Name the most expensive personal item you’ve ever purchased (not your home or car).

I got the chance of a lifetime when I got the job at Marylhurst University (mostly online, now closed). I met a great group of coworkers and we had a blast together. It wasn’t the perfect job for me because we don’t get to pick the jobs we want down to the curtains, but it was damn close. The reason for this is that University of Houston had 30,000 students, staff, and faculty when I was there. The labs and helpdesk were buzzing with activity, which was great for my ADHD and hell on my autism. It was a lot to take in, and I managed because I was young and didn’t know any better. Marylhurst was none of that.

I was older by then and thus couldn’t have limitations excused. At the same time, I shared an office suite with three other people, I wasn’t taking up four square feet in a sea of fifty other people. It was massive, in the top floor of a library, and it was more at home and settled than I’d felt in years.

With age comes responsibility. By the time I got the job at Marylhurst, I was in a train wreck of a marriage that started out with so much promise I still have dreams in which none of the last 10 years ever happened. My conscience spaces it when I have PTSD triggers or something like that. It’s only my brain trying to protect me and giving me calming images. I haven’t talked to her in years, but my brain doesn’t care. Dana’s laugh always brings out mine, even if I’m just thinking about her and she’s not in the room.

Absolutely none of it excuses the moments in which she purposefully tried to hurt me emotionally and physically. That’s a big statement, that she did it on purpose, and I will not shy away from it. That’s because whether Dana’s intentions were pure or not- her actions stemming from neurodivergence or malice- the effect was the same.

First, I cannot speak to whether Dana is autistic or not. In retrospect, I did not pick up anything that suggests it, because all of the things that would fall under autism I observed fall into ADHD, too. Secondly, Dana is not ADD. She is ADHD, and why the DSM is so fucked up for not differentiating anymore. I have the kind of ADHD that presents classically in women. She has the kind of ADHD that classically presents in men. As children, we were treated accordingly. You can tell that Dana has ADHD, and mine is hidden until you’re close enough to see my lack.

Our marriage made so much sense when you look at our relationships with our sisters. There’s the same age difference between Lindsay and me as there is between Dana and Counselor, and I’m betting that Counselor didn’t pick up on this because she’s never met Lindsay………… I see it so clearly that I married Dana because she reminded me of Lindsay, and Dana married me because I reminded her of Counselor. That comes out in different ways, mostly because Lindsay has the Dana brand of ADHD and Counselor and I are so close in personality that it’s weird how you never see us in the same room. If Counselor had been queer and I’d met her first, we actually would have been better partners to each other than Dana and me. This is because opposites generally only attract in the short term.

The theory holds up because Counselor and I are more like our dads. Dana and Lindsay are more like our moms. Laser beam to her head, Counselor would agree with me. Ask her if she’d like to be partners with someone like Dana having already lived with her. It’s a mixed bag because there is everything loving and comforting about a relationship pattern you’ve had since childhood, and everything bad about continuing a pattern you’ve had since childhood.

My mother knows I’m just like my dad, and I’m sure in a lot of ways knows better about what happened to Dana and me than anyone else who ever lived. She would not have understood specifics, but could have written an essay on dynamics. She could read it blind.

But, for all my best hopes and intentions, our childhood patterns turned on us. I only once had a fight with Dana that was more explosive than any I’ve had with Lindsay. Variables were transient, pattern recognition was absolute.

ADHD and Autism combine in me, but don’t in Lindsay. That means when we turn on each other, we have equal and opposite reactions….. but when we’re tracking together, it’s so good it’s like we’re the front and back of the same piece of paper. Dana and I had that same pull toward each other and the same negative reactions. Knowing in retrospect that I “married my sister” is valuable for the future because it means that who I’m looking for in a partner is more like my mother than my father, how adult relationships are currently classified (and in fact, how I think they should because the relationship with your parents is hierarchical. You don’t learn anything about how you work when a power structure like that is in place.).

