I have about half a post

But it’s late and I’m really tired. Tomorrow: another “things about my sexuality” post. Hopefully sometime soon after that: a post about similarities between the criteria for autism and PTSD (spoiler: I don’t think they’re really that similar.)

Glasses

When I was younger I always got glasses with really big, round lenses (to be clear, this was all long befor ethis was a cool, ironic-stylish thing to do) because I hated being unable to use my peripheral vision because my glasses didn’t cover it. But I also thought they looked bad, and they certainly didn’t look stylish according to the whatever of the time.

So in high school I gradually moved towards smaller, more rectangular lenses, and the ones I have now (and have had for like eight years or something, wow) are very cute on my face and all but the lenses are tiny. And I’ve 99% gotten used to them, but every so often I think about how much of my field of vision isn’t actually field of vision right now, and feel like I made a bad choice and I’m missing out.

Like. e.g. While my eyes are focused on these words I’m typing at about the midpoint of my laptop screen, in my peripheral vision my hands on the keyboard are outside my glasses. My hands can’t be in focus unless I turn my head.

If I have a book in my lap, I have to look down at it by moving my whole head to be able to read it. How much of my neck problems are because of my glasses? How much of my thing of always actually-turning-my-head instead of moving my eyes is … well, any other kind of habit,* and how much is because of my glasses?

 

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* When I’m driving, or crossing the street, I feel like the reason I do it is to make sure I’m Really looking left and right for oncoming cars.

Life update

Today I “took a day off” from captioning and Sparkly and I did a bunch of cleaning around the house, took out the trash, etc. And I cooked a nice-ish dinner. I also sent a couple of messages and finished a writing thing elsewhere. And Sparkly applied for some more jobs! Yay Sparkly!

Today’s weird thought:

My parents know that I have social anxiety, in the sense that they watched me grew up and saw how it affected me in various ways. But they don’t know in the sense that I’ve never actually used the words “social anxiety” in reference to myself when talking to them.

Today Sparkly went

to the first day of a class at eir synagogue. Ey came home very excited, with an armful of books, and an assignment to read and discuss with someone. Ey asked if I could be eir weekly-assigned-conversation partner and I’m very happy to do so. I see em occasionally post stuff about Judaism online, but clearly ey has done a lot more research into it than I’ve seen, even before starting this class, and I’m excited to learn more.

A small thing about my hearing: white noise

This has happened a few times: I’m walking outside down a moderately busy residential-ish street. My phone rings. I don’t hear the ringer at all, and it takes me several rings to notice the vibration because my phone is in my purse. The not-really-that-loud sounds of traffic completely obscured the sound of the ringer.

The sound of running water is also very other-sounds-obscuring, especially when the running water is right next to me and the other sounds are further away. If I’m in the kitchen or the bathroom using the sink, I can usually just barely hear someone speaking at normal volume in the rest of the house, but I can’t understand what they’re saying.

When Sparkly gets text messages

eir tablet receives them too, because they’re both apple devices. (At least, the tablet also receives them some of the time? Maybe only from other iPhones? IDK.)

Anyway, Sparkly is out and I’m texting em and this results in two interesting experiences:

1. Each time I send em a text, the tablet on the table next to me goes Ding!

2. Sometimes the tablet goes Ding! when I have not sent em a text, and so I know that the reason ey stopped replying to me is because someone else texted em.

Rainbows

Lately I’ve been thinking about beautiful sparkly shiny things aka visual stims, and how much more I used to be interested in them. TBH this was partly prompted by going to museum gift shops and seeing the big tubs of tumbled stones that I loved so much when I was younger.

I used to love shiny rocks and marbles and glass beads So Much, both for their colors and for their heavy, smooth feel. I also feel like I used to spend a lot more time just looking around at the outdoors, the sky, trees, etc. It seems strange to say that I don’t look at those things now or that I used to look at them more, but I think it does have a real basis, namely the difference between riding in a car and driving. Now that I’m walking some places and riding the bus to most others, I’ve been making a point of looking at the scenery more.

Also, I never thought of my parents’ house as having a particularly nice view, but it really did, at least in that it was up high on a hill facing west, so you could see a lot of sunset without trees or other buildings being in the way. Sparkly’s and my previous apartment had no views of anything in particular, really– even from the porch, most of what you could see was tree branches. The new place has huge windows and a lot of nice light, but the “view” is still of nearby treetops and buildings, although they’re a bit further away.