Runs in the Family - WARNING: outdated jargon ahead

A gradient rainbow infinity symbol with white text reading,
"Why light it up blue... When we have a whole spectrum?"

I mean, of course it does. Anyone who trusts the science (or even basic logic) over Google University/Random Influencers/Autism (but not Autistic) Moms/Geriatric Addict Lawyers Cosplaying Doctors knows this. It's genetic, not the result of Tylenol use or vaccines or diet or (God help us) Wi-Fi signals.

In any case, I have here in my hot little hands what my youngest daughter calls "Mom's Half an Autism Diagnosis." I have reread it several times in the last four-plus decades, but this is the first time I've actually perused the accompanying documents, like the denial of special education services (or even assessments!) from the school district, and the letters between my parents and the school district.

It makes me so sad for thirteen-year-old Jenn.

And it still makes my mother both sad and furious about how Things Could Have Been Better if the district had accommodated any of my needs. Even now, 44 years later. Forty-four years later when both my kids went through this same school district with (ultimately, though it took some support for Lizzy) positive outcomes (my oldest graduated in 2021, even with the Covid BS, and my youngest graduates officially in about two-and-a-half weeks), and this school district is even my employer, albeit in a non-academic role.

To be absolutely fair, this testing and exchange of letters was in 1982, when if you had anything other than high support needs, what we now call Level 2 or 3 autism, or if you had massive intellectual disabilities concurrent with autism or ADHD, they didn't really have a way to do that in public schools, especially for girls, since most of them thought it was a boy thing. The laws regarding started changing in 1975, but those of us with "insufficient handicapping conditions" (ugh, what a phrase! But I warned you in the blog post title) fell through the cracks in a lot of ways until the 90s, when the Education for All Handicapped Children (EHA) act was renamed to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). There were contained classrooms, there was the alternative high school (but that was only for the "troublemakers" back then, and I wasn't hurting anyone or smoking or using drugs or getting pregnant or anything), and there was mainstream. 

Things are much, much better now. Which made my mom cry out of sheer relief when she attended Lizzy's IEPs with me after Laston's death. I tended to mist up as well, but I wasn't aware of all the ramifications when I was the student in question, so it didn't hit me quite as hard when it was my own child under discussion. And (as stated), it's a lot better now.

But the fact that they had a letter from a child psychologist saying I needed assessment and they refused to assess... well, to me that's just a dick move. I'm sure it had to do with money - everything in our society seems to - but how can you be in a special education profession and just basically say, "too bad, so sad, we think she's just being a drama queen because she's a teenager and her parents are divorced?"

So the psychologist said I had some learning issues, the schools refused to test me based on my grades (pretty solid B student through 7th grade, which they found "interesting" in that they thought I just acted out then, instead of coming to the logical (and true) conclusion that I hit algebra and my brain came to a screeching halt), so my dad took me to get a full neuropsychological workup. The results of this were basically that I was intelligent but hyperactive with learning disabilities, especially in sequencing and in more abstract math. My dad sent a letter to the district with these results (the letter is a thing of beauty; between this letter and my mom's ability to write super polite notes in which she (very sweetly) tells you to stick it, you can tell that I come by my writing skill honestly), and they agreed to assess me... but I don't really remember what happened after that, except that I had a tutor for math.

I have said before that my diagnosis is something like, "hyperactive with learning disabilities and sequencing deficits" but that if you put mine (from 1982) together with my daughter's "ASD Level one and ADHD Inattentive Type" (from 2017), they are close to identical, save for updated language.

Anyway, the whole point of this post is to show that things have improved, are improving... even though in the frustrations of the moment that's kind of hard to see.

Because that's an important thing to remember... especially as we're all close to burnout near the end of any given school year.

We're Trippin'

A bridge with a sign that
says Entering Oregon

Not that kind of trippin'.

WARNING: picture-and-link-heavy post!

Caveat: I know the world is shit right now, and I'm doing what I can. Donating goods, time, energy, and money, etc. But Normal Everyday Life with (Young Adult) Children™ is important too. To that end, this post is almost all Just Having Fun, except where All That Out There™ <waves vaguely> insists on sticking itself in.

