Ball Games, Peanuts, And Creative Packaging

We went to a Braves Game this last weekend.  I am not a huge baseball fan, but I can certainly appreciate spending a pleasant day in the stands, watching our team play a good game, chatting with friends, and enjoying the beautiful weather.  Oh yeah… and the food!  It just isn’t the same without the hot dogs and peanuts.  It is a wonderful American tradition.

Whenever I go to the ballpark and see those peanut shells I am reminded of a cute story from years ago.  One of my best friends has a boy the same age as my oldest.  We’d taken both families to see the Braves play.  The boys brought their gloves in the hopes of catching a fly ball.  We parents brought in a large bag of peanuts to share.  The boys practically dove into the bag, selecting their peanuts, then setting about the business of cracking them open (without spilling the nuts inside) and popping them into their mouths.  After the initial surge of nut popping activity, my friend’s son seemed to slow down a bit, pondering his peanuts as he twisted them open.  Then, after opening one and eating the nuts inside, he held the shell up for closer inspection.  He turned it around and around, then turned to his Mom.

“How do they do that?” he asked.

“How do they do what, Butterbean?” she replied.

“How do they make the little waffles and get them around the peanuts?” he said.

That makes me chuckle to this day.  Peace to you all!

Crazy Elephant Stories

My younger son receives Occupational Therapy (OT) in school each week.  He has alot of sensory issues, gross and fine motor skills to develop, and of course tons of energy.  His school OT is a good professional and very creative.  She makes him work hard too - which he doesn’t always appreciate .

At the last IEP meeting, the OT tells us the following story…

The OT, in preparation for our son’s session, “messes up” her room, turning chairs over, moving desks, taking books off the shelves and putting them on the floor.  She does this so that she can ask our son to put everything back when he first gets to the room.  This gives him some deeper sensory stimulation and helps him calm and focus himself for the work ahead.

Our son, walking into the room, says “What happened!  Why is the room so messy?”

The OT tells him that an elephant came through the room and moved all sorts of things around - she needs his help to clean up.  Our son, suspicious that an elephant didn’t reallycome through her room, but willing to play along, gives her a look and then starts to put things back where they belong.  After half-a-minute he stops, cocks his head, and says “I have something to tell you about the elephant and how he came to school to mess up your room.”  Clearly he has concocted a story to help explain this strange occurance.

The OT, wise to my son’s story telling stalling techniques, tells him that now is not the time to tell stories, now is the time to work.  My son tries again with no success.  Eventually the room is put back to rights and they begin a more traditional exercise.  My son is a bit perturbed but settles in.

At the end of the session my son is preparing to leave the room to go back to his regular classroom when he turns at the door.  “I want to tell you a story,” he tries again.  He is determined to tell a story!

“What about?” she asks.

He pauses for dramatic effect then raises his eyebrows.  “About the CRAZYOT,” and placing hand on hip he grins and says “and YOU are the OT!”  Satisfied that he has made his point he flounces out of the room (as best as a first grade boy can flounce) and makes his way back to his classroom.  At this point in the story we all laugh, shake our heads, and agree that our son has quite a personality and flair for the dramatic.

Thank you to all of the crazy OTs and STs and PTs who work with our crazy kids and us crazy parents.  We couldn’t get through this without you.  Thanks for pushing us a little farther so that we can all achieve our best - especially when the elephants charge through our lives.

Hallmark Untaps New Market? - Autism Greeting Cards

Ever walk through the greeting card section in your local mega mart and wonder…  With Autism diagnosis rates increasing, could there be a new angle for the greeting card industry?  Shouldn’t there be greeting cards to reflect this significant part of our lives?

