This For Better or For Worse strip made me laugh. And cringe.

Anyone have suggestions for how to handle this kind of situation?

While I’m here, I realize I should give at least a brief update on my “that explains…” post from a few weeks back. I am almost certain at this point that there’s no way in hell Mike would ever be diagnosed w/AS. That said, he definitely shows many AS-type traits. We’ve no interest in pursuing a diagnosis (it wouldn’t change our benefits, so why bother?), and instead we’re spending time on an as-needed basis considering how his AS traits impact our relationship.

It’s enlightening and maddening. On thing about having started grad school though (official as of the 1st!), I have no time to really muse over it. Maybe I’ve just had entirely too much time on my hands? Whatever the case, I could see some AS poking its nasty head up this weekend while I “enjoyed” a round of puke-and-poop brought to me courtesy of Maya. Mike was trying to be supportive, but just didn’t quite “get” what it was I might need while I was racing back/forth to the bathroom and dealing with a 100+ fever. I’m learning how to spell things out in much more literal, concrete terms. It sucks, and sometimes I feel like a child throwing a temper tantrum: I SHOULDN’T HAVE TO DO THIS!!!

At the same time, I spent some q/t with my cousin over the T-Day weekend. She’s in the middle of a divorce from a guy who was (and is, from what we can tell) lying about everything in his life, was irresponsible about money, and basically used her — all while justifying it to himself as defensible. When I see things like this, I am reminded how absolutely lucky I am that — even though he often isn’t sure how I need it shown to me — Mike loves me completely, is responsible (some might say anal) about finances, is committed to me and our family, and will do whatever it takes to make our marriage work. I need to remind myself of that sometimes.

At what point do you decide what percentage of “I have it all” is enough?

Okay, two more assignments to finish today for week 1 of grad school…guess I’d better get with it rather than contemplating my navel.

Why do Asperger men and Neuro-typical women get married?
AS men are attracted to strong, intelligent, compassionate women who can handle the social world for them. These same women are attracted to the unconventional nature and boyish charm of AS men. They feel he will allow them their independence. It is only later that they learn their AS partner is quite conservative. Instead of supporting her independence the NT wife realizes that her AS husband is merely disinterested in her interests. His attention is narrowly focused on his interests.

(Source)

To say that I have a lot on my mind doesn’t even begin to describe it. When I sort my thoughts out a bit more, I may write about them. Then again, considering the subject (my marriage), I may not. On the plus side, Mike is incredibly motivated to meet my needs — as long as he can actually figure them out. That’s the hard part.

I love new words, especially ones that resonate with my life.

The New, True, Eudaimonic You

Eudaimonia refers to a state of well-being and full functioning that derives from a sense of living in accordance with one’s deeply held values—in other words, from a sense of authenticity. Some characteristics of the eudaimonic life include:

• Being open to experience without censorship or distortion
• Living fully in the moment, so the self feels fluid rather than static
• Trusting inner experience to guide behavior
• Feeling free to respond rather than automatically react to life events
• Taking a creative approach to living, rather than relying on routine and habit.

Today’s focus at Psychology Today online is authenticity. The timing couldn’t be better, considering that much of my recent focus (in my head, even when not written up here) has been on trying to parse out reality from distortion, especially when it comes to my picture of myself.

You see, lately, I haven’t been enjoying being me much of the time. This isn’t an all-the-time phenomena, but it’s frequent enough that I’m puzzling over whether my life might need some big changes. Over the past 10+ years, authenticity has become the trait that I most desire in myself. Sometimes, that just means shedding away self-censorship and dancing without worry about who might see. Other times, it means recognizing and admitting — even embracing — parts of myself that aren’t so desirable. It’s this second item that has troubled me lately — troubled me enough that blogging has been sporadic at best. Yes, I’ve thrown up periodic parenting and political thoughts or humor, but that involves no risk. It doesn’t expose any of myself — at least not any tender spots.

Saying that I’m a cranky, mean, caustic bitch more often lately than I care to admit? That’s a little harder for me to swallow. But I’m a NICE person, damn it!