There’s more to that story, but I’m instituting a hard out because to say more is to tell someone else’s story. But from what I’ve written, you’d think that I wanted Dana back. This is not true in the slightest nor will it ever be. I will be sad if I never see her again, but not bothered. We both owe each other too much not to restart with a shit ton of resentment, so even if it worked for three months, you wouldn’t be able to check in on us three years after that.

If Supergrover is any character in this story, it is Uncle Phil. We got in one little fight and I did not want to wait around and see if it happened again, so “Bel-Air” became “Silver Spring.” The real deal is that when I decided to pick up my toys and stomp off, I did not make the agreement not to come back. At the time, I wanted physical distance for safety, but I honestly and completely believed that we’d get back together because we needed to live apart and work on ourselves. Didn’t mean the connection was dead, etc.

Over time, I began to realize that’s not how being hit works. Dana broke the physical barrier and I’m not saying I didn’t hit her back or anything like that. I am saying two things. The first is that Dana instigated. The second is that at the time, she was about 300 pounds and I was maybe a buck 20. Her last punch was at my eye, where there was a lot more force behind her fist than there ever could have been in mine. She smashed my glasses into my face, and it took about two or three weeks so that the bruise didn’t show on my face. I was embarrassed to leave the house (and in burnout/depression). I didn’t get better in two or three weeks because phantom pain set itself up on my face for about a year after that. I didn’t think about calling the police, but our next door neighbors did.

It would have had to be that painful for me to let her go. She is the love of my life, but not that I don’t/won’t have others. I think that we would have been all right with counseling and we were too stupid not to see it….. but the counseling should have started the moment she got out of jail (DUI), not when Supergrover entered the picture.

Dana indirectly cost me my job at Marylhurst and I will not apologize for that statement. She wasn’t rude to my boss or anything like that, so I’m not blaming her. I am telling you the reality of the situation. I have two disabilities that affect my executive function and Dana helped it freak the fuck out. I couldn’t regulate for months.

That’s because when she got arrested, she lost her driver’s licence. When she lost her driver’s license, I had to drive her to work. There was no other option, as there was no bus to get her where she needed to go at 0300 and this was before Uber (it also would have been crazy to spend that kind of money on Uber when we had a car).

I would try to go to sleep when she did, not always possible because I wasn’t actually on her schedule, and try to function at work despite having gotten up at 0200 and gone back to bed at 0330….. every. Single. Night.

She didn’t feel that disregulation because she isn’t autistic and it was her job. What was torture to me was a chauffeur service for her. I’m not bagging on her. It’s not like she didn’t feel bad about it or anything. We both did a better job of beating ourselves up than the other one ever could’ve.

At the end of the day, neither one of us could change how we did things. It was a nightmare, and we had different reactions to it. I started focusing on soda and not alcohol. I moved into a sober house without knowing beforehand because my “host family” is Lebanese, and even though not Muslim, they are Druse, a derivative. It’s not that they disapprove of me drinking. I could have a case of vodka if I bought it.

Alcohol is just not our culture. It’s not what we do to enjoy ourselves, therefore no one is itching because it’s not there. I think once we had a brandy together before Thanksgiving, and this will be my ninth coming up. It’s just not a thing. It’s also returning to the culture of my first family, because my parents didn’t disapprove of other people drinking, but it’s not a Methodist pastor’s vibe (in general).

For a Methodist pastor, not drinking is a source of high comedy.

Editor’s Note:

The Jews do not recognize Jesus as the messiah. The Protestants do not recognize the Pope as the head of the church. Two Baptists do not recognize each other at a liquor store.

I don’t think I even tried alcohol until I was in middle school, and even then it was just a sip of wine because I didn’t know it wasn’t grape juice at communion.

