My Very First Post........

Hi!  Welcome to my island!  This is my very first post on my very first blog, so I’ll introduce myself, even though the three people reading this probably already know who I am.

My name is Deb.  I’m married and I have four homeschooled daughters--ages 15, 12, and 10-year-old twins.  I’m a stay-at-home mom, but I didn’t become one on purpose (at least, not the 'stay-at-home' part).  I have a genetic immune deficiency called hypogammaglobulinemia (also known as CVID).  It’s related to the ‘boy in the bubble’ disease.  Although I was born with it, I wasn’t diagnosed until ten years ago.  I’m especially susceptible to bacterial infections—sinus infections, ear infections, and pneumonia, as well as things like ‘mono’ and strep throat.

I also have several neurological ‘challenges’—it’s kind of like I had a stroke, but I was born this way (hey, that would be good on a t-shirt), and some of it runs in my family.  The biggest complaint I have about my brain is that I don’t remember much of what I see.  I don’t recognize people by their faces.  When my children were younger I used to dress them all alike when we went out in public so I could find them.  I also don’t recognize cars & buildings, so I can only drive to a couple of dozen places.  I get lost very easily, and once I get off-track it can easily take an hour (and perhaps a bit of profanity) to find anything I recognize.  I get lost inside buildings, too.  I also have trouble hearing if there’s a lot of background noise.

All of this is statistically related to Asperger’s Syndrome (also called high-functioning autism).  I’ve been diagnosed with prosopagnosia (my difficulty recognizing people) and CAPD (my trouble with background noise).  I haven’t been tested for Asperger’s, but I’d probably be diagnosed with it.  It’s only been during the last ten years that I’ve learned about Asperger’s and most of the rest of this.

What all this means is that I don’t recognize you, can’t find you, might not be able to hear what you’re saying, and just generally don’t have a clue sometimes.  And, please, don’t cough on me….

Anyway, that’s how I got exiled to my happy homemaking island, but I won’t be writing a homemaking blog any time soon—the most I could manage would be a ‘barely keeping on top of most of it most of the time’ blog.  While I’m waiting for the spaceship to come and take me back to my own kind, I keep busy barely keeping house, homeschooling, playing the piano (especially Chopin, with whom I’ve become slightly obsessed….all right, more than slightly….all right, all right, not quite obsessed to the point of madness), and trying not to spend too much time online.  I also like to walk outside along the beach under the trees….