Hurricane Sandy & Future Post Ideas

Well the winds a blowin' here in Massachusetts. Hopefully we don't lose power here again like we did last year (that was a fun week) and this whole things just blows over, no pun intended. I will be doing more posts this week and a couple will be going into different avenues, thought wise, then before. It is amazing the things you think about in your free time if you take the time to let your thoughts develop. Thoughts about what you are feeling and whether it is 'normal' should be a good topic and hopefully open up some discussion, a thing that is really lacking on this blog. It should be an interesting week either way. Check back often, I'll be writing/waiting for you!

How to Deal with Change

"The more things change the more they stay the same". This is surely a quote you have heard many times in your life. When I first heard it, at around 12 years old it confused me, at first. I thought to myself 'how can things change and stay the same, isn't that a paradox (although I'm not sure I used that word at the time). I did figure out what it meant by experience, I guess. Per usual I'm going to start by talking about the past.
Our house was always changing. As the seasons came and went so did the designs that went with them. Halloween, Christmas, and spring brought about a new crop of colors to the house, and the fact that it was a large house (5000 sq ft) the decorations were pretty expansive. My mom saw the house as a canvas she had free reign on. I'm not sure how my dad felt, but he had to pay for it. Sometimes we would get a new couch or something larger and, for me, it was just another thing to get used to. In talking with my AS group while at college I found out that a couple kids hated it when their parents got new furniture, you could say the change terrified them. I guess its because the outside world is supposed to do all the changing, not the place they hold sacred; their house. From what I have gathered Aspy' care less open to change than other people. I used to have a quote (well I guess I still have it) about how I saw change. "The more things change, the more          I stay the same". It's not anything special, but it does say a lot about who I am.
I tend to have a loose schedule about what I have planned for the next day. I don't have it set in stone and I am actually quite flexible. There is no danger of me freaking out because I'm about to miss Wapner. If something comes up, I adjust. Life isn't always that perfect harmonic symphony, where all the notes are in order and each consecutive part comes in at the right time. It's more of just a jam band session where the people playing know the notes, but they aren't as on point as they think. The one thing I have the most trouble with in terms of planning for and then getting interrupted is food. I hate it when I am sitting down to a meal and then am forced to do something else and only an emergency is understandable at this time. If I make up my mind to do something later in the week then I tend to go, not matter what. There is a college story about how my car broke down and I HAD to borrow someones so I could drive down to KFC. I know, that is very odd, but once I get a certain type of food on the brain something just takes over. Some of the OCD things I do can fall into this category, sort of.
I usually walk down the street avoid the lines in the sidewalk, preferring to stay in between them on the solid parts of the squares that make up the path. This seems typical of some people. If I can't avoid the line, then I'm fine. This is not typical, however, and I just move on. Even while playing baseball I did something like this but that is more of an ingrained and accepted thing to be superstitious. Each time out the mound I would leap over the line that separated the grass, the base path, to avoid the white line. This line I avoided at all costs during a game, but like I said it can be unavoidable during practice when we are doing sprints and you had to touch it. To this day I think I'm the only Colombian afraid of white line. That was an attempt at humor, by the way. The thing about me and OCD is that I never got to the point where it interfered with my daily life. I have never had to do something so long that I missed something else entirely. I can deal with the fact that its not perfect and move on. True, I do like the toilet paper to be cleanly cut to the next piece after I'm done with it, but that doesn't take too long. I'm lucky with that , I guess, but many people with severe OCD are not, and its sad. Going back to what I was saying about the seasons changing, there is one thing that does so with it. This is something I could care less about and is a waste of money in my mind, fashion.
 Now women are all about fashion, I should know, having lived with two of them for a year during college. Heather had 23 pairs of just blue jeans, so many shoes it made me sick and sweaters, shirts, jackets and enough other things to make me wonder why. She had over $10,000 in there, by her own estimates, and that was only part of her wardrobe. I realize most women are like this, and I assume they realize they can't wear it all at once. As for me, I am not a person who is trendy when it comes to this department. I like my clothes to last a while, and the seasons don't matter. I wear pants 365 and I only put on shorts when I'm working out or going to the beach. There are reasons for this that I'm not going into now. As for the top half I tend to wear shirts that are all one color or limited colors, nothing that can be described as 'busy' in terms of design. I  wear a lot of black, just not enough where you would think I'm Amish. I don't like to stand out like a peacock. I prefer to stay low on peoples radar. In public I can be very elusive, getting in and out of an area and on with things. The only kinds of shopping I like are food and jewelry, although I am making more of the latter myself. The jewelry shopping is strictly for resell, as I now have a rule that I can't wear anything I don't make myself. I never pay retail and do a lot of browsing on eBay, clothes included. I don't buy jeans on eBay, just shirts and shoes many used or just slightly. Yard sales and thrift shops are a common place to see me, albeit for too long. I have shirts that I have had for two years. I'm not at the point where anything has holes in it but I use items until they are worn out and this goes for almost everything I own. I buy things that last and don't mind paying more for quality. And if you can get quality for a bargain then all the better.

