welcome to my own little corner (of the sky)

@germanova

I’m truly very sorry that happened 😓

But Texans aren’t just “snowed in.” There is a very specific thing happening with our state specific energy grid.

Millions of people have been without ANY ELECTRICITY OR HEAT for 40 hours in places that have been -5 to 20 degrees. Water pipes and main are breaking everywhere so that many people don’t water either.

This didn’t just “happen”

We are suffering under corrupt and inept leadership who MADE this happen.

From the article

And yeah, this sucks. All of this sucks and is vastly damaging to people’s physical and mental health. We’re enduring a global trauma, the ramifications of which will likely be felt for decades.

But when it was just my daily life being housebound due to my disabilities, it was a-okay for you to abandon me to this life while using phrases like, “must be nice” and “sounds rough,” all said smilingly under the sneering veneer of implied laziness and choice.

Like the average adult needs about 8 hours of sleep every night, so that cuts your 24 hours to 16 right off the bat.

You’re working for 8 hours, so 8 left.

But you actually work 8 to 5 at most offices, not 9 to 5, and that lunch is basically just long enough to retrieve food and eat. 7.

It took you 20 minutes to shower this morning, 10 to get dressed, and 45 to make a bowl of oatmeal and eat it. We’ll say 15 to get your stuff together and out to your car. 5 and a half.

You get home and have to cook dinner, 30 minutes min for that, probably more like an hour, so somewhere between 5 and 4.5 hrs left. And then you’ve got to eat it, 30 minutes if you’re being healthy about it.

So at best you’ve MAYBE got 4/4.5 hours left every week day and that’s assuming you ran exactly zero errands, didn’t stop by the gym after work, didn’t have to stay late, have a wicked fast transition time between tasks AND a commute of like 5 minutes by car. If you have to go to the store after a quick run at the gym, pick your kids up from soccer across town, and you factor in a 30 minute commute both ways, you’ve got enough free time for like one episode of show Monday through Friday. And weekends have got to be for cleaning the house and going to visit your mom for a few hours.

When do you write, or paint, or read or sew or go on hikes? When do you go on spur of the moment adventures with your wife and try to perfect your grandma’s soda bread? What happens when it rains on Saturday after being sunny all the rest of the week so you can’t go to the zoo that day and you don’t have enough money for the museum? Why are we all just content to postpone our whole lives, put off “happy” and “healthy” for a miniscule amount of extra value we’re producing for someone else?

And it’s also a thing that fascinates me about hustle culture like. When do y'all rest? When do sleep and food happen? How do you make 3 different jobs work without dying?

Their obsessive need not only to perform these ritualistic behaviors themselves but for everyone around them to perform them as well can be a huge burden on family members.

For example, people with allism often have extremely complex compulsions surrounding eating, with which they will attempt to force everyone at the table to comply.  These may include such unusual and varied behaviors as only cutting one bite of food at once (vastly increasing the amount of time it takes to feed a meal to a person with allism), only using silverware in incredibly specific and often uncomfortable or time-consuming ways, resting a piece of fabric or paper on the lap at all times whether it performs a function or not, and arranging all items at the table in a particular configuration.

A particularly common food-related obsession is a superstitious belief that some sort of harm will occur if people touch the eating table (for instance, if someone becomes tired and rests their arms on it).  This inexplicable superstition is so common that those in the allistic community have even made up childish rhymes about it, such as “Mabel, Mabel, strong and able, keep your elbows off the table”.

When others do not conform to the complex and often highly inconvenient demands required by the obsessions of the person with allism, the person with allism can become extremely upset, resulting in a variety of negative behaviors.  They often become aggressive, sometimes even dangerous.

While the stereotyped behaviors of people with allism can be very difficult and disturbing to manage, it’s important to understand that the meaningless behaviors don’t feel meaningless to them.  For whatever reason, they appear to find these rituals soothing, which is why they become so distressed when others do not follow them.  Remember, people with allism are not capable of healthy self-soothing techniques, like stimming, and therefore may resort to problem behaviors to cope.