After Dana got her DUI, it changed the alcohol game in only my mind, it seems. I found new flavors in new things. She did not. I wasn’t the one with a DUI, I was the passenger that, according to a police report in Multnomah County somewhere, I was “passed out in the front seat with Taco Bell lettuce on my face.” Being able to do that was the point of why Dana was driving in the first place.

She ran a game on me that I should have seen coming and I didn’t. That’s why in an earlier entry I called her an alcoholic, and I’m sorry if I’m wrong. Sincerely. I can only tell you what I observed. She actively sabotaged my ability to drink to take it for herself by agreeing to be the designated driver. She could not see that if she had one, she would not stick to soda after that and leave me in the lurch. Then, when she realized it, she’d drink more because she figured out she could.

I’d start with a Guinness, she’d start with a double Jameson. That right there became me enabling her by anticipating that she was going to do it to me and just accepting my fate. I was always the DD, and it didn’t occur to me to fight her on it instead. If I wanted a cocktail myself, I needed a ride home and compromising on it became a drumbeat I got tired of hearing because it didn’t change. I should have stood up for myself, and didn’t. This is because it is only in retrospect that I see how I enabled her.

It wasn’t on purpose. I was used to the push/pull of that dynamic of becoming a parent to an adult who wasn’t always pleasant. I didn’t mind being a caretaker because that’s how I was raised. I realized in Houston that a DUI was absolutely going to happen again and I wouldn’t excuse a second like I did the first. That at the very least, I wouldn’t divorce her, but she’d have to move out. I didn’t want to be around her culture, and when she hit me, I didn’t want to be around her, either.

There is a direct link between her and the person who emotionally abused me as a child. They know and have loved each other in the past, but that’s not the only thing. Dana was the first of my partners to recognize that she could love us both all she wanted and that still didn’t mean that __ and I weren’t a toxic dumpster fire. She saw the obsession with which I thought of her, and even I thought I was obsessed with her until I found out I had autism. It wasn’t that I was obsessed with her, it’s that I’m programmed to think about a single interest.

Now, why in the hell would a beautiful opera singer become a single interest to someone who wants that life……. who is also an opera singer, but untrained at that point…….. and still hasn’t appeared in a mainstage role but has been offered one (Penzance). In fact, she was a great teacher, but not the one for me. She didn’t have my high range, so it took a different teacher to unlock it. However, she has amazing music comprehension/interpretation and I’m glad I have her concept of musicality (PHRASING!).

I also loved her like a house on fire, listening to all her secrets and lies. Reading her college journal. Freaking out over her emotions and not mine. She used me as a dopamine source, and don’t let anyone convince you otherwise. She has manipulated so many women in front of me that I have seen her run the same game on others because their faces looked just like mine on so many occasions. When she turns the sun on you, you feel like the rest of the world blurs. You’re drawn to the web by the beauty of the spider. In some cases, physical attraction to her is right away. In all cases, people hear her sing and fall all over themselves to meet her.

In so many ways, that taught me how to be a singer more than anything else. Watching people fall all over themselves when they talked to her taught me about conserving energy. NEVER believe your own press. Have confidence in yourself, but becoming needy for external validation will lead you down the wrong path because you’ll emotionally vampire the people around you.

Therefore, in some ways from the outside we look like the same person. Our behavior just comes from opposite ends of a spectrum. I’m anxious, she’s avoidant. She needs dopamine, I need stability. Her interest is based on getting adoration, mine is about genuinely caring and catering to her needs. Her manipulation comes in when she knows she’s avoidant and you’re anxious, because your need to be heard will be blocked at every turn when a narcissist only wants dopamine from you.

They don’t want any negatives in a relationship because they really can’t handle them whether they’re narcissists or not. Knowing whether I was a narcissist or autistic was a very important distinction for me because I knew I wasn’t like her on the inside, but my judgmental bluntness made it seem that way and I had to find out why. None of the things about obsession and getting dopamine seemed true, but that’s what everyone thought because I didn’t have either an ADHD or an autistic diagnosis at that point.