Sympathy cards: I’m so sorry your child was just diagnosed with autism…

I Love You: I love you, Mom, even though I’ve never been able to tell you in words…

Anniversary cards: It’s been a heckofa year since your child was first diagnosed…

New Year’s cards:

- Another year, and your kid is still autistic???…

- Another year, and your kid still isn’t potty trained???…

IEP Thank you cards: Thank you for all of the double-talk, confusion, and aggravation from our last IEP meeting…

Congratulations cards:

- Now that you’ve spent your life savings on therapies and are entering bankruptcy we didn’t want this important milestone to pass without saying congratulations on destroying your credit rating…

- Congratulations on sleeping through the night!

Thinking of you cards: I know you never get to go out with your friends anymore, but we’ve been thinking of you and wish you were here…

Extreme Makeover cards: You and your life are so totally different now that you have a child with Autism… what a makeover!

Alas, none of these would take away the pain that comes with a diagnosis, but I sure could use these once in a while!  What other ideas are there for a new line of greeting cards?

What is Dinah Doing?

You know how you can get song lyrics wrong?  You know how funny it is when someone else does it?  Take my younger son, who insisted that this little ditty was the “correct” set of lyrics to a section of the kiddy classic ”I’ve Been Working On The Railroad”… 

“I’ve been workin on a railroad, all the livin day!

I’ve been workin on a railroad, jus a bass a dime away!

Can ya hear a wiffle owin, aye uh a eary ih a born!

um a uh uh uh uh uh dah, Dinah bow ya born!

Dinah Warsh and Blow,

Dinah Warsh and Blow,

Di - nah Warsh and Blo - o - ow!”

Rather than working on the railroad, I think Dinah opened the west’s first Cut’n'Curl Beauty Salon… but that is a whole other post.  Peace to all out there!

Spring Break Musings 2

While on spring break on St Simon’s Island, we took to the beach one night to search out the sand crabs.  The two adults in our party who had grown up on the island swore that after the sun went down we would see so many crabs on the beach at high tide - we just needed to take a big flash light so we could see the crabs in the dark and avoid stepping on them.  We thought the kids would love it.

We strolled along the beach, sweeping the light to and fro, searching for the elusive crabs.  We kept walking… and walking… and walking.

“Where are the crabs?” one little girl cried.  “Why can’t we find the crabs?” whined one of my sons.  “Where are the @#% crabs?” asked a parent.

“I thought you said there would be hundreds of crabs out here,” a wife said to her used-to-be-an-islander husband.

“There are, there are, we just haven’t gotten to them yet,” he said.  The rest of us adults just rolled our eyes in the dark and kept walking while the children jumped and leapt with excitement.

Further on, one of the “former residents” stopped the light on a dark mass (which turned out to be a piece of wood) and the children huddled around it.  Out of the corner of my eye I spied something to the side of the crowd… could it be?  I stared hard, willing my eyes to sharpen their focus in the dark.  “Hey!  Over here.  I think I found a crab.”  They shone the light on my discovery and sure enough, it was a CRAB!  The children danced and the adults high-fived while one gingerly picked up the crab and put him in a large beach bag (we released him at the end of our walk).  We whooped and hollered (as us Southerners do when thrilled with life in general) and exulted in our success the rest of our walk.  We likely scared off all other crab wildlife (although we found a dead horseshoe crab, but being dead he didn’t seem to mind our noisemaking) as we didn’t see nary a one after that.

My children were so proud that THEIR mommy was the celebrated crab finder, that they felt the need to tell all others we encoutered the good news. 

My youngest shouted “My Mommy got crabs!” in the condo courtyard as we made our way back from the beach.  Some whooping and hollering came back in response from the late-night revelers on their balconies.

My husband, trying to cover his laughter, told my younger son that we should say instead “Mommy found a crab on the beach,” as this was more correct.  He told my older son that saying “Mommy had crabs,” wasn’t a nice thing to say - he would explain later.

We left our friends at their condo and I felt secure that the proud announcements and strange looks were over.  I was wrong.

