alexafaie-asd - Tumblr blog

[alexafaie-asd]

Grilled cheese, better known here as the cheese toasty, gets made in machines like this:

And creates perfectly sealed triangles of lava hot cheese and other fillings of your choice.

Its way more common here for people to add other ingredients along with cheese on the inside, than to dip them in anything. They're a meal in their own right.

Wouldn't ever think of going to the trouble of making soup to go with them. And if making soup, I'd go for bread over toast triangles filled to the brim with cheese any day because you have the bread as a soup delivery device. Or at least I do, because in my mind if you have to use a spoon for your soup, then the bread quota has not been adequately met. And so filling said bread full of mouth scorching cheesy goodness makes it a poor quality soup delivery device. Its too busy containing cheese the temperature of a thousand suns.

POLL TIME

When eating a grilled cheese sandwich, do you dip it in ketchup? It's the norm where I live, but the besties are giving me raised eyebrow emoji faces about it

[alexafaie-asd]

I think I've just figured out the difference!

I still find it weird to give so much food it either goes to waste or you have to figure out a way to take it home to have again later because that's just an unwelcome hassle. You only want to pay for what is a sensible amount to eat.

But like the phrase "family dinner on a Friday night"... here people generally go out to restaurants for a fancy meal/special occasion. Its not a weekly regular evening meal with family here. If I hear "family dinner" that explicitly means homecooked food by family members, at a family member's house. But usually just means your own direct family. So like household members.

Going out for a meal isn't a family dinner here. Its like what you do for a birthday/anniversary or a meal of convenience when going on to somewhere else (like cinema, or in town shopping) where having extra boxes to carry becomes a burden not a welcome thing.

Note to vacationing non-Americans: while it’s true that America doesn’t always have the best food culture, the food in our restaurants is really not representative of what most of us eat at home.  The portions at Cheesecake Factory or IHOP are meant to be indulgent, not just “what Americans are used to.”

If you eat at a regular American household, during a regular meal where they’re not going out of their way to impress guests, you probably will not be served twelve pounds of chocolate-covered cream cheese.  Please bear this in mind before writing yet another “omg I can’t believe American food” post.

[alexafaie-asd]

The Autism “Accent”

Neurodivergent_lou

[alexafaie-asd]

Whose idea was it to have some many low pressure weather days in a row?

My body just can't with low pressure. I'm constantly dizzy. Excruciatingly fatigued too. And to make it worse its cold today which triggers my Raynaud's Syndrome so all my extremities are acting like I'm in the arctic & they don't mind falling off if it means my core stays warm.

[alexafaie-asd]

I don't know if this is close enough, but when kindle came out with the "paper" screen I tried one in store & it almost immediately gave me eyestrain/later a migraine. Noone else I was with seemed to have an issue, they liked it. But its basically a diffuser over LED bulbs.

To me it was sort of blurry/flickery like you could see the lights turning on & off. I have a similar issue with regular LED bulbs (worse with fluorescent).

Anyway looked into it more and how LED lights work is they very rapidly turn on and off. But its at a rate that is way above what most human eyes/brain can detect.

BUT, turns out that some people with an astigmatism (and seems to be more common in autistic people with astigmatism) can actually detect the flicker caused by the slight delay between the individual LEDs.

So whilst that doesn't really give you a solution, it could potentially explain why its happening.

If I'm having a very sensitive time of things, even screens I'm usually comfortable looking at are Bad™️.

Does anyone have experience with e-ink monitors/tablets/laptops? Do they hurt your eyes? Have you noticed headaches getting better with them?

After avoiding screens for the last week (with the exception of using my phone for brief intervals) I tried to do work at my computer today and within 20 minutes the pain in my head was debilitating.

Please don't suggest filters or blue light glasses. I’m already using all of those with my screen turned all the way down and looking at LED screens still causes me pain like staring directly into the sun. Again, I’m not asking for LED solutions, I’m asking if anyone has or likes their “paper” style monitor/tablet/laptop.