People only knew I was bipolar, and figured OCD came with it. For my friends and family, sometimes they have assumed that PTSD and the breaking of my reality has been the forward note in all of this. They don’t know how I’ve made women I’ve loved my special interest since first grade. I was seemingly obsessed with Mrs. Grant, my dad’s secretaries, Meagan, and all the women they haven’t met after that, including Dana.

I made her my whole entire world, yet separate and secondary from __ because I’d known her since I was 12. I regretted it (twice in different ways- leaving her because I didn’t want to have an affair, and coming back because I couldn’t stand not asking the question…. and not “should we have an affair?” It was “leave your partner because we’re obsessed with each other in a way we can’t duplicate elsewhere and we should stop fuckin’ trying.” But we were only as successful as we allowed ourselves to be- I could choose Dana every time over my mom, dad, and sister.

The separation that comes with establishing your second family was secure biologically. That being said, __ also raised me and whether she intended it or not, I thought there was a possibility of romance. I didn’t by the time I moved to Portland having visited several times since she left Texas. I was secure about all of it, but that didn’t mean my monotropic thought process changed. She had 15 years on Dana, and I’d been every bit as rabid about her in the past and was having trouble not scheduling an appointment to talk about penguins (Sam from “Atypical). I didn’t have any way to stop it, so I couldn’t.

It embarrasses me that it led directly to a relationship where I couldn’t hang because I couldn’t acknowledge a monotropic thought process, letting go of depression and anxiety stemming from it because everyone thinks I’m weird and I feel like an alien.

If I wrote an autobiography and was just spitting titles, at least the working one would be “Jesus, Michael Valentine, Aziraphale, and Me.” Or, more accurately, “The Holy and the Moly: A Love Story.” That’s because it’s universal enough to cover history, politics, intelligence, and my romantic/platonic relationships. Those aren’t the only subjects to which it applies. Yin and yang are everywhere.

A/Theism is the greatest love story ever told, and the truth is in the slash. -Pete Rollins

Dana and I were an overnight success years in the making, because we’d loved each other so intensely emotionally that it became impossible not to pine for the physical in a way that just didn’t take until I had to live without her. I lasted a grand total of 18 months.

And it wasn’t all Dana’s magnetic pull. It was also that I spent a month in Portland alone and my house was more peaceful without Katharin. For as much as Katharin would hate me for having an affair that lasted eight and a half hours, she didn’t realize what a toxic mess she was and felt perfectly justified in being a lunatic and pulling shit on me for life. It was always my behavior, never what triggered it.

Meagan was my ex-girlfriend and I should have known it was “our” house and to consider her feelings when we’d been together for three months. She didn’t remember ex in high school and we were 28 or something like that. She remembered that if I’d been attracted to Meag once, I still was and she felt threatened. Meanwhile, I’m like “Meag was three girlfriends ago.” Just because I now think she would have been a good partner for me as an adult doesn’t mean she actually would have been, or that I would make the decision impulsively to sleep with someone in which there would be disastrous consequences for both of us…. for years on end, not just the next morning. What I said yesterday about actually sneaking off together was based on one thing- the women who we were with the night she was there both gave us unpleasant breakup experiences- not that we were perfect.

Additionally, after we broke up, Meag and I always flirted heavily and she could see that it had an effect on me and avoided it……. but not enough to stop. until we were much older and wiser. Like, if you don’t want to open Pandora’s box, degrade your pickpocket and sneak abilities, okkkkkkkkk…… I made the mistake that we would have another night together at some point, derailing my ability to move on because sometimes it was flirting innocently, sometimes it rode the edge…….. especially in front of her girlfriends.