This trip came about because Lizzy complained that she hadn't been out of the state for nine years (that's about half her life, y'all), and even then, it was for two hours at a pasta restaurant in Idaho. 

Given that that trip was primarily to deliver a third of her dad's ashes to his parents, view an eclipse, and leave Lee with the grandparents for a couple of weeks, I'm sure you can see her point. And it has also been a while since Lizzy and I have had the same spring break, as most years I have out-of-district students to transport, but this time they all had the same week off as we did.

So Lizzy and I spent Monday in recovery mode from the previous weekend's activities; Tuesday, I got a steroid shot in my left knee, we packed, and we attended a birthday party; and then Wednesday, we took off for Points South (and west). Where is Abby, you ask? At school, because her spring break was earlier in the season.

We were gone from Wednesday mid-morning to Saturday late afternoon/early evening, armed with a full tank of gas (in a hybrid, thank goodness, because even then it took two tanksful for the whole trip), a six-plus hour playlist of (mostly up-tempo) showtunes, and reservations for two hotels with pools (one in Washington State and one on the Oregon coast). Oh, and also some arthritis gel because it takes a minute to get the knee back to baseline after the shot.

Amazing "kids' size!" portion of
Macaroni and Cheese.

Last August, we spent Lizzy's 18th birthday at an Airbnb in Olympia, WA, and we so enjoyed The Sensory Toolhouse and Insert Coin Olympia that we planned the first leg of this trip around them. Went to dinner with my brother and sis-in-law (thanks for dinner!), where Lizzy wondered aloud why we would order Annie's Mac&Cheese at a restaurant. She had forgotten (or wasn't aware)  that the restaurant was called Tugboat Annie's (where one can get anything from yummy food to kayak rentals). Also, Lizzy and I kept getting the giggles because there are streets with single-word names like "COLLEGE" and Liz kept envisioning a college called simply that, as though it were a generic product.

I had a similar oopsie later in the trip (also cheese-related, funnily enough), because I asked her why it smelled so much like some of the areas with cows near home. Um, yeah, it smelled like cows where the winding mountain road of Highway 6 dumped us out right in front of the Tillamook Creamery. We did not do the Creamery tour; Lizzy pointed out that there's not enough Lactaid in the world for me to do that, at least not on a short trip like this. If we were there for a week or more, maybe, but not for just a couple of nights.🐮🧀🥛

Then we went down through Portland (Powell's City of Books is still a really good (and enormous) bookstore, but not as cool as I remember it, and it no longer has its own parking garage. It's also possible I oversold it based on 28-year-old memories), and down Highway 26 to Highway 6 to get to the Oregon Coast. Our friends who live down near the town where we stayed had warned us about Highway 53, but Highway 6 was... something. Any road that features permanent Rough Road signs could maybe use a little help. Of course, there were also several somewhat terrifying one-word signs (ROCKS! TRUCKS! SLIDES!) scattered about (COLLEGE), and a wild number of changes to the speed limit. Like it would change a couple of times in the space of a single mile, again with permanent signs rather than advisories.

We were not expecting our double-queen hotel suite to be an

A green-haired girl in a sunflower swim
dress, carrying a pink plastic pail away
from the camera on a beach at sunset

actual small apartment. What hotel room has one two-queen bedroom, a bath and a half, with a full (if small) living room, dining area, and kitchen? The clerk said that the building without the ocean view (I'm unwilling to pay so much more for the view) contains the biggest suites, but Expedia didn't make that super clear. We had lunch with family friends in the nearby town of Wheeler (not that Wheeler), but we didn't stay as long as I would've liked, because Lizzy evidently needed to get back to The Actual Real Ocean™.

Lizzy has been staying at my mom's timeshare on Puget Sound on and off her entire life, but this - the freaking Pacific Ocean - is the real deal. Inlets like the one Wheeler is on are fine and all, but they are not The Biggest Ocean on the Planet either. So we'll have to go for a longer stay the next time, so we have more time for the ocean and for other things as well.

