Posts Tagged by aspergers

So a few weeks ago I “liked” a page on facebook for “muffin tin meals” when I saw it on a friend’s status as it looked kind of fun for the kids, and I wanted some more info.

When I saw what they were doing with “muffin tin mondays” I decided I’d try it with the kids. I have muffin tins I NEVER use ( as you can see by the picture! lol) I liked the idea because it is derived from Bento boxes from Japanese traditions, and as an ADD person I find Asian culture’s streamline organized ways to be calming to my mind.

Anyway, in my usual ADD fashion I forgot about it for a week or so, and then in a rush one evening this week past, and from having literally NO clean plates in the house due to our current canoe project taking up a lot of my time, I needed a solution!

Once again a possible ADD disastrous supper due to no clean dishes, and little time to prepare anything decent, I became a Super ADD Mom, and got some major cool mom points for remembering the muffin tin idea.

I dug out some muffin tins and scoured the fridge for leftovers, and made a muffin tin meal for the kids. We had worked late on the canoe and everyone was tired and cranky, so I just threw in some fast bite foods to fill the tummies fast, and cut up their hot dogs in bite size manageable pieces with some raisins for the boy, and hummus for the girl.

THEY LOVED IT!

HOW SIMPLE an idea, but how BRILLIANT! A mom and former preschool teacher from California came up with muffin tin meals!

Now, the kids are asking for muffin tin meals at every supper, and if I can dish it in a muffin tin, I am!

The smaller sized sandwiches or hotdogs cut make it easier to eat, and they are HAPPY to have them cut for the muffin tin. If I suggested cutting a hot dog served on a plate in half to make it more manageable to hold they’d normally get really upset..possibly even major meltdowns, but in a muffin tin, they are happy to have it cut.

The girl HATES her foods touching each other, so this is PERFECT for her. Potatoes and corn and chicken all separated. Even gravy for dipping. She’s not whining about foods touching.

The hyper boy is making less mess and actually SITTING for supper!

In fact he was so excited for “our muffintin meal” for supper the other night he cleaned the WHOLE table off ( it was stacked with crafts, recycle, and the breakfast dishes)….and he worked really hard to wipe the table off! He was so Proud of himself! he said to me ” i’m being asponsible aren’t I mommy” with a big grin on his face.

Then in the evening after the kids were in bed. TMO and I were cutting beef up and I put the crock pot and slushie maker on the table for counter room, and in the morning the boy said ” AWWW man I JUST cleaned this WHOLE table and someone went and messed it ll up!”

I laughed so hard…nice role reversal. I cleared off the table and told them if they like muffin tin meals to keep the table and dining areas clean. Today they kept it clean again, and even put new place mats in place, and made a bouquet of fresh flowers from the garden.

So far… this is like a small miracle in my house! We are planning on shopping for some nicer looking colourful muffin tin type trays for the kids soon, or maybe making more traditional bento boxes.

The Mundane One has also said he’d like to eat that way too and spent some time on google looking at bento boxes.

Thanks @muffintinmom !! She and I connected on Twitter last night, and best part of all…. SHE’S a Super ADD Mom too!

If you want to check it out, follow @muffintinmom on twitter, or read her blog at www.muffintinmom.com

So planning things is helping me not have so much anxiety.

becoming more aware of my high anxiety times is helping me avoid total add/aspie meltdowns.

all my life I’ve been a sort of “fly by the seat of my pants and see where I land and deal” kind of person.I think one of the reasons I avoided it like the plague is because I fear needing to be very rigid and have strict planning to function. it’s almost like dealing with the chaos feeds my ADHD need for stimulation, and my aspie side of me is cringing, and having anxiety the whole time.

So planning things, and using a day planner/to do list has not been natural to me, nor has it it been easy to start as a habit.

I’ve finally come to some habits that are making things easier for me, though if I get interrupted/sidetracked in my routines, I forget things lose things etc.

Slowly I’m trying to fix the mess I’ve made of this place since our move and my mental burnout. Your looking at someone who has taken 11 years to remember hubby needs his bread toasted to be able to eat it ( oral sensory issues)

So, I have a day planner I write a week out in, in an overall plan, and then each day of the week after the general plan I write out info that is important as those days come, like who I called, recipes, my master to do list for the week, and next steps in those projects .. really it’s just a composition book, with blank pages, so I have no worries of needing to remain neat, or confined to a certain amount of space.  it IS my brain it holds everything.

and I have a calendar I write out meals on for a week or more to have a plan.