Last night, I was chatting with an online friend (hi, Linda!) about my lack of writing and how it’s affected my own mental state. As would seem obvious, she said, “Well, write, then.” “But, but…some people I know for REAL read this blog, even if it’s only every once in a while.” “Does that really matter?” (This is paraphrased. The actual exchange was much longer.) When I thought about it, I realized that no, it shouldn’t matter. Some of the issues I need to consider — ones that might hurt people’s pride and/or feelings — are important enough that I need to just dive in.

What this means is that things might be a little uncomfortable around here in the coming days/weeks/months while I try to get my head on straight. While I don’t like “uncomfortable,” I spent most of my childhood avoiding it, just to end up with severe depression in my mid-twenties. My sense is that in order to get the ugly to go away, I have to plow through it; there is no over or around.

Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming.

Sorry for the vagueness. I’m still steeling myself to strip off all the veneer and get emotionally naked. (Hey, will that word raise my hit count?) Here’s hoping I can swim through without drowning in my own head!

(nice visual, eh?)

Over the past few weeks, I’ve started to wonder (fear, actually) that I might need my meds adjusted upward. Anxiety has crept in. A general cantankerousness has joined my normally happy demeanor. I’m not excited about my life. And most of all, I find myself engaging in a thought script that involves a lot of doubt about myself, my life, and my choices. All of these are big red flag type indicators that something is amiss. But I’m only now spending the time delving in. Why?

For one thing, I’d be lying if I said pride wasn’t a factor. Yes, I might be on an antidepressant, but I’m on a low dose, and have never needed anything more than that. Pretty stupid, huh?

Beyond that, I have a case of fear-based “what if”s. What if I raise the dose, and that only helps for a brief time before I start tumbling again? What if I am *gasp* irreparably broken? If so, why fight? Why not just accept? Well, there is that teensy issue that life quickly becomes not worth much if I do give in.

Finally, I realized that if I’m needing a dose-boost, perhaps that means that there are non-medication fixes that I need in my life. Okay, not “perhaps” there are, but undoubtedly, there are changes that I need to make. And the biggest change I need to make is that I must — just must — get thoughts out of my head for processing more often. I rarely write any more, and when I do, it’s not of much substance, just a quote and a quip.

So, here I am, with a brain full-to-bursting of ideas, thoughts, emotions, and writing material. Why am I not writing?

Self-censorship.

This is a big deal, one that I’ve touched upon before. Wow, how much things have changed since those days, huh? What remains true is that for me to write well, I need to allow myself the freedom to write whatever strikes me, without worry about who’s reading. Does that mean I should just journal privately? Well, no — I don’t think so. Part of the fulfilling nature of writing for me is in having feedback (even the absence of feedback is feedback)!

Crap. I realize now, I’m censoring myself even in writing about censorship. Crap, crap, crap.

Moving on (since I’m a bit stuck), I moved to my current town (and it IS a town — only 20k people give or take, and an hour+ drive to Santa Fe) in February. As a result, while I have a few “friends” those friendships are more of the acquaintance variety. And, I do have a few very close friendships I maintain remotely, but how much do I want to dump on those folks with what’s in my head? At least one of my good friends, I’ve come to almost develop a complex about how much I’ve used her ear as I’ve struggled (yes, struggled) through the last two years. Yet, just the way my mind works (truly, I am very much an extrovert in how I process information), I must get thoughts out of my head in order to make sense of them. If I just think things over, it’s as if my brain is scratched CD. I’ll move on to other thoughts, just to have my current issue grab me again. If I write thoughts down, I can swim around in them a bit, picking them up and examining them one at a time, rearranging them until they make a modicum of sense to me. I can find patterns rather than being stuck with details. Telling my thoughts as a story, the story starts to take shape. I have a somewhat cohesive (if confusing) whole rather than a million discreet bits of mental debris.

But, if I write about my husband, he has this address. If I write about my beliefs regarding religion, it feels like I alienate people whom I love dearly, but who I know are believers. And in some cases, I have people I know in real life who read, but might not have the maturity of tact when sharing my thoughts with others.