The next morning at breakfast my younger son told his Grandma (who didn’t come with us on our beach adventure) that Mommy was on the beach and got crabs and that Daddy was trying to hush him because it wasn’t nice to say but that he thought it was really cool that Mommy had crabs.  He ignored our efforts to shush him as he proudly offered this up to his Grandma.  Once finished with his proclamation he beamed at me, pride spilling over in his eyes.

My mother-in-law raised an eyebrow and gave me a look as if to say “I suspected as much all along, missy.”

Spring Break Musings

During our kids’ spring break we went to St Simon’s Island.  While there we journeyed to Jekyl Island to visit the Sea Turtle Center.  It was fantastic - I highly recommend!

Fortunately for all of us, there are some wonderful (and very patient) volunteers at the center.  Want to know just how wonderful?  Well… they graciously put up with the following from my two precious boys…

Scene: I am paying for our admission while the volunteer selects passbooks for us. 

My younger son says to the volunteer “Your teeth look really really bad!”

My older son says to his little brother “You can’t say that to her!  She can’t help it.  She’s just really old!”

So proud.

Acronyms and JACK

If you are a parent of a child with a disability, you probably participate in a number of on-line discussion groups, email lists, etc.  If so, then you probably have seen parents sign their emails with a list of their children’s diagnoses… often in the form of acronyms.  With some of these kids’ complex medical conditions and learning disabilities, it can look like alphabet soup in the signature!  In fact these many acronyms get to be so familiar - like our own little special needs language where vowels are rare but consonants abound… but I digress.

One parent recently shared a funny story…  On one of these lists, some time ago, there was a parent who had three children.  Two of her children had several dx (a.k.a. diagnoses) and one was what we call NT (a.k.a. neurotypical).  So her signatures looked something like this:

“Beth, proud mom of:

Simon - ADHD, CHD, DS, NLD, DD, HI

and Jordan - HFA, SI, SLD, IBD, OCD”

(Which, BTW translates to “Beth is an amazing mom of Simon who has Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder,  Congenital Heart Disease, Downs Syndrome, Nonverbal Learning Disorder, Developmental Delay, and is Hearing Impaired and of Jordan, who has High Functioning Autism, Sensory Integration Dysfunction, Specific Learning Disability, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder)

To take it even further, some parents even include the acronyms of the various therapies and assistive devises they use to help their child, but I won’t give an example here since that would just be waaaayyy too much fun.  So anyway, back to my story…

This mom of three had an NT son as well and so, one day, she included in her signature a fourth line that read “and Robert - JACK” 

JACK?  No one had ever heard of that one before.  Was this some new exotic disease?  The parents just had to ask her what this new diagnosis acronym was.

She responded that her NT son felt left out when he saw these signatures and wanted his name on the signature too.  So she gave him her own diagnosis acronym: J. A. C. K. = Just a cute kid!!!

You can imagine the conversation that ensued in that discussion group.

To all those with JACKs and with the whole alphabet soup in their signatures - Peace to you all!!!

My Unfavorite Things

Here’s a song by Jessadriel Darkmountain (to the tune of “My Favorite
Things” from the Sound of Music):

My Unfavorite Things

Bright clashing colors, machines that keep beeping,
Phones and alarm clocks that ring when I’m sleeping,
Getting told off when I’m scattered or late,
These are a few of the things that I hate. Tags in my clothing and seams in my stocking,
Those who say “teasing” when really it’s “mocking”,
Fluorescent flicker and noises that grate:
These are a few of the things that I hate.

Too many people in too small a room,
Vile reeking chemicals mis-named “perfume”,
Voices too loud and weird food on my plate,
These are a few of the things that I hate.

Being expected to follow the fashions,
Not being able to share my true passions,
People who bitch when I perseverate,
These are a few of the things that I hate.

Indirect questions and vague explanations,
Having to smile when I’m losing my patience,
Looks of disdain if I stim while I wait,
These are a few of the things that I hate.

When my hands flap, when my voice fails,
When I’m meltdown-mad,
I simply remember - I could be NT (ack!) -
And then I don’t feel so bad!

