music, links, stuff

[flamingsword]

Because of La Niña , it is going to be 84 degrees in a couple days here, at the END OF DECEMBER. I'm trying not to freak out, as that will do nothing productive.

Who wants a really good protest song? If you love it like I do, go thank sabotabby for her excellent musical taste.

Or maybe some gentle cottagecore vibes in classical music?

The book that I asked Mom for, for Yule is Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD. We'll see if I get anything like it, not that I'm fussed either way. I can afford my own stuff now that I have omfg $200 of yarn heading my way. I love my people, even the ones who don't give me money and gift certificates for yarn. Have I mentioned that knitting/crochet projects are how I'm not losing my shit right now? Yeah. Sanity: the gift that keeps on giving. I wish I could start a library of things for y'all so that we could just send each other helpful stuff that we aren't using, like bedside caddies and extra computer cord wrangling equipment. And yarn.

But I need to stop collecting more and more projects to do, as I am starting to get the too-many-tabs-open feeling continuously this week. Brains are weird.

Does anyone play Death Stranding? Is there any good fanart of it for sale? I want to get Ghost something nice for his birthday that he won't get for himself.

Also: a friend had a question - if you don't identify as neurodiverse, did you used to stand on chairs/sit upside down in chairs/sit on tables and counters/generally use furniture outside their standard uses when you were a kid? I don't honestly know whether that was a normal kid thing, but she implied that we just don't know any "normal" people. But is that statistically likely? I just don't know.

Comments

[conuly]

When we did the checklist for ADHD when the kids were little, we'd only intended for the older kid. The doctor observed the younger one flipping upside down on the patient bed and wordlessly handed us a second pair of checklists.

Later that night, as we filled them out, we came to "often has trouble sitting in chairs appropriately". We called E in to ask her about it, and she ran in, flipped herself over the back of the chair, and plopped down in it, no big. Yeah, in retrospect, it was obvious....

(My sister and I used to sit on the fridge when we were kids. She lacks a diagnosis! She... probably ought to have one.)

[flamingsword]

I don’t have a dx either, but … I’ve been thinking about getting one? I can’t really do stimulant meds, because I’m a stroke risk due to the complicated medical shit, but I think it might make me feel validated to have it, even if it is just a scrap of paper that says this wack brain shit is not my fault.

I dunno. It’s a lot of money for emotional validation.

[ex_flameandsong751]

I was fortunate enough to get evaluated when I was describing symptoms to a psychiatrist [I was at an outpatient clinic for depression/anxiety meds, which is what Medicaid was willing to pay for] and he started asking me about childhood stuff and he was like "you sound like a textbook case of inattentive ADD, let's take an evaluation quiz". I can't take stimulant meds either [I do self-medicate with caffeine] and I was already on disability so the dx was just one more thing in the list of "here's why this person can't function in a way that befits having a normal nine-to-five job" [some people with ADHD can, obviously, but] but it was, like you said, emotional validation. Suddenly a lot of stuff made SO MUCH more sense and all of the "stupid and lazy" comments I got from my mom and others, welp, that's executive dysfunction.

I mean, I think self-diagnosis is valid in this case - almost all AFAB people I know of a certain age who have it [and/or autism-spec] weren't diagnosed till adults if at all, it was absolutely underdiagnosed with Xer and millennial AFAB people in those days, and it's one of those "if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, walks like a duck" type things IMO - but if you really want the piece of paper it's very understandable and I hope you can find someone to dx without too much trouble or expense.

[flamingsword]

💜

[ex_flameandsong751]

I am neurodiverse and one of the reasons why I was always getting in trouble is because I used to sit "inappropriately", like I remember sitting on my desk in school, and at home I tended to sit on top of the couch with my legs dangling down to the couch pillow where your butt normally goes. My Catholic school had a punishment bench and I would sit upside down on that when I got sent there for various infractions and then the nuns would find me sitting upside down and I'd get in more trouble.

I sit on furniture "normally" now, mainly by virtue of being old and arthritic so my body isn't as adventurous with sitting positions as I was when I was young. But the weird sitting is something I totally did.

I was dx'ed with autism in the 1980s, and dx'ed with ADHD when I was 35 [it's amazing it wasn't caught sooner but I've noticed ADHD was underdiagnosed in AFAB people of my generation,and inattentive ADHD is underdiagnosed in general; they caught the autism because it was EXTREMELY OBVIOUS, I got called "Rain Man" in school].

Insomnia, ugh

[flamingsword]

I didn’t get called Rain Man, on me the bullies used an entirely different r-slur. I don’t think I still have a trigger there, but we’ll see I guess.

Re: Insomnia, ugh

[ex_flameandsong751]

If it's the r-word I'm thinking about, I got called that too. I was in special ed for a couple years after I got sent to Catholic school and I was still getting called "that kid from the r-word class" when I was twenty-one by co-workers I'd gone to elementary school with [I fucking hate small towns]. I hate that word somewhat less than I hate the sp-word slur though.

Re: Insomnia, ugh

[flamingsword]

I was in special ed for violent meltdowns and emotional dysregulation, but the rest of the school did not know that. Not do I care what their reasons were for discrimination; if people of less intelligence are considered less human in someone’s worldview, then I have a bone to pick with them. With extreme prejudice.

Re: Insomnia, ugh

[ex_flameandsong751]

Same. People being shitty to people with Down's/etc is one of those things that hits my berserk button.