Because There is NO TIME for Thoughtfulness

Yeah, I haven't started my classics essay ("How much importance does Herodotus attach to oracles and predictions?") yet, and it's due in tomorrow. In my defence, my special-needs assistant hasn't rung me back to organise our sessions yet, and oh-my-hell I still can't take notes properly. How did I get to be an A2 student? How??

Anyway, I thought I'd write something really really short today. About my family. Because this is the Aspergers Blog, and my family? We are just full of the autistic-spectrum-disorders.

My Mum is fifty-seven. She's a career physiotherapist, who didn't go to university. She was the national life-saving champion five times. She makes the most gorgeous jewelery. She very defiantly has Aspergers, even without a diagnosis.

My Dad is forty-seven. He's a retired police inspector (on health grounds after a car accident), who's done various jobs in IT, training and coaching, memory techniques and, you know, stuff. We think that he might have Aspergers (at least, he claims this is true), but none of the rest of us are convinced because when Mum and I talk about how we think, he gets confused and frustrated, like most 'normal' people do. In my opinion (oh, I hope he never finds this...) he's a psychological hypochondriac.

My sister is two months shy of her eighteenth birthday. She's social butterfly who talks easily to people, has a big group of friends, is a huge girly-girl, and is generally the life-and-soul of any party. However. She's a mathematical genius, not through any sort of hard work (because: HA! Haha!) but because her brain just works that way. Emotionally she's incredibly male, if you know what I mean by that? Would rather not talk about her emotions, thank-you-very-much, etc. So, really, she's not got aspergers, but some days you really wonder.

And there's me. I love clothes, and make-up, and hair and yet have no idea how to do any of it properly. I play the same videogames, music and films over, and over, and over again until I've pretty much memorised them. Then I play/listen to/watch them again. I have OCD, and I knit to help this. I am a perfectionist, and as such I cannot keep things tidy. I don't know how to have a 'superficial' relationship, but once I find people who're also like that I have the best relationships of anyone I know. I'm kinesthetic and visual, which is a combination that pretty much never happens in conjunction with aspergers. I cannot. Do. Math, or science (but I can make a bomb. Hello, FBI!)

We also have a dog with cleanliness issues (among other things) and a cat who's just the most chilled-out guy ever (upside: utterly lovely, downside: drool!)

So yeah. That's my family. We have four TVs, six computers, and stacks of books and CDs. We cook, we take photographs, we watch Too Much Friends (also Simpsons). We don't communicate well, we fight, we cry, and we have the absolute best discussions on music, philosophy, personal development, art, math and the Internet.

We might be crazy, but we have the best stories.