Daylight Savings doesn't really save

I've always hated Daylight Savings time. I'm not big on change and I love when I have a regular steady schedule, so it's just not fun to change the time on the clock twice a year, just because someone somewhere thinks that it makes people use less energy. My dislike of change is not unusual amoung the autistic community.

Today, what is at the top of the news on Yahoo!? Why it's a story about how Daylight Savings doesn't save on energy costs. In fact not only does it not save, but more energy is used during Daylight Savings, then when the same area Standard Time during the summer. In Indiana, where they just recently started changing to Daylight Savings time, politicians had promised that changing would save consumers a total of about $7 million a year in energy costs. A recent study showed that the truth is more like spending an additional $8.6 million per year. Now admittedly that does average about $3.19 a year for each house, but think of the principle here. We've been told for decades that Daylight Savings was to SAVE money on energy.

This kind of news really is upsetting. I mean I could handle that I get messed up twice a year and go through tons of stress and many nights shorts lots and lots of sleep if it was for something good. But now I learn that not only is it not useful in any way, but they knew that it might not be working as advertised as far back as 1976. For some reason this is not surprising at all.

What a difference accomodations make

I have two failed attempts at college behind me. Both attempts, one in 1994-1995 and the other in 2000, were before I knew that I was autistic. Tests were difficult, and when I was taking someone outside of one of my special interests it was even more difficult to get through.

Now I'm trying again with accomodations. I get to take tests in a quiet room and I get extra time so I'm not rushed (worrying about how much time is left can really slow you down, even more so when you sometimes have to read a question several times to understand it.) This didn't slow me much in high school but, as my AP teachers noticed when I bombed my AP tests, sometimes it did.

Since I'm working full time, I'm going to school part time (only one class at a time.) As a parent and the main bread winning of the family I can't afford to cut back on hours at work or take an educational leave. This quarter I'm taking a math class (with many more in my future.) When I took math in 2000 I didn't do so well. But this time, at about halfway through, I'm holding at about 92%, which is much more in line with how I did in high school than 2000 was. This class doesn't count at all though, other than to get me into pre-calculus, which will then get me into the needed calculus.

And for some reason it's not a surprise that even though the disability center director tries to meet with the autistic students at my school regularly as a group there's been no success at getting us all together so far this quarter. Maybe we'll meet before the winter break, maybe not.

Over stimulation

Sometimes I feel sorry for my wife.

Yesterday we went shopping at a discount grocery store almost 20 miles from home. This was intended to be a major shop for a month's worth of groceries.

By the end of the shopping I was tired, run down and having a hard time finding a good safe stim that didn't drive her crazy. (I tried to click the clicker pen I had about half way through or so, but it got on her nerves quickly.)

Really it was a combination of several things. Stores seem to always have lots and lots of bright florescent lights. Even with sunglasses on I can only take a certain amount of time in that kind of environment, and we were there for over 4 hours. Those who've known me a long time know that I've always disliked bright light, always hid for as much of the daylight hours as I could get away with.

Add to this the stress of being around tons of people I don't know (the store was packed) and tons of physical discomfort from being on my feet that long (I have hypermobile joints, it hurts to be on my feet without a break for that long.) Put it all together and by the time we got home it took lots of effort to get through just putting away the perishable foods (the rest were left sitting on the kitchen floor to deal with later.)

And that was my Sunday. We got started late, so nothing that I'd planned or hoped to do got done. Well, atleast I got a good foot massage before bed.

Doing too much

It's so easy sometimes to do too much without taking a break to recharge.

Right now my wife and I are trying to fix up a second property that we own to sell it. It's a lot of hard work, and I try to help as much as I can, but I've found myself doing too much way too often.

See when you are autistic you need to take more breaks than others. But it often feels bad, because this is only the case when working on something that is not a special interest. And sometimes it can seem like the others (even those who know about autism) are resentful of your need to rest more often. So it's easy to end up in a total fog, unable to think.