I think that’s because it reinforced the yin and yang I had with her beard and it stuck with us. It encouraged competition she thought was amusing, but I didn’t when I learned I was always designed to lose. If it wasn’t her beard to keep her safe, it was the excitement of feeling two women fighting over her without having to suffer the consequences because I didn’t have any boundaries. I know why, therefore I don’t care. What I care about is the fact that I let myself be snowed more than once, going home brokenhearted every time until I went to visit her on her new turf.

That’s because going to visit my parents makes all the ghosts rise from their graves. I couldn’t get over her in the same town where I met her, because grace doesn’t leave you where you were found, a running theme in my life on multiple levels.

The relationship with Supergrover doesn’t make me want to run because I don’t see her everywhere I go unless I’m specifically looking for her. I don’t except at times where it’s possible a shared interest would lead our paths to cross. Because of the insecure connection, I actively avoid those things and will until our connection is secure again.

Because she’s suspicious, if I don’t avoid these things she uses the events as evidence I’m an asshole because I’m trying to look for her or trying to get close to someone because she is. I went to school with a lot of people who are now famous.

She knows a lot of famous people. An analogy would be scaring the life out of her because we both showed up at the same theater to see Matthew McConaughey. I don’t know if she knows him, but he’s the biggest star I’ve actually met in real life (not at HSPVA, attended the same church as kids. I just don’t remember meeting him because I was three at most.).

Because he’s a household name, there’s a bigger chance she knows him. For instance, I could say the same thing about Jason Moran and Robert Glasper being threatening, but they’re not as widely known so she might not have heard of them.

Editor’s Note:

The way Supergrover and flip each other shit runs thusly with stuff like this. I make a joke or observation (here or otherwise). I will have written thousands of words around it. She’ll go for the joke and laugh at my annoyance (that’s it? That’s all I get?). For instance, the e-mail I will get in response to this whole entire ass essay (if it happens) is “I do know Matt. :)” No context whatsoever, pick your own adventure. Luckily, that hasn’t been problematic at all (eyeroll).

In return, I do shit like compare her job to one in the service industry and she says, “I accept tips.” I PayPal’ed her two dollars. All I got back was “Dead.” That laugh is worth more than I’ll ever pay for it.

When it’s good it’s perfect because she’s basically George Clooney. Beautiful and impish.

The Holy and the Moly: A Love Story

I just want her to see that she’s the whole book on her own, and so am I. We’re like a YA novel where every chapter is one of us acting as unreliable narrator, because our problems are adult and our reactions to them are not.

We are talking about serious shit with underlying feelings akin to the love and disaster of your best friend finding a new one in third grade…… not a one-off for me as I’ve fumbled my way through life.

Katharin was a narcissist because she was a dry drunk, another bird with a broken wing who treated me like shit while I walked on eggshells hoping it helped and it never did.

The absolute and only reason I made Supergrover my special interest in my writing is because it was the first relationship in which my partner could be first in my mind. Whether she was a yellow string or a red, there was no hierarchy except the hard outs. I called her on her bullshit as easily as she called me on mine. I felt freer than I’d ever been, and I’m sorry I hurt her because of it, flying too close to the sun.

That’s because we came back together afterward, the relationship was maintained with an anxious/avoidant attachment and history repeated itself. I was seemingly obsessed when Supergrover is one of the few topics where you have to make an appointment with me to talk about whales (“Extraordinary Attorney Woo”).

Another character I love is on Apple TV+ called “Dr. Brain.” I can’t remember the real name of the doctor, but the show starts with a clearly autistic child (relatively low function STEM savant in medicine- brilliant intellectually, not so much with the affection. The way he’s low functioning as an adult is what makes him come off as an asshole who “doesn’t look autistic.”).

Yet, apparently my monotropic thought processes will always be such a mystery :::hold for everyone to roll their eyes:::

I also do not know what happened to Dana after I moved to DC. We talked a few times when I got here, but not since. I feel such pain and relief. I sincerely hope that she prefers Fanta to whatever the fuck that was…… if not for her sake, for her future partners.’

