The Dino-Aspie Ex-Café (for Those 40+... or feeling creaky)

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I am passionately in favor of the extended family. Of course, if you have a lot of living space, several generations living under one roof can be a lot easier. We don't have adequate living space (three bedrooms, 1 bath for 6 people), so privacy is at a minimum, but we manage to get along for the most part. Two of my grandchildren have lived with me since they were born, and I feel blessed by their daily presence in my life.

The other day I said to my 5 yr old grandson, "I think I'm going to be getting coal in my stocking this year." He said, with much seriousness and sincerity, and using his little hands to emphasize the mysterious nature of what Santa might bring, "You never know, Mom-Mom. You never know." I'd live in a one room shack with those kids if I had to. And consider myself fortunate. Well - maybe on a good day.

I lived with my 3 little boys, my brother and my parents for a month when my first husband moved out. They offered to let me live with them as long as I needed. It didn't take me long to start looking for my own place. I just can't handle having so many people around.
Most days I like living in this little house with my 4 kids but yesterday wasn't one of them.

Strange, so many common symptoms with AS.
I have the ringing thing too (long term, gets worse on some things like aspirin, neurontin) but had an unusually large 'floater' in my left eye for past few days, worrisome but floaters are
normal, just debris in the fluid of inner eye, usually goes away. The glowing line thing is a different story though. That could be detached retina. Haven't had time to catch up on the whole thread so some may have already clued you in on this.

And is Sci-Fi affinity universal with AS? (me too)

BTW, thanks to all for the warm welcome to WP. This is the most human interaction I've had in a long time. I compose words (at least coherent ones : ) much slower than I can talk so writing is much easier way to communicate for me. I run a business from home (an aspies' dream!) that keeps me very busy but I'll definitely find time to drop in at the ex-Cafe.

Quoting Otter1:

Good to have you aboard, Otter. Yep, writing is my preferred mode of communicating also. BTW,
what kind of business do you run from your home?

Quoting BlessedMom:

I think my views on living packed ass to elbow are in the minority, BlessedMom. But truly, I have always, since I was a little kid, loved being surrounded by family, especially children. "It warms the cockles of my heart." Body heat maybe. One of my favorite movies is "Cheaper by the Dozen". The classic version with Clifton Webb, Jeanne Crain, Myrna Loy. But that house they lived in had lots of living space, or so it seemed and the character played by Clifton Webb is not my husband.

From "Phrases.org"

1.The cockle is a heart-shaped mollusc.This leads to the combination of "Cockle" and "Heart". Indeed, in German, it is called the edible heart-mussel (essbare Herzmuschel).

2. Michael Quinion from World Wide Words:

It’s one of the more lovely idioms in the language, isn’t it? Something that warms the cockles of one’s heart induces a glow of pleasure, sympathy, affection, or some such similar emotion. What gets warmed is the innermost part of one’s being. It’s not that surprising that it should be associated with the heart, that being the presumed seat of the emotions for most people. But what are the cockles?

We’re not sure. We do know that the expression turns up first in the middle of the seventeenth century, and that the earliest form of the idiom was rejoice the cockles of one’s heart.

Cockles are a type of bivalve mollusc, once a staple part of the diet for many British people (you may recall that Sweet Molly Malone once wheeled her wheelbarrow through Dublin’s fair city, crying “cockles and mussels, alive, alive oh!”). They are frequently heart-shaped (their formal zoological genus was at one time Cardium, of the heart), with ribbed shells.

It may be that the shape and spiral ribbing of the ventricles of the heart reminded surgeons of the two valves of the cockle. But I can’t find an example of the word cockle being applied to the heart outside this expression, which makes me suspicious of this explanation. It may be that the shape of the cockleshell, suggesting the heart as it so obviously does, gave rise to cockles of the heart as an expansion.

There is another possible explanation. In medieval Latin, the ventricles of the heart were at times called cochleae cordis, where the second word is an inflected form of cor, heart. Those unversed in Latin could have misinterpreted cochleae as cockles, or it might have started out as a university in-joke. Oddly, cochlea in Latin is the word for a snail (from the shape of the ventricles — it’s also the name given to the spiral cavity of the inner ear), so if this story is right we should really be speaking of warming the snails of one’s heart.

3. Come on, take another little piece of my heart now, baby. Janis Joplin

Neighborhoods can be good. There was one when I was a kid. The version of extended family where granny lives next door, or around the corner would have been optimal, for me as a parent. I can't live in close proximity to many people. I dislike it intensely. But having had to have raised a kid alone, I can say that if there had been anyone - granny, sister, cousin, uncle, grandpa, whatever, within earshot it would have been immensely helpful. Someone to call when I had to work and the kid got sick. Or if I got sick - dealing with a baby/toddler/young child when you're running a 103F and barfing every 45 minutes or can't get out of bed is just not something I'd wish on many people. (It's even more fun when both you AND the kid(s) are in the same shape.) Someone to take the kid to school when the car broke. An emergency contact for the school if I could not have been reached.

Hell, just someone to call on the phone after a hideous day who would have understood what raising a kid on a budget of $500 a month when rent was coming out of that, and diapers, and everything else, and foodstamps for two were $68 a month total, dealing with the medicaid system... it woulda been nice. Everyone I knew was a professional person either without kids (when mine was very young) or relatively well off and clueless about the impact of the cost of throwing or attending a birthday party, signing up for gymboree, dance lessons, daycare, etc., when the kid was older. It would have been good to have had someone who, when the tightwire was down to a hair and starting to unravel underneath, could have handed me a parachute or pulled me back in off the wire entirely. That kind of support would have been incredibly helpful.

What a lot of folks who do not have kids do not realize is that when you have one, you are on duty 24/7 with no time off. Even if you are able to hire a sitter and go somewhere for an evening, you're not off-duty, you're just on secondary duty. The strain of that on a parent in the best of circumstances is tough. Under non-ideal circumstances it's just hideous. If there's nobody to trade off with - no other parent or substitute parent figure... well, ... oy.

Would I like to go back and do it again? Absolutely, knowing what I know now that I didn't know then, and with my current financial, housing, and employment status. Would I survive it again? I honestly have no idea. I know I wouldn't if I had to do it again as I had to do it the first time.

My hat's off to any parent of young kids. Been there, done that, and I know what it's cost/is costing you. If you're doing it alone, my prayers (such as they are) are with you.

Now ain't I just a little ray of sunshine this morning.

My hat is off to all you moms and dads, and to all you do and have done in any and all circumstances!

Ya done good, Nan.

I was just now looking for a funny- looking exercise machine, so typed "antique exercise equipment" into Image Shack to see what would appear. Got three pics: A rather large and heavy piece of furniture, a woman wearing a sweater, and a street map. And the randomness of it has had me laughing ever since.

But maybe its a cryptic message: in ancient times, when people needed to exercise, they followed this map to the sweater lady's house, and she made them move heavy furniture.

Maybe more functional than pilates?

(Anyhoo, Lauri - a rather large and heavy piece of furniture furniture seems to be the fix for 'lil girl's lost muscles. )

Yep, yep. Ditto!

You've done an awesome job, Nan. Would I have been able to do it without the help of my mother and in the early years my ex-inlaws? No way! Not a chance.
Would I do it over again? Ask me when lil'girl is 20.

You would! Can't fool me.

That's what we were doing when she lost her muscles. We were moving the heavy love seat to look for her accidently-on-purpose lost socks.

maroon!

Were you wearing a sweater?!?
(Maybe the map was to your house?!?...)

oh now, this is just SPOOKY!! ! Image Shack is the new Ouija board?
(...gonna go type in "winning lottery numbers" and see what happens...)