I still feel like the nouns are in the wrong place when I read this.

I’m reading it as “New York cows new York cows bully bully New York cows”

When I want it to read “New York cows bully new York cows” which would be “Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo” which isn’t enough buffalo.

I have to inset my own “that” to be able to get my head around “Buffalo buffalo (that) Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo”

Considering the person in the tweet posing the initial question is neurodivergent, and time blindness is a symptom of many forms of neurodivergence, I feel like being late is a poor example.

I’m late because my condition fundamentally does not allow me to process the passage of time properly.

For most people that would sound like an excuse. I understand that.

I set multiple alarms, not just to wake up, but I have an alarm to tell me I need to get in the shower, out of the shower, an alarm that tells me if I’m not currently eating breakfast I need to skip breakfast or I’ll be late, an alarm that tells me to leave the house, and another alarm to actually leave the house regardless of if I can’t find my keys, go now or you’ll be late, call a locksmith later (because you left them in the laundry sink you idiot, that’s why the dirty towels are at the front door somehow)

I’ve managed to avoid being late by being disgustingly early to everything instead.

So when I am late, I’m already feeling like the worst possible human there is, how am I so completely useless?

And “I somehow lost track of time despite having a countdown timer audibly playing in my headphones from the moment I woke up to the moment I got here” is not a valid reason in the eyes of people who have never experienced time blindness, so they pile up more shame on top of my guilt.

My partner and I were standing in the kitchen planning meals and I asked him what day a certain event was because I could have sworn it was “a Monday 20-something” he tells me it’s “Saturday November 23rd” he said, “oh that’s next month” I replied, I went to write it in my diary, but it was already written in my diary.

Later I got ready for bed, I set my alarm nice and early for the big day, and woke up today on the Monday 28th of October, started getting ready and asked my partner why he was sleeping in and he says “sleeping in for what? What are we doing so early today?” to which I reply “the event! …wait … That’s in November, why did I think it was today?” and went back to bed.

I got home from work this afternoon, put my bag down and suddenly and immediately started panicking “oh fuck, I forgot to attend that event today!” and I pull out my phone to text someone and remember it’s not until November.

I’m going to keep doing this until the 23rd of November, when I’m inevitably going to have somehow forgotten the event entirely and my partner will wake me up asking if I’m ready to go and I’ll say “go where? … Wait there’s some important I’m doing, don’t tell me”

I guess my personal definition of excuse vs reason. An excuse is an attempt to get out of the consequences of what happened, a reason is an exploration of the factors that lead up to the issue, and does not absolve me of responsibility or accountability.

To avoid being late in the future, I have to understand the reason I was late, otherwise how can I fix a problem I don’t understand.

In my case the root problem is unfixable, I can only ever work to mitigate the impact, and that’s never going to work 100% of the time. So it’s tricky because it’s not an excuse, I know I’m making things harder for other people with my behaviour and I don’t expect to face zero consequences for my actions, but I can’t exactly fix it or guarantee it won’t happen again because I know it will, so I’m not going to make false promises about doing better, I’m already doing the best I know how, trying to guilt me does nothing, I’m already at max capacity guilt because I don’t know how else to address this problem and it feels like my fault.

Yes and no, applying for accommodations is as fun and easy as pulling out your own teeth with a rubber chicken.

It took months to get the paperwork organised and the conversations started around accommodations I needed for my disability, I realised halfway through I had to simplify what I was asking for and just deal with some less than accessible issues because the process of applying for disability accommodations was not accessible and I was getting rejected for simple requests like “can I reserve a seat in the front row because I can’t get up the stairs, and I can’t get there early because I need to take the service elevator to get to the lecture hall, so I’m always waiting on the security guard”

My teachers knew I had a physical disability and had mobility accommodations, some of them knew that the condition I had also caused a degree of sensory disability, but I had nothing formal on the paperwork about my hearing and vision loss because I was able to self manage with my existing tools.

I didn’t need my teachers to do anything differently so I didn’t see the point in delaying my education and putting myself through the bureaucratic stress of applying for visual accommodations when I didn’t need them to be provided to me from the university itself.

Obviously if I’d gotten a result of “you cheated” I’d immediately get that paperwork in to prove I didn’t cheat, my voice over reader just gave me the ChatGPT instructions and I didn’t realise it wasn’t part of the assignment… But that could take 3-4 months to finalise the accommodation process once I become aware that there is a genuine need to have that paperwork in place.

