Returning to the Same Old Numb

Wah,     having to return from a restful paradise!   But oh so needed as I was having some physical issue I believe were related to stress.   Weekend before last Jeremy and I sans children went to Amicalola Falls and I was unable to keep up.  Seems like my legs just did not have the strength to go further than the  ½ mile climb up the trail.  Very discouraging for me.  I was told by the nurses at work it could have been from Diabetes, Fibromyalgia, Anemia, Varicose Veins etc.  Since I have all those conditions, it was no surprise. 

But honestly the weakness in my legs scared me…. I had never felt them just suddenly feel like there was no more left in them.

Since we went on this 4 day 3 night trip, I feel ever so much more rested. But the return to work was an absolute beast.  Torture could not have been more appealing…

 

 

Studying in the real world: AKA Perpetually Numb ( old or just clueless).

Being an autistic, being closeted, or out in the open has its stigmas.  You either explain your oddness or you lie low and hope that you aren’t singled out for being too weird. But secretly, you wish to be anonymous, no one taking notice of you; such as no one disturbing your work, or staring at how you walk or try to engage you in social banalities that you feel totally helpless in. I myself often don’t know how to appropriately react in social situations. I hate changes.  New things just make me dig my heels in not to like them.  If there ever was an ugly duckling, that would be me.   Despite my getting along well (My own way of keeping peace) I am the red headed step child in a world of dark haired children.  Or the ginger child as South Park would have you to believe.   So perhaps between being autie and being red headed has me singled out to just being odd period. Who knows, maybe I am just weird. To thyn own self be true.  So do I really need to change? God, the C word, change!  It causes angst even in the typing.

 

I guess I have a hard time convincing myself that I am really all that different.  After all, I am human.  Human beings have lots in common.  So why is it that we pick out the different ones?  We attack differences much like the weak and sick chick in the hen house.  To make ourselves seem to be strong and equal we mask our true selves daily, pushing aside our social bumbling and our angst that challenge our daily existence.  Is it really so difficult to accept that someone is awkward, or clumsy or shy? Is there any normal person that you know out there that doesn’t have at least one of these characteristics? Imagine being a student who won the lottery of all the characteristics…

 

All my life I have been studious.  I love reading books, using computers, learning my obsessive subjects.  I have great difficulty learning something I find boring such as math, or programming or other tedious subjects. As an artie autie rather than a technical one, I have always had much more of a grasp for the arts both language and manual. I love to analyze things, discover the reason why things are as they are and why something works.  I do tend to overanalyze though and sometimes don’t know where to stop.  I realize that I could probably learn programming, but I seem to have a mental block atm. The block is like a dull ache between the eyes, that nothing can penetrate. How can I release that block?  How can I make myself be open to liking new things? Perhaps it’s just stubbornness…Red heads are good for that. Auties are notorious for that.

 

 I want to go back to school once my kids are older.  But each year that passes, leaves me more and more technology impaired and current world events and history changes in the maps etc that I just don’t have a clue.  How does one go back to a school to relearn things you haven’t thought about in over 20 years?  Is it really that important?  Why is it so necessary to take core classes when they have nothing really to do with what you are majoring in?  Isn’t that what high school is for?  And why can’t you just take the classes necessary for the field you need?  Presuming that you passed high school, you should have a good basic grasp of math and English and Science.  I thought high school was to prepare you for college. I thought College was to give you a career.

 

These days, more and more studying is done online.  I think I could do that since now my children are a bit older and have learned not to be interrupting me every 5 minutes.  But then again, my son (my last baby) does love to mommy me to death so maybe later rather than sooner.  I guess what I am trying to say is that perhaps the online experience would avoid having to be in a classroom dealing with social awkwardness, the age gap dumbness and the physical disparity, especially being the older student at school..

So tired, and wish for numb to come

 

All things totaled, I had a very good weekend.  But it didn’t start out that way.  2 days before I left to go camping with Jeremy I was under the impression that we were going to one place, when Jeremy discovered another place to go so we went there.  Change for an autie is never a good thing and so I had my sights/heart set on one thing only to discover I had been mistaken.  Even though I know Jeremy has great taste in places, I grumbled because it wasn’t what I had in mind.  Its not that I don’t trust him or anything like that, but I had my mindset that we were going to the other place (which we still are in a few weeks) it just wasn’t this outing.

