Kevin's Watch

I'm tired. I spent the last three hours of work madly trying to help Mark get his packages mailed so that they arrive in time for valentine's day. He owns a custom t-shirt shop. I have about a hundred more to work on tomorrow...

I did manage to take the time after I clocked out to add some more decorations to our break room life size cardboard demonic Tony Stewart. I think Sorus will be suitably impressed by his 3D serpentine forked tongue, his devil horns, his pointed tail and his protruding fangs. They go nicely with the red slitted pupil eyes I gave him the other day.....

Rigel wrote:

Murrin wrote:I doubt any full blown disorders, but I do have some pretty bad social anxiety problems

Does anyone else here ever wonder if they're mildly autistic? I have that suspicion about myself from time to time...

Nah, but I have wondered if I was borderline sociopathic.

Anyway, 2nd Friday of the month. Our massage therapist will be in today, and lunch is on the boss.

--A

deer - how many inmates in the kitchen? average of 30 those two days. i have had more by myself. you just get used to it. keep focused on work...

i have only been terrified once at work. we were making sandwiches during a lockdown and someone mentioned being stabbed. our butcher (who was also a murderer) said quite plainly and flat "the worst thing about stabbing someone is that they just won't stop screaming."

now i have been threatened with attack twice that i actually thought the inmate would go through with it (once with a plastic shovel and once by an inmate that seemed twice my size) but nothing compares to the feeling of my blood turning to ice. never knew that really could happen.

rigel - when i was young i didn't speak for an entire year. my parents seemed unconcerned when i asked them about years later. but i was sent to see someone. this would have been age 3 or 4. had i been born nowadays i would have been labeled austistic. very poor social skills. piss poor balance. (i had to go to balance and speech therapy in grade school.) i stuttered and had a lisp that no one else ever seems or seemed to notice. i catch the stutter an dlisp when i get tired sometimes. add to that - i spoke french before english. but was made to stop with the french because it interfered with my english as late as kindergarten.

so maybe it all makes more sense to everyone now?

Hi everyone. Thanks for the well wishes. I will get through this, always do. Wayfriend, good idea about productive time, as long as I can figure out how to do it flat on my back. Wait..............I know something I can do flat on my back..........

Be well everyone.

lorin wrote:Wayfriend, good idea about productive time, as long as I can figure out how to do it flat on my back. Wait..............I know something I can do flat on my back..........

Be well everyone.

That's the spirit.

sgt.null wrote:rigel - when i was young i didn't speak for an entire year. my parents seemed unconcerned when i asked them about years later. but i was sent to see someone. this would have been age 3 or 4. had i been born nowadays i would have been labeled austistic. very poor social skills. piss poor balance. (i had to go to balance and speech therapy in grade school.) i stuttered and had a lisp that no one else ever seems or seemed to notice. i catch the stutter an dlisp when i get tired sometimes. add to that - i spoke french before english. but was made to stop with the french because it interfered with my english as late as kindergarten.

so maybe it all makes more sense to everyone now?

I actually had something similar. I started talking at three, then shut up for a year before talking again. Spent several years in speech therapy. Eventually I stopped going, not because I conquered my impediment (though that happened too), but because I got tired of the stigma of going to those classes - so I just stopped.

Never spoke another language until late teenage years, though. Of course, now I'd like to learn a few more, but I just don't have time at the moment... if I decide to pick up another skill this year, it'll be guitar (see the Rocksmith thread in the videogames forum).

Autism is not merely poor speech. People with Asperger's usually have no speech problems.

My son was diagnosed with high functioning autism last year. He's 5 now, and just starting to speak clearly. When he was around a year old, he would put two words together that would make sense; highly unusual at that age. Then he would regress. He would go back to babbling, but it was as if his babbling were a language. This went on for a couple of years until finally one day he literally started speaking in sentences out of the blue. I didn't start speaking until I was 3 years old, but I'm not autistic.

Also, my son is very sociable. But, it's how he approaches people. He won't say, "Hi!", he'll go up to someone and immediately start talking about train tracks, or train crossing lights. He will go on and on about this, no matter if the person is interested or not.

Which brings me to the point of his interests. When he was about 2 years old, I flew out to my mother's house. It was a 5-6 hour plane ride, and I entertained my son with a piece of string. He would put the string between his fingers and straighten the string out. For 2 consecutive hours he did this. He'd also rotate wheels on his cars repetitively, turn lights on and off repetitively, etc. He loves fans, train crossing lights, traffic lights, stop signs, Pac-Man, and Sonic. Those are pretty much his sole interests. He'll watch videos of train crossing lights for literally hours.

And, he flaps his hands when he gets excited. Throughout this journey, I've wondered myself if I'm a little autistic, but I think parts of us are. Everyone is different, even autistic people. But it's when all of these things are in one package, per se, that they label them as autistic.

I wouldn't change anything for the world, though. My son is an amazing kid, and I love him being autistic.

