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This is where the majority of my issues that people can see show up. The first one is just me in a nutshell. When I get stuck onto something, I have to know absolutely everything about it and I will talk about it all the time! Sometimes it's a brief thing, maybe a few months or a year. Others, it lasts for years or even a lifetime. When I was a kid, it was baseball. I could quote you Braves stats for the current team at any time. I collected baseball cards, mostly Braves and mostly my favorite player Steve Avery. I read books about baseball and watched baseball movies. In 6th grade, to learn the research process, we were to write a 3-4 page paper on a topic of our choosing. Well, I'd just seen the Oliver Stone movie JFK. Yep, my 3-4 page paper turned into a 12 page paper with an appendix and I bet I'm the only 6th grader that has ever read the entire Warren Report. I went nuts over certain movies over the years...watching them over and over to the point I could quote them and driving everyone around me nuts. Music has stuck with me and always been an interest, so has reading and Disney stuff. This summer I got back into baseball, but thankfully it doesn't seem as intensely obsessive as it was when I was a kid. I've also become a crossword puzzle junkie. Number two is there, but not as intensely as number one. I don't like change...at all. If something is going to change, either small or large, I need notice and prep time. I need to know exactly what is changing and exactly how it's going to affect me. Then I can usually get on with it. I hate having routines changed. At work, I like being in my lab because I know which classes are coming and when...I hate fire drill days, testing schedule, and any other day where it just doesn't follow the schedule. Not being on schedule makes me nervous. My biggest trigger is being late. If I need to be somewhere and I have control over it, you can rest assured I'll be there 15-30 mins early. Some of the funnier routines (or nonfunctional ones) I have...I must go to Downtown Disney the first night of any Disney trip or I will pitch a 2 year old fit...I have routines in the shower for the order I do stuff and for the rest of my getting dressed and ready routine and if you mess it up, move something, or distract me...I will forget something. I drive the same way to places, even if it means 10-15 mins longer and having me go another way is asking for a panic attack. In stores, I start at the same side and go to the other end and having to backtrack only makes me angry. Number three exists too...I constantly move my foot or leg. It's usually my right but can sometimes be my left. If I'm sitting next to someone it will bother then and they'll ask me to stop, I don't even realize I was doing it! I will shake the whole table and have no clue! If I get really frustrated or upset or want something away from me I will do a bit of hand-flapping but it's not as often, only when I'm really stressed or frustrated. I do rock some when I'm nervous or really bored or upset. I've found a therapy toy called a Tangle helps with my movement issues as it puts a toy that looks like an old teething necklace, but it has twisty, textured parts into my hand and I can move it around. It keeps me calmer and actually helps me focus on whatever I'm doing. I never really showed much of Number 4. My son used to have a thing with wheels (still does) or he'll play with a part of a toy, just that part...nothing else. I used to like to break things down and take a look at their parts, but that's as close as I got to this one.
So many of the quirky/odd things you see me do all day long and most often in stressful situations or when my routine has been altered...well I can't help them. Sometimes I'm aware of them and I try very hard to stop them, but it takes so much effort I can't stop them and focus on what I should be doing at the same time. Most of my friends/family have figured it out by now and they just let me do what I need to do and let me schedule stuff my way so I don't flip, but life isn't always easy to schedule so I still have a bad day sometimes when it doesn't work right...but hey, who doesn't!
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