I feel guilty about manipulative speech...

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She is... correct, as I said, her speech is manipulative, not her intent.

I, however, am REALLY challenged by that type of speech...

For instance:
"I wish this was a different color" NOT a request to repaint it.
"I would like it if the yard was picked up" IS a request to pick up yard.
"Oh wouldn't it be nice if we had one of those ____" If ___ is "grapes" that means buy grapes... if ____ is "an above ground pool" it does NOT mean buy an above ground pool.

These are fairly straightforward examples... but I know them because of a lifetime of experience, not because one sounds more like a request than a statement... they all sound exactly the same to me.

lol... not to me... that seems pretty direct and displeased. Well ok... manipulative in that they don't mean it would be nice, they mean "you need to start doing this now"

(manipulative in the sense I used it would me more like "it would be nice if the dishes got done and the trash taken out" without attaching a clear intent that you do it)

...also typically if I had that much control in any given moment I'd just do what she was asking. I'm not TRYING to be a dick (ODD notwithstanding)... my deep brain is whispering "she's asking you to DO it" and my mouth is already in ASD response mode "yeah, it WOULD be nice if the dishes were done".

And she knows, I don't actually blame her, she generally realizes and course corrects and it is all good... I'm not the only person in her life and everyone else speaks NT... I don't blame her for wanting to speak in her own dialect...

I totally get this. Strangley, I have the inverse problem. My husband has said that I can be so passive aggressive at times. This confused me a lot. He infers that I am hinting at something or stating something other that what I say.

Example- we need more milk. I say "Do you want to get more milk?" thinking he might like the chance to get out the house for a few minutes and pick up anything else he wants from the shop, or he might not want to move, and I giving him an open choice. He can still say no and I will get it. But he thinks that I am phrasing the question poorly because of course he does not want to do a chore, and I am implying that he should be the one to get it.

Or if I say "do you know where the camera is" he thinks that I am asking him indirectly to look for the camera, where in fact I am happy to look for it but do not want to spend 10 minutes looking and then discover he could have told me in the first place.

This kind of stuff can get even weirder in other cultures. It is almost impossible to get a flat "no" from someone in Japan. I'm told that there are a dozen ways to say "thank you" and they all imply different degrees of resentment for the obligation to reciprocate. Maybe, where it is a known problem, you can get in the habit of always clarifying things with more words, preferably working together 'till it is settled. eg: "Do you know offhand where the keys are?"

I have been learning the first few elements of Japanese speech for about 20 years... since I lived there, one of the more amusing things to me is asking someone something. Everything is efficiently stated as though the person you are asking does not want to do anything with you. "You do not want to go get something to eat?"

Wow, I do this exact thing. I don't have anything to add, I'm just surprised someone else does this too.