NotSwaps

this blogpost is brought to you by the BBCs "Eat Well For Less".

when I was a student, I was domestically useless. at last year's BiCon, I domestically fabulous.

student me: fuck, I need to eat. I should've gone shopping [mumble] days ago. hmmmn, what can I make with this random assortment of stuff? also, it's 10:30pm. why do I do this?

BiCon me: OK, everyone. I'm gonna start cooking the pasta at 6. if you don't want to eat then, it'll still be tasty cold.

student me: has no bras. laundry should really happen soon. laundry should probably have happened last week.

BiCon me: here are my perfectly planned outfits for each day.

now, a small amount of this is the fact that I was significantly older at last year's BiCon than I was as a student, but mostly it's about something else.

BiCon is a discrete event. it has well-defined edges I can work with. I know I will have to organise dinner for 3 nights, plus breakfast & lunch. I will need to pack or order all the ingredients, and think through the utensils I'll need. life...doesn't have edges. you can do whatever you want. it's up to you how much you spend. how often you shop. what you keep on hand and how you keep track.

open ended questions are hard. Being Domestic is an endless list of open ended questions, that aren't even phrased as questions.

so, what does this have to do with "Eat Well For Less"? well, week after week, they take a family who have found answers to the (many) food-related questions of Being Domestic that can mostly be summed up as "paying for convenience is working, but we wish we could save money". the presenters watch, perform shock at how wasteful the family are being, and embarrass them for ratings. then, they guide them through a week of "swaps". sometimes, it's straightforward "this supermarket own brand coffee is £4.23 cheaper than your usual brand and you didn't even notice the difference". sometimes it's not so straightforward. sometimes, it's "let's swap your regular Just Bung This Frozen Thing In The Oven dinner with a wholesome home cooked meal. it's easy! we'll take you through it with a professional chef and if you like it you can keep the swap." and it is easy. the hard bit of cooking fresh, nutritionally-balanced, flavourful and cheap meals isn't chopping a red pepper. it's building a routine of planning, shopping & cooking, and doing it consistently, so you don't open the fridge to discover you have don't have the pepper (or have the pepper and nothing else).

I wonder how much they really keep. oh, they all love the meat-free chilli or marinated chicken & vegetable skewers, and I'm sure they fully intend to continue. but then the cameras leave, the training wheels come off, and real life seeps back in. the well-defined edges are gone, and they've got to find all the answers to all the open ended not-questions again. when confronted with 20 supermarket aisle of options, suddenly bunging the frozen thing in the oven or buying the ready made sandwich for work seems very appealing.

I'm not sure what the answer is, I'm just sure it's not what the program is offering. it's answering a different, much simpler question. "starting with this selection of fresh ingredients and a recipe, make a meal" is not the same as "here is a supermarket. go buy food for your family".

everyone should know - RED INSTEAD 15

everyone should know, when something is described as a "life long developmental condition" that means people don't grow out of that condition. there will be 5 year olds with that condition. there will be 35 year olds with that condition. there will be 85 year olds with that condition. this is important.

routine - RED INSTEAD14

I don't need routines, except when I do.

I didn't think I needed routine, because doing things outside an arbitrary, prescribed order causes me no anxiety. I'm not Sheldon Cooper, insisting that Tuesday night is laundry night. I'm more of an "erm, what day is it today?" person.

and that's why I need routine. if Tuesday night was laundry night, but I have to do something else on a given Tuesday, I could do laundry on Monday or Wednesday. if I don't have a planned laundry time, undergarment emergency day becomes laundry day. if I'm busy on a given Undergarment Emergency Day, I can't do it the day before due to lack of time machine, and I can't do it the day after because it's Undergarment Emergency Day. I become Sheldon and I hate it.

routines are great, because they take the brain out of the equation. an established routine means almost mindlessly following the steps rather than having to remember all the things I need to do. the problem comes with establishing the routines in the first place.

I've felt out of step recently. I love my new job, but the hours feel really chaotic. I work evenings & overnight when my metamour works. they follow a 5 week rota, with 1 "relief week" which could be literally anything and they can't tell me until they find out a week before. I sort of have 2 homes, which need different routines, and struggle to switch between home-Lambeth mode and home-Croydon mode, so days are lost pissing about online in the executive function equivalent of jet lag. the result is I feel like I have no time for projects I want to do. hmm.

now I have something to think about, at least.

family - RED INSTEAD 13

well, that's a complicated prompt.

they love me, but the geek social fallacies run rampant.

I love them, but they drive me mad.

favourite charity - RED INSTEAD 12

I can't think of any that operate in my country and are actually decent.

ASAN is doing great work, but not here.

NAS... run support groups for parents and not much else...?

Autscape is autistic lead, but also a clique that repeats some of the dysfunction of the worst parent-lead groups.

so I don't have a favourite.

stims - RED INSTEAD 11

stim on.

this is like coming out, in that it's often the most visible sign of my neurology. therefore I owe it to myself to stim on whenever it's safe to do so.

fortunately, it's almost always safe for me to stim. my job is informal enough that I could probably do it in my pajamas. my friends accept all of me. my girlfriend thinks it's cute.

I'm very lucky, but it should be that way for everyone.

sensory life - RED INSTEAD 10

I've written about sensory stuff on here before, when trying to make sense of the issues and come up with some practical solutions.

I'm not sure re-hashing my specific sensory profile here is productive. I seek some, I avoid some, I get confused when stress makes me avoid something I usually seek or vica virca.

the most infuriating thing is that I had to make sense of it on my own. if I attempt to crowd source answers, I get a whole lot of "if your child does X, Y might help". fine, parents need help too, but:

- every time I read the words "your child", it's a reminder that people like me don't matter to the experts.

- many issues that I have as an adult are ignored. "your child" might have issues with food & clothing, but they probably don't have to cook for themselves or go to job interviews. there probably are ways to make formal clothing more comfortable, but I can't google them because everything is so kid-focused so I have to work everything out for myself.