Three Hairbands For The Price Of One

I felt like the naughty kid at school when I left work today. Usually when I leave a number of other people are also making the trek to the car park, and we all leave one after the other, but today, despite leaving at the same time I always do, the car park was full of cars, and no one was walking out with me.

The reason for this was because work were putting on some training about ASD. For those of you who aren’t in with the acronym lingo, that’s Autistic Spectrum Disorder.

(Yes, by the way, I do work with kids. Don’t worry, I find that as laughable as you probably do.)

I didn’t sign up for the training for two reasons, the first being I’ve had a similar training session before and recently. The second being that Autism is something my family deals with all the time. Much like the last training session, I doubt this one would have told me anything I didn’t already know.

Autism is a spectrum disorder, which means that everyone is on the spectrum somewhere – most people falling within the ‘normal’ parameters. Members of my family, as my mother so succinctly put it, are a little more ‘on’ the spectrum than most. Myself included.

Recently, at a different training session at work, we were asked to walk round the room for a while, then stop and pair up with someone near us, randomly selected by our wandering around. We then had to look into their eyes and project our gratitude for them in what was supposed to be a ‘team building’ exercise. I’m not sure if I succeeded at projecting gratitude, but I was an absolute ninja at holding eye contact.

You should try it. It’s really hard. The woman I was paired with is a natural communicator – the sort of person who would put her hand on your arm and hold eye contact as she spoke to you to make sure she had your full attention, and to let you know you had hers. She said to me afterwards that the better I was, the harder she found it, and I could see it as we stood staring at each other for those two minutes. The longer I held her gaze, the more often she looked away.

The reason I was so good at it is because holding eye contact is not natural for me. It’s something I have to think about all the time. My natural instinct if someone catches my eye is to look away. I have to consciously choose to hold eye contact, and it makes me very uncomfortable if it’s not with someone I know.

I don’t pretend to have even a mild case of Autism. I just have some autistic tendencies – the eye contact thing, not being very good at telling lies – exacerbated by a fairly abrasive personality.

The kind of kids I work with are not the sort with extreme Autism. They are what is known as High Functioning Autistics – kids with some social and behavioural difficulties, but who are able to function, and even excel in a regular environment. This is where Charlie is.

Charlie, my youngest sister before the really young one, has never been officially diagnosed with Autism. She didn’t speak until she was three years old, she doesn’t understand metaphors and she lines her socks up in colour order. She’s exceptionally bright and driven – predicted As and A*s at GCSE. She wants to be a doctor, and if she continues as she is doing, she will be. She’s bright enough to know what she struggles with and conscientious enough to do something about it.

After missing the training session at work, I went to my mother’s after work for our weekly Zumba session. I asked Charlie to borrow a head band to hold back my fringe, as I’d lost mine. It was the sort of lost where I was sure it would turn up, just not in time for 6 o’clock Zumba. I had no alternative that wasn’t either hideously unattractive or completely impractical.

Charlie reappeared about five minutes later with a collection of about twenty head bands.

‘You can have up to three of those,’ she said.

‘What do I need three for?’ I said, imagining myself with one round my head, two hanging off my ears.

‘One for now, one in case you break that one, one in case you lose one,’ Charlie said, very matter of fact. ‘I would let you have more, but I want to keep some for myself.’

I didn’t ask what I would do to the first three to require more headbands. It was typical Charlie – practical, logical, covering all eventualities. I laughed and chose one plain black one.

I didn’t lose it or break it.

365 Project, Week 10

It has not been a good week.

After a blissful holiday, things at work kicked off with relentless speed – I was in three out of five days much longer than my contracted hours, which is a pain in the backside any time, but this week I was also called in on Saturday to do some extra stuff. I get paid for it, but having a one day weekend is not nice. I keep thinking I’ve got tomorrow off, but sadly, I don’t. I’m not going to be happy when that alarm goes off.

To add to my woes, the Boyfriend has been poorly this week. Not Man Flu poorly, but genuine flu poorly. He woke up one night hallucinating that he was in a plane crash and just kept telling me he was going crazy, while his temperature climbed. Poor bean. He’s rubbish with illness, as he refuses to not go to work, despite my constant nagging, and so made himself worse. Fortunately he had Thursday off anyway by nature of his shift rotation, and got a chance to recover.

So, this week was going to be a series of pictures of the garden, which the Boyfriend was meant to be clearing. In the end his dad did it, because we’d already ordered the skip, while the Boyfriend lay on the sofa feeling sorry for himself. Instead of pictures of the garden, I’m going to give you a series of pictures taken at my little sister’s fourth birthday.

