Your Blog is Over the Top – Award!
Well I’m honoured and very chuffed Benedicte. Thank you for passing the ‘Your Blog is Over the Top’ award to me.
Here are the rules. I must now answer the following questions using just one word per question (I will cheat and use a couple in some questions as I am not good with authoritarian rules).
Then I must pass the award on to five more bloggers of my choice. They are at liberty to answer the 25 questions on their blogs or not answer the questions. I won’t be holding any guns at their heads.
Here we go!
- Where is your mobile phone? don’t know
- Your hair? - pony tail
- Your mother? – precious
- Your father? - intelligent
- Your favorite food? - cheese
- Your dream last night? – weird
- Your favorite drink? - beer, wine, spirits, champagne
- Your dream/goal? - peace
- What room are you in? blogden
- Your hobby? blogging
- Your fear? storms
- Where do you want to be in 6 years? infamous
- Where were you last night? bed
- Something that you aren’t? sane
- Muffins? chocolate
- Wish list item? solid-wood guitar
- Where did you grow up? Brisbane
- Last thing you did? coffee
- What are you wearing? casual
- Your TV? crime
- Your Pets? gorgeous
- Friends? treasures
- Your life? surreal
- Your mood? volatile
- Missing Someone? mum
- Vehicle? VW Beetle
- Something you’re not wearing? mask
- Your favorite store? Bunnings
- Your favorite colour? red (with blue undertones)
- When was the last time you laughed? last hour
- Last time you cried? yesterday
- Your best friend? Louise
- One place that I go to over and over? gingatao
- Facebook? overrated
- Favorite place to eat? good restaurants.
Now I am passing on the award to the following most outstanding and splendiferous bloggers.
I would have passed it onto Aletha Kuschan but Benedicte has already passed it on to her and we don’t want the poor award getting dizzy as it follows a continous loop. But given that time is non-linear this may be appropriate (‘just shut her up or I’ll put a gun to her head’).
Enjoy fellow bloggers!
Echolalia: The Autism Files
Children with autism have a lot of problems with communication.
Some children with autism can’t speak at all. When my son Michael attended the AEIOU* many of the children could not speak. Some children will grow up and never speak a word their whole lives. They may learn how to communicate their needs with sign language, picture-exchange systems (PECs) or assistive communication devices (e.g., computers that speak).
Some children with autism have language delays but develop speech as they grow older. Some children repeat words and phrases (TV commercials, movie scripts, parental commands) in a parrot-like fashion, with no real understanding of the meaning. This is called echolalia.
Michael used echolalia when he was younger. If we asked him a question he would immediately repeat the words. He had no understanding of what the words meant but he knew a response was required, so he would oblige us with our own words.
Like many children with autism he would watch his favourite videos (e.g., Nemo, Spot the Dog, The Wiggles) over and over again. He would repeat large slabs of the story verbatim, to himself, when he was stressed.
Michael would repeat entire story books after I’d read them to him once or twice. He memorised every Hairy Maclary story book and he would ‘read’ the books aloud to himself while turning the pages at the correct spots. He couldn’t read at that age – he wasn’t even looking at the words. I don’t know how he did it! This uncanny ability disappeared as he developed comprehension of speech.
As Michael got older and began to understand what the words meant he would use phrases from movies in the correct context when asked a question. Clever boy! If you hadn’t watched the movie you would never have picked up on what he was doing. If you listened carefully you could tell he was exactly repeating a phrase from some show that he’d watched. He would use the correct accents and intonations. He is a great mimic.
When Michael was 3 he didn’t know how to call me mummy and maybe he didn’t know that was my name. I had heard him use the word as part of a repetitive script from some show but he never called out ‘mummy’ if he wanted something from me. He would just cry with frustration when his needs weren’t met. I became a mind reader.
One great day when he was 3 and a quarter he called me mummy.