These essays are how I learn what I will not tolerate anymore. I am not a judgmental asshole. I constantly want a better relationship and try to provide positive feedback, but when my sensory issues are turned up to hell and I’m having an autistic meltdown, rage takes over my whole body and my executive function goes out the window.

It is not only because autism chooses to hit hard and fast. It is because I didn’t realize that people don’t rage like that when they’re angry. It looks a lot different and you can’t put your finger on it if your brain isn’t the same (especially, but not limited to you thinking it is). My social masking taught me how to fight, how to express myself, but not the way neurotypicals do it. I could only pick out their patterns, not understand them to the degree I could replicate.

I did not comprehend that when I was angry, frustrated, and overwhelmed so were other people, but their emotions weren’t tied up in their health. When people get angry and defensive at me, I respond. I do not have “a proportional response” because I have no executive function. When I get angry, I get arrhythmia, shortness of breath, and sudden drop in blood pressure that makes me feel like I’m going to faint, but I don’t. I’m just frozen.

The reason I know it’s autism and not PTSD depends on the subject. It’s a PTSD trigger when I’m thinking about the source, and autism because the rage has happened since long before my emotional abuse was a thing. Just like other autistic people, that kind of rage can be brought on by anything during meltdown.

It could be “my parents divorced” or “I have to eat blueberries (every one is different) instead of Goldfish (every one is the same). Not seeming bothered by such a small thing is what we mean when we say “social masking.” Pretending that a whole lot of social shit doesn’t matter when we’re physically and mentally in pain.

We put up with a lot of emotional abuse because autistic kids are treated differently than autistic children and you never grow up whether you’re neurodivergent or not. We are layers and layers of social masking over a six-year-old child, and I’m not the first or only person to make this observation. Because I’m a preacher’s kid, I saw this long before Psych 101. Taking Psych 101 led me to be interested in Erickson, Skinner, and Freud to some extent. That’s because I was not interested in going into early education, but how childhood affects adults. Through education and volunteering (youth director at church), I have learned a little bit about both ends of the spectrum.

“Volunteer youth director” jogged my memory and I remembered the two times I knew I really had a win with them. The first was a parent coming up and telling me how much her son appreciated a story I’d told (sermon illustration I didn’t write) about a little boy flinging starfish into the ocean. His parents stopped him and said “it doesn’t make any difference. There’s too many.” He said, “it makes a difference to this one.” The reason it was a win is that his mother told me the story of him telling her two years later.

The second win is entirely because of who my dad and stepmom are as people. My dad was a pastor. My stepmom is a doctor. The scriptures that week were on the lepers that Jesus cured, and how only one of them came back to thank him for it (that’s on brand for humanity). Where they meet is being able to explain to the kids why the lepers were outcasts. What leprosy did to the body and why it made them look so physically different. Leprosy is now called “Hansen’s Disease, and falls under autoimmune diseases.

In Texas, we occasionally see cases because pro tip, you cannot eat an armadillo.

Anyway, the message resonated and one of the kids….. the one who everyone else considered “a mess….” said, “maybe we shouldn’t do the same thing to the Muslims.” I don’t remember the correlation because I don’t remember which country said outcasts were from, I just remember it was the Middle East.

Back to you, Bob. Let’s go to the phones.

You don’t stop having PTSD, you focus on it longer because you’re a monotropic thinker. Once it gets in, you have a hell of a time getting it back out….. and yet when you solve it, you don’t suddenly become “not autistic,” either. Again, Supergrover and I weren’t, aren’t, and never will be a couple, but I learned more about how I behave in one than I have from anyone else in the last 10 years.

I could pick up the “I should be angry about this,” but not “this is how a functional person experiences rage.” I don’t need to learn how to get rid of rage because it’s never going to happen. Disabilities frustrate and anger the shit out of me. It is something that needs constant management, because freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from consequences. You don’t have a social mask for something, you better get it.

