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.