I don't really no where to go with the rest of this post and I may have to add more, so let me sum up: Change is going to happen whether you are prepared for it or not, so be flexible and understand this important fact. It's funny but I think my increased flexibility has come in part from Bikram Yoga, but that could only be a biased opinion. My next post sort of has to do with change again, but this time its more about letting go (in all its different forms) and the troubles people have with that. It is aptly titled "How to get over things" and the contents may surprise you.


Questions or Comments? Let me know.

Disappointment & Shame, With a Hilarious Silver Lining

So I woke up last Tuesday, October 2nd and it was my sisters birthday, but that doesn't come into this story much (I called her at 8:30am, was the last in the family to do so, and sort of felt like a dick but I got over it). So that morning at was looking in the mirror and I noticed a small mark on my face that surely was not there the night before. I didn't think much of it and continued on my way. Over the next couple of days the mark grew in size and and spread a little. I began to think what it could be. Now I don't smoke cigarettes and never will (I did have a cigar at a bachelor party recently and it was fun and will probably do it again, but that's the line) but I have been known, on occasion to smoke something else. Go ahead, judge all you want, but I did cover this topic in an earlier post and describe the brief but very noticeable 'benefits' that this plant has on me. Anyhow, I was certain that by passing a joint around I had gotten my first cold sore aka herpes simplex. Right then I looked up pictures of it and sure enough they matched. When I picked up some Abreva at the drug store the tech on duty told me that it looked like herpes. I felt like a leper, doomed to walk the earth with this shit on my face forever, although not all at the same time, just whenever it broke out again. According to my dad, who like many people has it, I would be getting an outbreak about three times a year at most and maybe even far less often. I still felt bad, real bad. I was going through the 'seven stages of grief'  and got stuck on number four for a couple of days. I just couldn't stop feeling bad for myself and you already know how lonely I am to begin with. 

 I kept looking ahead in my mind about how to tell a girl and when (providing I meet one soon) about how every so often I would be getting mouth sores and then I would imagine her reaction. Either way you look at it can't be good because if she has it as well, I would have to be ultra cautious about not wanting it on my private areas or the other option; she runs away so fast that all you see are ass and elbows flailing. I don't think anyone would understand, I think for me that would be a deal breaker because things don't always work out and it seems like people are getting divorces just for fun these days. Armed with the better cream I got from dad, I prepared to embark on my new life of dodging glances (and to think I was just getting comfortable around people). The cream seemed to be good and dried out the area well, unlike Carmex which, according to the late Mitch Hedberg, was "cold sore hi-lighter". Friday evening came along and I was looking at my FaceBook news feed when a post from Deb Marree came up. You know those people who post political crap on their walls and make sure everyone knows their opinion? Well that is what Deb does,  with food and how it should be natural, but her posts are actually beneficial (like for instance you should only buy organic strawberries because all the non-organic ones have so much crap put into them it isn't worthwhile to eat at that point) to people who take the time to read them. I love food, a lot, so I read mostly all of them. Now Deb is a woman who contacted me from down under, literally she lives in Australia to help her son out with some autism related questions, which I was happy to answer. So I was reading a post that showed a rash on someones arm and her caption for the shared photo was 'I wasn't surprised to see "Autism" on this post !' didn't read the post but in the comments section, and by some miracle of God this was the first one so I didn't need to scroll down or open 'see all comments' to see it was the following "Ryan, it's not the actual mango you are allergic to, it's the skin. The peel contains urushiol, like poison ivy. Use gloves. (so I've heard) Don't believe everything i tell you!..lol" Three guesses to who ate fresh mango on Monday. Not only did I eat fresh mango but after taking it out of the fridge, you age them like a pear in a brown paper bag at room temperature and then put them in the fridge so they don't spoil. So the fruit was a little stiff around the core and I decided it was too hard to cut off with the knife so I just stuck my face in full force like a fat kid eating a chocolate bar. I rubbed my lips up against the skin and tried to get every last bit of fruit left. Now I had no idea that mangoes had urushiol, the same oil that causes the poison ivy rash in the skin and 5 mm into the fruit. This was the biggest relief I a have ever had in my life! Now I'm not going to say it doesn't itch like a mother and I haven't had poison ivy for around six years as I tend to freak out when I see three pointed green leaves mixed with red ( I even thought maple tree sprouts were poison ivy plants once upon a time). So I had a rash I knew a lot more about than the herpes I was sure I had. I simply washed my blankets, pillow covers, sheets, towels and clothes and yoga mat/towel because we do one posture in Bikram where you put your mouth on the towel, and I had eaten the mango the last day I did yoga. 

So there you have it. I was freaking out about having herpes when it was a case of mango-induced poison ivy rash. Everyone I told this story nearly died laughing when I told them that part and I can easily see why.  

As for me I have sworn of eating fresh mango for good, or at least letting it touch my lips and hands and I will certainly not be cutting up any myself. It should also be known that today my mom was relating the story around the office and a coworker was amazed to find out that her daughter, who had been to the doctor many times and even he was baffled by the sores she had in her mouth and on her lips, had her regular fresh mango eating habit to blame for it. My mom said the daughter 'lived off mangoes', according to the coworker. I guess she has to get off that wagon for good too. I think I’ll just settle for the lightly dried and bagged mango pieces I had while at Worcester Academy back in 2005, as they never gave me a bit of trouble. 

Questions or Comments? I’ll gladly pay for your stitches if you split your side with laughter.