My mom bought my brother a set of ear buds yesterday. He’d been wanting to borrow my mom’s ear buds but you know ‘ew’. So, she bought him a pair from Staples for about ten bucks. When she gave it to him, he took them and then wanted to know how much it cost.

Why? Because he wanted to know if he was worth it. If it cost too much money he didn’t want it. He didn’t believe that he was worth having a lot of money spent on him.  I don’t know how this happened to him, but if I ever meet the person who convinced him that he was worthless I’ll happily do horrid things to them.

A lot of times I see people walking around in their own little world, completely oblivious to everything around them. Enough that they get hurt walking into traffic or crashing their cars into things –or even trains! Apparently, if you do this with a cell phone or other device it’s okay but if you’re just doing it in your head, it’s not.

Clearly I need a better phone. That way I can go into my own little world and no one will realize that I’m autistic. I’ll be doing it the socially acceptable way!

Come on, you know you’ve thought it too.

I do exist! Honestly.

Though sometimes, I do seriously doubt that. Or at least I have trouble with reality. If my memory and what I see outside don’t match up, say because a building was painted a different color or they removed a tree, I suddenly go into a doubt spiral.

Was what I remember seeing true or was what I am seeing now always true? After all memory is fleeting and something I can’t hold in my hand while what I see is tangible and hard evidence. How do I know which is right?

I think it’s a matter of concrete-ness. The memories are abstract, the outside is not and yet I’m sure the memories are true. So which do I believe?

It makes my head hurt thinking about it.

Sometimes I wonder how true this is and how much of it is me being silly.

This is in relation to my previous post on what is normal. I noticed that when you get a bunch of autistic people together and let them socialized at will without any staff or leader or .. well when you let them socialize like normal people they will act normal using autistic social cues to communicate. When you toss in a non-autistic person into that mix, they will start acting autistic.

They will hang against the walls, be uncertain as to how to socially interact with people, be the odd ones out in conversations. All the traits that mark an autistic person in normal society is found in a non-autistic person in an autistic society.

Interesting, isn’t it?

One of the most annoying questions I get when I talk to some people about what it’s like to be autistic is “But what is normal?”

Generally speaking? If you have to ask such a question? You’re normal.

If you have to ask ‘but what is normal’ because you don’t see yourself as an outsider and have to find minor things to point out as making someone not normal? Then you are normal. You are apart of the majority society and there for you are normal.

I know you are trying to make me feel better.

But, you know what?

You’re normal.

I’m not. And your attempts are annoying me because you are trivializing my experience.

I heard on the radio today that they were going to be doing a  program about Autism and vaccinations.

There’s been a rise in the number of Whooping cough cases since there has been a rise in parents not vaccinating their kids for fear they’ll get autism. Also, according to the page there’s been a rise of measles in France, all diseases that are preventable with the vaccinations.

I will readily admit that there are a lot of problems with having autism and trying to raise a child with autism. It causes a lot of stress, effort, money and hundreds of other things.

The thing is…

It’s a lot harder to raise a child who died by a preventable disease.

I’ve done the autism panel circuit. The sitting on panels and talking to parents about life the universe and everything. During some of those conferences I would sell artwork. We printed up some cards using my pictures and would sell them at a buck a pop. People would buy them. Of course they would. I also had the originals out for people to look at.

One of them was an abstract piece I did while testing out some new watercolors. My mom liked the design so we put it on a card. It didn’t sell very well. Then we labeled the original “Autism”.

It sold very well.

People would look at it and try to decipher what about this random conglomeration of shapes made it “autism”.

Funny how that is, isn’t it?

Having absolutely no sense of time and when the future is going to be. Or at least when later is going to be, I completely rely on a schedule to know when “reality” is going to happen. My routine is my life. Without it I don’t know what’s going to happen because it doesn’t exist.

Currently work is throwing me for a work. My routine and schedule is going to be changing. When? I don’t know. My place of work is going to be changing. Where I’m going to be? I don’t know.

Basically I’m heading for the off ramp on the freeway and don’t know if I’ll end up in Denver or Dusseldorf.

Yes. That is anxiety provoking!

So this is a tiny origami frog on a penny. I was seeing how small I could make one. The other is frogs in the soup pot that I made for my family’s Passover Seder.

Those were a big hit. Everyone ended up playing with them. They also ended up giggling a lot because, you know, they were playing with frogs and they were adults. But, you know, FROGGIES.