 

Also because I had a hard day at work and wasn’t able to come home and take my normal nap, I was extra grumpy.  Then came the 2 hour drive.  Grrrr It was hurry up, load the car, buckle in the kids, feed the cats and fish. It was fast becoming night, having to make stops in a grocery store in a strange mountainous place, with winding roads and few markers to indicate where we were going.  Even the GPS did not have this place on its map.

A long ride, we get there tired and hungry.  The wood is wet and dinner takes forever but finally we are fed and headed for our tents to bed.

 

Bedtime for me is usually an ordeal.  Because of my bursitis and other issues, sleeping on a firm to hard surface is not the greatest idea.  It was cold, and getting colder.  The ground was cold, the outside birds making strange loud calls.  Then I get to bed and discover that Jeremy decided that I didn’t need my pillow because  the car was full.  I went into full melt down..   The straw that broke the camel’s back at that point. We went round and round about it and I finally fell asleep only to wake a few hours later, shivering hard with the cold.  I couldn’t stop crying because a towel folded up is not a pillow.  I could not get warm and could not get comfortable because my pillow he left, also had a jacket, a long sleeve shirt, a hat for the cold and some other small things shoved into the case to save space. Not trying to be a spoiled brat I finally calmed enough to sleep. Tomorrow would be a new day.

 

I know Jeremy was looking forward to it .

 

The next morning, indeed things looked a lot brighter.  The sun came up very early, and although it was cold, Jeremy forecasted that it would warm up and be quite nice.  It was and my attitude improved.  Especially when Jeremy suggested we go to a store in the nearby town to pick up some things we needed and pillow for me. 

We drive down the mountain and in the next town we found a convenience gas store that had little to nothing in it we needed so we drove to the next nearest town and saw a familiar sign of Dollar General.  Fortuitous luck, we found they had much of their winter gear on sale.  In the South usually it stops being cold around Easter but this year we have had wild temperature swings.  Nature PMSing I guess.  I found a pillow and funnily enough, Jeremy also chose one. (Go figure he needed one too) and a couple of throw blankets and some hats and socks for the cold.

 

The place we were staying was absolutely stunning.  Nature being it’s very best.  The mountain was lovely and I got in a good climb, even for me despite my leg problems.  Ty my son struggled a couple of times; he gets tired and grumpy like me sometimes but once we got to the top he really liked the view. Jeremy got some lovely photos. We had some beautiful ribs and roasted corn on the cob and just really pigged out.  The kids got their first real opportunity to roast marshmallows on a campfire. Finally worn down, we went to bed to try out the new coverlet and pillows.

 

Unfortunately peaceful slumbering was over too quickly as some Spring Break teens sneaked into the camp around 1am and made so much noise it woke everyone up. Strangely enough they got quiet around 3am when some dogs ran through barking and howling, and around 6am they were packed and gone again.  Jeremy and I assumed the ranger kicked them out as he made the morning rounds.

 

After a fine breakfast we went up to a place where there was a lovely water fall.  We were kinda in a hurry because the weather was not going to hold out for the whole day. As we were climbing I finally just had to sit, and Jeremy was going to continue on with the kids. He came back rather quickly.  Seems one of the ledges he put his hand on, had a small brown eastern diamondback rattler on it. Quickly retreating, he came back to where I was waiting only to feel the first drops of rain, so we scurried back to the car. Slightly damp, out of breath but pleased, we headed to another spot.

 

On the drive back we noticed something very furry walking along the roadside in the ditch and at first we thought it was a cat, but it waddled rather than had the smooth gliding gait of a cat.  It had a flat back, a small pointed head, and a very bushy tail, almost looked like one of those foot stools with the fringe and the low four legs.  Turned out it was a very unusual marked skunk. Skunks in the wild are normally black with some white, this one was almost entirely white with some black spots near its bushy little tail.  It quickly ran into a rain culvert and we marveled at having seen one.  I had to wonder if this was once a pet turned out in the wild.  At least it would be in its natural habitat if it was.  I certainly was not going to investigate to see if it had been descented or not!!!

