It’s spring! Our air temperatures in mid-April are heading into the 90’s during the day, a 40 degree swing from the night temperatures. But even in the middle of the day I haven’t had to turn my air conditioning on yet because the house is still cool, because the adobe stays cool all day.

Keeping up with the temperature in the desert is always an exercise in chasing a moving target.

There are a few mosquitos are out! There’s not very many of them yet, and they are a mixture of two kinds. I’ve seen a few of the big, loud, slow northern kind that are most active in the evenings (the kind that most of you in the northern and western parts of the US are familiar with).

I’ve also seen a few of the small, nearly silent mosquitos that are a warmer climate mosquito. They are extremely aggressive and bite during the day. I believe they are Aedes aegypti. The Aedes varieties are small and striped and often called Tiger mosquitos. Those are the ones that tormented us last summer. Last year they came out briefly in April, disappeared during the dry months of May and June, and then were thick during the monsoon rains in July, August and September.

Some of you were asking about when the cacti bloom. It depends on which ones, and varies each year, but some are blooming now.

This ocotillo, pronounced o-co-tee-yo (no “L” sound) is across the street from my house.

A variety of trees are blooming (and others bloomed earlier in the year). These are around the corner from my house.

The rest of these cacti photos are from my yard.

There’s been a lot of wildlife too. I’ve been regularly seeing coyotes walking down the street in broad daylight. And the wild pigs have been wandering around. These guys stink! A javelina is not actually a pig, it’s a peccary, but most locals colloquially call them pigs. Like coyotes, they live in and around the arroyos and frequently wander the neighborhoods surrounding the arroyos.

A neighbor of mine said she recently saw the pigs while walking her dog late in the evening. And sure enough, our security camera picked one up around 11:00 one night. https://youtu.be/oOHPyAbUBfE

I had an out-of-state friend visiting the week of the pig visit – we didn’t realize (until John noticed recently from stored security videos) that pigs had passed by in the night. If we had known, we could have stayed up late one night to enjoy the evening with the javelina.

I’ll write more about our fun visit from my friend soon. But first I want to finish a follow-up post about the pineapple guava tree project from last month. I’m always running 2-3 weeks behind with this blog, no matter what I do! But I jumped ahead with this post, because I wanted to get my mid-April spring post published in mid-April, not sometime next month. By May it will be summer!

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com

I often get together with a small group of friends on Sunday mornings. We go for a walk, come back and meditate for about 20 minutes on a topic, and then have a discussion. We alternate whose house, and one morning in late March we met in a very nice area in central Tucson.

When I drove down there, I discovered bicyclists everywhere! Roads were blocked off and traffic cops were directing traffic. Turns out there was a local bicycling event happening.

It wasn’t a serious race – people were riding on all kinds of contraptions, some in costumes. What fun!

I made it through the festivities and to my friend’s house with no problem and we all set out walking toward the activities. This area of town has tons of character and makes an excellent place to walk even without a local festival going on.

I was like, wow, this is cool, where am I?

Here come the bikes!

I’ve always thought there would be nothing better than having a balcony overlooking street events.

The guys up on the balcony were friendly and chatting with my friends as we stood in the street, right in the way of the bicyclists. But the mood was casual, no one was racing.

There was even a Mariachi band. Local events help me to not miss Albuquerque, because the culture here in Tucson is similar.

Here’s the link if the embedded video doesn’t work for you, https://youtu.be/Bb09LIc15XQ

What? In Tucson we have earnest conversations with cacti all the time.

It was fun to walk through the festival atmosphere, and then back through the barrio.

On one hand, I would love to see this house restored to its former glory. On the other hand, when out-of-state money comes pouring into an older neighborhood (as is currently happening) there is a type of authenticity that is lost. Not to mention the social implications for the displaced local residents.

So many different southwest styles. From a distance this next one might look like the roof is terra cotta tiles, but that is actually a metal roof.

The walls are adobe brick with a thin outer layer of pigmented mud, leaving the brick texture showing, but giving it a more uniform color than my house (with nothing on the bricks at all).

This next one is more like what I had been used to in New Mexico.

If you look at the windows you can see how thick those walls are. It blocks the direct sunlight from getting in, keeping the house shaded. And the thermal mass of the thick adobe walls keeps the house a more consistent temperature from night to day, when air temperatures swing drastically in the desert, helping to keep the house cool during the day.

After our great walk, we retreated to my friend’s peaceful backyard.

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com

Here’s the link, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/we-need-better-diagnostic-tests-for-autism-in-women/ and for those of you who struggle with links in this blog, I’m going to reprint the entire article. Credit to Zhara Astra, Scientific American, April 2022. “Zhara Astra is a screenwriter, producer and a professor at Arizona State University where she teaches a course she created on Understanding Neurodivergent Women.”

