journal

This is Legwork and Life, where I track the legwork and opportunities in my career as an autistic advocate, and also describe parts of my adult autistic life, including my perspectives on everyday problems and situations.

I managed to sleep in a whole one day or so without my spouse around, and after that I started suffering lower back pain.  It woke me up progressively earlier and earlier until I racked up a sleep deficit… which is about where I was when he got home.  I\’ve been tired ever since.  

I did manage to fix the lower back issues a day or two after Chris got home.  Turns out my bed was set too firmly, so my back wasn\’t getting enough support.  I\’m not really sure why that was an issue in the first place, but it was.  My back seems to go through periods where it prefers a firmer mattress, and then periods where it doesn\’t.  I have an adjustable bed, so this isn\’t the end of the world, but it is pretty annoying.  

I spent a lot of time while he was gone just cleaning the place up.  I have a better eye for detail than my spouse, as well as a higher need for cleanliness, so it can be bothersome to him when it comes to cleaning up the whole house.  Moving things like computer chairs around for a whole day isn\’t really an option when the person is going to want to sit in them in a few hours.  So I moved a lot of things and cleaned up various surfaces that don\’t normally get attention.  The end result, I hope, was a better environment for me and a relatively welcoming return home for him.  

This week seems to be devoted to breaking my addiction to sugar and building a buffer.  I\’m not actually sure it\’s wise to be trying for both of those at the same time, but it seems to be the direction I\’m heading so I\’m leaning into it.  I\’ve been running kind of ragged all week, but I\’m really, really tired of seeing my weight keep rising.  And I do have a week\’s worth of buffer, which I\’ll try to expand on as the week progresses.  

Last week I got my hair redone.  It\’s a lot darker than I\’d\’ve liked, because my friend tried something new and got new results.  The result is more \”dark and stormy night\” than \”royal blue,\” unfortunately.  I\’m sure it looks fine, it\’s just not what I was going for.  I\’ll live with it, though, and next time around she won\’t be quite as experimental.  In the meantime, I\’ll be seeing her this week for a biking excursion.  

It\’ll be good to see her, and also good to tie one of my exercise days to someone else, because I just haven\’t managed to work up the enthusiasm for biking this year.  Maybe it\’s too many rainy days?  I just haven\’t been able to get into a rhythm the way I did last year.  Anyway, it should be a good experience.  She likes seeing the flowers and greenery, and there\’s lots on my preferred biking trails.

This is Legwork and Life, where I track the legwork and opportunities in my career as an autistic advocate, and also describe parts of my adult autistic life, including my perspectives on everyday problems and situations.

The transplanted field garlic is still alive!  Though it\’s not entirely happy.  I have two pots, and have moved one to an even shadier location on the offchance that makes it happier.  It\’s been trying to perk up a little during the rainier weather, but yesterday it got sad again when there was more sunshine.  So I\’m not really sure what the deal is, but neither pot is dead yet.  So the experiment continues, and I have yet to harvest from either pot so they have the best chance of survival.  

I kind of wish I had a third test pot to try growing indoors, which… I guess nothing but the trip out to where they grow is stopping me. I technically already have a pot, it\’s just small.  So I\’d need to find a smaller clump of field garlic.  And then make sure I remember to water it.  …If I\’m being honest with myself, this third pot would probably die the fastest unless I make reminders for myself.  

It\’s funny because there aren\’t really guides to this sort of thing.  Allium vineale (field garlic, or crow garlic) is very definitely an invasive weed.  It\’s edible, like many invasive species (that\’s why it was brought here).  But people haven\’t tried to cultivate them for quite a while, so the Internet doesn\’t seem to have anything on the subject.  I\’m just trying to replicate the conditions I found them in, sans the competition with other plants for the soil. 

Related to foraging and wild plants, my friend has lent me her favorite foraging book!  So I\’m going to read that and try to get better at spotting other plants besides crow garlic, dandelions, and cattails.  Speaking of cattails, they\’ve just started to sprout, so we went to a local area and harvested a couple for practice.  The area is a drainage ditch, and cattails soak up heavy metals like nobody\’s business, so we won\’t be eating the sprouts.  Still, it was a cool experience. 

Going a bit further back in the week, it was my spouse\’s birthday.  My parents took us both out for dinner on the day of, and then on Saturday I\’d planned a day-on-the-town kind of excursion.  We played arcade games at Dave and Busters, ate lunch at a restaurant, saw a movie, went for ice cream (sorbet for him) afterwards, and then had dinner.  All this meant the vast majority of the day was spent celebrating him, which he seemed to enjoy. 

