There Will be ZERO Woo-Pitching

A flaming orange ball of gas

Even if I had a baby with whom to pitch it.

In fact, I would probably pitch them... into a separate room.

But not outside; I'm not a monster.

My neighbor is a weatherman. Weatherwoman? (No, wait...) Weatherperson? Ooo, I know: Weather Nerd! So I asked her what the temperature is in our neighborhood, as I was getting a variance of several degrees Fahrenheit, depending on which nearby weather station I was pinging. She didn't answer my question. She just sent me a link to her weather page. Stand up and take a bow - if you can stand to move at all - because this web page has awesome up-to-the-minute data. When I started writing this post, the temp was down to 98F (from a high of 101). Now it's something like 97.1 and falling. 

In any case, as with everything else in life, I cope with the stress of X - in this case, a completely unreasonable heatwave - by a) writing about it, and b) assigning music to it.

It is possible that this is a weird little neuro-quirk. The assigning-music part of it, anyway. Writing about it is a pretty widely accepted mainstream journaling mental health kind of coping mechanism thing.

So I spent all day yesterday being Extra Anxious™ about the upcoming heatwave. I think. At least I was simultaneously twitchy and wiped out, in that lovely state I call Wired and Tired, and there was no other immediately obvious reason for same. Just me fretting about the state of the planet, the state of my country, friends and family, etc. Anxiety is like that sometimes.

You know, the usual.

But this morning, I was fine. I suspect this is because the heatwave has arrived, and while it's fairly awful, the world did not immediately stop turning.

It is, however, still Too Darn Hot.

And with that tune in my head, I enlisted Liz to help me think up songs to associate with this 100F nonsense we're expecting for a couple more days at least. 

My first go-to, is, naturally, Star Trek. In this case, a Next Generation episode called The Inner Light, one of the best episodes in my opinion, and evidently many critics and fans think alike. It's no Darmok, but that's another post entirely; entire linguistics curricula have been written about that one. Season five had a lot of awesomeness. 

Anyway, back to The Inner Light - for those of you who did not click the link, it's an episode where the Enterprise comes across a probe, Picard collapses, and the rest of the episode is him living out the memories of a man's life on a planet that is nearing the end of its habitability due to heat.

One would think this would not be a comfort for me, but here we are. 

So... for the You Have Got To Be Joking - Some Still Think Climate Change is a Hoax playlist...

• The tin whistle tune from The Inner Light
• The aforementioned Too Darn Hot
• Sesame Street's Hace Calor - always a favorite
• Again Sesame Street, from the Fiesta! album - Hot Hot Hot
• Foreigner's Hot-Blooded

There are a few others but we're going to move on to the counteracting-the-heat playlist:

• It wouldn't be a proper playlist without Dr. Horrible and his Freeze Ray
• And more musical theater with Heathers: The Musical
• Foreigner's Cold as Ice, just for balance
• Ha! We found Sesame Street's Hace Frio

And now, guess what?

I feel better.

Neurotype is Not the Same as Mental Health

A cartoon of me, a chubby fair-skinned
brunette with grey, wearing a blue top,
cuffed jeans, and bunny slippers,
balancing on a ball while juggling three
balls of assorted colors. 

Well, that sounds very heavy, doesn't it? 

But here lately I've seen a number of people attempting to excuse famous (rich, white, and (usually) male) people for their racism or transphobia or general assholery on the grounds that they are autistic or traumatized and essentially saying "they can't help it, the poor dears; it's a mental health issue." 

I dunno - I'm autistic and ADHD and certainly traumatized, and I'm able to not be a raging jerk most of the time. My younger daughter is diagnosed as autistic - of the flavor they used to call Aspergers but don't anymore - and ADHD and while she is often a jerk, she's also an adolescent. And a traumatized one at that, given that her father died when she was eight and she's lived through this mess of a pandemic year boots on the ground, so to speak. Certain tech giant types or famous authors are grown adults who have the resources to insulate themselves from that stuff and should've learned better by now.

Trauma is a mental health issue.

Neurodiversity is not.

Oh, don't get me wrong, they're intertwined and hard to separate. But they are not the same thing. My mental health is pretty okay at the moment - so sayeth my therapist - and so when my mom asks me if I'm okay because I seem "a little agitated or blue," I don't immediately jump to the conclusion that I'm being attacked and get all defensive. Because my mental health isn't bad at the moment. And so when mom texted me with that question, I realized immediately that it was a "honey, your ADHD is acting up" kind of message, rather than a "what the hell are you thinking?!" kind of message.

Thanks, Mom.

And when my mom says my ADHD is acting up, it means I need to make a list. Of which she reminded me, because it's a coping strategy so I don't get even more overwhelmed and activate the mental health issue of anxiety overmuch. 

Now, I make lists all the time; as I said, it's a coping strategy. But they're usually pretty basic - like  Monday: Abby school, Lizzy school, mom work, garbage day, pay bills.

When my momma texts me with Concerns, I know I need to be more specific, with times as well as dates, more details as to what I'm doing when, etc. Especially right now, because the end of the school year is nigh for Liz, and Abby graduates high school (!) on Wednesday, and there are just SO MANY THINGS going on, most of which are not the usual round of Abby school, Lizzy school, mom work, garbage day, pay bills.

So yes, between all that up there, my late husband's birthday last week, Fathers' Day coming up for the same reason, etc., yes, I am a wee bit "agitated and blue."

But my mental health is good enough right now that I can override the executive dysfunction involved in making a more detailed list; I'm not depressed on top of the usual issues caused by ADHD and so forth. 

This does not mean, for instance, that I have the executive function required to properly clean my house from top to bottom (and there's another thing to thank Mom for - she's hosting Abby's tiny graduation party consisting of vaxxed relatives except the one kid too young for it), but I do have the executive function to put small housecleaning tasks on the list. Because - again - not depressed on top of All The Things going on right now.

(Evidently, I also lack the executive function to shut up when I've said the same thing three different ways in the last two paragraphs. I'll just leave this here to remind myself).

Anyway, back to the Neuro vs. Mental Health thing.

Being autistic - or any other number of neurodivergent quirks - does not automatically doom one to a life of unfeeling asshattery. It may be harder for autistics to "read" people, or to empathize with strangers, but that's not the same thing. And as with most stereotypes, the stereotype is super harmful, inaccurate to the vast majority of us, and often used to excuse abject asshattery, especially in people with power. 

I mean, if I started, say, repeatedly poking you in the arm with a sharp fingernail, would you excuse me with "she can't help it, poor thing," because I'm female? Widowed? Fat? White?

No, you probably wouldn't. Although you might try to ascertain if any of those things were affecting me in the moment, especially the widowed one. That's a mental health issue.

So why would you excuse my behavior because I'm autistic?

Or would you not bother to investigate at all - just brush me off as an asshole - because I'm not the head of a tech giant, with more money than God? Or a famous author or actor or celebrity?

Food for thought.

Now, please excuse me, while I go add "Costco run for the grad party with Mom" to 8:40 AM Monday to my list.