After a week of having a poorly, miserable boyfriend, I was glad for a bit of light relief. The birthday girl herself had hit over excitement mode, and promptly hit me round the face with a frisbee (not accidentally) on my arrival. However, the baby brother was in a good mood, and amusing himself by walking round in his dad’s enormous shoes. This cracked the Boyfriend up, and prompted him to help the little brother into a pair of Taylor’s boots, which cracked him up further.

It was probably smaller sibling abuse, but I was just pleased to see a smile on the Boyfriend’s face.

365 Project, Week 9

After the excesses of Easter, we decided to start the week with a healthy meal. It was also partly because I forgot to put my fresh spinach in the lasagne I made last week, and so it needed using up. It was a very healthy meal.

The little ones were finally well enough for hair cuts, and I’d been promising to go with Mum for ages, as part of a Mother’s Day present, so we all went together. Taylor, Ivy and I got our done in a bid to persuade the littlest sister that getting her haircut wouldn’t be painful or scary. It took the little brother calmly getting his trimmed before she consented to having ‘just a tiny bit’ cut off. It was a major victory, won by a very patient hairdresser, for Mum, who was getting tired of the baby hair tangles.

The Boyfriend and I enjoyed a meal out at the new Indian in town. We were both a little tired to make the most of their bring your own booze offer, but enjoyed their beautifully presented and delicious food.

Continuing our healthy kick (and our use up our old food kick) we had fruity pancakes. The fruit being the healthy part.

Unfortunately, the pancake mix we had was American Pancake mix, not regular pancake mix, so the pancakes were a bit of disaster. But given how much we drowned them (well, everyone except this one I happened to take a photo of) in grapes and strawberries, I don’t think we actually tasted pancake that often…

This week also saw me finally giving my Godson his birthday present – a trip to Attingham Park. We meant to go to Attingham Park Farm, but couldn’t find it. Fortunately the Park had a lovely mile walk that the ‘Toggler’ could manage, and the boy enjoyed being pushed in some swings in a play area. And we saw some Tamworth pigs, for our animal fix.

This weekend my Stepdad got back from visiting his parents. His mother recently got an iPad and has been enjoying using FaceTime as a method of keeping in touch with her family – some of whom live as far away as Switzerland. The Stepdad introduced the idea to Mum, who thought it was the most hilarious thing she’d ever seen. I was with her while they were setting it up, and phoned her when I got home. She promptly burst into hysterical laughter for about five minutes.

The webcam style conversation reminded Mum of the days when I was about 14 and used to talk to my friends over MSN with webcams on. This was pre-broadband, when there was significant delay on the cameras – you’d have a picture frozen for a few seconds, and then it would jump a few seconds later to another still picture. Mum used to take advantage of this to try and put different silly hats on my head when I was chatting – the idea being that one second I would look normal, the next I would have a silly hat on. This amused her endlessly.

I got wise to it after a while. The computer room in those days was down the end of the corridor, and I used to point the camera down the corridor to show my mates that Mum was commando crawling down it, silly hat in hand.

Today, while I was talking to her on FaceTime, someone finally enacted some revenge.

(P.S. I don’t know why my face is exactly the same in all three pictures… I’m not some sort of manikin, I promise!)

365 Project, Week 8

This week was a week of new things. Fitting, really, for Easter week.

We had big new things – piano finally arrived safe and sound. It has a few kinks from the delivery, and needs to settle for a while before it can be tuned, but in two weeks or so, I’m hoping to have it working perfectly.

I also got some small new things – these shoes, which I have needed for ages, and finally went out and bought.

It was also a week of some depression, which I combatted by keeping as busy as possible. Which meant cleaning. I got this out of my oven, just by wiping it….

But of course, in true Easter fashion, it was also a week of cake and family. And there’s nothing that cheers you up when you aren’t in the best of moods like a carrot cake.

Or a cow cake…

We also played a little Cranium. This is my model of big foot, which the Boyfriend did not guess. I was a little disappointed.

And just to round off the week, here’s a picture of my little brother (and Mr Taylor) in a box.

Happy Easter everyone!

G is for Getting out of Town and the Grange Hotel

This date was done some time ago now, but between last weeks of work before the holiday madness and general apathy, I’ve only just sat down to write it now. How time flies.

This was a bit of a spontaneous one – we needed to go to Macclesfield to look at some pianos (I say needed, I’m sure the Boyfriend would object to that choice of word)  and decided on a whim to extend our stay to the weekend. We both needed it desperately.

We looking through a load of hotels on a last minute booking website, and while I was all for staying in the George and Dragon (glad I didn’t in the end – we passed it on our way to the Grange, and it looked like it was falling down) the Boyfriend chose a Best Western Spa. This was a good choice, as use of the spa facilities added to our de-stressing considerably.