It's pretty easy to tell when I'm doing too much. My language skills start to get poor. I'm slow to respond to requests and can't think for myself. Once dinner showed up and was set out for everyone to just grab some when they were hungry. I was sitting down by where the food was and didn't notice the food, or that I was hungry, until my wife told me to eat after the food was half gone.

Busy week

Last week was a busy one for me.

It was my son's last week of summer school. He was there not because he'd failed anything, but as a way of making the transistion to next year easier. The first half his old teacher was there, and the second half was lead by the teacher he'll have in the fall. So now his new teacher will not be a surprise, and he dislikes surprises more than I do.

Early in the week I finally met with someone from the Services for Students with Disabilites (or SSD) office. My past attempts at college have ended in failure, but they say that third time's the charm. But then this time I also have a diagnosis and with that access to accomodations. After the meeting I took my placement test again. This time was different than when I did it 7 years ago. I used one of the private testing rooms available in the SSD office. Not only was I in a quiet room (thankfully not elbow to elbow with a bunch of noisy fellow students) but I was able to turn the light off, ridding myself of the horrid abuse known as florescent lights. I placed at the max level for English, and did better than before on Math (but still not as high as I'd have wished.) Now all I need to do is get registered for class and start learning.

Last week ended with getting married. That may not appear to have much to do with autism, but it does. I got married. I, an autistic adult who has troubles in social situations, am now married. So for those of you who are parents of autistic boys, and those of you who are autistic men who are still single, IT CAN BE DONE. The hard part is finding someone who cares for you the way you are. Someone who will try to understand you, but not try to make you "normal" at the same time.

Everyone is different

No two people are exactly the same, and that goes for those of us that are autistic. It's something that sometimes I have to remember.

You see my son and I are not matching up on milestones as he's growing up. This is something that is hard to realize sometimes. He just finished the second grade and is 8 years old. When I was in the second grade and 8 years old I was reading anything I could get my hands on. I'd discovered a wonderful place called the Seattle Public Library and I'd found the fiction section.

Yet now I'm struggling to get my son to even try to read, and it's not easy he doesn't often want to sit still long enough to read even a couple of pages. I was reading the likes of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkein at his age and all he'll read if at all is Dr. Seuss (Green Eggs and Ham is his favorite, so at least there's something we have in common.)

He has been lucky though in one respect. Technology. When I was his age home computers where rare (I didn't know anyone with one when I was 8) and the only home video games were Atari 2400's. Just like me he is drawn to both, and was excelling at video games when he was 4 years old, even though he could not read the text telling him what to do. He's also learned how to work a computer very quickly, and has had an old Mac in his room for years.

Of course this is not the only differences between us, but they are amoung the biggest ones. I just hope that he discovers the true joy of reading, and he's been getting much better since I shared with him one of the tricks I used long ago, so maybe he'll catch up and if he catches up just half as fast as I dashed ahead in reading, he'll be ahead of his peers before too long.

Hugging

I recently learned that there is a whole series of unwritten rules about hugging, rules that in 35 years of life, everyone just assumed that I knew and was purposely not following. This of course was not the case, but one of the bad parts of being autistic is not knowing these unwritten rules and not being able to figure them out on your own.

For me a hug was a hug and all hugs were created equal. I had no understanding of the difference between the "I'm just being polite" hug and the "best friends" hug or even the "I barely know you" hug. To make things worse for me, I'm sensory seeking for touch, so I love to squeese and be squeesed, so being hugged has always been a good feeling.

My fiance gave me a quick tutorial on hugging a few weeks back. She'd realized, as she learned more about autism, that the reason I'd been hugging in what seemed to be a creepy way, was that I didn't know the rules. So now I have the added joy of having to think when someone hugs me, "what kind of hug is this?" and "where is the let go of me sign?" Of course there is an advantage for her, now she's the only one who gets hugs from me that are undistracted by thinking about the rules.