Glimpse of autism

I found another blog to follow & added the button at the bottom of the side bar on the left right. I found the blog through an article shared on Facebook by my friend Terri.

The article, A heart shattered by a glimpse into autism by Rob Giorski, is a heart breaker. It's too late to check it out further, so ... true to the Scarlett O'Hara Syndrome ... here it is for another day.

Nick was a little concerned this morning when he read Tax Day was yesterday, April 15. He wanted to make sure I had sent his grocery credit off. I told him I had another day, which relieved him, but tomorrow I will have run out of time & I will not have another day.

Power of God's love

Another quote from readthescriptures.com. I am including this because of several incidents that happened today, both at home & at work.

"Filled with his love, we can endure pain, quell fear, forgive freely, avoid contention, renew strength, and bless and help others."
--Elder John H Groberg, "The Power of God's Love", November 2004 Ensign pg. 9

Nick was "cycling"  today. No, he didn't go out & bicycle, it was too cold & windy for that. Nick is a rapid cycler.

A cycle is the period of time an individual takes to go through one episode of mania and one of depression (or hypomania and depression).

A person can have bipolar disorder & only cycle once in a lifetime. Nick, however, has bipolar II. He can cycle several times in one day. Sometimes I have a hard time distinguishing between the Asperger's & bipolar, sigh.

Here is just one incident from a day that seemed fraught with "incidents." Nick was fine with me & just a few minutes later, he was "snippy" with Don. Don came back out of Nick's room & sat down at his computer in the front room. I tried to talk to him about the episode with Nick, but he said he was tired of being made to feel stupid. He  just sat at the computer with his head in his hands for a long time.

I am glad that I have two days off & that it is not a week with 2 production days. I don't think I could handle it.

Gwendolyn Strong Foundation placed

OMG, I didn't realize that I hadn't reported on how the Gwendolyn Strong Foundation placed in the Community Giving campaign on Facebook. I did on the Bipolar Kids message board on Jan. 25:

OK, we've been following this for the past 10 days. Today, I checked out the leaderboard on Chase Giving again.

We have some excellent news!! although none of our favorite charities won the $1 million dollars, Gwendolyn Strong Foundation did win $100k!! Numbers 7 through 100 won $25k! So, that means Ehlers-Danlos, National Autism Assoc., Pancreatic Cancer!! The Chase Community Advisory Board picked another 17 charities to win even more dollars. Six more charities won $100k and 11 more won $37k.

So, my dear friends, thank you for putting up with my crusading, thank you even more for participating in the voting.

I came over to Blogspot to check on Jonah, Gwendolyn, & the other blogs I follow. This is a nightly routine. Just before I go to bed, I check the blogs. Tonight I found a comment from Kristen, a lady who lost a baby to SMA, on my blog. I answered her & then went to check her blog to see what I had said. I read more of her entries, found another blog from her blog about a family losing twins, a boy named Nicholas, & a girl, Olivia. I had to check that blog too.

I heard the clock chime, & I, thinking it was 1 a.m., checked the computer clock. It was 2!!!!!!!!! It couldn't be, I just started this journey. I bookmarked Georgia's Journey, & now it's almost 2:30 & I have to work tomorrow & I should've been in bed hours ago!!

Kristen posted this on her blog about the Facebook Chase Community Giving & SMA being in 6th place:

I know that some of you are probably annoyed but think about it this way. Autism has Jim Carey and Jenny McCarthy. They have books, millions of dollars of research, treatment and 'cures'. Their victims are out in the community getting noticed. Our children remain silent for the most part. We have no celebrities and no treatments. All that we are left with is manpower and hope.

So, I answered: 

Autism has Jim Carey and Jenny McCarthy. They have books, millions of dollars of research, treatment and 'cures'. Their victims are out in the community getting noticed. Our children remain silent for the most part.

This is said so much better than I could ever have said it. Which is exactly why I DID NOT vote for autism awareness, even though my 22-yo son has Asperger's. I did not want to jeopardize the Gwendolyn Strong Foundation.

I am saddened to read about your sweet Georgia.

No, I didn't vote for autism awareness. I did not want to jeopardize the Gwendolyn Strong Foundation. These babies are DYING!! Besides, the research for SMA will benefit other diseases such as Parkinson's which is what my father had. And ALS/Lou Gehrig's disease which is what Bob Marshall, a former owner of The Citizen, died of. These diseases are cruel. Polio was eradicated, why can't these diseases be eradicated?

Now, it's 2:52 & I'm not very coherent. I hope this post makes sense.