[alexafaie-asd]

Wait, what? Is the back of your head not meant to touch your spine when you tilt your head back?

Is that not normal range of motion?

Fucks sake, not another joint related weird I figured was just normal.

Uh hey so I have the same range of motion vis a vis back-of-skull-touches-spine as the example pics you posted (Katherine Jenkins's xrays). But I don't really have like,,, pain or joint problems. Is this amount of bendy cause for concern??? Or is it normal for some if there's no accompanying pain? Obvs tumblr is not substitute for Dr, but I figure I should at least check I'm not misunderstanding before I make a whole appointment about it.

You’re asking the person who was casually dislocating their shoulder to sleep on the empty socket for 30+ years so I’m really not the best person to ask.

Generally speaking if it’s not causing you issues and you don’t have any other symptoms, it’s probably more than likely fine and you’re just in a higher range of motion.

It’s an issue for someone like me because when we drive over potholes, my neck can’t support itself, it flexes abnormally and the nerves all get crunched to Hell by my cervical vertebrae and I get to see God for a moment until my soul comes back into my body.

[alexafaie-asd]

No, but my Mum still has our old VCR. And I've got all my old VHS tapes here with me now. We'll probably buy ourselves a new VCR (you can still get them if you look for them) when we move house & have space for another device. Because I want to watch/copy my childhood tapes before they age too much to work anymore. Lots of the remasters added/changed details from the films so I want the OG content.

saw this exact post but about DVDs by not-a-space-alien and felt the need to check something

[alexafaie-asd]

When my tablet is locked, the screen turns off. There's no image there at all.

When I press the button to turn the screen back on so I can swipe to unlock, its just a sheer overlay on top of my regular background & the icons are hidden.

[alexafaie-asd]

Would be great if more of those activities weren't boring or just uninteresting (different feels to me). Or otherwise unpleasant. Like meditation just triggers psychosis for me; I get exercise induced anxiety (don't get endorphins, I just get cortisol release).

And only thing playing video games does for me is help me avoid having to make decisions by holding my focus long enough its too late to make any. Never has it made them any easier. Perhaps it only helps there if you don't have decision paralysis issues? But I don't find pkaying video games makes decision making for regular things any easier at all. If anything it just highlights the disparity between how easy it is to do things in games vs real life. And I have played games since I was a young kid, I grew up on them. If this is what nearly 40 yrs of gaming has done for my ability to decide which one of two options for dinner I want, then I would hate to see what it would've been like if I hadn't played games growing up. Lol

Can't do audiobooks because they're so slow going and I just don't get any enjoyment out of trying to listen to them. The run time is usually at least twice as long as it would take me to read the book myself. I grew out of being read to the moment I could read quicker than my Mum could speak the words. So about age 4/5. I'll happily watch people talk whilst playing games for hours upon hours & be able to remain focused. But audiobooks to me are a form of tourture that I can't wrap my head around people enjoying. Like I know they do, but it makes no sense to me.

Though I'm not diagnosed with ADHD (yet) so am unmedicated so maybe with the correct levels of dopamine it would help to actually improve things more. Certainly the studies Dr Russell Barkely discussed in his lectures show that ADHD people rarely improve by much just by attempting to "train" the executive functions without the very necessary dopamine to allow the functions to actually happen. Whereas properly medicated its way easier to actually improve the executive functions as you have enough of tge neurotransmitters required which non-ADHD brains tend to produce enough of. There's also a massive delay in brain area maturation & link forming in ADHD brains meaning someone in their 30s has closer to a teenager level of parts of the brain (like prefrontal cortex) meaning that some of the improvements seen are likely just age related maturation rather than particular focussed efforts to improve those areas.

I don't remember exactly which of the 2 lectures of his discusses this in details, so here are both links in case people want to check them out. He's really interesting to listen to.