It was a fun for me too, but I stressed pretty hard coming up with the stops on the excursion, and made it extra difficult on myself by having everything be a surprise for him.  We share calendars, so I couldn\’t just plan the events in a nice, neat, easily-referenceable order.  Next year, I\’ll look into whether I can set events to private or hidden or something. 

Either way, it\’s been a good week, I guess. 

This is Legwork and Life, where I track the legwork and opportunities in my career as an autistic advocate, and also describe parts of my adult autistic life, including my perspectives on everyday problems and situations.

So, much is said about indoor air quality, and my doctor kind of figured that might be the issue.  She suggested various possible coping mechanisms, including upgrading the home furnace to use a HEPA filter.  She warned that would be expensive, but it\’s technically doable… it just requires a much stronger fan than any other type.

After trying the other things (allergen-resistant pillow-holder, washing the bedding with hot water, taking an extra NAC to boost my detoxification), my spouse decided to look into the furnace things.  While doing so, he happened to notice the furnace filter… which hadn\’t been changed since November 2017.  They\’re rated for 3 months, and we\’d been using the same basic model for 17 months.

Unsurprisingly, the filter was a gross mess.  So we trucked off (actually, he trucked while I staggered) to a home improvement store and bought the top of the line non-HEPA filter, figuring anything would be better than the old one.  Lo and behold, less than an hour later, I stopped being dizzy.  As of this writing, I haven\’t had a single bout of dizziness.

I\’m really, really hopeful this will affect the amount of dizziness I suffer in the summer months when the algae has grown thick and foul.  I still won\’t be able to open the windows, obviously, but last summer, I\’d still get dizzy and foggy-headed with the house shut tight.  With a properly functioning furnace filter, maybe that won\’t be the case.

In happier news, adventures in field garlic continues!

I seriously love the taste of field garlic, so I\’m going to be sorry when it dies back a bit in summer.  As such, I uprooted a couple nice bunches and brought them home with me.  They\’re now in pots.  They\’re not exactly happy campers yet, still all flopped over rather than supporting their own weight.  But I\’m hoping at least a few of them will perk up.  I can then simply chop the garlicky tops when I\’d like some for my butter.

I have a very bad track record with keeping plants alive, so the ones I took home might well just die.  If so, they\’re an invasive species and shouldn\’t be here anyway.  So it\’s not the end of the world.  I\’m hoping they\’ll live, though.  I\’ve potted them with their home soil and placed them in a spot that kind of emulates being on the edge of the treeline, where they naturally grow.  They\’ll get sun, but not abundantly.

We\’ll see, I guess.  It\’s been a few days since I snagged them and they\’re still green.  Maybe that\’s a promising sign?  

This is Legwork and Life, where I track the legwork and opportunities in my career as an autistic advocate, and also describe parts of my adult autistic life, including my perspectives on everyday problems and situations.

Wellp, Easter weekend happened.  I seem to have survived.  It wasn\’t like the weekend was awful, honestly.  It was just people-intensive and I went into everything already at low energy.  I feel kind of bad about that, honestly.  Had serious amounts of trouble smiling at people and cameras, and making any kind of small talk.  

I can\’t quite decide if it\’s a logical extension of the anhedonia I\’ve been suffering from for a couple weeks, or whether it\’s just low energy overall.  Anhedonia is the lack of interest and enjoyment in previously enjoyable activities, which can include food.  It\’s normally associated with depression and burnout.  I don\’t think I\’m extra depressed?  So maybe burnout, I guess.  I\’m trying to be good to myself and take lots of time for self-care, in case it\’s that.  

I guess maybe there\’s an argument for depression, actually.  My grandmother isn\’t doing super well.  It was her birthday a couple days ago, and we had a small party.  I\’m afraid she seemed rather tired through the whole thing, though, and wasn\’t super social.  Felt like she was making the best of it, anyway.  There were certainly nice things, like sparkling grape juice, chocolate cake, and each of her three children with birthday wishes (one via phone call, but still).  Some friends stopped by as well.  So it was a nice party.  I just felt sad about her reduced enjoyment of the party.

I did get highly distracted by a live bird habitat in the same room, though.  I spent some time Googling the types of birds, but didn\’t manage to ID every single one.  There was no placard explaining them, of course.