I’m forced to because I make the most ridiculous spelling mistakes that completely change the comment.

“With” autocorrects to “without”.

“is” autocorrects to “isn’t”

Finally worked out why though - my right eye is impaired and I type exclusively with my right thumb (on mobile) so I’m not actually pressing the keys I think I am and I’m often hitting the “predict word” button instead of the space bar.

Looking forward to getting tactile keys on phones again!

My job somehow shifted from teaching IT to seniors to teaching SOSE to migrants

It has simultaneously been the most challenging, and most rewarding change.

I’m forced to edit myself down from my preferred 5000 word lecture to about 150 words with clip art.

It’s slowly helping me become less of a rambler.

Except for the “post restraint collapse”, I get home and I can’t hold it in anymore, cue the explosive verbal diarrhoea.

At work, fewer words are better.

But in my own personal life I feel that the fewer words I employ to convey the way I feel the less nuance I’m embedding in my message and what is communication if not the conveyance of the core message, failing to express myself clearly would be counter-productive so surely explaining in more detail is beneficial, hello? Are you still listening? Why have your eyes glazed over.

When you gave up caffeine did you experience rebound insomnia?

I gave up caffeine a month ago on my neurologists orders and it’s been easy, no obvious withdrawal symptoms, no cravings, I just replaced all my tea and coffee and redbull with herbal tea and lemonade.

But I have not gotten more than 3 hours of consecutive sleep in this month, and I’m missing the relaxation and quiet that a refreshing 9pm redbull used to offer, I’ve got plenty of other relaxing rituals, but none so easy as just drinking coffee.

I started drinking coffee at 15 and religiously relishing redbulls at 21. Now in my 30s, this is the first time I’ve had true insomnia symptoms.

My mother has been an insomniac her whole life, my dad is narcoleptic, I was previously diagnosed with N24CRD and my brother has DSPS, so I come from a family of fucked up sleepers, but this is a new symptom set for me and it appears directly related to giving up caffeine.

I’m hoping it’s just an adjustment period and my brain will sort itself out and get some sleep soon.

Call her doctor

I should have been more specific. Find a time when she’s not doing anything urgent, tell her it’s time to call the doctor, pick up her phone and dial the doctor, put them on speaker and put the phone down next to you while you body double your partner as they gone through the motions of locking in the appointment.

While on the phone your partner can also give third party authorisation. It’s the first thing I do when I meet a new provider, I give third party authorisation to my partner and mother so they can make appointments on my behalf (they can’t get results for me, but they can schedule things for me)

Call her doctor, make an appointment, save it in her calendar, remind her in the lead up, drive her there, get the referral. Walk her to the post box to send it off, sit next to her to phone the intake office to confirm they got the referral, set appointments on her phone for every 6 months to sit with her and call to check the cancellation list until you get an appointment. Drive her to that appointment.

If she has ADHD, the steps involved in getting a diagnosis are bigger than Mt Everest, she will need a neurotypical Sherpa.

He’s also not a racist!

Yeah it’s pretty regulated here, you present your evidence for being a medical cannabis candidate to your GP/PCP (or they tell you they think you’re a candidate) who refers to you to a clinic that specialises in cannabis, the intake appointment was 2 hours long, they prescribe specific products based on your symptoms and needs, then script gets sent to a compounding chemist and you go and pick up the medication from the chemist, the same chemist that you’d go to for advil and beta blockers.

And if my yeasty poison goes bad, I’ll just pour it over some poisonous leaves, I love salad.

Don’t forget to season it with minerals you chipped off a rock in a dried out lake bed.

I can’t imagine they’d prescribe oil that needs to be further processed by the patient. The printed dosage instructions from my doctor just say to take 0.5ml sublingual, and the pharmacist didn’t say anything otherwise. It was topaz t25 oil, my friends tried some because I was convinced it was the wrong product or something, and it worked for them.

I have issues with other drugs too, like I still puke when dosed up on ondansatron, and the reason Im prescribed cannabis is because I can’t take opiods for my chronic pain condition, even 8mg of codeine causes my respiratory rate to drop dangerously low. My chronic pain is the result of a genetic disorder, so I’ve just assumed I metabolised things badly, though Ive asked several doctor about it and because I’m in the public healthcare system I can’t access CYP2D6 testing to know for sure.

