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What's in the Glass?

Today, on my walk, I started thinking about toxic positivity and toxic negativity.    I thought about the whole glass full vs glass empty thing. And then I decided that assuming the person in question actually LIKES and WANTS the liquid in the glass is an aspect of toxic positivity. A half full glass of something that is disgusting to us is not a good thing.  Beyond the glass thing, here are some real world examples: 1. A family member is going on vacation. We check the weather forecast for where they are staying. We see that every day is supposed to be in the 80's and sunny. You really lucked out with the weather for this trip! we say, You're going to have a great time! I hope you will count your blessings. But if we had listened to our family member in the past, we would understand that they are heat sensitive and don't like sunny weather. They prefer cooler, cloudy weather.  And they love thunderstorms. 2. Our coworker is surprised, by their boyfriend, with a huge expen
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Bonus Expansion Packs

While in the pool today, I had some thoughts. And the thoughts led me to imagining my family as Sims. I think from 2017-2019, it was like we were playing the pets expansion pack.  We all had pets before, but in those years, the pet thing kind of blew up. My parents adopted two dogs. We adopted Annie and Yeti One of my sister's family ended up with five dogs. Though they might have gotten the fifth dog during the pandemic.  I forget.   Anyway.... In 2020, we were supposed to install the university expansion pack. Jack and his cousin were starting  college. And we did play that. But it's like we unknowingly also installed two bonus expansion packs: Pandemic! and Disaster!  Our house was very damaged in the Texas winter storm.  Ever since then, I have felt weird. I guess life has felt less real to me?   It feels sort of like I'm in a long dream, or we're all living in a movie.   Another analogy I came up with is the end of the school year where you have classes but you'
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Synchronocity Leads Me to Bonding With 2011-Me

Last night I had a dream that involved a discussion about how some Australian people sound more British to me than Australian. Then...this morning I started reading an old blog post of mine. Okay. Detour here.  Because of annoying changes on Blogger, I had to change my already somewhat complicated way of choosing which blog post to read. So now what I do is look at the stats for my most popular posts in the last 24 hours. I go to the 7th post...and if that one already has my new labels, I move to the 13th post. Well, I guess I should explain that my purpose in reading old blog posts is not just to reconnect with my past self but also to label or relabel old posts. If both the 7th and 13th post don't need to be labeled or relabled, I move to the NOW stats and do the 7th or 13th post there.  My blog isn't super popular, so sometimes the blog posts don't even go up to 7.  In that case, I just have a day off.  Anyway, my purpose of explaining this is to A) show my probable-auti
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Hilary Clinton Doesn't Drink the Blood of Children Because the Accusation Hurts Her Feelings

If someone suggests we have said something racist and we respond by telling them that they have hurt our feelings with the accusation, this is not evidence against us being racist. It's just evidence towards the fact that we can't handle criticism and also maybe that we're avoidant and manipulative. If someone accuses us of sexual assault, talking about how this accusation has cost our family, and our friends does not prove we are innocent of sexual assault.  It just shows we are capable of using those who love us as manipulation tools.   I think it's sometimes easier to gel with these concepts when we believe accusations and when the accused belongs to the opposite political viewpoint or the opposite whatever-viewpoint.  But... Sometimes it comes from our own side. And sometimes it comes with accusations we don't actually believe.  It happened for me yesterday. Tim and I watched the quite-didactic series Debunking Borat . It features the two conspiracy theorists of
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A Way to Describe My Visualizations

I thought of a way to sort of describe my visualizations (or lack of). It might be like if you put your phone on the darkest setting; then imagine looking at a picture of something in a not-well-lit room.  AND...you see the image for only about 1/10 of a second. So...if someone tells me to picture a certain person and I can manage to remember what they look like (because sometimes I can't) this is what it will be like for me.  A very quick dark flash. I can't sustain it enough to notice details.   When I have random (unchosen) memories of an image...it might linger for a bit longer. Or...well...it's stronger in some way.  I'm not sure how to describe it.   One night, some decades ago, I "fearlessly" looked at a photo of Zelda from Pet Sematary and then I was haunted by the image most of the night. It was a long time ago, and I can't remember how vivid the image was. But it was strong enough to torment me.   I don't think my aphantasia is about not bei
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Do You Hear Your Thoughts?

Yesterday I ended up watching this video about aphantasia  from Quiet Mind Inside. She explains why she thinks she never realized that people could actually visualize, and it helped me understand why I had this blind spot (great pun, there) for 48 years.  I glanced at her other videos and saw she has one about not having an inner monologue .  It was late, and I wasn't in the mood for watching another (and longer) video.  But I wondered if and why a lack of an inner monologue is related to aphantasia. I started frantically Googling and saw something or somethings about people actually HEARING their inner monologue.   What????!!!!! I was totally freaked out...like giggling and on-the-verge-of-tears freaking out. It's been mind-boggling enough to realize that "normal" people actually, literally visualize.  Like normal people might actually see with their imagination. But people actually hearing their inner monologues? I Googled to try to figure out if I was understanding
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No Cheese Pizza No Soup and Definitely No Mayonnaise!

I'm a moderately picky eater these days.  In my childhood and other younger years, I was a very picky eater. I am guessing my very-picky status came from being autistic. I'm not sure, though, how much of it was due to sensory issues. I think a lot of it was due to faulty conclusions and associations. Here are the things I was picky about in the bygone days. 1. I refused to eat soup. This came from not liking tomato based soups and concluding that ANY food with the name soup in it was off limits. 2. I would eat only mozzarella cheese and it had to be cooked. I refused any cold cheeses and any other cooked cheeses.  3. I refused to eat cheese pizza. I think this is because one time we had a Kosher brand cheese pizza at my grandmother's house, and it was disgusting. So I concluded that all cheese pizza was a no.  Usually I'd be happy with pepperoni pizza. The exception was Tombstone frozen pizza. I didn't like their pepperoni.  But I was not okay eating their cheese pi
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