 

Jeremy drove us all the way home and it was a welcome sight.  We had a nice quick and easy dinner of roast chicken and potatoes, and bed was calling.  Who says I don’t need a pillow. (And my microfiber blanket and memory foam bed pad and my velvet comforter…)

Karma and payback

There are days when you are damned if you do, damned if you don’t. I mean, you get up in the morning… and the first foot out of bed finds where the cat has sicked up, you clean that up and then start getting ready for work and raspberry vinaigrette just happens to leak out of a covered bowl you are packing for your lunch onto your white corduroys...If I didn’t need to save time up for my surgery I would just call it day already and head back to bed. Through dreary sleepy eyes (I awoke from nightmares about something gray chasing me zigzagging me as though I was being hunted) I stumble through my morning routine. Get to work, the traffic is moving at less than a snails pace and though I live only about 10 – 15 minutes away it can take a good 45 to an hour to go less than 5 miles… not amused. 5 minutes after I am supposed to be at work I pull up, stepping out the door of the car, the clouds drop their mother load of rain on me and I look like a survivor of a bad wet T shirt contest. So much for parking near the door as to not get so wet! My boss is tiffed because she had to sit at my desk for the 5 minutes but she doesn’t say so, she just says glad you’re here (in a grumbley tone) and leaves off to her office. My head is pounding now, and I haven’t gotten through my first intake. Open a diet coke and as I go for the phone which has all five lines lit up, it tumbles. Spilling onto the khaki pants I changed into after the Raspberry Vinaigrette…. Diet coke at least doesn’t stain bright red and after damp cleaning faded back into the khaki. Clean up on aisle 5. Then I snort back a goodies powder which promptly dusts the front of my blouse. Deep breath; not a good sign of things to come. Found out I needed copies of almost every form I had so I went back to use the copier and put it on 50 each. So another co worker, who I don’t particularly care for came up and decided she would cancel what I was copying right in the middle of sequence. Then, she has the gall to call me at my desk to blame me that every time she needs to make copies, she can’t because I mess it up! Called the person to reset the machine, and low and behold, the error came because she tried to stop my copies!!! Feeling a little smug I trudge back to my desk with the partial copies and try to get a moment to go back and make more, funnily enough with no further incident. Coincidence? I don’t think so. Karma has its way again! Anyone ever tell you dealing with office personalities and politic could be fun? At least for me it is a best a daily challenge because I just don’t get why they do what they do. My personality isn’t evil; I haven’t got the claws to stab my coworkers in the back. I am not worried about what everyone else is doing. I just don’t have time and energy to be plotting the demise of my coworker’s career plans… I really can’t/don’t/won’t understand why they do. To me it just doesn’t make sense. I guess I am not like Stewie Griffith out to conquer the world. I really do not have subversive plans to undermine the office government or to steal my co worker’s job title. I think that may be why it annoys them. I am not under anyone else’s control and they hate that with a passion. I am also not into their clique, their race games, or their office co-op for snacks. My office is solitary, I don’t sit at their lunch table, I don’t offer to share my food unless it’s someone I really like. Nor do I really have to have much interaction or depend on them to do anything. I think that irritates them as well. There are really only a couple of people here that really get under my skin though. I guess it’s that way in any office. At least I recognize what’s going on some of the time. Motives though escape me. I can’t wrap my head around why people do some of the low down things they do? What could possibly benefit them? I just shake my head and move on because deep down, what they do doesn’t affect who I am and what I do. The evil people in this world, they don’t know me. They haven’t a clue who I am really down inside. But that’s where Karma comes back in, and will bite them in the butt. One day for some reason, they will need me for something. Then what will they do? Suck it up like I have to when they are being evil. I love to see their faces when they do too… It makes them just squirm and they get that sour I just ate an unripe persimmon look on their faces, (or is that just the way they look, anyway?) Things will come full circle…