Disneyland, Day 3

On Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, we were on our way to Disneyland after renting the wheelchair for Mother at the Scooter Shop. Mother & Don-Mike were ahead & had been stopped by a salesman. If we would consent to listen to a sales pitch Friday night for Shell Vacation Club, we could have a ride in a limo & would get $150 in gifts. We didn't have to buy anything, but we did have to have an income in excess of $70 grand a year!! And an excellent credit rating. We don't have either one, but as Don-Mike said, maybe combined we have an income that high. I'm sure the boys have excellent credit ratings, but we don't. We also had to pay $20 in cash as "earnest money." LOL. Don-Mike had $20 in cash.

So, Thursday night, we extended our stay another night to listen to the presentation about the Shell Vacation Club.Since Mother & I only had a one day pass for Disneyland on Thursday, the guys spent the day at Disneyland with us. They went to California Adventure on Friday. Two full days at the park was better than the evening on Wednesday, all day Thursday & leaving Friday morning.

Friday evening Don, Don-Mike & I got a ride in a limo. I was NOT impressed. It was a rear wheel drive & I fell over the hump in the middle not once, but twice. On the way back, we had to sit facing backwards & I got car sick, uggg.

We listened to their 90 minute spiel. Kept saying no, thanks to not one, not two, but to THREE salesmen. It's a good thing Nick didn't go with us. We kept using him as our excuse. We don't travel much because we have a son on the autistic spectrum, blah, blah, blah.

Don-Mike got his $20 cash back & we got $100 in Darden gift cards. Darden Restaurants are Bajama Breeze, LongHorn Steakhouse, neither of which had we heard of, Red Lobster and Olive Garden. We also got $50 in ARCO gift cards for gas.

ARCO's web site says, "You can fill up at nearly 1,300 ARCO stations on the West Coast." Bold italics are mine. However, we only found one ARCO station that had diesel. We used $21 on diesel. and now have $29 in ARCO PumpPASS's left to use.

Back to using Nick as an excuse. He does NOT like to travel. Maybe he'd do well if we went somewhere & stayed. He does not like to ride in a car, but he will drive. Last year, he wouldn't go to Montana with us. We were afraid he wouldn't go this year. He did have fun at Disneyland & California Adventures; but did not enjoy the trip up the coast or home.

I listened

I listened to the still small voice today. Eddie, our foster son, Nick's best friend, a friend's son, has been on probation for a long time now. He AND his mother are facing jail time if he misses an assignment in school. He has a really hard time with executive function. He is severely ADHD, has some Asperger's & probably bipolar disorder on top of everything. He was held back a year in high school, so is a year behind others his age.

One of the hints that I was given when Nick was in high school was to get a zippered binder & organize it so that EVERYTHING goes in the binder, EVERYTHING.

I looked at Wal-Mart, even the simple binder like Nick has is $15 now. I've looked other places, like online, $45 on Flylady.net; $13 plus shipping & handling on another site. So, today at work, I walked out into the book store to see if there were any zippered binders. There weren't any. I knew I could order one, but decided I'd check at King's & see if they had any.

As I was leaving work I decided I'd stop at King's on my way home. "Check at the D.I.," kept niggling at the back of my mind. I'm thinking, "Ya, right. If you go into the D.I. looking for something, you never find it." I got out onto State Street & there was a perfect parking place right in front of the D.I. I thought that would work, I'd run into the D.I., check to see if they had a zippered binder, then could walk out the back door, across the parking lot to the back door of King's & out the front door to my car.

I never made it to King's. Almost immediately I found a zippered binder. It looked brand new, like it had never been used. The tags inside were still crisp. It was black with a big Jack Skellington face on the front. Ed loves skeletons. They are his signature. I see a skeleton & automatically think of Eddie. The binder was $2!!! Something like that would have been $19-29 new, if I could still find something like that around here.

Eddie loved it. I hope he uses it. I may have to get some dividers for him. But I'm so glad I listened.

Lent, Day 24

Ok, here it is 11:36 already. I got on BlogSpot to make my update & saw that a blog that I follow, Surviving Crazy, had a new entry. Then I followed a link that bothered her & I've been reading news stories & comments on this. I must say it has really bothered me also as Nick has Asperger's Syndrome. I'll give you the link to the blog entry that upset us both.

I made it to bed by midnight last night, well, not quite midnight, several minutes before & was awake at 8:45 a.m. Even so, I was late to work, sigh. I had a phone call that put me behind. I almost didn't answer it, but was afraid maybe it was bad news.

