Legwork and Life, week of 12/6/16

Posted on by Realistic Autistic
Eek, it\’s December.  I didn\’t even get a couple days to breathe before people started sending me emails and requests to do things, either. 

As you can tell, I didn\’t manage to finish the remaining section of my observations about my trip to the Dominican Republic.  That\’s going to end up as a bonus entry at some point soon, rather than one of my scheduled updates.  The reason…

I\’m not handling the transition back to the US well.  Chris wasn\’t even phased, as far as I can tell.   But I was.  The food was the first issue, I think.  The morning after we got back, we had brunch at a restaurant we like.  I had the offering that is both delicious and contains carrots and broccoli.  Like most restaurant offerings, it also sadly contained a high amount of processed sugar.  Despite it being a savory dish. 

I left the restaurant in an ill mood, and proceeded to be crabby for the next half week.  I\’m not sure I\’m much better today, but, as is the story of my life, that\’s just too bad.  Things to be done. 

I\’ve heard of this sort of thing before, and seen myself have poor physiological and psychological reactions to lots of sugar.  This is, however, the first time I\’d seen it on regular foods.  I hadn\’t really expected it, since the resort we were at tried to serve a lot of standard American foods.  Meat-heavy, almost no vegetables, but things like pizza, pasta, steak, chicken and turkey cuts, etc.  Pretty basic stuff, right?  Well, so what I recognized but didn\’t factor in, was that all their base ingredients are different.  They don\’t import, say, flour or sugar, from the US.  They use what they have there.  Which is perfectly edible, just not processed in the same way.  They\’re more likely to use brown sugar than processed white sugar.  And y\’know, not put it into literally everything, like in the US.  If it\’s a savory dish, it probably doesn\’t have sugar in it. 

The end result is food that is tasty, but doesn\’t taste exactly like you expect pizza or pasta or chicken to taste.  Which I stopped being disappointed about within the first week, because given the number of people they have to feed at any given time, I was impressed even some of the food was completely delicious.  Then I returned to the magical land where everything is chocked full of sugar forever, and now my system is having a hissy fit. 

So the food is the first transition.  The weather is the obvious second.  The area of the Dominican Republic we visited?  It\’s a very rare, chilly day when it gets below 77F.  I live in Michigan.  We routinely get down to the 20s and 10s in winter.  It\’s grey and cold for 3-6 months out of the year.  Specifically, starting about November.  Sometimes October.  Climate change has thrown a wrench in that pattern, so we may see sunshine here and there.  But fact remains, it was literally 50 degrees (F) colder than where we\’d left.  And, y\’know, completely grey.  Punta Cana wasn\’t a flawlessly sunny paradise, but it did have blue in the skies most days at times, even whilst pouring rain from being in proximity to a tropical storm.  And sunshine. 

By the way, it snowed several inches a couple days ago. 

So between the gut-issues and the weather, I\’m kinda dragging my feet and trying not to bite peoples\’ heads off.  I\’m out of buffer on my blog, so I need to get in gear regardless of how bad I feel, though.  Wish me luck!

Book Review: Autism Tomorrow

Posted on by Realistic Autistic
Autism Tomorrow: The Complete Guide to Help Your Child Thrive in the Real World

I should preface this review by noting that by now, I am very suspicious of anything that insists it\’s comprehensive or complete in regards to autism.  I\’ve gone over why the various factions in the autism world can\’t seem to stop arguing about autism, and have at least privately noted that if someone could manage to get them all to stop arguing and start listening, we could have a really decent conversation and maybe get a lot done.

That said, this book does take a good shot at covering many aspects of an autistic person\’s life.  Though admittedly, it seems more focused on the more heavily-affected, less blended section of the autistic population.  Most specifically, it seems focused on their parents.  I try to read such books with an open mind and an eye to figuring out ideas that might help me, but in this case, the book was almost entirely academic reading (ie: it had little personal bearing on my life).

The book is a compilation of essays, more or less, based on specific subjects in a person\’s life.  The authors seem to be, if not experts in their fields, at least notably thoughtful on their subjects.  Most of the contributors seemed to be parents or lettered people (ie: PHD, MA, MD, etc), rather than autistic people.  That\’s par for the course, particularly since this book is now six years old. They did include a piece from Temple Grandin, and another couple shorter pieces from an autistic man named Stephen Shore.

The subjects covered include things I\’ve never had to consider, such has how to deal with the police, firefighters, and hospitals.  There are sections for financial planning, for health issues, and for sex-related subjects (both sexuality and specifically boys\’ and girls\’ issues when dealing with autism). Because of the variety of authors, each section varied from indepth and helpful to \”here\’s stuff you should do.\”  The latter didn\’t seem terribly helpful, given the kinds of parents I tend to run across- harried, overworked, exhausted, and just trying to survive another day.

Still, at least as a spread of issues to know about and be aware of, it doesn\’t do too badly.  It skips the vaccine controversy almost entirely, along with most kinds of therapy I\’ve heard of for autism.  But education, finances, health and welfare, community, puberty, and communication are all covered.  For a book of less than 300 pages, that\’s impressive.

Read This Book If:

You\’re a parent of a child on the spectrum, particularly a younger child, and you want a grasp of a lot of the issues you\’ll face as they grow.  Each of the chapters in the book could easily have been its own book, and you\’ll want to consult more sources and your local experts on those subjects, but this is, at least, a place to start.