On Sundays I plan the weeks meals ( generally, sometimes they change)

This week, my menu plans are

Chicken taco crockpot w/home made Naan bread

Salmon Croquettes w/dill sauce

beef crock pot & gravy w/mashed potato

Veggie Lasagna

Pizza

Crock Pot Pork with orange and Videlia onions & rosemary rice.

1. 4 yo me saw my third term of SK marked as “behind her peers” and would be held back in SK if I didn’t show significant improvement
2. 4 year old me did not get along well with the other girls, i didn’t understand “playground soial rules” and the teacher was concerned for me

3. 4 year old me, was clumsy, and accident prone, and was no longer allowed un covered cups at snacktime…i remember the yelling

4. 4 yo me, had hearing tests because I appeared to have a hearing deficit, but my physical hearing tests came back fine

5. 4 yo me had to take speech therapy bcause I could not talk well…speech therapy taught me how to read lips, little did they know..

6. 4 yo me could not count to 15, i would count, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,12, 11,13,14,15 EVERYTIME, and was scolded for it ( i remember well)

7. 4 yo old me, refused to play building blocks with a partner, and wanted to be alone and would have temper tantrums if forced to play blocks

8. 4 yo me, could not sit still for reading circle, interrupted with questions, being “picky” on the teacher paraphrasing the storys she knew..

9. 4 yo me…hated chalk and paint on my hands, refused to do those activities. liked to play house with dolls, in the dress up area alone..

so, ya.. looking at this report card.. the signs are SO CLEAR…but not in a public school classroom in 1978

ohhhh my… i just witnessed in myself a near meltdown from sensory overload.

This naming it to claim it stuff is draining.

Now that we’ve made the correlation of the Aspergers traits I have, I’ve been working on becoming more aware of when i’m having what I call “An Aspie Moment”

Sensory overload is a thing.. too much noise, to much light, to many colors. I am a very visual person, I see things very vivid and i notice EVERYTHING…unless I’m really hyper focused on something, I see and take in everything around me.

In the last few weeks, it has been interesting basically evaluating myself to see what is bothersome, when do things get too overwhelming, and how I deal with them, so I can deal with them better.

Being tired. Being in pain…they make it harder for me to filter, and process everything I take in. It then makes my ADHD traits worse, and I’m essentially a bumblling idiot who can’t remember what you call that thing you put things in to stay cold in the kitchen.

When I get that way, I get flustered, anxious. I have a hard time finding words to speak and I go inward. I get clumsy and trip over my own feet. I make mistakes, I get scatterbrained more. My depth perception is off, i break glasses, burn dinner, etc..the list goes on and on.

I recognize that in the past…I’ve dealt with these things, and have been avoiding actual panic attacks, or temper tantrums I guess by becoming actually moody, bitchy, cranky, sometimes even reach a boiling over point to near, if not total rage.

When I’m moody, bitchy, cranky, no one wants to be around me, and it was I guess a backward, sub conscious thing that allowed me some alone time. It gave me the time I needed to recuperate and stop the panic inside, calm down, and find a way to regroup and move on, and handle the sensory overload better.

So, with this awareness, i’ve been trying not to be cranky and be a bitch when I notice these overwhelming feelings coning on, and I’ve been trying to find a way to cope better that is healthier for the relationships with the other people in my life.

Diverting the kids to go somewhere else away from me, using my ear phones, but still being physically present etc.

But today was too much…..I’ve been this overloaded before…many times… but by now I’d always have been bitchy, cranky at people’s needs, yelled at the kids for the smallest things like how they are chewing their cookie near me ( the sound is SOOO ANNOYING and LOUD i can hardly stand it). I’d been cranky with hubby, and then this would cause strife for a while. There would be bad feelings between everyone, and then I’d need to recoup, AND get over the bad feelings, and apologize for my behaviour.

Today I fought the urge to be bitchy…It is very hard to fight the tendancy to revert to a coping stragedy I’ve used for 35 years. I managed to not flip out, but it was replaced by the urge to physically run away…I’ usually run away to the computer, and that in an of itself causes issues, because I retreat to the computer as a way to shut out the stuff that is overloading me, and then I get less done, and hubby gets mad at me for “being addicted” to the computer.

I’ve been trying not to run to the computer for a mental escape as much lately, and have been using a timer to force myself to do things that need to be done, for a certain period of time, before I go take a break.

So I didn’t run to the computer….but I got a feeling of being out of control and stuck in a situation I could not get out of, and I started to have a panic attack. Of course I put myself in the situation with my limits I’m trying to pose on myself in small ways.