This is the whole thing.  The plaque just says the case was donated.

Diamond doves, from Australia.  Just two of these in the whole case.

Food is in the red bowl.

I think these are Society Finches, or Bangladesh Finches. They\’re fairly nondescript, though, so I\’m honestly not sure.

Another shot of the nests and greenery.

So I spent a good amount of time just watching these fly around.  For all that they\’re so accessible to look at, they seemed surprisingly ill-at-ease with being approached.  The calmest were the diamond doves, which is maybe not surprising since they\’re relatives with the common city pigeon.  The finches and finch-like birds kept a close eye on anyone approaching the case, though, and flew away from the immediate area of visitors.  

I couldn\’t identify every type of bird in the case, but I\’m pretty sure about the diamond doves and the orange-cheeked waxbills.  The society finches I\’m not sure about, since they\’re a created species and come in many many colors.  And there was one more type of finch-like bird in there that was basically just dark brown in color, and I had no idea how to look up what species it was.  

While doing all this research, I found a site that was pushing pet bird ownership, and proposed doves or finches as an acceptable alternative to owning a parrot or parrot-like bird.  Doves and finches aren\’t as handle-able or affectionate as parrots, but they\’re a great deal quieter in their vocalizations.  I\’m somewhat interested in the idea, as dove cooing can be relaxing, but it bears a lot more consideration before I go see about getting a pair of doves, a cage, and food.  

This is Legwork and Life, where I track the legwork and opportunities in my career as an autistic advocate, and also describe parts of my adult autistic life, including my perspectives on everyday problems and situations.

I mentioned last week that I\’d picked up a meditation app.  I\’m still working with that, but I\’m finding my posture is a very seriously off… and also that bad habits are very hard to break.  I hear there are things you can use that\’ll help monitor your posture, basically beeping at you when you get too far off a healthy position.  I dunno if I want to get one of those, but it\’d probably help, anyway.  

In other news, I seem to be basically recovered from whatever was making me ill.  It just sort of faded away until I didn\’t notice it any more.  I guess that\’s how that happens sometimes.  In the meantime, though, the weather was obnoxious and opted to pretend it was winter for a bit longer.  So I haven\’t been able to get out and bike again yet.  

Just yesterday, though, it warmed sufficiently for me to go foraging with my friend for the first time!  The haul: 

This is field garlic.  We didn\’t gather a whole lot, because it\’s wise to try just a bit of a new food before eating a ton of it.  But in this case, it\’s pretty much just like green onions, so I\’m not too worried.  I\’m more concerned that I won\’t finish it before it rots, honestly.  But I guess it\’s an invasive species in this area, so if it rots, it\’s not really the end of the world.  

I had kind of an interesting experience aside from going foraging yesterday, also.  I was developing the precursor to a tension headache due to stress and shoulder misalignment, and I happened to A) have peppermint oil around and B) remember my doctor insisted it was excellent for headaches.  So I put some on the back of my neck and a bit above my upper lip.  Basically as soon as I had done that, my headache stopped.  

It was so sudden, I was startled.  Though appreciative, obviously.  I looked it up later, and it seems you\’re supposed to mix the peppermint oil with coconut, olive, or some other less reactive oil before applying it to your skin.  Otherwise you can get rashes or have breathing difficulties or other things.  Still, considering I needed to run out the door shortly after that, it was a really nice find.  I have a couple bottles of peppermint essential oil, so the next time I get a tension headache, I guess I\’ll know what to try first.  Works way faster than regular painkillers, too.  

This is Legwork and Life, where I track the legwork and opportunities in my career as an autistic advocate, and also describe parts of my adult autistic life, including my perspectives on everyday problems and situations.

My bike is fixed!  I had sent it to the shop a couple weeks ago to get it tuned, because it needed tuning last year and I just… didn\’t.  It\’s somewhat inexcusable, but I was so busy using it that I just didn\’t want to go without it for the week or two it\’d take to have it worked on.  It was expensive to do, frustratingly.  So I\’ll probably look up some how-tos for bike care rather than have it professionally done every year.

Fortunately, it paid off.  The bike functions quite smoothly now, and I\’ve been out twice on it already.  Spring is only just beginning around here, and all the plants are pretty much dead still.  I did manage to locate a small sea of cattails, so my friend and I will definitely be back to that area.  I\’m excited for this whole foraging thing.  It\’ll combine exercise with food.  The latter is more my forte than the former, but y\’know, baby steps.

The very professional finger slightly over the lens.  I am such a good photographer.  XD

Also health-related, I picked up a new meditation app.  Remember I mentioned like a month ago about the deer-human theory of stress?  Where healthy creatures, like deer, are calm most of the time, and go into fight/flight when there\’s a threat, but shift back to calm once the situation is over?  And humans don\’t, because we\’ve created a world where you can\’t club all your problems to death.  Or at least, clubbing your debts to death wouldn\’t solve your problems for very long.  The idea with meditation was to retrain people to shift themselves back to calm, stepping back from the stress of their problems for a short time.

I\’ve tried meditation in the past.  I\’ve found it rather like trying to cage a hummingbird with a whisk.  I was somewhat hampered by the lack of instruction and free content, and grew discouraged with my lack of progress.  This particular app seems to incorporate social media with tons of free content.  So I\’ll give it a go.

Another issue with it is my sitting posture.  I have had awful posture basically my whole life.  So it\’ll be a goal this time around to find a way to sit such that I\’m comfortable, but my back doesn\’t hurt after a while.  I\’ve gotten around this in the past by simply lying on my bed.  Hard to get a stiff back if it\’s resting comfortably on a supportive sleeping surface.  Still, I\’d like to have better posture overall.  It\’d probably reduce my need for chiropractic work.

Lastly, I\’ve been sick for almost a week now.  I think it might\’ve started as \”oh boy, there\’s mold in the house again…\” but it proceeded to turn into some kind of sinus issue.  It\’s made me a bit more of a shut-in than is normal.  Several of my weekly activities include contact with elderly people, and I can\’t get past the thought of getting someone\’s grandparent sick.  Peoples\’ health can become fragile as they age, and what mildly inconveniences me could kill someone else.

Anyway, I haven\’t been a complete shut-in.  I\’ve done my grocery shopping, met with friends, gone to church, and attended a meetup for autistic adults.  So I think I\’m still doing okay.  I\’m sure such a limited schedule would kill some extroverted people, but I\’m highly introverted and still feel fairly satisfied with my social life.  So meh.  I\’m calling it good enough.  

This is Legwork and Life, where I track the legwork and opportunities in my career as an autistic advocate, and also describe parts of my adult autistic life, including my perspectives on everyday problems and situations.

So hey, remember last week\’s mention of a genetic test I did?  Turns out the results are bad news for my eating habits.  Though not new bad news, I guess.  In essence, I need to be avoiding processed foods like the plague, especially anything \”fortified.\”  This includes basically everything with white flour, because that is almost invariably fortified.  Stop and think about that for a moment.  How much of the grocery store just got put off-limits?  

I\’m really, seriously thinking about verbally narrating a trip through each aisle of the grocery store, wherein I mention each category of food and explain why I can\’t have it.  It\’d be a thoroughly depressing experience, but maybe educational?  Not sure.  Maybe it\’d be better done as a series of pictures, because I\’ve been underwhelmed by every experience I have of myself on TV or recorded audio.  

Anyway, it won\’t kill me if I eat these fortified foods, but it will start screwing with me the more I eat.  The offending chemical is \”folic acid,\” which you\’ll note is normally a healthy thing.  In fact, it\’s vitamin B-9.  Hence it\’s in fortified foods.  My particular system simply doesn\’t digest it properly, so it builds up in my system and does bad things.  The specific bad things vary by the person, but everything from digestive issues to fatigue to depression can result.  

This isn\’t really a new diet change, as I mentioned.  In general, it\’s wise to choose whole grains, fruit, and vegetables over TV dinners, mac\’n\’cheese/quick pastas, and other heat-and-eat options.  But of course, I\’m a stressed autistic person with depression and an anxiety disorder.  As such, I\’m going to want easy options for meals.  I make do somewhat with leftovers and frozen meals, but sometimes I just want something tasty, hot, and fresh.  Most restaurants are closed to me as well.  

Basically, my eating habits are kind of a mess and it\’s extra bad for my health compared to other people.  Yay…

In happier news, spring continues to advance.  The pond is entirely unfrozen now, which lets me see the wind rippling the water\’s surface.  Also, it rained and shredded up the algae-blooms that froze near the surface last year.  You could kind of see those in the heron picture last week.  So hopefully being outside will be a bit safer for a while yet.  Lawn care hasn\’t started, thankfully.  

I went on a walk Friday of last week, in lieu of my usual exercise.  It was nice, and I enjoyed the sunshine, but it also reminded me of why I prefer biking.  Having the uncertainty of social interaction with every person I pass is extremely uncomfortable.  I tried to be friendly to the two older dark-skinned ladies in ethnic garb out of general goodwill, but the awkwardness made me so anxious that I couldn\’t meet the eyes of the next three people I passed.  On a bike, I\’d simply summon a polite/friendly smile for each and be gone almost before they\’d even had time to register it.  My bike\’s in the shop, but hopefully tomorrow it\’ll be available for pickup.  

I did locate some cattails, though.  I have a friend who\’s interested in foraging, and apparently cattails are edible when they\’re young.  Also, you can harvest the pollen as flour.  So that\’s weird, but also kind of cool.  This is a smaller stand of them, but there\’s a much larger stand I didn\’t get a good picture of further down the way.  I\’m not sure how much pollen you can really get off a cattail brush, but it\’ll be interesting to see.  

This is Legwork and Life, where I track the legwork and opportunities in my career as an autistic advocate, and also describe parts of my adult autistic life, including my perspectives on everyday problems and situations.

So last week, I posted about how spring was coming.  The weather proceeded to reward me by snowing shortly thereafter.  Fortunately, little of it stuck, and spring seems to still be advancing.  I can\’t say I missed the birds chirping at 7am, when I\’m still trying to sleep, but I suppose I\’ll forgive them.  

The ducks arrived first, but this fellow only seems to have just returned.  He\’s the resident great blue heron, and my spouse and I sometimes see him fishing or sunning himself in our back yard.  I suppose we should name him, but in all honesty, we don\’t actually know if he\’s male or female.  So I suppose we could choose a gender-neutral name and call it good.  

With the improving weather, I threw open the house to air it out.  This did freshen the air, but also gave me a scratchy throat.  It\’s still a mite cold for the algae to be growing properly, so that makes me wonder if my problem isn\’t twofold.  It\’s worth bringing up to my doctor, anyway.  

I\’ve already got something else to bend her ear over, as it happens.  The very last of my blood tests came back, and it seems I have a couple genetic mutations that hinder the body\’s detoxification processes.  The test was called MTHFR, and it was annoyingly expensive and not covered by insurance.  But like every other test, they simply drew a vial of blood and sent it off to have Science done to it.  

We already kind of guessed I had detoxification issues, because I do best with a medium dosage of N-acetyl cysteine.  That\’s a detoxifier you can take orally.  In an emergency context, it can save you if you\’ve overdosed on Tylenol, but in smaller dosages it also supports the body\’s own detoxification systems.  Effectively, if I take two doses in a day, my mood is better.  I don\’t fully understand the science, but the results are clear.  

I\’m hoping that the more specific knowledge of the precise failure points in my genetics will help improve my treatment.  Rather than a broad treatment, more specific supplements might help prop up the failure point and improve my mood climate even further.  Not that I particularly want to be taking more pills, mind you.  But we might be able to replace some with others, which would be nice.  

In other news, I semi-accidentally got my brain stuck on music again.  I normally have some type of music playing in my head at all times, but this mental soundtrack is usually quite flexible and spans many genres and styles of music.  Sometimes, however, I get \”stuck\” and hear only a single song or album.  Some types of music are better at making my brain stuck than others.  This month\’s earworm-on-crack is Brave Enough, by Lindsey Stirling.  I really like the catchiness, the violin, and the dubstep all blended together.   I\’ll probably continue to be stuck on the album for another week or so, and then shed it and get back to business as usual.  

My forays into the world of podcasting continue.  At this point I have 11 podcasts followed, and a couple more in \”trials.\”  Most of them update once a week, or once every two weeks, so I don\’t anticipate having huge issues keeping current with them.  I\’m also finding my initial dismay with understanding podcasters to be somewhat overblown.  The vast majority of the podcasts I\’ve listened to were comprehensible.  Even the one run by a guy with cerebral palsy and a definite, though minimal, accent because of it.  (I call it an accent rather than a speech impediment because I have about as much trouble understanding it as I do any given foreign accent.)

Thus far, permanent residents in my podcast collection include: MBMBaM (the one that started this whole thing), Myths and Legends, Fictional, and Invisibilia.  Only the lattermost might show up in this blog, but I\’m hoping to find others to recommend to you at a later point.