A picture of a sunset over the beach,
where the water is a fried egg.

On the way back home, we experienced more ROCKS! SLIDES! TRUCKS! and my personal favorite, which is "Entering (or "Leaving") Tsunami Hazard Zone." We stopped for breakfast at a cool place called Yolk, where they have agate inlaid into the pathways and funky egg-based art on the walls. This restaurant had a similar vibe to The Braeburn in Langley, Whidbey Island, WA, to me, in spite of different music, decor, etc. Just vibes. We went up Highway 101 this time, and almost ran out of gas at one point, because there is a loooooong way between gas stations up in there, but we did find one in a tiny town while my gas gauge was still at one tick, but hadn't started flashing the OMG-low-fuel indicator. Whew! Also, Washingtonians hold their breath in tunnels (except the driver, of course, if you're smart), but Oregonians evidently honk their horns. It was madness near Portland on the way home!

Once back in Washington State, and with me starting to get frazzled (this has been a long drive even by my standards, and I drive for a living), we pulled off the freeway at Centralia to check out the Centralia (the original; the Olympia one is newer) branch of Insert Coin. The Olympia branch is newer, brighter, and bigger (and has massage chairs, which is not to be discounted), but the original is objectively just cooler, in a nerdy way. The floor tiles (and the tater tots) are all shaped like Tetris pieces. The sink in the ladies' restroom is a barrel a la Donkey Kong. Drinks are called potions, etc.

Lizzy wants to go to the Centralia Insert Coin for her 21st birthday celebration (about 2.5 years from now, on Labor Day Weekend). It's only a couple of hours' drive as long as it's not rush hour, so I think we can probably manage that, and who knows how often we'll be back in the meantime?

Because we will be back.

Also?

COLLEGE! ROCKS! SLIDES! TRUCKS!

Something Positive for Once...

The Greenlight logo, which is, y'know, green

...although it's a tiny bit bittersweet, in a my-baby-is-growing-up sense.

I can't believe I didn't include Greenlight in any of my Best Purchases of the Covidpocalypse posts, because it absolutely was one of the best purchases we made.

We started with Greenlight as a new way to give Lizzy (then 13?) her allowance. Because we live in a semi-rural area (so no public transportation to speak of, and it's too far to walk to a store except a local convenience store with no sidewalks), if I gave Lizzy her allowance in cash as we had done previously, she really had no way to spend it.

I don't even remember how we found Greenlight, because it was before my bank started advertising it. 

It's essentially a prepaid debit card, with parental controls on where the kiddos can shop. I sent a monthly allowance to her, and if she got, say, birthday money, or good-grades money, or weeded-grandma's-garden money, that could be sent to her card, with me vetting all deposits so she wasn't getting money from god-knows-who (safety first!). So she had the kid version of the app on her phone, and I had the adult version on mine. If she wanted to buy something from a store (or online) that wasn't already added by me, her app could request permission to add that seller to her approved list.

It was great, and it gave her some freedom she otherwise wouldn't have had. And when I decided I needed to cancel it (she's had her own checking account for a while now, so I didn't want to pay the $5.99 a month anymore), the company was really chill about it. They did ask why, but as one of the choices was "my kid has outgrown it," this was clearly something they had prepared for.

Decent, and in this world, basic decency is not to be discounted!

Realities in Games

A screenshot of the village view of the
game My Tribe by Big Fish Games

I'm going to try not to rant about the state of the world right now, because the people who should read what I often write about Being Kind to Others and Have You Tried Not Being a Hypocritical Asshole? and Maybe We Should Protect The Actual Living and Breathing Children aren't listening anyway.

What I want to talk about today is related, insofar as it touches on topics such as gaming culture and unrealistic beauty expectations, and even on the leave-the-poor-woman-alone-until-she-has-recovered-from-giving-birth.

I play a lot of different types of games - I have done so since the mid-1970s - from tabletop RPGs (and a LARP once or twice) to card/board/tile games to computer/phone/console games, and there's a lot to unpack here. And I've touched on my gaming before, most notably in this article over on Vocal.