But I could not run away from what I was doing to retreat to the computer, or even run away outside, because I was cooking food for people, baking cookies, and listening to hubby talk about stuff he wanted to tell me.

I had a loud self talk in my head saying. “pay attention, pay attention, listen….don’t panic, just finish the cookies and then you can leave. hang on ok!? Don’t get mad at everyone.”

At some point, I had three people trying to tell me something all at once over each other, and I could feel the need to get mad and yell “go away from me now, you’re driving me nuts!” I answered in a snappy tone and had to take a breathe and appologize right away to not let the responses to my snapping, roll over into the same old song and dance we always end up doing when I get to feeling this way.

I don’t know how I got through finishing the things I was doing in the kitchen, but the second I was done, I HAD to go away.

I had a tight chest, heavy breathing, and a headache behind my eyes coming on from the stress, because I wasn’t reverting to just coping by getting mad.

I’m upstairs now, in the office where I usually gazelle. it’s quiet, it’s good.I txt messaged hubby to tell him where i was and why.

I started writing this to try and get it out as it is pouring out of my brain, and I’m trying to relax.

I’m still buzzing in my brain and my body feels like how it feels when you drink too much caffine in a short amount of time…jittery and jumpy. But as that slowly starts to die off, and the adrenaline from my little Aspie moment is spent, I can feel how spent of energy I am…

My brain is fried right now, and I feel like I just need to sleep for a little while. I feel guilty about that, and I’m not sure anyone here would let me sleep for a little while to get some equilibrium back.

I hate this feeling.. these are the times, when I would get mad and bitchy at everyone and say “maybe I just need to live alone on a mountain in a yurt with no one around me, cause I can’t take this crap anymore”

sigh…..

A blog of a woman with aspergers has been really insightful in allowing me to go, hey…there’s a name for that!?

It’s a good thing to be making the connections… but also…. it processing, and dealing with stuff, and THAT is tiring to.

I never made the connections before but this is why I have what I call “recoup days” after we’ve had a day out shopping, or driving far to the city etc.

I’m discovering the reasons behind elements of who I am, I never really gave a second thought to.

if you’re interested in reading it…

http://www.aspieteacher.com/2009/07/be-an-aspie/

thanks for letting me spill that

So those of you who follow both my husband and I on twitter will likely recall a recent back-and-forth from some issues going on right now, that all relate to my “neurodiversities” and my being upset with his sharing there some pretty deep issues that are affecting our marriage. Not “call the lawyer for divorce papers” issues, because I am not about to run away from this, but serious enough that it leads to extra stress and chaos in our day to day living.

So….ya.. here’s the deal. I’ve sort of covered the topic lightly before WAY back here in a blog post.  But I’ve only ever glossed over it and not took the idea seriously at all when doing the whole ” name it to claim it, claim it to change it” deal.

Now it is clear that the struggles we are having are because I am Autistic. High functioning, verbal, able to be independent in adulthood, above average intelligence autistic.

The above average intelligence is apparently a given because without it I’d be less functional in society if I didn’t have that going for me to have been able to learn and adjust on how to cope in life, and appear relatively “normal” from a glance, with all the things I have going against me, but from what my dr and husband tell me I’m somewhere between on or around  “superior to high average” intelligence.

But, I don’t test well due to dyslexia, and verbal auditory issues and such, so my IQ level has never been measured properly, and noone has seen a need to really find out.

So, if you looked Autism in the face ….would you  recognize it? well, you do now.

We’ve just made the connections. My Dr has alluded to “traits” in the last 4 years I’ve been seeing her, but she is more of a “let them figure it out for themselves” kind of Dr. who  makes suggestions, but doesn’t push.

So ya….a “label” doesn’t change who I am, or make me different from yesterday when we didn’t have a label, but currently I feel worthless knowing. I’ve known all along you can’t change brain wiring, but until now, I’ve been thinking I could sorta train the ADHD to stay in a small part of ym brain where it wouldbe more good than disruptive.

But now the struggles I have, over and over, all my life are clearer and easier to understand.

I basically have felt worthless all my life, and my existence has been trying to prove my worthiness. I feel like a fraud to my husband, and think if he had known when he got involved with me, he would have run away as fast as he could, and now 11 years and two kids and a physical disability later, he’s essentially trapped with a relatively functional retard.*

I feel like a failure at life due to the deep anxiety that is a constant in my life making basic day to day functioning very very difficult. I have panic attacks, can’t think, and then come here to the computer to calm down.

