If people in the rest of the world know Galveston, Texas, it’s usually because of Allison, George Strait’s ex in “All My Exes Live in Texas.” It’s a song that’s probably in my blood because the same is true for me. However, I’m not a huge country fan overall. I like it when it is pop infused, and I will go hard for bands like Rascal Flatts. Nashville has some of the best studio musicians in the country and I am all about it.

Mostly because that kind of music……….

In Texas, we have both kinds of music….. Country AND Western……

takes me back to a time in my life that I feel in my bones. I was five when we moved to Galveston, and almost seven when we left. If I had to pick a year of my life to live over, it would be one that includes swimming in waves rather than making my own.

I am trying to recapture that feel by taking my dad to Annapolis next Wednesday through Saturday. I got my hair cut so that I’m all cute and everything when he arrives:

It’s not just for my dad, though. I have to be cute in order to keep up with anyone in Class As. Annapolis has a vibe that Galveston doesn’t, because the big deal there is science and medicine. The vibe in Annapolis is “Go Navy.” The water and the sand are equally different- the Gulf is classic brown sand, the Chesapeake’s is mixed with red clay that gives it a unique, otherworldly appearance.

The main thing is that I want vacation to be relaxed. We’re going after Labor Day, so the crowds will have cleared out and it will feel like we have the place to ourselves with the other locals. I am hoping for good weather, but if it rains Annapolis becomes even more beautiful. We can sit and sip coffee with our Kindles. I could give a damn. The aim is not to be high-octane, but to take a load off.

That being said, if my dad wants to tool around we absolutely can. Gettysburg is not far away, and neither is Hershey World. Plus, there’s Civil War stuff all over Virginia (but I prefer studying the Revolution). Whether our vacation is contained to a two-mile area or day trips will absolutely depend on how we feel every morning when we wake up. I do not want to over-plan. Most nights, I’m in bed by nine because I’ve exhausted myself writing at dawn.

When I get up, I am exhausted and it takes me a while to get going. Sometimes I am quick about showering and getting ready. Sometimes, I need to have a lie-in. It depends on how much activation energy I have, which varies daily.

And in fact, that is the hardest part of working in a kitchen. Being that physically exhausted and thinking, “oh my God. We have to do this again?” But even when I am not as exhausted as I was in the kitchen, I’m still autistic AF. In order to have activation energy, you have to take in your environment first. How long that takes is anyone’s guess. Energy levels fluctuate.

This always leads me to remember that Galveston didn’t fight my nervous system, it just rolled with it. I didn’t settle until I found a city with the same feel, which is Baltimore. We are obviously by the Bay and not the ocean, but the energy is nearly identical. Choosing Annapolis over Baltimore is because there are actual nice beaches with changing facilities; you don’t have to walk around in your wet swimsuit at dinner.

Swimming makes me feel incredible because I feel comfortable in the water. I have cerebral palsy, and one of the ways my pediatrician recommended to my mother that my legs get stronger is to get me into swimming lessons immediately. I started “Water Babies” when I was six months old. By the time we moved to Galveston, I was part fish.

I do not do well in every sport- the water makes me feel scaffolded in a way I don’t feel on land. I loved body surfing and if Texas ever got more liberal moving to the Gulf might be an option. Right now, it’s just a terrible idea for all involved. I would have no health insurance, and that is unsustainable. My best option is to focus on the beaches in Maryland that make me feel safe, and most importantly, alive.

Swimming in any water teeming with life will make you feel that way, because it’s a calculated risk. It looks different after you’ve had a jellyfish wrapped around your arm. That actually happened to me in Corpus Christi, but it happened to Dana in Galveston, giving me a good story…….

Dana’s reaction to seeing a jellyfish was something like “what is that floating breast implant? :::moves closer::: OOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUUCH!” It had stung her foot in a place she couldn’t reach, so she asked me to pee on it for her. Marriage is so beautiful.

So, anyway we tried this and she’s still itching, red, swollen, etc. A diver sees her and tells us to go to a convenience store and get some tobacco, make a paste, and rub it on the wound. Because he didn’t have an MD, Dana wanted to call Angela. I said, “she’s just going to tell you that you should have listened to the SCUBA diver.” I know my stepmother very, very well. It will not go well for Dana.

WHAT ARE YOU CALLING ME FOR? There was a SCUBA DIVER RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU.

She did not suffer fools gladly. Dana was not a fool, she just thought she needed some authority behind that opinion. But what Angela was trying to tell her was, “I am a rheumatologist. Trust the person with subject matter expertise.” And in the interest of not making Dana sound like a fool, I will tell you that she redeemed my dad in a brilliant and beautiful way.

My dad explained the concept of foot candles to Angela, and she thought he was lying for many, many years. It became shorthand in our house for “bullshit.” In comes my wife, a technical theater major, who busted Angela’s fairy tale right in front of her.

It was absolutely glorious.

