Cars, Socks and Asperger's Syndrome

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Here is our new car. 2004 Kia Rio. And it's really a manual. Hand crank windows, no electric locks and manual transmission. I'm not complaining about the lack of electronic gadgets. Manual are much easier to fix if they go out. It's got good AC, lights that work, a place to store my driving glasses... It's a good car for us.
And here is the progress I made on my Bones sock yesterday. I had Big Foot aka Youngest Son try it on and it's not snug at all, so I'm sure it'll fit Seeley aka David Boreanaz.


Not much else happened yesterday. Little grocery shopping, a trip to the library, and that's about it...

From a discussion on one of Ravelry's forums concerning Autistic Spectrum Issues:

Poster: I’m just hoping that one day my daughter will have the skills and the courage to go out into the world, and to make a life of her own as you have.

I hope that she figures out coping strategies to help her deal with sensory overload and unpredictability. I can really do little more than just love her, when she is overwhelmed.

My response: I don’t feel I have a life. I spend most of my time figuring out how not to have to interact with people and the rest of the time terrified I will have to. I don’t think any amount of skills would have changed that. I really thought about it this morning, and it’s about a 50-50 chance no matter what I do, it’ll piss someone off. So now I try to do what doesn’t upset me.

Of course it’s taken 50+ years of trying to be normal for me to get this jaded. My kids and grandkids still try to do it “right” but they have more reserves of energy to do it. I hope it’ll be different for them, but I don’t think it will.

And something to remember. Doing the things you “make” your daughter do gets her to do them. It doesn’t change the anxiety they produce inside her. So each time she “has” to perform according to the standards set by someone other than herself, it produces anxiety within her. The anxiety may or may not create physical symptoms (such as stomach issues, etc.) but for sure it will create psychological issues of tension, fear, or a mental scraping of fingernails on the chalk board. It doesn’t change with time, either. I can make eye contact. But it always, always, always creates a gut wrenching anxiety within me.

I guess giving her the tools to “pass for normal” is an okay thing, but I just don’t know how good it is to insist she use them. I worry about this all the time with my kids and grands on the spectrum. It took me years and years to understand that everyone didn’t go through this agonizing anxiety every time they walked into the store, answered the phone, went to school. I thought everyone had a garbage disposal grinding inside when they had to interact. So I pushed the feelings down and down and down until I almost had a breakdown. Well, I suppose that some would say I did, because I walked out on my family and tried to start all over.

I’m not criticizing your beliefs. You, like every other parent, has to do what you think is best. And I don’t know that what you are doing isn’t the best. But I still come back to my original question for these kinds of forums:

Why do I have to change my behavior to make NTs comfortable? If your answer is, “Then less NTs would single you out to pick on you,” that is an untruth. It’s always a crap shoot whenever someone on the spectrum interacts with an NT. They still know we are “faking it”. Some are still nice, most aren’t. They can single someone that is different out of a huge crowd. I’ve had someone I’ve never seen before walk into a room full of people, make a bee line to me and start being abusive. I’ve seen kids on the playground single out my aspie kids or grands and start pushing them around.

Although it may make you more comfortable your child can “act normal” I can assure you it’s not making your child comfortable.

I have a son in a wheel chair and no matter how many tools we give him to walk, he’ll never be able to do. His disability is obvious and no one tries to make him pass for “normal.” My spectrum kids and grands and I have invisible disabilities and people are always trying to make us pass for normal. I don’t get it…..

I’m sure this post offended someone. I apologize in advance, but I know no other way to speak for the spectrum people that can’t speak for themselves. You have no idea how debilitating being forced to act “normal” is.

Another Pair and Ironman

I found a great crochet pattern for these muffatees. They are alot like Mariella's knit Wristerz. However, crochet being crochet, I made these in about two hours.