In general, as technology has improved, especially in the videogame space, games have become increasingly complex, with deeper themes and more beautiful visuals. We can talk all day about the problematic issues that can come with that last, even in some of my favorite games, like Genshin Impact's skimpy costumes and lack of skin-tone variation, or the similar skimpy costumes and cultural stereotypes in the Final Fantasy franchise. As I said, I love these games, and they're some of my favorites of all time. 

And some of the potential issues in them are by the standards of the American culture in which I grew up (where we are finding more and more each day that they are even worse than we thought).

But I digress, again.

Anyway...

I keep going back to Big Fish Games.

They're a local (to me) company specializing in desktop games of various types since 2001. I've been downloading games from them since 2010, mostly Hidden Object games (complete with those that scared Abby back in the day, what with stone angel statues and all), with forays into other genres.

My favorite of these is My Tribe. It's a city (or at least village) builder, resource management type of game, that I can run in the background much of the time.

I think it's my favorite because, compared to a lot of others, especially in light of recent revelations in my country, it's just wholesome.

Infants (0-1 years) and Toddlers (2-3 years) just hang out, doing baby things. They toddle, babble, coo, giggle, etc. They are safe, in spite of village campfires and deep sea nearby, and the only way in which they can be hurt or killed is if you run out of food (or wood for a fire on which to cook the food) for long enough that the whole tribe starves. In fact, only old age or starvation can kill any of the Tribespeople.

Young Children (4-5 years) and Children (6-13 years) can do minor chores, like picking up potion ingredients.

Young Adults (14-17 years) can do the same chores, plus work by chopping wood, finding stone, constructing buildings, fishing, tending a garden, researching science, and making new clothes.

Adults (Women 18-45 years and Men 18-50(?) years) can do all that, plus Call the Stork with each other. Now, as Calling the Stork is specifically for reproduction, it's all very binary, and here's an important thing... Women can only Call the Stork every two years (that is, their most recent offspring must reach the Toddler stage before they can Call the Stork again). I find this to be a decent representation of a reasonable time between kids.

Older Adults (45 (or 50)-64) just keep helping out in the village. If you have Fountain of Youth Water and sufficient research knowledge, they can be rejuvenated back to 36 anytime after their hair turns grey at 65. I don't know the algorithm for when they die of old age if not rejuvenated.

Anyway, I find this sort of game - especially this one, which is relatively simple - to be... soothing, I guess? I mean, it's a little quirky on Windows 10 or 11, and I generally turn off the special effects. It'll crash if there's a power outage or the computer restarts while it's running, but them's the breaks.  

I realize this is kind of silly of me to make a big long post about. But sometimes you just have to acknowledge the good (or calming or soothing or regulating) stuff around you when the world is <gestures vaguely> All That Out There™. And if even one person finds it to be any of those things, then I've accomplished my goal of spreading even a tiny bit of cheer for the day.

The Hits Just Keep Coming...

Teal Ribbon for Anxiety

...and I'm not even in the crosshairs (yet).

Note: euphemisms and pronouns without referents used below are to keep myself from being shadowbanned by the algo.

I'm having a very high-anxiety day, and I would say it's for no particular reason, but the reasons (or triggers) are so obvious as to be laughable.

That is, they'd be laughable if they weren't also fucking terrifying.

"If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about," say the sycophantic bootlickers. Except that "nothing wrong" changes on a whim, usually daily, sometimes hourly. I imagine they'd consider this post to be "something wrong," since I'm not fawning over the batshit lunacy coming out of The Other Washington through Truth Social or Twitter. Excuse me, "through X." I'm pretty good with preferred names and pronouns, but that one I struggle with.

And those who "finally see what he is" because of a single racist post, what in the actual fuck? Sanctioned killings weren't enough for you? How about all the atrocities on That One Island™? Grabbing another country's oil and selling it for personal gain? No? I mean, I guess I'm glad you finally get it, at least to some extent. But for fuck's sake, people.

"But Obummer deported..." or "But Obama bombed..." Yes. He did. That was bad, too. But he's not the one in power now, and he was subject to ridiculous amounts of scrutiny over things like a tan suit or his wife's bare shoulders. And he doesn't, even now, have the kind of fan club that forgives all - or declares there's nothing to forgive - no matter how outrageous.