Funny story: We were at an indoor playground one day and Michael was calling out to me ‘mummy’. Then he noticed that some of the other children were using the word mummy. He was surprised, but had the solution, he called me ‘Gabrielle’. I explained that other kids also used the word mummy. It is very confusing if you think about it. Lucky he went back to calling me mummy as I was just getting used to it.
Michael is now 9 and appears most of the time to speak like other children his age (he can read at the level of a 10 year old). This would not have been possible without the help he has received from speech pathologists (thanks particularly to Leith Johnston).
He still has some communication issues. He still has difficulty processing speech and it helps if people slow down and speak clearly to him. When he is stressed or nervous he will mumble and whisper while looking down at his feet. He has difficulty with the reciprocity of speech – the ability to take turns and share in conversation. He tends to speak about his special interests and he will interrupt conversations to ask questions about the solar system. But if Michael is calm, relaxed and in a happy environment his speech normalises and he is just like any other boy.
* AEIOU is an intensive early intervention centre in Queensland for children 3-6 years old
Bum Sniffing Beasties
Don’t dogs just love a good sniff, especially when going for walkies. They sniff dog bums, trees, posts, dead possums, and flowers. I think it’s their way of checking their emails.
Jazz
Sheba
These are my dogs Jazz and Sheba. They are Labradoodles, which are a cross between a Labrador and a Poodle. Sheba is smaller than Jazzy and a big sook. When I am writing at my computer she lies near my feet, usually behind the slipper chair. Jazz is named after the music Jazz and she is also a big sook. She doesn’t fit behind that chair so she lies on the floor behind my chair. Makes it difficult to move about.
They have wool Poodly type coats which are non-shedding. The Labradoodle was developed by the ‘Australian Guide Dogs’ as a ‘hypo-allergenic’ dog for visually impaired people with allergies to pet hair. They are beautiful, loyal, affectionate dogs, great with kids and somewhat intelligent. Their coats are quite high maintenance and need to be clipped regularly.
Jazzy got very stressed when she first went to the doggy groomers and had widdle accidents for the week after. The vet said ‘don’t go back to the groomers’. So guess who has to clip the dogs. Yes, poor me and I’m hopeless at using shears. See that photo of Sheba – well, put it this way, she doesn’t look quite like that anymore. Maybe with practice!
Jazzy and Sheba come from a place in the mountains called Doodledom at Cloudcatchers Labradoodles. It sounds magical doesn’t it? It’s located between Byron Bay and the Gold Coast near Mount Warning.
Mount Warning is located in the largest volcanic caldera in the Southern Hemisphere. The mountain is called Cloudcatcher by the locals.
A lovely lady, Kathy Young, runs Doodledom and she adores Labradoodles. She is so nice that she sends our Labradoodles doggy birthday cards on their birthdays.
Now that’s dedication.
Worms, chooks and mulch – local recycling
worms, chooks and mulch
Note: I’ve written this for the ABC Radio National ‘Live Local’ program. Posted also on the POOL website. They will decide later which stories to include for the broadcast.
A large amount of rubbish destined for the dump can be recycled locally. This has benefits for the whole of society in terms of environmental sustainability. Here are some of the ways that this can be done.
If you have a garden than a compost bin is essential. You can throw in lawn clippings, leaves, shredded newspaper and cardboard, plus kitchen scraps. Eventually all that stuff breaks down into lovely soil for the garden.
Worm farms are amazing. They can be made from discarded containers or bought from your local hardware. You will have to beg, borrow or buy the worms. They eat kitchen scraps and their poo can be used as a soil conditioner. Some worm farms have a tap on the bottom and excess liquid is drawn off and used, when diluted, as a tonic for gardens. The worms can be used as a protein supplement for chickens!
Chickens are highly recommended. They eat kitchen scraps, fertilize the garden, produce eggs, eat bugs, and till the soil with their scratching behaviours. They are gorgeous and produce music to your ears with their gentle clucking.
