Wednesday, September 25, 2019

Legwork and Life, week of 9/25/19

This is Legwork and Life, where I track the legwork and opportunities in my career as an autistic advocate, and also describe parts of my adult autistic life, including my perspectives on everyday problems and situations.

Today finds me in Reston, VA, quite near Washington DC. I spent a good period of time yesterday panicking or at least semi-panicking for the travel portion of this trip.  I'd mainly packed for the trip the day before, but some things had to be left for the day of, including some chores.  

I also spent too much time that morning beating my face fruitlessly on configuring an older model iPhone that a friend kindly gave me to use as an exercise buddy.  Between the fact that it's an older phone and I had an older copy of iTunes, many errors ensued while trying to get it set up.  I didn't manage to get it exactly the way I wanted by the time I needed to leave, which I blame entirely on Apple.  Still, it does have most of the music I wanted on it, and fiddling with it has been excellent practice for helping my mother set up her phone in a few weeks.  

Thankfully I'll be able to relax for the first part of today.  The orientation for the Autism Research Program (ie: why I'm in Reston) won't begin until early afternoon.  I'll be able to eat breakfast at my leisure and try to decompress from airport security.  Dealing with TSA is by far my least favorite part of traveling.  Apparently they won't be accepting driver's licenses as valid IDs soon, so I'll have to go get whatever they consider "Real ID."  Like a driver's license or state-issued ID is somehow fake ID.  Honestly.  I have half a mind to apply for a new passport and tell TSA that if they have a problem with my identity, they can take it up with the US government.  

Anyway, at least I'm prepared for this trip.  I got all of my assignments done, first and second rounds of reviews.  I'm extremely pleased to see that the two applications I wasn't impressed by also didn't really impress the other reviewers.  There's some dissension around the issues, but not a ton.  The one whose idea I hated actually got such poor reviews that I'm not sure we'll even bother discussing it.  Which is just fine by me, because it means less talky-time.  

I'm anxious about this trip, but not super anxious.  I've done this before a few times, and while I'm probably a bit more wound up this time than I have been in the past, I can still probably handle it.  The staff of the program seem to like me, and I haven't been too much of an ass since the first year.  So I don't know.  It'll probably go well.

Not going as well: my new supplement.  Apparently the extra side effects I've been experiencing, the bumpy skin, weird metabolism, and gurgly guts, aren't normal.  My doctor thinks I tolerate herbal type supplements poorly, based on this and my previous experiment with the Feminessence, where I broke out a rash, a vicious headache, mood swings, etc.  

I'm not really sure what to do with this information. I know my system is sensitive.  But at least in the case of the histamines, I really need something to handle the problem. I may see about lessening the dose, and see if I still have good effects with the exercise. I really don't want to lose this progress, because I've been able to go jogging twice now. It was really tiring, but not miserable.   I'm continuing to lose weight (1-2 pounds a week, which is the maximum healthy weight loss rate).  It's the first real progress I've seen on that front in literal years.  I don't want to give it up. 

We'll see what my doctor says when I see her next...

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