By the way, you can improve your executive function. You can literally build it like a muscle.

Yes, even if you're neurodivergent. I don't have ADHD, but it is allegedly a thing with ADHD as well. And I am autistic, and after a bunch of nerve damage (severe enough that I was basically housebound for 6 months), I had to completely rebuild my ability to get my brain to Do Things from what felt like nearly scratch.

This is specifically from ADDitude magazine, so written specifically for ADHD (and while focused in large part on kids, also definitely includes adults and adult activities):

Here's a link on this for autism (though as an editor wow did that title need an editor lol):

Resources on this aren't great because they're mainly aimed at neurotypical therapists or parents of neurdivergent children. There's worksheets you can do that help a lot too or thought work you can do to sort of build the neuro-infrastructure for tasks.

But a lot of the stuff is just like. fun. Pulling from both the first article and my own experience:

Play games or video games where you have to make a lot of decisions. Literally go make a ton of picrews or do online dress-up dolls if you like. It helped me.

Art, especially forms of art that require patience, planning ahead, or in contrast improvisation

Listening to longform storytelling without visuals, e.g. just listening regularly to audiobooks or narrative podcasts, etc.

Meditation

Martial arts

Sports in general

Board games like chess or Catan (I actually found a big list of what board games are good for building what executive functioning skills here)

Woodworking

Cooking

If you're bad at time management play games or video games with a bunch of timers

Things can be easier. You do not have to be stuck forever.

[alexafaie-asd]

I always had a very strong sense of fairness growing up and was observant enough to notice that many people were not treated fairly and that was Wrong™.

I also very early had Strong Opinions™ on the concept of money. I felt that either it should not exist at all (everything should be freely available to all) or if that wasn't an option, then money should be spent not hoarded. I may or may not have been slightly obsessed with The Tales of Robin Hood which we visited when it was newly opened (attraction based on the legend). It closed is 2009 because it couldn't afford its rent charged by the landlord Tescos (supermarket chain). Oh and guess what the location looks like now, 15 years on?

Yep, been empty pretty much ever since. Tesco put a small store in part of the building in 2011, but the shuttered bit? That was the old entrance & it covered either side. Upset me so much when I found out it closed.

Anyway back on topic... my Mum would tell me that if everything was free then people would simply hoard more than they needed of things since they could. And I was so perplexed by how she thought that wasn't already happening (billionaires) with things costing money. I didn't have all the words yet to fully explain my concepts, but little just-started-school aged me was adamant that there had to be a better way. That currently necessities costing anything was putting them out of financial reach of a lot of people and that uber rich people were already hoarding those resources. Making them free to all wouldn't necessarily change the behaviour of the billionaires, but it would help the most disadvantaged massively.

But nooooo.... my thoughts were too radical, too communist. It could never work for real. And I'd just become more conservative as I aged and learned how the world worked.

Well that didn't happen at all. I just learned better words for what I was trying to say. Oh and my Mum has actually become more left leaning rather than the conservative she was when younger.

So I win!

Tax the rich! Redistribute the wealth! Introduce Universal Basic Income! Love is love! Trans Rights! BLM! ACAB! etc. etc. etc.

"who radicalized you" ever since i was a child i wanted other people to be treated nicely and fairly because i didnt understand why theyd deserve otherwise and it fills me with disgust seeing how people treat their fellow human beings sometimes

[alexafaie-asd]

I've seen Pride & Prejudice because my Mum wanted to watch it whilst I was at home. Same for Mamma Mia! (I hated it).

Only one of these I've watched by choice is Venom.

And all the rest I have not seen.

I have seen some of The Mummy Returns though.

[alexafaie-asd]

Where the fuck has my copy of Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett gone?

I'm in the middle of reorganising my bookcase because the whole thing needed dusting & I had some newer books to put in it together with others by the same author so everything needed shifting.