Youngest Son and I went to see Ironman yesterday. What a fantastic movie. I've always loved Robert Downey, Jr., and hoped that someday he'd overcome his addiction problems. He looked pretty darn good in this movie, so maybe..... He did perfect dead pan comedy which added so much to the script. The story was good (typical comic book stuff, but really well done), the actors multi dimensional, the special effects fantastic... Just a darn good way to spend a couple of hours. Oh and did I mention Robert Downey, Jr. looked sooooo good?

Well, it worked! Youngest Daughter's dad came through and helped her buy a car. I knew he couldn't sit by and not jump in to "fix it." It's a 2004 Kia Rio, electric blue, manual transmission and all the standard bells and whistles. It's a good thing, even though I'm not fond of the car payment thing. Youngest Daughter took the bus to take Eldest Granddaughter to school and riding it jarred her back so bad she could hardly walk for the rest of the day. Of course, with all the money being spent on car payments we can't afford for her to see the acupuncturist to get it fixed up.... It's a real Gift of the Magi!

Second Son stopped by yesterday to bring me a Mother's Day gift...a nice 5 x 7 of him and my grandson. I'm kinda sorry we won't need to borrow his car....it was nice have a few minutes every day to visit with him. He has such a busy life I really don't get to see him very often.

Ketchup

Today's the day I am supposed to get my tooth pulled. I have a funny feeling it's not gonna happen. When I made the appointment, the gal told me the only reason they wouldn't pull it is if they needed additional authorization from the insurance. I'm assuming they will, which means I'll go in, he'll look at it and say, "Yup, it needs to come out. We'll schedule it for next Wednesday." That's how my life goes. We'll see. If I'm really quiet for the next few days, you'll know I was wrong.

Got a couple of Charity Log Cabins in the mail yesterday. I am still working on the first one. I've decided, since we've lost so many members in our group, to do two six inch sections on each blanket to hurry things along. So I did the orange section on the right and am working on the green striped brown section on the top. I still have a couple of inches to do on that.


And before I checked the mail, I worked some more on my Bones socks. I have two more inches to add to the five already done before I start the heel. Haven't decided if I'm going to do a heel flap and gusset, or an afterthought heel. I just hate to break up the stripes on the patterning by changing the stitch count necessary for a heel flap type heel...

Well, Youngest Daughter's car still isn't working. The part we need is no longer manufactured. I did check out JunkYardDog.com and we've gotten two e-mails saying they have the used part. One place in Illinois, the other in Indiana. Phone calls will be made to see what we can find out. Otherwise it'll have to be junked. And then we are without a working car.

Been checking out bus schedules, and fortunately we can pretty easily take buses to work and to get Eldest Granddaughter to and from school. The worst part is that it extends Youngest Daughter's work day by a couple of hours. The bus gets to a bus stop about three blocks from her work either an hour before she needs to be there, or twelve minutes before she needs to be there. Getting YG to school is no biggie, but going home requires a walk of four blocks to safely cross the road with a light or take our chances and cross one block from the school. Things like grocery shopping is what is going to be no fun at all. Getting our five gallon water jugs filled once a week will require getting someone to take us to the Water Station. I'm sure we'll get it all figured out, and who knows maybe the car part is really available and it'll work.

Life is so much fun.

Same Old, Same Old...

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F didn't trim trees yesterday. He threw his back out....are you ready? Knitting! Well, actually sewing. He spent 10 hours bent over the table sewing his sweater together! Of course it's gorgeous! Pics will come in time. He had to redo some ribbing on a sleeve, so once that's done, we'll take pics.

We did visit and go out for lunch. Our favorite Chinese place. We've been going there for, gee, almost eight years now, I guess. Food's still as good as it was the first time.

I grabbed my chunky yarn as I went out the door and have finished the second muffatee. So that brings my total to 3.5 items to keep hands warm. Just 4.5 to go to meet the challenge.