Autism is a spectrum, and what we mean by “high functioning” is enough executive function to be aware we need social masking in the first place. The classic image of an autistic person is someone who doesn’t, so therefore all people who can social mask “don’t look autistic.” It’s not that I don’t have the same reactions. I have different ways of expressing them. My toxic trait is being in meltdown and it looking like nagging/nitpicking. I’m not, I’m just overwhelmed and headed for burnout and can’t adjust my tone because I’m not thinking about it. So much depends on what happened before I got angry and how many sensory issues are in the room.

The way I manage it is to walk away from a conflict, but reassure the person that I am not walking away because I am angry at them. I just need to process meldown and burnout before I can discuss an issue calmly. That it’s better for me to process on my own so I don’t take out my anger on them.

The added bonus is that while we’re not interacting, they’re still seeing how I’m processing my emotions because I don’t lock them out. Anyone can read here, and I’m sure “anyone” does. 😉 (This applies to many, many people…. like Allison in Galveston, etc.). Whether someone else wants to work with me or not, they get closure if they want it. I’m doing it for myself, but that doesn’t mean they don’t benefit from it.

In fact, sometimes I’m so good at writing about things here that people don’t tell me things because they feel like they’ve already talked to me because I’ve written about them. In their minds, I’ve already “texted them.” It’s not a slam on their reputations because I don’t have much to talk about outside of what I publish to make conversations different.

People don’t have to ask me how I am because they already know. The difference is that I don’t have the same relationship with them because I’m isolated by nature of what I do. Sometimes I’m distant whether I want to be or not because it takes being completely off the grid for me to write. This is problematic when people think of my phone as a leash.

I don’t even carry it most of the time because I have an Apple Watch that will switch hit between Wifi and my cell plan. I turn off the notifications so I have it if I need to call out or if I fall, but my wrist isn’t constantly dinging or buzzing (if you have an Apple Watch, you know the hell of being trapped in a group text). I prefer buzzing to the sound, btw. The reason I don’t carry my phone is that I only need to be able to call and SMS because I use an Android tablet that does everything my phone would with more desktop real estate.

Neither an iPhone or an Apple Watch has a 3.5mm headphone jack, so I don’t get any benefit from better audio when the Bluetooth cards are basically identical. I just don’t have a use case for a phone anymore. The only reason I use my iPad is to watch Apple TV+. My iPad is more powerful in terms of hardware, more irritating in terms of software. If I could buy an iPad and install Android on it, I would. In fact, because I use both tablets as a laptop, adding a keyboard and sometimes a mouse, I could put the entire desktop version of Ubuntu and all its applications with hardware that good.

It’s not that I prefer desktop linux to Android. I can do anything on an Android that I could do on a linux box because it’s the same OS in terms of command line. But there are more applications written for desktop Ubuntu that haven’t been ported to a mobile app (damned inconvenient).

Android has been around for a long time, but really started competing with iOS when Samsung started releasing features that were years ahead of iPhones (and Apple always thinks their improvements are their ideas). I learned the most about Android when I was working for Marylhurst.

It was the storm before the TARDIS landed on my lawn, and the sweet relief of finding my own bedroom.

It’s all connected. The way I acted. Why. How I got to different locations and conclusions with multiple people who all had the same characteristics and wildly different in other ways, leading to me to believe there were no repeats, etc.

That’s why it is such a long essay over a $500 leather satchel (tablet case) I bought when I got the job. It was handmade in Ecuador. I don’t care if I paid too much, the quality makes in an heirloom. It needs conditioning now, and it needs to be worn in even still. But it is the most valuable personal item I have, because there’s way more than $500 worth of joy, laughter, and pain in it.

Even my autism turns up in a joke about it…. that my Satchel is a TARDIS in and of itself. The reason that it connects to my autism is that in bringing up “Satchel,” we have just made an appointment to talk about intelligence.

Again.

Maybe I should have picked otters.