactions and Simple Things by Konnie Enos

 

My husband is the sort of person who overreacts. If something stops working it is always the worst case scenario. Generally, whatever is going to cost us the most money or completely inconvenience us. Most often both.

The second any appliance stops working, my husband figures we’ll have to replace it because whatever it is, we won’t be able to repair it. This is his reaction even when we’ve manage to repair every single appliance that broke this year except the stove.

I’m talking dish washer, fridge, clothes washer and the dryer.

When we had the floods (two of them in less than a year) in the garage, he was positive it would cost us money we didn’t have and require us to focus all of our time and energy on the clean up and repair. We honestly didn’t have to do much at all because insurance covered most of the damage.

And when I had multiple doctors order tests or do biopsies on me to check for cancer, he assumed we would be dealing with cancer treatments. (Okay, to be fair, valid assumption because I have a lot of family members who’ve had several kinds of cancer. My dad and his mother had multiple kinds of cancer before bone cancer took both of them.)

Don’t worry, every last one of those tests came back clear. I do have health issues, but so far cancer isn’t one of them.

But the big one with my husband is our cars. Whenever something goes wrong with one of them it is always the most expensive repair and/or a harbinger of more catastrophic issues that would be expensive and eventually having to replace the car. None of which we can afford to do.

But I think the worst is when he invents issues that aren’t even there.

Case in point, our current car.

Almost from the time we got it he was finding reasons to take the car into the shop because something wasn’t working right.

He insisted the transmission was slipping and needed expensive repairs all while none of the rest of us had ever noticed the issue he described. He also insisted it’d be thousands of dollars to repair. The same goes for the car radio, which he is still complaining about and my daughter, who drives the car almost as much as he does, cannot replicate. And in both cases it was covered by the warranty.

Now yesterday, he insisted the car had a leak, like a major one, leaving a streak of oil from our driveway and up the road which he found because he turned around to get something he’d forgotten. Apparently, he’d checked where it was coming from and even the fluid levels under the hood and decided we had a break in our brake line and the car was completely out of brake fluid.

He refused to even drive it to the shop and instead opted to pay nearly $100 to have it towed in. He was also sure there was no warranty and it would cost us thousands of dollars. He was also absolutely positive we would be needing to do these costly repairs monthly now because the car is pushing a whopping 7 years old.

Do you know what the skilled and trained mechanics found?

Nothing!

They not only couldn’t find any sort of leak, but the brake fluid levels were also good. There was seriously nothing wrong with the car.

So, my dear husband skipped work and spent money we couldn’t really afford because he overreacted and invented issues that weren’t even there. Not only that but we spent an entire day without a car and wondering if we’d have it back in time for appointments and such we have Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Not to mention next week.

In comparison, I have found that it is rarely the worst case scenario when things go wrong. There is usually a quick, easy, and far less expensive fix.

If the car is sputtering to a dead stop the engine is not failing, it’s simply a clogged filter that needs replaced. (I’ve seen this one multiple times.) And just because doctors order tests to check for cancer does not mean it will be found. Something breaking isn’t the end of the world because a solution can be found without breaking the bank.

I’ve even told him it is not always the worst possible outcome, but he will inevitably forget this wisdom in the moment.

Then, of course, my brush goes missing and it’s the end of world. I just under react for the big things. I think that might be an autism trait.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.