Shall I tell you about my day? I went on the dreaded shopping trip. I have no clothes. That's an aspie 'no clothes' not an NT 'no clothes', because shopping is put off until I reach crisis point. Crisis point has been reached.
Parked ok. New escalatory ramp thingies going up into the shopping centre since I last went there. Cool. Not feeling particularly brilliant but needs must. I need to get plus size trousers to accommodate 1 leg which is so swollen it's twice the size of the other. There are dozens of shops in the mall but only 2 do about size 14.
I go to the first one and find the widest pair I can find. Pick up a couple of different sizes so I can find the best leg fit in the smallest size I can get away with. Head for the changing rooms. There's a long corridor of 32 regular changing rooms and one large one adapted for disabled use with 2 chairs outside. Most of the regular ones are free, the large one isn't.
It's being used by 3 young teenage girls while mum and dad wait outside. Mum is on one of the chairs, Dad is standing, shopping bags are on the other. I look into the other cubicles, there is no way I can fit in there with my frame, so I have to wait for the disabled one. The girls are in and out of the changing room as they go and pick more clothes for each other. Mother guards the door while they are not in it. I start to get tired and ask her nicely to remove the bags so I can sit down. She glares at me, removes the bags and Dad sits down. So I wait and I wait and I wait, perched on the edge of my frame to try and take some of the pressure off my leg which is killing me. After nearly 45 minutes of waiting like this, I give up, leave the clothes I'd picked up and head for the second shop.
Here I find something which may be suitable and again head for the changing rooms. Similar situation. A dozen or so regular rooms, 1 adapted for disabled use. It's in use. 2 young women trying on party dresses and thoroughly enjoying themselves by the sound of it. Like the others, in and out to get different sizes and different items. I wait 10 minutes and then feel like I have no choice but to use a regular room. I leave my frame outside. It's incredibly difficult. I cannot balance well and there is nothing to hold onto. But I persevere. I end up collapsed on the floor, exhausted, with a pair of trousers that don't fit stuck and twisted round one leg, alone, frightened and in full autistic meltdown.
Enter husband stage right, straight into the women's changing rooms to much tutting. Eventually he calms me down enough to get me up off the floor and take me home.
And just to really take the piss. I got the new flat escalator slopey thing first only to find that you cannot hold onto a wheelie frame with both hands and remain steady. One hand on the frame one on the bannister bit. Wheelie frame doesn't like this and makes a break for freedom, despite the brakes being on, and I end up on my hands and knees before husband has chance to respond.
So I didn't get the much needed trousers. I have got 2 sore hands, a massive headache, backache, a leg so sore and swollen it feels like it's going to pop, 2 grazed knees and a whole in the knee of one of my only remaining pieces of clothing.
I love shopping. Till next time ...........