Routine is like GPS in my brain. I know my routes, but it’s still nice to hear them “declared” at the right times. But instead of destinations, it tells me what I need to do next in my mind.
“Approaching leave bed protocol.”
“Enter your computer chair from the left side.”
“Now you may proceed to enter and leave your computer chair from the right side.”
And so on and so on.
Then my routine gets changed. GPS gets stuck.
“You performed the shower protocol early. Recalculating… recalculating… recalculating…”
And it can’t give me the altered route until I’ve completed the “right” steps at the “wrong” times if, say, I have to shower a day earlier than I usually do for an event taking place on the actual shower day.
Then I can proceed more or less as I normally do until the day of the event comes. Then my mental GPS needs the times I should be ready to leave and when the event starts to help me calibrate a protocol.
“It is 2:30pm. Time to prepare to leave. You should be ready to leave by 3:00pm. (Usual “get dressed” instructions here.)”
Those extra 30 minutes of “nothing” is time I use to finish up whatever I was doing and be ready for transitioning to leaving the house. My usual protocol when I reach a destination is find and use the bathroom there. I get super cranky if I can’t, because my body is a thing of habit and it’s not fun to do anything when your body is screaming at you that it has to pee.
Now, when my routine is already shuffled to hell, and somebody throws info at me that tells me my routine is going to get even more messed up, all I can think about is my brain will be saying “Recalculating… recalculating… recalculating…” to me for two days instead of one. I can’t make those pieces fall into place in my brain.
When my brain can’t put something together, it crashes in a meltdown.
Part of that confusion is I have to figure out my “disconnect from x activity to prepare for y activity” when a disruption is approaching. Throwing more stuff at me means those calculations get thrown to hell. I try to calculate my transition times in preparation for disruptions in routine.
Telling me more disruptions are coming breaks my mental GPS. I freak out thinking I will forget to recalculate because I’m still recalculating for another disruption. I get stuck on the recalculating more than the actual disruption.
That’s why I have meltdowns over “insignificant” changes in routine, such as people not checking with me and telling me I now have to wake up at buttcrack o’clock in the morning for a technician to come check out why my internet keeps cutting out. This weekend is already so chaotic with stuff happening that I would’ve told my mom to wait until Monday.
That is the one autism thing my mom just doesn’t get: I cannot handle a ton of changes in routine in a row. I just can’t. I had a burnout in 2016 because literally every day in December broke some part of my routine at the last minute. I stressed out so bad that I collapsed and barely recovered in time for Christmas.
And it’s not that I don’t try to handle it. I do. I write stuff on my calendar and everything. It’s the mental recalculating and knowing I have *more* to recalculate that turns my brain into radioactive soup.
Yo this is a very good metaphor I’ll have to use this later
“but how could thor and the other asgardians have been completely unaware of their people’s violent history as a conquering and enslaving empire?!?” have you ever met an english person
Skeletal reconstruction of an English Longbowman– Lifelong training left its mark on the archer. We can actually identify a longbowman’s skeleton by the damage they have done to their bones; otherwise rare defects show up along the shoulder blades, wrists, and elbows. The act of drawing back hundreds of pounds of force every day, hundreds of times per day, strained ligaments and bones to such an extent that some skeletons even started growing extra bone to compensate. Their devotion to their skill permanently changed their bodies enough that we can still identify them hundreds of years later. Few other professions can so easily claim the same.
Here’s the business of “How long ago should it be before grave-robbing becomes archaeology?”
If the “Titanic” is anything to go by, a bit less than a century. However, I bet that in about 30 years, if someone uses the same rule to go rummaging around the “USS Arizona” they may find that the rules can get abruptly inflexible.
Meanwhile, Tom Archer here might just have said “make me look good”, and I think the reconstruction did that. There’s a man you’d want as a friend, not an enemy.
@dduane says, “You want might to keep him a safe distance from your girlfriend, too. Especially if she likes guys with broad shoulders and English accents….”
What a splendid example of safe gun handling to set before impressionable youth.
Some of whom may not even have noticed that there are guns in the photo…
@korblborp said: I think most people would be fine with being accidentally shot by Milla Jovovich, tbh
😛
I say: Milla Jovovich is sexy and attractive, 9mm short rounds are neither.
Guns have one function. They turn living things into dead things.
Once you’ve accidentally shot someone (I did – my kid sister, many years ago, fortunately a low-damage ricochet – more here if you want) you’ll not regard shooting, or being shot by, even the prettiest, handsomest, whateverest person as anything but something you would rather please god not have happened.
@seriously-mike said: Those are inert lumps of plastic. Not even cheap toys.
I say: They look enough like guns that they should be treated like guns. Where does gun safety rules have an exception for Not Real Guns?
IF IT LOOKS LIKE A FUCKING* GUN, TREAT IT LIKE A FUCKING* GUN, BECAUSE GUNS ARE NOT FUCKING* TOYS.
* First time eff-word ever on my Tumblr, and I don’t even live in Merika, but please, people, if ranting like this can save just one life, I’ll fucking rant.
“From what I’ve seen, your funny little happy-go-lucky little life leaves devastation in its wake. Always moving on because you dare not look back. Playing with so many people’s lives, you might as well be a god. And you’re right, Doctor. You’re absolutely right. Sometimes… you let one go.”
Jess has discovered that catnip comes with stems that can be chewed on, and thinks this is the best thing ever! (She is also, at this point, so stoned. It’s awesome. I need to take away the rest of the catnip stalks, though.)
There's a Mirror on the Wall 