I feel mad because I’m only finding out all the issues i have NOW in my 30’s, and dealing with a lot of deep emotional crap from my life for EVERY event that probably occurred due to my brain wiring, and it being blamed on me for being stupid, but smart enough to know better,and therefore feeling bad, and guilty for doing stuff I had no explanation for.

They literally are replaying in my mind and the connection of shit that happened to me and being autistic without knowing it is being made. and I feel every emotion going….mad, sad, relief, confusion, etc.

I debated about sharing here…but I’m not gonna “hide it” I’ve always said I’m open and honest… I was told all my life “not rock the boat”, to “smile and forget about it”. I was always made to shut up and not share any negative emotions, and I just cannot be that way. I refuse to hide, or be shut up in my life. And so even if I am embarassed, or sad, or hurt or whatever, I need to remain true. If that gathers me critics, or loss of people I know/enjoy in my life then I’ll just have to deal with it.

I’ve always talked about my ADHD, my dyslexia, my learning disabilities… all this shit was stuff I never knew about me as a child. I grew up in an family of self medicating drinkers. I admit I have a hard time dealing with people in my life who medicate their lives heavily with alcohol. It is basically burying your head in the sand to avoid shit, and I refuse to avoid shit. It would be SOO much easier to just drink or be high all the time, but I don’t…because of basically paralysing fear of becoming a dysfunctional alcoholic, and causing my kids an adult life of grief trying to figure out their shit because I changed them with drinking.

I’ve done a LOT of healing and growing from my childhood, and the constant bullying I endured in school, being suicidal at 15 and making a lie up to not admit I’m suicidal, but to get me to a therapist anyway.

So, what I struggle with a lot now is brain wiring and natural chemistry makeup and trying to change the ingrained taught behaviours I was provided to “cope” and “appear normal” to society. I also am having to learn how to cope with over exposure to sensory things that  bother me, and not take it out on others. I never made the connections before, I was just bitchy…but not realizing it was due to too much noise, or people being clingy around me, or too much light.

Some days sound is so painful to my ears I need everyone to shut up, or I desire being alone, and therefore become VERY agitated. I don’t know how to show emotions properly in person, so though people get to know the real me on the internet, when they meet me in person, I appear odd, or aloof, and stand offish. This is because of the level of anxiety I have trying to hear conversations due to my CAPD , and understand people’s facial expressions etc, and then they think I am a fraud because I’m nothing like I am on the internet. I don’t understand non verbal communication and misread people all the time, and it drives me crazy. it’s taken me a long time to admit and realize at the same time that these are issues for me. Because of spending 35 years trying to prove I’m “normal”

Like most adults who discover such debilitating neurodiversities at this point in their lives. It has come to the front and has been recognized because I could cope better when I was single, or just a couple with no kids… or even when I was a couple with one child under 2…but now with two children with very similar neurodiversities, a husband who’s physical abilities are diminished, and worsening brain chemistry because I’m peri-menopausal, I’m basically a bumbling idiot, and a lot of day I can hardly pull off the things that everyone does in their normal day to day and do on autopilot.

Last night I took three hours to make a pizza, which I then promptly left in the oven ( had the sense to turn off the oven when the timer went) because I got pulled away trying to figure out the downed internet issue calling the ISP…. but let it get brown in the oven’s residual heat to make it like cardboard.

This seems “minor” but when you make these kinds of mistakes EVERY DAY….multiple times a day…leaving people hungry, waiting for you to fix your mistakes, living your life as a failure makes one feel pretty fucked up, useless, unwanted, and like I should just go away, because I can’t make it any better, so being gone could not make it any worse.

If there is a Hell it is being smart enough to know you’re retarded, so you cannot live simply and unaware of your shit, and be the “cute little retarded girl” with no anxiety or awareness that what you do/cannot do is outside the “norm”.

sorry if this is incoherent.. this took me 2 hours to write, through tears, yelling at a 5 year old spinning in the living room playing Luke Skywalker with a drumstick, and dealing with a 9 year old who STILL cannot change gears and is melting on the floor.

*Don’t get on my ass about calling myself a retard… retarded means.. slow or limited in intellectual or emotional development or academic progress.. look it up…literally I’m retarded. It takes me longer to “get it”. So, get over yourself if that offended you… and no, I’m not THAT “retarded” to not know that YOU think *I* should be offended by the word retarded, and that THAT really means you’re anal retentive. NOT  MY PROBLEM