Andplusalso, the "oh, but he didn't make it, he just reposted it" folks can take a flying leap. That's not actually better, you know, that the putative leader of the country/"free world" (it's clearly not) didn't make a racist meme; he just shared it.

Not.

Better.

This person has the power to obliterate most of the life on the planet, is clearly losing his marbles (whether due to age or illness or whatever is immaterial), and that's on top of his already massive, petulant, and racist egomania. But y'all are okay with that? Because he hates all the right people, is that correct?

Just checking.

I would also like to smack all the people I see smugly saying things like, "Of course the kids are protesting, anything to get out of school!" or "Yeah, they're only protesting because their teachers have indoctrinated them into woke ideology. You wouldn't see our kids protesting!"

My dude, you guys tried to get one of our high school principals fired because he stated on his personal Instagram that common sense gun laws could've saved Charlie Kirk. Your kids were out there protesting every damn day because you feared a professional might treat them differently if he knew their parents were gun nuts proponents of the Second Amendment. Which he would not have, because he is, in fact, a professional who just wants to keep students safe. But maybe that's because - after a famous MN murder - you think the 2A  (and the first) only applies to you.

Those kids out there protesting? Yeah, I imagine a few are seeing it as a Get Out of School Free Card, because they're humans. But from what I have seen, most of them are just teenagers who have been encouraged to actually think rather than parrot. Shocking, I know. But some of them - most of them, I hope - have that pesky condition known as Empathy for People Not Just Like Them. Maybe they see more clearly than some of their elders.

Because y'know what? I know people who are afraid to go to the grocery store. Not because they have done anything wrong. Not because they are undocumented. But simply because they might be perceived as such, due to darker skin or an accent. 

As stated above, I'm not in the crosshairs (yet). Because I am a cishet, white, native-born, English-speaking person. Of course, I'm also fat, female, politically progressive, neurodivergent, ethnically Jewish, a single parent, work with disenfranchised people, try to behave decently with everyone (regardless of their gender, sexuality, color, national origin, etc.), and so very tired of the firehose of awfulness. 

So that could change.

Writing this out usually makes me feel better, except for that time almost a year ago. And today, evidently, though it could still happen.

SSDD...BW

A pale hand, doing thumbs down

 That's Same Shit Different Day...But Worse

Click the link. You might see my point.

Or you might not, especially if you believe in what He Himself (I'm not naming him; we all know who we're talking about here) called "alternative facts."

The ICE guy didn't "fear for his life," and he didn't have "internal bleeding" unless it was just a bruise. If he legit did fear for his life, then he was a) poorly trained, and b) not over the trauma of being dragged by a car six months previously. He should not have been there.

The ICE guys today - with their "Like Call of Duty, cool huh?" - bullshit. Normal people - like me, for instance - can leave their video games on the console where they belong. These assholes just see terrorizing, shooting, and killing real people as another game. I guess that it's not fun for them unless there's real blood and guts. 

He Himself has said out loud he's picking on blue states and areas. He has said he loves the poorly educated. He has said he could shoot someone in public and his fans wouldn't even blink. He's right, although I can't understand how you people are so gullible. How you can dismiss "grab by the pussy" as "locker room talk" while simultaneously praising Himself for truth-telling, I do not grok.

"But Obummer deported even more!" Yeah. Legally, fairly nonviolently, and actually going for people who broke more laws than just being here, which is a misdemeanor and a civil matter in the first place. The ICEholes right now are going after anyone who "looks illegal" (by which they almost certainly mean not someone who passes as a cishet white allegedly-Christian male), or who so much as looks at them crosseyed, apparently just for fun.

I would bet most of them are just Proud Boys with bigger guns. Read that link, too.

It does make sense, I guess. You can't expect real adult men to follow He Himself, as he started out as Veruca Salt and is deteriorating rapidly.

Has Mexico paid for that wall yet? No? Shocker.

I believe in people over profit, but I guess that's too hard for some of you to fathom.