Some men love to use machinery in the garden, such as ride-on mowers, edge trimmers, and chainsaws. But a great investment is a mulcher and the bigger the better. You can get mulchers that virtually eat up any type of organic matter, including tree trunks. My husband has a mulcher. He mulches everything from our garden plus does the neighbours stuff. If they want their mulch back, they help themselves. As long as they shut the gate behind them so the chickens don’t get out. If that happened I’d have to kill them.
But I live in a unit and haven’t got the room? This is a real issue and obviously you can’t have chickens. But you may be able to have a Bokashi bucket, which is a bucket with a lid that seals completely and which has a tap at the bottom. It is odour free and can go on the kitchen bench or under the counter. You put in food scraps and add micro-organisms that break down (ferment) the contents. Excess liquid is diluted to make liquid fertiliser. When the bucket is full you put the contents in a compost bin or bury it in a garden. It breaks down into a nutrient rich soil conditioner.
Boxes and cartons can be donated to local schools for art projects.
If you recycle your rubbish locally just think how empty your council bin will be!
The mess I call my office.
Today is Tessa’s birthday. She is 7 and having a lot of fun. She has a new ballet tutu and a dolls house. We will have a chocolate mud cake later. Isn’t it fun being a kid. I love being a mum cause I get to play with stuff I never had as a kid. Plus I’m really just a big kid myself.
As we are all sharing photos and videos of our writing areas, here are a couple of photos of my office. I can see the kangaroos in the front garden when I look out the window.
The mess that is my home office.
No matter how hard I try I can never have an organised office but somehow I survive. I am slightly addicted to books and this is just one of my bookshelves. I have others throughout the house but still not enough space. These books must be breeding. A few months back I got rid of hundreds of books. I also have boxed up books in the shed.
Some of the books have only been partially read, as I move onto other ones. Many are reference books and I just dip into them as required. I really like those ‘For dummies …’ books. You know the ones – ‘How to write poetry for dummies’, ‘cognitive-behavioural therapy for dummies’ – ha,ha,ha. I have a lot of books about autism, poetry, psychology, birds, animals, writing, plays (I did a drama major at Uni) and novels.
When I get one of those new fangled digital video devices I will give everyone a tour of the chook yard.
No Straight Lines in Nature
I promised Paul Squires a poem, as he was kind enough to write one about my son Michael (and one about me and my chickens). I thought I would continue on with the general theme of spinning and circles. I started reading Paul’s blog gingatao because he talked about non-linear time in his lovely poetry and prose. It seems like I have been thinking about this issue ever since I was a young girl looking at the night sky in the evening. It was a pleasant surprise to find that I am not the only one in the universe to think about these type of things.
No Straight Lines in Nature
Spherical earth rotating
sun circulating.
Rotund moon held tightly
in ring-shaped trajectory.
Electron spin
atomic, molecular orbitals.
Sound waving gently through the air
light bending with the squeeze of gravity.
Dingy shaped red blood cells floating
in plasma streams and rivers.
Heart, hugs, thought bubbles
soft curve of lips and skin.
Lost girl stumbling in the dark
finds herself back where she started.
No straight lines in nature.
If you think you see one,
crystals spring to mind,
take a look closer
and you’ll find it’s gone.
Mandelbrot’s theory of fractals
Look intimately at a spider web
to see a straight thread
between two points
that’s not straight.
Human-made straightness
illusory of course
requires extra energy
nature
the greatest conservationist.
If there are no straight lines in nature
is time straight?
Madeleine L’Engle
crinkled in time.
crumples, crinkles, dips
waves, ripples, loops
stringy twirls
oscillating tendrils
a wheel in time.
breath ceases
the first cry of a baby
life circulating
non-linear time?
Who knows!
Obsessions and Special Interests – The Autism Files
Let me tell you about obsessions!
One of the most fascinating things about children and adults with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) is their obsessions or special interests. My son Michael has had numerous obsessions and preoccupations with objects since he was a toddler. It was these special interests that first alerted me to the possibility that he may have autism.
