but lately, part of me just crumbles
every time I hear that melody

I have not gotten into the choir for which I auditioned. This is an unprecedented thing, with the exception of a middle school all-state choir that I knew I wasn’t getting into in the first place. I don’t know how to react to it. I was counting on that choir to be a place where I could make friends. A friend. One would be nice.

There’s a choir here in town that I would love to be a part of, but whose audition requirements essentially make it impossible for someone like me to join. I’m not being euphemistic about autsim stuff, though–I’m talking about musical experience. I am a chorister. I don’t sing solo pieces and never have. So requiring that I have a prepared aria means, well, I won’t even audition, because I have no means of preparing; my sheet music reading skills are substandard for the sort of music I’m capable of performing. Further, I’ll own that my voice often sounds reedy and thin alone, but I can bolster a chorus and blend well–and how can a director tell that from me doing a solo piece? Surely one doesn’t want a chorus entirely made of strong soloist voices? There need to be those like me who can shift from part to part and provide a depth of cover.

I hate it here.

A belated post for all the awesomeness of Florida and to say that while I have thoughts about my new job, I promised not to talk about them extensively in online public spaces. Email if you’re that curious.

Alright. FLORIDA.

The first day and a half were spent at Universal Studios. We arrived Sunday afternoon and spent the evening exclusively in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter (part of Islands of Adventure), spent Monday morning at the original Universal Studios and then Monday afternoon back at Islands of Adventure.

Almost all of my pictures were from HP, because, um, awesomeness?

(This was taken from inside of the greenhouses while waiting in line for the awesome ride of awesomeness Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey.)

After HARRY POTTER HARRY HARRY POTTER we spent Tuesday at Disney’s Animal Kingdom. It was, how shall I put this, AWESOME.

We were at the gates before they opened, along with a few hundred other people. The park opens with employees carrying a rope and setting a walking pace towards the far back corners of the park, so that guests can’t rush and hurt themselves, I suppose. We ended up walking with a pair of employees, both of whom had been with Disney for a long time. One was new to the park, though, and was being trained. We must have made a good impression, because Raphael, the man doing the training, took us to the employee entrance and let the three of us skip the growing lines for the Kilamajaro Safari. This is a long safari trek through a variety of African habitats with dozens of different animals out living as they might in the wild (the big cats have subtly separated habitats from the herbivores). We skipped the fast-pass line and the regular line and were placed in the second row of the very first bus of the day, behind another very friendly employee in the front row whose job it was to count the animals outside. Stina and Dylan told us to get on the first bus we could, as the cats go inside for most of the day due to the heat, but I don’t think they meant that! The employees called it a Magical Moment. I tend to agree.

(I feel like this ostrich is begging to be a tumblr meme.)

Brad took a lot of photos, too, and they are available on his picasa page.

But I do know where we’ll end up soon: HARRY POTTER LAND.

That’s right. On Sunday, August 8th, I will be flying to Florida/the outer reaches of Hell and going to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios. We’ll also spend a day in the rest of Universal (meh) and a day in Animal Kingdom (woohoo!).

On Wednesday we’ll drive to my grandmother’s house, just south of Tampa. Expect lots of pictures. My brain’s brewing something interesting, so when it decides to use coherent English I’ll write.

If you are my real-life friend and you would like me to send you a real-life postcard from real-life Hogsmeade, send me your real-life postal address at ayagirl at gmail dot com or message me on the facebooks.

I’m at a bit of a loss for what to read online lately.

In May, the Autism Hub disbanded itself. One of the bloggers who had been a hub member was bullying others on the hub and many of my favourite bloggers removed themselves from the group a few days before it was officially disbanded. I’ve tracked down most of the blogs I enjoyed reading there, but find it much more difficult to keep up to date with them now. I’ve tried using an RSS reader, but I’m not very good at remembering 1. to add blogs and 2. to visit the reader to see if they’ve posted. The Autism Hub had been a really great website for a few years, a respository of science-based blogging about autism by people on the spectrum, parents of kids on the spectrum, and professional researchers and educators. It introduced me to many of my favourite blogs. After the hub came down, most of those bloggers have stopped writing.