Muffatees are really quick to make and certainly help keep hands warm. Think about making some to help us out if you're not "into" mittens. These muffatees are just a rectangular piece of st st with some ribbing at top and bottom. Then sewn up the side leaving an opening for the thumb. See, simple. They can be made in the round too, just knitting in rows for the thumb opening and rejoining to knit the top in the round.

We put our room air conditioners in last night. It's been in the 80s all week and the upstairs bedrooms are just warm enough to be uncomfortable in the evenings. Seems funny...I read through many blogs about their White Easter and already we need AC. I'll bet this summer's going to be really hot for us...again....

Did I tell you my car finally bit the dust? Transmission and CV Boot need to be replaced. $2000 is too much money to invest in that car. We're going to check one more mechanic to find out if that's an accurate figure. If it is, then we'll donate it to charity. So we're a one car family again, and I am off to take Youngest Daughter to work at 6:30 am and then Eldest Granddaughter to school at 8:00 am. Daughter gets a ride home from work at 4, but I have to pick up Granddaughter at 2:30 (1:30 on Wednesdays). All that's been added to my life is an extra trip out 3 or 4 mornings a week. Not too bad for the $120 plus we'll save on additional car insurance and gasoline.

Yesterday on the way home from lunch with F, I stopped to pick up some carpet cleaner. My car key has always been wonky. Made from some lightweight metal that easily twists. Well, apparently a small piece twisted off. Although the key would open the door, it wouldn't start the car. So Youngest Daughter, Youngest Granddaughter and Youngest Son had to hop on the bus to bring me the extra key. Then off to pick up Eldest Granddaughter and over to Ace Hardware to get new keys made. We now have three workable keys. Guess we won't have to worry about this again!

Mittens Done!

They are all finished! I wove the final ends in last night! Today when I drop Eldest Granddaughter off at school, I'll wait around and give the other three kids their mittens, too!

The Fire Mittens turned out really nice. For all the bad talk MicroSpun gets, it sure makes a nice finished product! These mittens are so soft!

In the never ending saga of my car and all it's little broken parts, the inside driver's door handle snapped off yesterday. Went to pull it to open the car and it snapped right off. I was stuck in the car at the Post Office. Well, that's not too bad, so I grab the phone as I'm pulling out and find out that our service had been terminated. Youngest Daughter forgot to pay the bill.... So, now I'm stuck in my car with no phone...oh, and Youngest Granddaughter is in the back seat.

I get home. I'm sitting in front of my house, stuck in my car, with my Youngest Son asleep upstairs and no way to wake him up. After a couple failed attempts, I manage to crawl over the center console into the passenger seat, open the door and get out.

Eventually the phone bill got paid and I called my Honey Do, F. We spent about five hours driving to different import car shops to no avail. No one had or could get a door handle. F took the door off the car, tried to fix the lock so we could get the lock linkage out of the way so the window could be opened again. No luck. So, eventually we fashioned a loop of wire out of a coat hanger that loops around the quarter inch bend in the handle mechanism. I can now use it open the door. Hey, at least it wasn't baling wire!

However the car still runs perfectly...it's just on it's way to be held together will bubble gum and band aids.

I need to get back to 2nd Sons replacement socks. I had knitted the foot too long so need to frog about an inch of that and start the toe. That sock should be finished today and well on the way to the second one by this time tomorrow.

Moving Right Along!

Moving Right Along!

Even with running around trying to get the car fixed, I managed to get quite a bit done on the 2nd Sock for 2nd Son! Just about eight more rounds before I start the heel. I'm excited! Felt like for so long I was knitting and not getting anywhere.

Found out that it's just not gonna happen getting a lock on my car doors. Can't find or order parts, and if the guy I talked to yesterday could manage to use a lock from a Honda (my Sterling is basically a Honda) it's gonna run close to $1000 for him to do it. Just a diagnostic was $250. And no guarantees. So....no locks on the car as it looks now. However, we did get to U-Haul and bought towing lights which F is going to wire up so I'll have rear lights!!!!!!! Disneyland here we come!

I found another house I want to live in: