Some Aspie traits

People with Asperger’s Syndrome are occasionally called Aspies (Ahs pees), I’d long thought my intense reaction to ice cubes touching my teeth to be indicative of sensitive teeth, but while studying Asperger’s something that came up from time to time was intense reactions to or inability to cope with certain textures or sensations (or visual or auditory sensations). I think my aversion to ice cubes is due to this, that and the vibration of the cord of hair clippers on the left or right of my lower back. Bright light transitions, like oncoming headlights, or any high beams pointed at me or my mirrors just irritate me.

Coping with the clippers cord on my back took some time, I’ve always been ticklish, but this sensation was unbearable, what I found allowed my barber or my dad to be able to effectively cut my hair was gripping my throat quite firmly with my left hand, that sensation would distract the urge to jump out of the chair just enough to get the haircut. My dad eventually learned to try and avoid letting the cord touch me while the clippers were running. It never occurred to me to tell him not to let that happen, it seemed silly and unnecessary, and I couldn’t come up with the words to describe what I wanted (not to happen). Today this sensation still drives me batty but what I do now is cross both arms so I can squeeze both biceps with the opposing hands, again the left gets the stronger grip, the seatback of the barber’s chair’s with me as an adult makes this an incredibly brief experience, the barstool dad used and the kiddie seat in the barbershop exposed my back to the vibrations of cord of the running clippers for nearly the entire time.

Left-handed

Why the left hand? I don’t know, I’m a lefty turned ambidextrous, I use my left hand only to write, hold a fork, eat one handed while driving, as the primary hand in a two handed catch, poking things (like a touch screen), and occasionally to operate a pair of ambidextrous scissors. I use the right hand for everything else including operating ambidextrous scissors. When confronted with a right favored tool like all the computer mice I grew up with things curved such that they only work in the right hand I’ve adapted to feeling that’s right or normal. I’d probably be a lefty mouse user if the old Microsoft mice didn’t have that ridiculous lower curve on them, I occasionally mouse with my left hand now though, usually this will happen when I’ve filled my right hand (food or a book etc.) or when using a mouse on someone else’s computer that they’ve configured in lefty mode, or just set on that side of the desk.

Journal

I’ve kept journals (the diary type) before but like many Aspies I can fall into some deep depressions occasionally and these got really dark so I stopped. The very first one was abandoned because it was in an actual paper journal, and I’m not a hand written person, thanks to my poor and labored penmanship. (Stupid computer converted my British spelling of Laboured to US style.) There’s another common Aspie trait, we often pronounce or spell words the way we remember first encountering. Dr. Tony Attwood explains this is why many British and Australian Aspies speak with an American accent despite the rest of their family speaking with a local accent.

I do adopt a local accent to better fit in, and it does shift very quickly when I travel, I currently have a mild southern accent but I often get remarks asking where I’m from because it must not be very good. The person asking always says no it sounds southern just not local to where we happen to be. I drop it as quickly as I can when I can take on a northern or western accent as those are how I prefer to pronounce my words, but it takes a few days for the dialect to shift. I really enjoy British and Australian accents and phrases, I’ve never had the opportunity to see how those come out for me to see if they’d stick around for a bit when I finish traveling. This isn’t done to be fake or even on purpose; it’s something I don’t even realize I’m doing until someone points it out. (There’s another tangent for you :) )

Fitness

I have been hovering between 152-181 lbs.; bodyweight, 150.5 and 184 were both touched for a day each. My daily exercise preference has been to basically try to match calories burned to calories eaten; obviously more of the former is preferred. This morning I picked up a workout routine that I tried back in 2009, I came across it while putting some clothes up from winter (go figure that it’d be 38 degrees F this morning after hitting 90 earlier this month).

This trainer believes long workouts will never get done by normal people, and that loads of cardio are for girls and that you get resistant to it like a bad drug needing more and more to achieve the same effect.

So the scale this morning read 170.6 with 19% body fat and 55.5% body water content, which is good, it has been 171-174 and 18-22% fat, for the past two or so months, body water content is always 55.x-58%. I think the extremely stable water percentage is due to the fact that I weigh right out of the shower, but this really doesn’t concern me drinking fluids is not a problem, 170.x pounds has been seen occasionally.

This morning’s routine consisted of three sets of speed-jacks, the wall sit x3, and three sets of the bird dog. This worked up a mild sweat even though the air had a slight chill this morning. (The air inside as the air handler was idled thanks to the mild evening temperature.)

Food Log (updated throughout the day)

Today I was late leaving the house so I couldn’t have my bowl of oatmeal at home, and it was too late to make it at work without feeling like I was taking advantage of the situation. So I had an egg & cheese bagel at McDonald’s, reminding me why I always order this item without the “breakfast sauce”, that and once again setting me to wondering why they have such a hard time not burning the bagel. The bagel was washed down with a medium orange juice.

Lunch was Vegan Hot & Sour ramen with Cookies & Cream Ice cream (I’m a veggie not a vegan [yet anyway]) One bottle of water.

Update 18:09​: Snacked on a chocolate chip granola bar

Update 20:11: Taco Bell Taco Locos - sub beans for the beef, add ​tomatoes (i'm not a fan of sour cream particularly not on these tacos, with the waythey gob it on), Small Pepsi, and another chocolate chip granola bar, organic with dark chocolate this time.

Kacey Green
This post brought to you from deep within the thought-stream of Tangent.