I knew that I had duplicates of several of the Discworld books due to multiple people buying the same thing off my wishlist one year because they didn't get marked off properly, but I'm putting them in order & Reaper Man is missing.

I think I might've leant it to my step-dad at some point but I could've sworn I got it back. I must not have done.

I really hope it wasn't one they got rid of during the move because they decided not to keep most of their books. It was one of the ones with the original fully illustrated covers and the newer ones just look wrong when put together so I'm going to be so upset if that's what has happened to it.

Oh and if anyone wants a copy of Small Gods, Soul Music, The Fifth Elephant, The Truth, or Thief Of Time, then do let me know. Free if you pay postage because I can't afford to do that bit for free.

[alexafaie-asd]

What is the driest month on average where you live?

Have a look at the records for your local area weather (as local as possible, not just state/country for you Americans out there) and pick which month receives the least amount of rain on average.

If you want to you can add how many mm of rain that is in the comments. Plus anything else you'd like to add that's related.

For example, here the driest month on average is July at 56.4mm, but we're on day 7 of July & have already had 4 rain days totaling 23.9mm (though its currently still raining so that's going up & its due to rain tonight & tomorrow all day & night too). So like we've already had 42% of the month's average rainfall. In 7 days.

[alexafaie-asd]

Can't add comments, they've been turned off, but to those concerned about cooking in lemon juice not being enough for immunocompromised people because bacteria/parasites, technically you should avoid even cooked shellfish & seafood if that badly affected because heat doesn't always kill off the parasites. Similar to pork actually (most adults are just able to kill off what parasites remain post-cooking partly due to stomach acid, partly immune system).

But if you like the concept of this recipe, there's no reason why you can't do the marinade stage & then cook them and then leave them to cool, or get an ice bath ready & plunge the pan you cooked them in into the ice bath to rapidly chill them since the dish appears to be intended to be eaten cold. If you cook then coat in lemon juice it won't absorb as much flavour.

This dish isn't something I could ever eat myself as I'm allergic to both coriander & avocados (apparently the latter isn't meant to have an itchy texture). But thought I'd share a better work around for those who would like it but would prefer the prawns cooked.

[alexafaie-asd]

I'm in a weird position where noone can place my accent within the country. It confuses people because they are used to using accent as an indicator of socioeconomic class. Its hugely based on stereotypes and isn't ideal, but it happens.

I'm not entirely sure how I ended up with no descernable accent, and I have had plenty of people say its totally impossible, but not only do people within this country stop to ask me where my accent is from because they can't tell what it is, but people in other countries don't even guess the correct country. Americans presume Canada, Parisians assume Southern France, people in Southern France assume Spanish/French border. I've had Germans think I must be from the border, though whether its a border with France, Switzerland or Austria, varied.

I think it must be that my accent morphs enough to what the people around me are speaking (when my Grandpa used to spend 3 week holidays in America he'd come back sounding Californian) that its always close, but not close enough to be local so they guess somewhere that's far enough away that it could explain the accent.

But within the UK we have hundreds of strong localised accents. So "from here, but not quite here" makes it way more of a guessing game. I went to school in a different county to the one I lived in. Escaped the town accent, didn't develop the other county accent. My Uncle on my Mum's side had a specific city accent, but I never picked that up either. People can't even figure it out from the larger regions (like how we split things into North East/West, East/West Midlands, South East/West & London).

Most recent time I had someone stop me to ask, they said "your accent's not from _city we were in_, where's it from?" To which I had to answer that I didn't know, but I'd been living in this city for over 20yrs at this point so ???

But even given all that, the jokes regarding accents still hurt to hear because I know its a jab at socio-economic background. I know for one thing that people never assume I'd be from a poor background from my accent. I was always told to "talk properly" which was code for "don't sound poor". Though it did use to bug my Mum that I'd say "grass" & "bath" instead of "grarse" & "barth". And I find it slightly funny that my partner is from where they're from but does use "grarse" & "barth". They're from somewhere where its really not common to hear that pronunciation.