Although I didn’t write this article, I could have. Except, unlike Zhara, I haven’t pursued a diagnosis. After coaching autistic adults for over 20 years now, I know all too well how frustrating and likely fruitless it would be.

We Need Better Diagnostic Tests for Autism in Women

Diagnostic criteria are developed using white boys and men, failing to serve many neurodivergent girls and women, By Zhara Astra on April 7, 2022

“You don’t look autistic.”

This is what people say when I first tell them I’m on the spectrum. But I do look autistic. The problem is that people, especially medical professionals, don’t know what to look for when it comes to identifying and diagnosing autism in women and girls.

I am a professor, a screenwriter, producer, mother and a woman who has autism. The challenges I have had in getting my diagnosis lead me to believe that we have to develop a more accurate standard autism test and better diagnostic criteria specifically for women and girls. This test and these criteria need to be co-created by autistic women and psychologists who understand how autism manifests differently in women and girls. 

I was undoubtedly different, but because my traits were more subtle than what we typically consider a person with autism to have, and because I had become accustomed to masking these quirks (girls with autism and ADHD are masterful at doing this), no one suspected I was on the spectrum.

It wasn’t until 2020, when I was in my 30s and researching autism for my son, that I began to suspect I was on the spectrum. There began my troubles. It took me a year to find a psychologist who offered testing for adults, who had an understanding of women with autism, and who wouldn’t charge me $5,000 or more for an assessment, since my insurance wouldn’t cover the testing.

Most places I called were clueless when it came to diagnosing adult women. These psychologists had little experience diagnosing girls as well. After a year of searching for a competent, available and affordable psychologist, I finally found one and got a diagnosis of autism in 2021. I was told I had Asperger’s syndrome, but that since the release of the DSM 5, the term had been swept into the general definition of “autism spectrum disorder.”

Because of the narrow and gendered diagnostic criteria, we’re instead often told by the doctors that we have a menstrual-related mood disorder or anxiety, as I was told, or we’re slapped with some other grossly inaccurate label. All through history, women have been mislabeled as hysterical, when I think many were likely just neurodivergent and trying to fit into a neurotypical world.

Because of these false labels and the lack of testing, we have historically been overlooked, misdiagnosed or undiagnosed entirely. Many of us end up self-diagnosing later in life, after years of wondering why we feel so out of place in this world and in our own bodies.

Anxiety and depression are very common in neurodivergent women, especially those who remain undiagnosed. Women with autism are three to four times more likely to attempt suicide than neurotypical women. Comorbidities are very common in autistic women as well and can dramatically enhance the risk. Research indicates that women with autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder have an even higher chance of trying to commit suicide.
 
We may look like “the mom next door,” but our inner world tells a different story: a change in plans, a high-pitched sound, a blast of pungent perfume, or a stray label in a sweater, and we’re suddenly struggling to avoid a meltdown.

It’s exhausting and if you don’t have the privilege of understanding why you feel this way, then it can be maddening. Knowing you have autism (along with other comorbid neurodivergences) and that you’re prone to anxiety, depression and burnout can help suffering women get access to the treatment and support they may need.

But better diagnostic criteria are just the beginning. We also need more programs, like group therapy and support groups for women who are diagnosed with autism in adulthood. Training teachers, doctors and psychologists on what to look for in girls and women and how to accommodate us should also become the new standard.

Understanding autism in girls is also a matter of safety, as these girls are three times more likely to be sexually abused. We tend to be more trusting and naïve, because we are often very direct and straightforward and expect other people to be the same. Recognizing ill intentions and ulterior motives in others can be difficult for us. This can make us more vulnerable and susceptible to abuse.

Every person deserves the opportunity to succeed and rise to their greatness, including women with autism. As more girls and women recognize they are neurodivergent, having accurate testing and the accommodations means we have a better chance to do our best.”

Thank you Zhara, for writing about this in such a clear, simple, and straightforward manner!

Also, in response to a comment on her LinkedIn page, Zhara says, “My next article will address transgender and non-binary people. We discuss this in my class, but it didn’t make it in this article because it deserves an entire article dedicated to just that. But basically in my research I discovered that in brain scans (which is what I first used to affirm my own autism)—transgender women’s brains reflect the brains of women assigned female at birth, and non-binary brains showed a combination of both. This is huge in affirming the transgender human experience and needs to be more widely discussed. I also found that transgender people are 3-6x more likely to be autistic, but many reported being overlooked because the focus from parents, doctors, and educators was predominantly on their gender. I’m hoping to conduct more research on this in the future!”

I am looking forward to that next article! Unfortunately Zhara teaches up in Tempe at ASU rather than down here in Tucson at UA, otherwise I’d be banging on her office door looking for my new best friend.

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com