Living with Autism

Have just posted on the other blog my plans to follow my own christmas traditions and avoid last years debacle. The other blog is suffering from Commentarexia; Would you be so kind as to visit and let me know what you think? And if I don't hear from you again; Happy FESTIVUS!!! May we all support The Human Fund, this year. xx

Brian Ormond and Merlin



Friday night saw the launch of a week of Celebrity Skating for Charity, I wrote about it already here and here.

For the next 5 days, 4 Irish Celebrities will be taught to skate by professionals culminating in a skate off at the RDS on Friday 19th, to be judged by non other than Boyzone, who I wrote about here, with some fondness. (okay gushing sycopancy then)

The four competing charities are; Children First, Special Olympics Ireland, Down Syndrome Ireland and my own Irish Autism Action.

Every charity has a sponsor who has donated €15,000 already, and the winner will receive an additional €15K.


For Irish Autism this will go to the National Projects like the Diagnostic and Support Centre; Solas.


Solas was established in 2007 as a result of fundraising and O2's corporate sponsorship, and offers comprehensive multi-disciplinary diagnosis within 3 months of referral.



The waiting list for a state provided diagnosis is a minium of 2 years. Minimum.
It is much longer in T…

Happy Birthday Mr Boo!Love Mammy, Daddy and Bratty.xxoo

The above misquote comes from an episode of the Simpsons "Much Apu About Nothing".
After a single bear wanders into town, Homer stirs up the government to provide a "bear patrol" to rid the town of bears. On their protest march to the town hall Homer chants "We're here, we're queer, we don't want anymore bears" when Lenny asks if Homer came up with it Homer claims "Oh, I heard it at the mustache parade they have every year."


The excellent Charlie Wolf who sang this song on Youtube recently has designed these T-shirts in the name of reclaiming and raising autism awareness. I saw them today on Sister Wolf's heroic Blog.

What do you think? (click on the image to embiggen it)



Charlie Wolf, 15, is a high school student who lives in California and has been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome.
He is a singer/songwriter who plays guitar, accordion, and harmonica.

Charlie also designs websites, and is producing his second CD of original music…

As you can see I have changed my layout. Might play around with a few different ones over the next few weeks. Let me know what you think. (please) Do you think it's Better?


I have also been updating The Other Blog


with photos of Boyzone at The Keith Duffy Masquerade Ball, held last night.

Where Ms Hammie was shaking her 40 year old groove thang in the front row of the free concert given by Boyzone last night.





Keith, Ronan and Mikey

No pictures of me, I was holding the Iphone.

I still love Keith obviously, but am a bit smitten with the lovely Stephen now too as he put on quite a show, and yes, at times made me feel like he was singing to me.


Okay, I understand that he is spoken for, but that doesn't mean that we couldn't go out shopping and dining and dancing together.
Oh, and I managed to give Ronan a kiss on the way out....
More later. Come on! I was up until 3am!!
xx
Cannot embed the Youtube video yet, just click on Better and watch it yourself. Ahhhhhhhh. He's lovely.

This made Bratty and me laugh today



Well she actually laughed more when I did the M M M! for her. And all this made me laugh:

Putting Boo to bed, his bedtime routine which starts with "Goodnight Sleeptight, Have a good dream, hope it comes true. What are you going to dream about?"

His answer: "Dream about days" (as usual)
"With Sky Movies" and then "Simpson's Boxed set Season 7"



Be Aspirational.



Bratty was "working it" in the middle of the kitchen imitating the Wiggles "Rockabye your Bear" dance to get a Jelly teddy. Then rejected a Green jelly teddy saying
"I - Want - Pink!".

Daddy got to eat the green ones. (don't blame her, green jellies have a taint)


Bratty standing at the bottom of the last hill in Crone Woods as we continued to climb and she felt she had gone far enough. Embiggen it and you can see she actually had her legs crossed in a faux casual pose.


In the end she gave up and ran up the hill but came straig…

My Bratty girl had one of her 2am Fiestas last night. This time she took exception to me having a quilt and followed me from her room to mine while I tried to snuggle up and go back to sleep.
In the end I gave up and came downstairs to read blogs and wait for Mr Melatonin to work his magic upstairs. Better to be learning something than trying to sleep and resenting the small person who was stopping me. She was in a deep sleep again by 4 am so I was able to retire once more.
This morning I paid a visit to Casdok and her blog "Mother of Shrek" to see what other commenters had said after I had read it last night. And then for a change I decided to read her other blog "Faces of Autism" . I'm so glad as it is full of photographs of children and young adults who are on the spectrum, with testimonials from the people who love them.
These testimonials celebrate what makes their child special, why difference is not something to be hated or feared (a constant theme of Casdo…