In June, Jezebel got a new EIC. With her came bannings, destarrings, and general discord. I stopped reading. I’ve been to groupthink off and on, but I haven’t been on the main page much at all. In the past two or three days there’s been a few articles of substance, the most worthwhile writing in months. I’m really hoping that this trend will continue and Jez will return to its former glory as my absolute favourite website. In its heydey, Jez was full of smart, feminist writing with an eye to intersectionality. It discussed the political and personal with humour and research, and the commenters were snarky without being mean (except to trolls) (this is a difficult line to walk and one they’ve lost entirely). Corrections were issued if the Editors made an error, often quickly. The new EIC calls commenters assholes and seems to encourage bodysnarking.

In July, ScienceBlogs had its own implosion. I missed it; as I’ve noted before, when I’m feeling spoonless I can’t muster the energy for SciBlogs, even though it often renews my spoon pile. What appears to have happened is Pepsi bought a blog spot there without clear distinctions being made on said blog that it was a paid spot (Sciblings are invited and paid for their efforts, usually). Many of my favourite Sciblings have left the website as a result, though the Pepsi blog has been pulled. There’s a disaspora of science writing, now, and, again, RSS is not my friend.

Please, gentle readers, suggest places for me to read. I’m looking for political and sciencey blogs with a liberal, feminist bent, preferably explicitly anti-racist and anti-ableist. Hubs or group blogs are very welcome.

I go in tomorrow morning to fill out paperwork for HR to begin my new job. I’m waiting for Stina and Dylan to do some reference letters and send them along, but I’ll get them when they come–no major concern.

My major concern is falling into a pattern of presumed incompetence. It was coincidental that I found this blog post today about the least harmful assumption (presuming competence even when others do not) as almost all of the people I will be working with have been diagnosed with intellectual disability (and many of them with autism). I need to work and remember that their diagnoses may not be correct and that any communication is welcome. I hope I’m up to the task.

…is that I like spreadsheets, organization, and Kate Miller-Heidke.

Just got done making a spreadsheet that shows the titles of the songs from which I’ve pulled titles, the songs in the official canon I haven’t used yet, the songs that are official or semi-official canon but are covers, and the demos which have any sort of name. This is actually the third spreadsheet of its sort, as I have one keeping track of the number of times I use a song and one that lists the song, the lyric, and the date.

So I’m feeling a bit compulsive and pleased, now. And tired. Tried to go to the library, but the lights are made of some sort of migraine-creating forcefield that also happens to emit visible light, because within ten minutes my eyes and head ached. I feel sort of spoon-drained now.

I have a JOB. I’ll be working with young adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities in their group home(s) and work program. I go in on Monday to fill out all the HR paperwork. It looks like the timing might be a bit weird since I’ll be in Florida August 8-14, so I hope that’s okay. It’s a straight weekday job, first shift.

My attention span is currently at a level I would describe as “kitten.”

I’ve known for a long time that my attention is directly correlated to the interestingness of the material–this isn’t unusual for kids identified as gifted (nor the adults they grow into), or anyone on the spectrum. In fact, it was this extreme hyperfocus that first had me questioning if I might be on the spectrum as I read tales of kids and their encyclopedic knowledge of topics and saw myself. This one time, I drew the same picture with only minor variations a couple hundred times; I was nine. I suspect I could still draw it.

I’ve also known for a long time that if I’m otherwise engaged, I can pay attention to topics of less interest with some reliability. In a school setting, for example, I’m usually really strongly into one class and then have varying levels of caring about the others–just like anyone else. Because of that high interest class, though, I have this sort of carry-over attention effect making it easier to pay attention to other material that is not as engaging for me. This has led me to the conclusion that I do well in moderate to high stress environments, but yesterday I started thinking (a rare thing these days when my mind lands on a topic and only stays for a few minutes at most), and this may not be the case.