We went to the piano shop first, and after a quick break to Costa’s for lunch and deliberation, purchased our piano. Wallets considerably lighter, we made the rest of the journey to the Spa.

It wasn’t as nice as Carden Park, but there was still that air of relaxation, and that general niceness of being away from home and not having to do your own washing up. We checked into our room and headed straight down to the spa, where we enjoyed the sauna, jacuzzi, steam room, and I read for half an hour or so in the relaxation room, while the Boyfriend, whose tolerance for steam rooms and saunas is much higher than mine, went for a second go in everything.

We drove into the nearby town for dinner, using the AroundMe app on the Boyfriend’s iPhone. We went for a place called Mario and Gianni’s because I fancied Italian, and it fit in with our G date criteria. We got Garlic bread to start.

I enjoyed a risotto, while the Boyfriend was amazed by a calzone pizza. Bless him, he doesn’t get out much.

The evening was then whiled away watching awful quiz shows on the TV. In It To Win It makes me so angry, but The Bank Job came on after, and I do find George Lamb’s hair quite attractive.

All in all, it was a date of not doing much, and that was just perfect. Role on H date for something a bit more energetic. The Boyfriend said he had some ideas, so I’m looking forwards to finding out!

April Reading List

Well, March was a big success on the reading front. I’ve finished all my books and a few of extras.

I read Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman, Visions of Heat by Nalini Singh, finished The Minority Council by Kate Griffin and The Book of Universes by John Barrow, The Girl In The Mask by Marie-Louise Jensen, Butterfly Summer by Anne-Marie Conway, The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett, You Against Me by Jenny Downham, re-read Dragonfly by Julia Golding, and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

So, for April I am thinking another 3 books would be a good target, then I can feel good about either meeting it or completely smashing it.

Here is my reading list for April:

April Reading List

Equal Rites – Terry Pratchett (to continue the Terry Pratchett theme)

The Adamantine Palace –  Stephen Deas (which I have been putting on similar lists for about two years, since I started this blog. This month it is going down!)

Bone Key (Supernatural) - Keith R.A. DeCandido (because Carole bought it me ages ago for a laugh, and it will probably be rubbish, but it will only take me about five minutes to read)

365 Project, Week 7

The fact that another week has passed without post tells you almost everything you need to know about this week. The fact that I’ve only managed to take 6 bad photos tells you the rest. This week has been defined by absences mostly – an absence of time to do anything interesting, and in the later stages of the week, an absence of energy to do anything with. Most notably, there has been an absence of a piano, which after ringing and complaining for the second time, I was told it would be delivered tomorrow. It better, or I will be driving back to the shop to put it in the back of my convertible. Don’t try and out logic me, dammit, this is rage speaking.

On Monday, Mum and I started our Zumba class and were impressively not completely terrible. We both survived and went home feeling buoyant and energised. At least, we did until I realised I’d left my handbag behind and I had to run back, resulting in the worst cramp I have ever experienced in my life. But we’re still excited to go back again tomorrow, which has to count for something. (p.s. excuse the bad photo editing – I only had iPhoto blemish remover, but I didn’t think the instructor would appreciate her contact details posted on the internet…)

I’ve had a few late ones at work this week, but the boyfriend fared worse when a near riot kicked off in his usually quiet area over the petrol scares. Fortunately, we have otherwise not really felt the pinch – mostly due to it all blowing over fairly quickly, but also in part due to a fortuitously timed fill up. The above photo is the Boyfriend’s record for Fuelly, which he dutifully fills in every time we fill up, and proceeds to analyse my inability to improve my fuel economy.

I won’t be having any other late ones at work for a while now, at least, as my holidays officially started on Friday. My jacket won’t be slung over the back of the chair like this for a while, retiring instead to its place in the wardrobe. Or at least, it will, as soon as I can find a coat hanger.

Saturday was a productive day, spent catching up on some much neglected cleaning. The Boyfriend did the kitchen, leaving me the clothes washing and the bathroom. I got tired of fighting with his t-shirt drawer and sorted that out as well.

It’s not easy to see on that photo, but this is evidence that I am glad we never got round to decorating the bathroom before we moved in – the Boyfriend’s leaky shaving foam has eaten through the gloss paint on the windowsill, leaving a series of slightly sticky circles that I did my best to clean up, and just ended up scraping away more paint. The sill is an attractive yellow underneath the more tasteful white. Lovely.

Today was spent with the family. Ivy is back from Uni, and agreed it was high time we did a bit of band practice. The littlest Gilmores have both been poorly, but Addy was well enough to pose for me in her robot/alien pyjamas. I seriously want a pair.

Next week: an excess of photos to make up for this week’s pitiful effort, and some blog posts that aren’t photo summaries. And hopefully a piano. Hopefully.