© 2/10/04 Jessadriel Darkmountain

(Per Jessadriel: “Feel free to send it around wherever you wish, as
long as my name stays on it.”)

Partyin’ in the ‘Burbs

I found this on youtube and had to share! Some wacky folks in the suburbs of Atlanta put this together and it made me laugh and laugh. If you are a suburbanite (or just like to laugh at ‘em) then you’ll want to watch this. Enjoy!
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxj5EEksI1I&feature=related%20<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxj5EEksI1I&feature=related>%20

Note: for those who don’t have the priviledge of living in the 19 counties that make up metro-Atlanta, “285″ refers to the highway that circles the city and effectively divides in-town from the suburbs.  It is also known as the “perimeter”.

Autism or Austentism?

Our family lives with obsession.  We have a child with Autism–enough said, right?  He is obsessed with animals and tiny tiny things… like tiny beads, tiny pieces of confetti, or, well, tiny animals. 

We all have our obsessions, I have found.  Each of us, in our turn, has something that “turns us on” to the point where we can, if we let it, perseverate and obsess and just plain wallow in our chosen joy.

My husband, for instance, like most Southern men, is obsessed with Football.  My older son is obsessed with sports and SportsCenter on ESPN.  My younger son, as I mentioned, finds his joy in animals and tiny things.

And me?  Sigh…  I am not above obsession.  I have to admit that I too am obsessed.

I am obsessed with Jane Autsen. 

Persuasion, Mansfield Park, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Northanger Abby… Jane is my escape.  Through her writings she allows me to relive the decisions made in my early twenties.  She allows me to explore feelings and rationalizations and moral questions… the senses and sensibilities, I guess.  I recently took joy in reading and re-reading Pride and Prejudice to the point where I have been pondering my own parallels to Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth and even, I must add, to Mrs. Bennet.  I even added a “Which Jane Austen Character Are You” quiz on my facebook page.  This is scary. 

I believe the official diagnosis is that I am a “Janeite”.  But that seems such a plain-sounding diagnosis.  I am starting to think of it as “Austentism”.

Just how far does this go?  Well, let’s see.  I have been faithfully following the recent US Masterpiece Theater Jane Austen Revival on PBS.  I have watched the interviews with the producer and actors on PBS.org.  I took the “which one is your man?” quiz, also on PBS.org (not telling which one I prefer :)).  I have watched just about all of the movies ever made based upon her works (my favorite?  The 1995 BBC version of Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle, of course, but the Bridget Jones’ Diary series is also a favorite as a “loose translation”).  I just rented “Becoming Jane” and loved the theory it presented about how Miss Jane Austen may have gained the life experience reflected in her works (such a fresh yet plausible story).  I have her books and books by authors who wrote sequels and books that tell the stories from an others’ (usually the man’s) point of view.  I have the soundtrack to the 1995 BBC version of Pride and Prejudice on my iPod.  I’ve read through (and reference) www.Pemberly.com  quite often (see link in the sidebar).  I’ve looked up patterns for the dresses and accessories that were worn and referenced in her books.  I even have a book titled “Jane Austen’s Book on Manners” and have thought about getting a cookbook that is now out with recipes for things that are mentioned in her books.   Like a drug addiction, I crave them and want more. 

Forget scary - now that I am writing this all down I realize that my addiction is… REALLY scary!

If my powers of concentration were better, I’d be able to ignore the dishes (ok, I am already pretty good at ignoring the dishes), and the kids’ homework, and the latest report demand from my boss, and just submerge myself in my passion.  Perhaps that only comes in the most advanced stages of obsession… or in Autism…

Did this come on after prolonged use of Teflon coated pans heated above 450 degrees?  Vaccinations?  Mercury poisoning?  A genetic predisposition?

Can I be cured through diet?  Chelation?  ABA?  Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy?  Vitamins? 

I hope not.  I’m having too much fun!