I have a friend whose daughter (who is now past 30) flaps her hands whenever she's stressed. Whether it's excitement or something less pleasant, she paces, flaps her hands, and mutters rapidly. That's in addition to pulling out her eyebrows and some other odd behaviors. But she's a perfectly nice person and can hold a conversation with you.

Autism awareness was pretty much in the Dark Ages back then. It took my friend forever to get the diagnosis for her -- the girl was probably about ten before they figured it out. Lots of other things were suggested first. For awhile they thought it was an X chromosome abnormality. People just didn't know back then.

Yay! they are letting me out of the hospital tomorrow!. The swelling went down and I can feel my foot. No decision about surgery yet but who cares. I am going home. I miss helldog

Thanks everyone for the nice messages.

lorin wrote:Yay! they are letting me out of the hospital tomorrow!.

aliantha wrote:I have a friend whose daughter (who is now past 30) flaps her hands whenever she's stressed. Whether it's excitement or something less pleasant, she paces, flaps her hands, and mutters rapidly.

Stimming.

Beorn still does this on occasion, or will make hissing noises if he can not get up and physically pace, such as when traveling. We have found it is much reduced when he takes a fairly large amount of Triple Omega gel caps daily.

lorin wrote:Yay! they are letting me out of the hospital tomorrow!.

Huzzah!

Lorin: Whoo hoo!

Menolly: Thanks! I'll pass along the info about the triple omega gelcaps to my friend. Altho I don't know how much input she has into her daughter's daily care any more -- I believe the young woman is living with a sibling now. (Friend is an LPN, so probably knows what the behavior is called -- it's just that *I* didn't know.)

Beorn is about 6'2", and weighs about 220, I think. He takes two Nature Made Triple Omega gel caps in the morning, and two at night. The effect is very slow and subtle; we wondered for the longest time if they did anything at all.

Then he spent two weeks with his grandfather where he wasn't reminded to take them at all. When we went to pick him up, stimming was back in full swing. Hissing, flapping, and pacing when watching stimulating t.v. shows. Needing to sit in the back of a movie theater for the same behavior so he was less of an annoyance to other patrons.

We reintroduced the Triple Omega, and within a month his stimming was back to manageable proportions. This was about six years ago, when he was 12; he even learned the importance of sticking to his nutritional supplement regimen from that experience.

Depending on the stature of your friend's daughter, she will probably need fewer gel caps. But, each person is an individual. I would recommend starting with one in the morning and one at night, and increase one in the morning before adding another one at night, if more than two is needed.

I had a busy day. Did a ton of shipping and stuff. Bit insane. I was feeling like OH HELLS YES I AM READY FOR MY WEEKEND! and yet exhausted and then I checked my email when I got home and I have an email requesting me for an interview at SF Nissan/Infinity. Now it's a matter of working out a time with them. I'm pretty excited.

Lorin: Great news! Mya will be so excited to see you. Who has been caring for her in your absence?

Jenn: Sounds like someone's "Car"ma is bearing fruit. We all know how you long to be back in the auto service business...but surely you will miss making a living in reproduction, even if only of paper?

sgt.null wrote:deer - how many inmates in the kitchen? average of 30 those two days. i have had more by myself. you just get used to it. keep focused on work...

i have only been terrified once at work. we were making sandwiches during a lockdown and someone mentioned being stabbed. our butcher (who was also a murderer) said quite plainly and flat "the worst thing about stabbing someone is that they just won't stop screaming."

now i have been threatened with attack twice that i actually thought the inmate would go through with it (once with a plastic shovel and once by an inmate that seemed twice my size) but nothing compares to the feeling of my blood turning to ice. never knew that really could happen.

THAT is one of the creepiest rl things I have ever heard.

And I'm glad I'm not the only one who wonders about my mental state way too often...

I think just about everyone wonders about their mental state. And there is still a lot we don't know about the human brain.

deer of the dawn wrote:THAT is one of the creepiest rl things I have ever heard.

try being there. lol - remember i am all that keeps them from all of you sometimes...

I'm home, home, home.

Lorin: Great news! Mya will be so excited to see you. Who has been caring for her in your absence?

A lady from the dog park took her for 5 days. 30 bucks a day.

Sorus wrote:I think just about everyone wonders about their mental state. And there is still a lot we don't know about the human brain.

I stopped wondering about my mental state. I just accept it is in a permanent state of flux. You know how they state to 'turn into a skid' to avoid loss of control........... I just keep turning into the skid ('course that keeps me constantly spinning in circles.)

Good advice, lorin. And congrats on getting back to your life!!

I turned in my letter of interest and CV for a different teaching position for next year. Whew!! Feel good about it, but kind of exhausted from the decision making (I am a real wuss when it comes to making decisions, getting better)-- and it's Monday morning, and it's the 100th day of school, and one of the kids' birthday parties later in the day, and staff meeting and a church meeting tonight... Sometimes it's not so much "one day at a time" as "one half-hour at a time".