Lent, Day 20

Thursday, March 19, spring officially begins tomorrow!!! It feels like it has been a long time coming. Don says it will snow again Sunday night.

After reading that there was a Porter family reunion last summer, I was really bummed. Don & I were going to bed at the same time, 11:30, can you believe it? I was still ranting about it. I said they had a reunion & who didn't get invited??? Don said, trying to lighten the mood, "Sammy." Sammy is our yellow cat. I thought Don had taken all the cats out & so I'm looking around trying to see Sammy. "Sammy?" I asked puzzled. "Ya, Sammy didn't get invited to the reunion," Don said. I did not think it was funny.

I had a hard time getting to sleep. I thought of a lot of reunions where things didn't go well. Like the time that Miranda kicked Nickolas when he was down & knocked him flat on his face in the parking lot, the year of the water balloons. Some ones windshield got broken from those water balloons & the kids were getting splashed, yet when Nick threw one of their balloons back & it broke & splashed, she kicked him.

I remembered Uncle Woodrow saying that year that we needed to stop having family reunions, every one's family is getting so big they didn't need one for the extended family. Well, ok, my mom has one living child, 2 grandchildren & a family reunion for us is every Sunday at the dinner table. I would like for my kids to have a sense of family, yet with Asperger's & my panic disorder, reunions are hard.

Of course, there was the Taylor reunion where Don-Mike was trying to help set things out for the buffet & Don's Aunt JoAnn chastised him. I haven't been back to a Taylor reunion since & that was over 10 years ago.

When I finally did get to sleep, I slept the clock around & didn't wake up until 11:44. Don must have had a rough night too, because all the covers, except mine were on the floor on his side of the bed.

When I went to the grocery store tonight I bought more Western Family TheraFlu. I'm taking it again tonight. It's funny, it's the "daytime" formula, but it sure knocks me out. I sleep so good.

Oh, & I even worked on decluttering today, wonder of wonders. In my last foray into decluttering the end of the bed, I wondered what was in the knee hole of the vanity & decided to look. Some of Don's mother's fragile china & dishes wrapped in towels. Nick had ordered something online & it came in a small box with peanuts, which, of course, just got dropped BY the garbage in the front room. I took the box in & started digging in the knee hole & brought out a bowl that just fit perfectly in the box with the peanuts around it.

Of course, then I thought of all the things I could do today, which wasn't scheduled & since I had slept half the day away & then spent 2-3 hours on the internet, it was already 3 p.m. I couldn't believe it was so late. I took Mother's mail over to her, sorted it, went to the grocery store, fed the dog, fixed supper & it was dark.

But, I am making progress on my bedtime, it's about time though, I've been at this almost 3 weeks.

I'm going to have to schedule my time, instead of spending hours on my boards.

Time flies ...

when you're having fun. I decided my blog list was getting rather long & so was my archive list. So, I've spent the last hour or so doing some housekeeping. Not often I do housekeeping, but computer housekeeping doesn't bother me. I could spend hours computer housekeeping, which I do, & we live in squalor.

I was bummed when I found that Alashandra had wrecked her car, but even more so when I found out she was on her way to the Porter Family Reunion the last weekend of June 2008 & we weren't even invited. Always wondered if the rest of the family thought we were part of the family. I wonder who hosted it & where it was at? It's Mother's turn to have the reunion this year, guess we'll just let it go & let them have their own reunion.

I don't know Loraine's sons-in-laws names, so I had to do some reading. Found out that Alashandra's husband is Matt & Morgan's is Mitch. I only know Tanya's husband because I faithfully read Baby Jonah's blog. Sometimes I check it twice a day. Morgan's blog is private, so I haven't even tried signing up for it.

I left some blog names cuz I like them. Em's Blog is my cousin Edmond. I remember his dad calling him Em.

I had to laugh when I was talking to my friend Janene on the phone the other night. She said she remembers my blog name as Do-Re-Mi. I love it. I told her that works. Almost wish I had thought of it myself. When Don & I got our first email address we named it radon. We thought we were really clever. Nick thought it up, RaDon. Well, guess what? It says ray-don & is an explosive gas. The boys were always laughing at the ads of ridding your house of radon. They said they didn't want to get rid of their parents, LOL. I always said I was explosive, but only when set off :D

PDD-NOS is pervasive development disorder, not otherwise specified. Nick is on the autistic spectrum, the reason I have that bookmarked, but it hasn't been updated for quite a while & I don't know that diet is going to help with Asperger's syndrome anyway.