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Autism: A Love Story

Autism: A Love Story

It has been a long semester guys, the most writing-heavy one so far. And as you all can see, it has caused a huge disruption in my posting schedule. However, for my Feature Journalism class, I was given an opportunity to write a paper that ended up turning into a profile of my relationship with Jess, through the lens of autism. I’m really proud of the way it turned out, and my professor loved…

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7 Awesome Things About the Pupper Being 1

7 Awesome Things About the Pupper Being 1

Nothing can prepare you for a puppy. I’m an obsessive researcher, I thought I knew everything there was to know and that I was totally prepared to be a dog parent.

Let me admit right now how arrogantly wrong I was.

Winnie was 12 pounds of crazy. Potty training, teething, exercise, all of this was frustrating and exhausting, and on top of it all, the pupper didn’t even seem to like me that much.…

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The Pain Scale

“And can you rate your pain on a scale of 1-10?”

I don’t know about you, but for me, this scale is not useful AT ALL. I’ve gotta tell you that the yellow face looks more constipated than in pain, and the utter horrible face seems more like he’s upset that his flight got canceled and he’s going to have to eat at Chile’s.

I’ve been thinking about pain a lot recently, mostly because I’ve been…

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5 Things That Determine Your Professionalism (apparently)

5 Things That Determine Your Professionalism (apparently)

It seems to be a torturous right of passage to make college students go to a job fair. It is my worst nightmare to have to talk to people who could affect my education while they judge me as a person and as an employee from a 3-minute discussion.

I’ve found that for the most part, my classmates don’t really agree with me. The anxious kids are generally on my side, and sometimes other…

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Ready, Set, Goals!

For most of my life, “goals” has been a 4 letter word. Now, I am fully aware that “goals” has 5 letters, but it might as well have been “fuck” or “shit” or “twat-waffle” (which also doesn’t have 4 letters) because goal setting is not something that I have the ability to do.

I don’t know about you, but in every grade from middle school up, the school provided a planner, which we were just…

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6 ASL Signs For Autistic Folks

6 ASL Signs For Autistic Folks

Because Jess and I really need one more thing to do *sarcasm* we’re learning American Sign Language (ASL) together. When you think about it, it’s very practical. When I’m having a nonverbal moment, or hour, or day, we can communicate like usual. We also won’t know for a few years if my hearing loss will progress, so learning ASL now is ideal.

I will say right up front, that signing is definitely…

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5 Summer Reading Books

5 Summer Reading Books

One of the great things about living in the future is that you don’t ever have to leave the house if you don’t want to. I can log my summer reading books online, and I can even report my participation in the library’s reading challenges!

(the library systems here make summer reading more interesting by giving extra prizes by doing things like reading books by authors whose race, gender, or sexual…

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It’s The Little Things

It’s The Little Things

Theory of Mind is a weird thing. A couple of years ago, I didn’t even know it was a thing at all, and now I see it everywhere. This is mostly a good thing. Pre-autism diagnosis, I was…let’s call it ‘confused’ a lot. Mostly because people kept doing things that seemed completely irrational. It surprises a lot of people, but it never even occurred to me that other people might think or feel…

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10 Quotes From My Notebook

10 Quotes From My Notebook

I like to think of myself as a child of the digital age. I was born alongside the home computer and came of age with the internet. Damnit, I could type before I could write!

There’s no arguing though, I am old fashioned about some stuff, most of them involving reading and writing. I have a Kindle, and I love it, mostly because it means I can get library books from the couch in my PJs. Yet, if I…

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How Autism Fucked With My Mental Health

How Autism Fucked With My Mental Health

Announcement: I was in a really bad mood when I came up with this title. I’ve been turning an idea over in my head. I wanted to write about the intersection between autism and mental health and how it’s affected me personally. It sounded like a professional topic. And then I had to get pissed off and name it something petty.

Pettiness aside…

My therapist and I are taking this summer to do a bit…

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6 Essential Self Care Things

6 Essential Self Care Things

It seems as though I never think about doing self-care until it’s too late. Let me explain, at this point in my life I find the act of self-care pretty instinctual, and when I’m doing alright, I rarely have to think about it. It’s when my mood starts creeping downwards and my anxiety heckles raise, aka the exact time when I need self-care, I forget to do it.

Luckily, over the years I’ve developed…

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Why Am I Here?

Why Am I Here?

No seriously, do you know why I’m in the kitchen? Because I don’t.

I may joke about a lot about being old, it’s mostly a product of having spent the past few years mostly surrounded by people who are 5+ years younger than me. On one hand, this is great, I get to keep up with what’s new and popular, but on the other hand, people tend to assume that I’m about 22. It’s flattering (I think).

I know…

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5 Summer Hacks For Autistic Folks

5 Summer Hacks For Autistic Folks

Summer is here! The exclamation point is less about excitement and more about alarm. Don’t get me wrong, there are good things about summer, like smores and fresh berries and corn on the cob (how have I never noticed that my favorite parts of summer are food?) But at least to me, the downsides of summer outweigh the good stuff.

I’ve spent 30 summers on this earth so far, and I like to think that…

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Bored Equals Crabby

Jess visibly cringes every time I utter the words “I’m bored”. I’m not positive if it’s an autism thing or not, but being bored makes me downright crabby. And if I’m suffering, everyone ends up suffering (this makes me sound evil, I promise I’m not).

I’m out of school for the summer. I didn’t end up taking summer classes because a: there weren’t any that were super useful for my graduation plan,…

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7 Recent Pictures and 1 Video

7 Recent Pictures and 1 Video

In the era of smartphones that have better lenses from my old Nikon, I, like many other millennials have a phone jam packed full of pictures. And for me at least, there are usually like 5 shots that are almost the same but not quite.

Since I have approximately 1200 pictures on my person at any given time, I made an effort to go in periodically and clean the copies out. In doing this I get to…

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T. T. Testosterone

About a year ago (almost exactly), I made a big announcement here, do y’all remember?

If not, here’s a brief recap: I very excitedly revealed that because of the gender dysphoria that I had been experiencing, I was making the big decision to have Gender Affirming Surgery, aka Top Surgery. I think I said something like “holy shit, no more tits”. That sounds like something I would do, right?

Well,…

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5 things I learned from ACT therapy

5 things I learned from ACT therapy

Once upon a time, there was a human named Meesh, who didn’t know that ignoring their mental health could end in disaster. They hid their worsening issues from everyone, including themselves.

The details aren’t important, but needless to say, they ended up in a place that was so unstable, they couldn’t fix it themselves, and ended up in something called Higher Level Care, which involved spending…