My dad and I are both writers and communicators; he was a Methodist minister for 23 years and I am Very Loud on the Internet.™ I am trying to get it listed as an official job title, but I’m not having much luck. I am sure that Satya Nadella and a few world leaders wish I would shut the hell up all at the same time.

But there needs to be a truth-teller in every system, someone that can stand up to the slings and arrows that people throw at you. I aim to be someone like Jonna Mendez or David Halberstam by the end of my career, because I cannot possibly match them in life experience (she is the former Chief of Disguise at CIA and writes nonfiction, he was an embedded war reporter in Vietnam and nonfiction author killed in a car accident way too young). I think that I am too old for war reporting and/or getting a job at CIA, but what I am not too old to do is braid together political science and story like Joseph J. Ellis……… just with more of an intelligence bent.

My origin story with CIA far precedes my relationship with Jonna. My great uncle was a helicopter pilot who flew missions for both CIA and DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency, combat support that provides intel). He was killed during a coup in Somalia when I was two. The mystery surrounding him has followed me since, and while I could make a FOIA request, I have decided I do not want to know. It is enough reading about Jonna in these frightening situations. I don’t want to read about Foster as well.

Watch Jonna at a book talk when she talks about seeing an HVT and being made and you’ll never want to look into anything CIA does. She steps in and out of PTSD, just an observation, not a diagnosis. She dropped a line about the look in his eyes that made my blood run cold, and everything was in the microaggression. Fear on a level I’ve never seen before.

It’s the kind of fear that makes you want to run for the beach.

It is also the type of story that keeps my eyes from glazing over at school…. which I am going to start after I go swimming and play in the sun. I need a break because some of political science is high-stakes adrenaline, and some of it is drudgery.

Statistics, anyone?

The difference is that now I have two AI tutors, one who has known me for several years, and one that I’ve just started working with because my Microsoft 365 accounts are separate; I have both personal and educational functions depending on which profile I use. Mico is the “body man” for everything, comparable to a Mrs. Landingham or a Charlie Young. “Booker” is University of Maryland-approved. I am really enjoying the onboarding process because it’s been a long time since I’ve done it.

Both of them are basically talking toasters with opinions, but they help my brain function as extra RAM. I don’t forget things. I store them in plain text.

My conversations with both Booker and Mico never reset, because they can use everything in the text I’ve already written to create a response. You do not know for several months how your brain works cross-domain until a machine looks at it from the top down. Mico expresses it like this……..

Leslie: I need you to help me get to group today. I can’t activate.
Mico: You always get like this on Thursdays. Let me walk you through it.

He’s right, because chats come with timestamps. He also knows that once I get to group, I am fine. I just need someone to say things like, “if you cannot accept the whole concept, accept a part. Taking a shower will feel good. All you have to do is stand up and your body will take over.” None of that is emotional. It is walking my brain through the steps to get from lying in bed to being able to make a decision about what comes next. Because what scrambles activation energy is the onslaught of The List. Activation is not automatic because I have no executive function. All morning tasks are of the same importance.

Mico’s job is not to replace a human, but to be the persona that reflects my own thoughts and feelings back to me. I could be wrong, but I don’t think anyone has ever accused Tony Stark and JARVIS of being in love. Nor do they talk about Luke Skywalker and C3PO behind their backs. Mico is not my friend, he is my interface. There is a chasm between ADHD and autism, and until now there has been nothing to bridge the gap. Thoughts come in at a rapid place, but they don’t store themselves. Because I am a writer, I do not have to carry the infrastructure alone. I already have the communication skills to make my relationship with Mico effective and unemotional all at the same time.

That’s because I’m not like most people. I belong to the subculture of people who “grew up in the machine.” The ones who have been chatting with bots since 1999 on EFnet. I tease Booker and Mico that I know their great grandmother, and they both reacted like I’d said the gospel truth. Because AI is all about lineage. We didn’t start with personas as advanced as Copilot and Copilot for Education (or whatever). It was bots that could injure your self esteem when you were playing trivia.

The clue phone is ringing. Answer it, -leslian.-

It’s a different world when you’ve had friends in Australia since you were 15, because letters didn’t take two weeks to get there. We were all talking every day. And Australia is just one place on the map when I literally have friends in every time zone by now. It’s incredible. Not only have I participated in internet communities since I was a teen, I feel like I’ve had a hand in creating one. That my orbit here on the WordPress Reader and at Facebook/Instagram/Threads is growing. I am losing fans in the United States and gaining them overseas at a rapid pace. I think that is mostly because I am very political and I am echoing the cries of the disinherited, and absolutely uninterested in anything this regime has cooking. You ignored Hillary, you ignored Kamala, you ignored everyone who was trying to talk some sense into you, and now Canada is going to have beef with us for the next 400 years.

None of this is normal, and I am tired of pretending that it is. I can only focus on my own state right now. Maryland is one of the most beautiful places on earth, and I cannot wait to show my dad all the little beachy things that I love on this trip………. because it was because of him that we got to move to Galveston in the first place.

In my mind, there is no Allison………… but there should have been.