There are different kinds of stress. Google thinks there are three–acute, episodic, and chronic–but that’s not what I mean. Those factors certainly play in, but I think stress can and should be divided by what part of you it engages, not just the length. Intellectual stress would be things like heavy schoolwork, complex reading material (fiction or no), non-rote professional work, puzzle solving. Emotional stress is identifying your own and other people’s feelings, social cues, working with other people. Physical stress could be identifying sensations (like needing to pee or being hungry), things that involve physical labour, or enduring discomfort (like working in a too-cold or too-hot place). Some combination of three things creates the stress, and that can then be chronic, episodic, or acute.

By this system, I really like things that are chronically intellectually stressful, with low levels of emotional or physical stress. I don’t like to move or worry about what my body language says. That is…not how I would currently describe my life. So even while I feel stressed, worrying about money and the cat and immigration, it isn’t the sort of stress that puts me in a position to spend a lot of time thinking. Those stressors are not comfortable for me, so they use up many more spoons than the stressors I like–and because I’ve wasted those spoons, I can’t do the things I enjoy (like reading scienceblogs) which could potentially refresh my spoons.

When I’m stressed–in the bad, not comfortable way–my memory and attention are spotty. I need to have a constant stream of intellectual information coming in–and going out, such as via blogging–to feed my own ruminative processes. Not only do I think they are a good thing, I now think they are essential to my well-being. When I am taking in enough information to have a viable ruminative background process going, my whole mind is working in concert, concious, unconcious, and memory. Being able to ruminate this way requires a precise memory, which is the first thing to go when I’m under stress (I often have no memory of meltdowns, for example–they’re just missing or I have a handful of photograph-like images).

I have been incredibly, risably forgetful lately–and lucky Kit doesn’t mind. Things we discussed multiple times have slipped my mind as if they never were. There is no sense of loss, of having forgotten something. My memory is not recording in the first place. Even when she reminds me, often with my own words, they feel new, unseen.

We talked about it yesterday, and I think it shifted my brain into the right gear to ruminate, because it hit me this morning, how all of this is connected for me: I need intellectual stress (and preferably as little of the other kinds as possible) to function well; I know alternate sources for this when I am not in uni; when I do not get this stress I become unable to seek it out because my will to live attention span grows shorter and shorter the longer I go without; this correlates with an unusually poor memory; these things are because with information coming in, I am able to ruminate properly (like any good ruminant and/or monster), because it is an adaptive and helpful process for me rather than being a destructive way to rehash bad memories or thoughts; therefore I have to just force myself to do something brainy, because it will sort of kickstart the whole process and I will stop feeling leaden. Which is…a helpful conclusion, and hopefully writing this will have done enough kickstarting I’ll no longer feel like my brain is dribbling out my ears slowly and painfully.

Despite the loss of spoons and almost inevitable migraine that will have me in bed tomorrow afternoon through sometime on Tuesday, I have to say that this weekend has been incredible.

I drove up to Staunton yesterday (Saturday) morning, taking a long route through a national forest and over many pretty streams. Lots of wildlife. Last night I saw Kate in a private gig in Charlottesville with Stina, Dylan, and a few other friends (and about 50 strangers), where Keir kissed my cheek/ear and I got sweaty hugs. I’ve just returned from Vienna, Virginia, and another Kate gig. More hugs. A new t-shirt.

Oh, and the part where Kate dedicated Shoebox to me on a whim, explaining how she felt like she should dedicate something to me because I was an American who had been in Melbourne when they were taking any gig they could get, and I’ve seen all of these songs thousands of times, but at least it’d been a while since then.

There was also the part where the audience was so genuinely enthusiastic that she did a real encore, not at all like in Melbourne, where it’s just expected. She was genuinely flustered and pleased, asked for suggestions. After rejecting mine (For The Hundredth Time or Apartment), she accepted Dylan’s early birthday wish for I Got The Way. It was fabulous. I’ll post a video once I have my camera cables. Later, she let him buy her a beer and promised I could pick out songs in the future, as long as I gave them a bit more warning than that.

I will sleep when my insides stop feeling electric.