Is it time for a new blog? What does it mean to be authentically myself, complete with the ugly parts and inconsistencies, and how do I balance that with kindness and compassion?

Whatever the answer, I need to find an outlet for all of this clutter that’s in my head. It’s making me crazy.

We’re having a boy, folks.

Last pregnancy, my skin was smooth and glowing. This time, I’m breaking out and oily. Oh, and I have extra hairs on my chinny-chin-chin.

Last pregnancy, I craved all-sugar-all-the-time. This time? Chicken. Bring me the chicken, darn it.

Last pregnancy, I got wide, and my belly grew low. This time? Well, I’m still getting wide (sigh…darned hips and thighs), but my belly is way the heck up near my ribcage. Let’s not discuss how much I weigh now at 21 weeks. The idea of piling 19ish pounds on top of that scares the bejesus out of me. Oddly, though, I feel great. I mean really, really great. And I love the belly enough that the butt and thighs are just annoying tag-alongs.

As different as everything is, and from the hint I got from intelligender, I had an inkling that this just might not be another girlie-girl. Nah. It’s a boy-boy-boy.

Gee, ya think? There was no room for questioning at this ultrasound. Not only did baby boy show the goods, he showed ALL the goods (seriously, we could see scrotum), multiple times. “Hi! I’m here! I’m HAPPY!”

He’s developing at a pretty normal pace, too, which relieves me and my fears of “what if this kid has a noggin as big as his dad’s?”

Looks pretty cozy in there, to me. I wouldn’t mind a recliner like that.

Since learning (three weeks ago, sorry to be so late) that this is a he-baby, we sorted through Maya’s piles (and piles) of baby clothing and packed a 30+ pound box to ship to Iowa to Mike’s sister, who’s having a girl next month. No, we haven’t decided for sure whether this will be “the end” for us, but why let all those cute things just sit unused? The universe will surely reciprocate should we have another baby girl down the road. And for this one, friends have given me stacks of boy duds to start with. And, of course, we *had* to buy a few new-to-this-baby items, just because we could. Who knew that boy clothing could be so fun?

We still don’t have timing on the move to Austria. Our last update was mid-October, that the Director General of the IAEA had signed off the paperwork, THEN it was going back to personnel, and THEN it would be sent to us. Maybe by Thanksgiving we’ll have details? Whatever, Mike knows that if we hit mid-January (32 weeks) without a move, I will seriously look at moving to Colorado until after the baby’s born. He says he will NOT let that happen.

So, that’s what’s up here…we’re still preparing for a big move in the December/January timeframe, but getting yanked around about the details. We’re told this is quite normal, and to expect things to move VERY quickly once they finally get us the paperwork. Wait and hurry-up.

Once again, I’ve been a neglectful blogger. Eh, what can I say? This thing’s here for my amusement, and sometimes I’m just too…amused…doing other things to take the time to post.

Still, I must at least post a few quick updates:

1. I’m pregnant. This time, it seems to be sticking (Today is 35 days post-ovulation, aka gestational week 7), and my body has responded accordingly. I’m getting big. Immediately, can’t-wear-my-normal-clothing big. With a little help from Target and Kohls, I have enough bottom half items to make due for a while, hopefully through the end of the summer. Baby was conceived in Japan (like you *really* wanted to know that?), and the due date will be sometime mid-March-ish. My calculations say 19Mar08, but the doctor might say otherwise when we visit with her on Friday.

2. Baby will likely be born in Vienna. Vienna, Austria that is (nope, not Virginia). Mike has been advised that the formal offer from the IAEA (intl atomic energy agency) is on its way — for a job that will move us to Europe for two years, with an option for a third year. You know those inspector guys they send to North Korea? And the ones they kick out of Iran? He’ll be the guy training them. Well, maybe not THOSE guys specifically (they’re the high-level, experienced ones), but the inspectors who are still early in their careers. Coolness. It pays to marry a brainiac.

Lots has happened, and I’m relieved to be home from all the summer travel. You mean I get to stay here? For at least a whole month? Yee-haw! I might even get a few travel pictures posted.