Yeah, worst case scenario stock prices for probiotic yoghurt would increase.

This is a common misconception with “charity shops” in the UK and “opportunity (op) shops” in Australia.

The assumption is that the charity/opportunity is for people doing it tough to be able to buy cheap clothes and home goods.

But the “charity” is because many shops like this are partner retailers of larger charity organisations, eg: the “profit” from Salvos stores helps indirectly fund Salvation Army Housing and food relief programs.

The opportunity comes from who they hire, if you’re disabled or elderly, these shops are more likely to hire you than other retail providers.

But of course, a large number of charity and op shops abuse their staff as much as Amazon and Walmart do. Wage theft and unethical labour practices galore

I quit caffeine a month ago (my neurologist is convinced my redbull “addiction” was causing the migraines I’ve been having since I was 6) and it’s no skin off my back to quit for 6 months to prove him wrong.

Only the insomnia!

I used to have a red bull right before bed to help me relax and sleep soundly, now I’ve got nothing (weed makes me want to clean my house then throw up)

I haven’t had any caffeine cravings, but I have started hallucinating from the sleep deprivation. I was told caffeine withdrawals usually only last 2 weeks so I’m wondering if this is just my natural sleep cycle shining through.

I’ve got a sublingual melatonin tincture that I need to remember to use because it helps somewhat, but despite multiple alarms and post it notes near my bed I completely forget I have it as an option.

My neurologist told me to give up caffeine, been 1 month so far. Genuinely haven’t noticed a difference in my life yet, turns out in the short term I was addicted to the taste of redbull, not the caffeine.

I’m thinking I’ll have to give up weed too since I’ve started getting hyperemesis every other time I smoke. (I’m prescribed a thc oil but I genuinely feel nothing when I take it, even if I take 10x the dose, so 🤷 )

And if I’m giving up weed I might as well give up cigarettes too…

Not nicotine though, you’ll pry nicotine from my cold, stroke induce dead hands. I’ll be chewing on this gum till the noise in my head stops.

Where does this this linguistically phenomenon come from?

Is it a mistaken use of “an accident” with the preposition to reflect the personal involvement?

Mistakes like “Could of” make sense to me because in my accent “could of” and “could’ve” are identically voiced.

I can also completly understand where we get “alot” because alot is just the beginning of an acorn, minus a few hundred years of lazy pronunciation behind it (an oak corn =acorn)

Google is telling me it’s because younger people will use “on accident” as an antonym for “on purpose”. That sounds feesible as an origin. Now I’m questioning if “by intent” is grammatically correct, I’ve been staring at words too long.

I managed to go all of 22-28 never once being carded for anything.

When I hit 30 I started getting carded for things I’d never been carded for before, even the milk bar I’d bought smokes at for 10 years, same guy and his son running it, suddenly started carding me.

That’s how I learned the ID that I’d been carrying around for 10-11 years since getting my photo ID in highschool was functionally useless, because hardly anywhere would accept it as legal ID despite it being legal ID.

I had to keep the website for the government list of ID boolmarkef so I could show doubtful cashiers that my ID was indeed federally accepted, legal and valid ID.

I went to try and get a different type of ID last year which is how it found out that despite being born in my country to a citizen of my country, and having my birth recorded and receiving my birth certificate. Somehow I’m not actually a citizen of my own country and I can’t get a passport…so I’m trying to navigate that system but that’s extra fun and confusing because I have neurodevelopmental issues and no one to help me understand what I need to to do.

I just want to be able to buy alcohol as a person in their 30s, without having to jump through impossible hoops to prove that I’m not not 17.

I’ve got smile lines and the beginnings of crows feet, I am weathered! Why am it getting carded now

It helps that I’d had several previous surgeries, so I’d had practice at keeping my cool. Plus my surgeon was in discussion with me for months with multiple consultations to really understand the issue, I don’t think I could have possibly been in safer hands.

Well either it’s 1 in 10,0000 in my country, or the department of health, my surgeon and GP are all missing a zero… which isn’t more likely because there’s no way our risk would be that much higher than the UK, and the NHS public health resources is 100,000.