I got teased at school for sounding posh by kids who parents owned these massive houses & had land big enough for barns, horses & sspace for horse jumping equipment. Meanwhile my Mum & dad worked full time & when they eventually divorced, we were living Mum, myself & sibling on c.£16k a year. And Mum chose to use half of that to send me to a private school. You can imagine the teasing going to a private school whilst poor. Granted I'd have been bullied as an undiagnosed autistic kid if I'd gone to the local state school & would've likely dropped out. But yeah. It was "fun" to get bullied for sounding more posh than my peers who actually were rich. Like one of them was landed gentry rich. Meanwhile I couldn't bring in food one year for the harvest festival which you bring in food donations for & noone could understand how we didn't have spare food. We had what was open or needed for the next few meals. We didn't have tins of stuff we bought on a whim & didn't like because we could not afford to waste money on things like that. We bought the 3p tins of baked beans from ALDI. They shopped their entire shops at Marks & Spencers or Waitrose. We were not the same.

But my accent never ended up heavily localised 3p tins of beans accent, nor did it sound like the local area of the kids at school. It didn't end up close enough to RP to confuse it for that, but too far away from anything definitely not that.

why are british people always so mad when people make jokes about their accents. sorry you say yewchube. it’s funny though innit

[alexafaie-asd]

As soon as you get them, give them a bath in a mixture of white vinegar & water (reasonably heavy on the vinegar). Then after a few mins in the bath, tip them into a seive/colander and rinse them with cold water until they stop smelling like vinegar. Then dry on paper towels. Now refrigerate. They will now last longer because the vinegar will kill the mould spores on the surface of the fruit & it takes a while for it to reestabilsh.

You can do this with most fruit & veg. It all lasts waaaayyyy longer. Like peppers (bell peppers) will say they last a few days on the packet, but if you trim the stalks down as much as possible and then give them a vinegar bath, they can last 2 weeks in the fridge.

You still don't need to feel bad about eating the fruit super quickly. But if you wanted to get them to last longer (80g is a portion so 1 of your 5 a day) then that's how you can do it.

do NOT feel bad abt scarfing down a tub of raspberries. there is NO reason at all to ration them like other delicious treats bc they WILL mold as soon as theyre out of your line of sight

[alexafaie-asd]

This might be useful for people.

I had foot pain on stepping for a while, but it wasn't this, I'd just disclocated my ankle at the back & it was sending waves of pain when I stepped down (all the time, not just barefoot). Once I managed to pop it back into alignment properly, the pain stopped entirely. I hope I never do get it because the solution of stretching the calf seems impossible because its always been overly easy for me to do the calf stretch thingy and I never feel anything. It just makes my ankle & knee instability worse.

That ankle had ended up dislocated before after an accident (stepped off my bed whilst wearing tights onto a laminate floor & everything went crunch as I slipped/fell). But it got missed because it had trapped a tendon so when I saw a physio they just recommended stuff to try & help the tendon as they incorrectly thought it was just overly tight post injury. I couldn't fully flatten my foot to the floor for 2 years. Ended up accidentally fixing that one when I sat down in a chair with a metal bar between the front legs & had got my leg under it a bit as I was moving it in to sit at the table. All my weight went on the back of my ankle above the heel, there was a big popping/cracking sound and all the pain I'd been feeling constantly just eased up. And I could flatten my foot again rather than looking like I was wearing an invisible high heel shoe.

But thanks to the two years walking on a dislocated ankle (lol 🙃) it now dislocates in that direction way more easily. Like in my sleep easily. Though most of my joints can dislocate in my sleep so its not an incredibly high bar to reach.

But just putting another thing out there for my fellow EDS peeps to consider. Lots of info about left-right ankle dislocations, but front-back ones are considered rarer in the general population so its harder to find info online about it when just trying to go by symptoms. They look similar to plantar fasciitis.