When he was about 2 years old he developed an intense interest in watching things that would spin. Particularly fans and the wheels on overturned bikes or toy trucks. Kids with ASD often don’t play with toys in the way other kids do. They investigate the separate components, often studying one part of a toy for hours on end. They can have restricted imaginative play.
Michael also loved to turn light switches on and off. Now some kids might do this a few times but Michael would go through the whole house with a stool, so he could reach the switch, and repeatedly turn it on and off. He wouldn’t stop until I made him and then would have a tantrum of massive proportions. Sometimes it was just easier to let him turn those switches on and off. My husband would come home from work to find the house lit up like a Christmas tree.
Once I took Michael to our GP and he quickly disappeared into another room while I was distracted. He managed to find the main light switchboard and turned off the lights to the whole surgery. When you are obsessed with something, nothing gets in your way.
Why the attraction to light switches? I think it may have something to do with the predictability. You flick the switch, the light turns on. You flick it again, the light turns off . A very satisfying level of control if you are living in the chaotic world which is autism.
Michael’s next obsession was with moving water. He would constantly look for taps to turn on so he could watch the water flow. When he was nearly three we took Michael and Tessa to Kingscliff, where my sister Lisa lived. We thought it was a bit too cold to go for a swim but Michael thought otherwise so we let him play in the shallows. After a while we made him come out but he went ballistic with rage. We had to carry him screaming and shouting all the way back to the house. I put that little episode in my poem Message to Michael. It was during that week long holiday that I was sure that Michael had autism.
Why get obsessed with water? Well everyone knows how relaxing it can be to watch or listen to running water such as in a fountain or stream. Kids with ASD are very stressed, most of the time. Obsessions generally develop from anxiety, unless of course it is an obsession to something like Bob Dylan music, which is just good taste. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is categorised as an Anxiety Disorder in the psychiatric text books. If you deal with the anxiety the obsession will reduce or disappear. If you try to suppress an obsession, without dealing with the underlying anxiety, it will manifest in a different way. Beware the pop-up effect!
It is very difficult to reduce the anxiety that ASD kids experience and sometimes you just have to let them have their obsession, or let them obsess in the privacy of their bedroom or at home after school. Often therapists use the obsession as a reward as part of behaviour modification programs.
Another water related obsession, and one that was particularly funny, was Michael’s obsessions with toilets. His father used to work as a plumber so it’s not that surprising. Wherever we went Michael would go straight to the toilet to see what it looked like. He wouldn’t use it, he just wanted to have a good look at the workings of the toilet. His special education teacher would shake her head as he ran towards the bathroom to investigate. He did that every day for the entire school year, plus turning the taps on.
He would also get very upset if anything about the toilet changed. For instance, my friend Shelley started using a new clip-on toilet cleaner, and he didn’t like that at all. He also had a tantrum when Tessa accidently dropped a toilet roll into the toilet. When Michael went to the early intervention centre AEIOU they made him a book full of pictures of toilets. It was called ‘Michael’s toilet book’ and when he was very stressed they would let him look at the pictures. We still have that book.
Michael’s obsessions have become more sophisticated since the early years. At various stages he has had special interests in aeroplanes (Spitfires), rubbish trucks, rubbish bins, recycling and the solar system. I will write about these obsessions another time.
My blogosphere is a rainbow flavoured ice-cream
Welcome to my blogosphere, a community of like-minded bloggers. I click on them and they click on me – it’s a lot of fun! It’s a bit like catching up on the daily news except this is news with a literary, poetic and artistic bent. There is also an interactive and synergistic component which leads to further creative explosions. Mind blowing really.
Let me introduce you to some friends from my blogosphere.
Another Lost Shark
Graham Nunn may be Another Lost Shark but he is also a Masterchef of the poetic kitchen. He works tirelessly alongside chefs and apprentices, coordinating the show, gathering ingredients from the marketplace, promoting extravaganzas and inviting guests, divining menus, printing cookbooks, adding the right balance of spices and seasonings, making sure the temperature doesn’t get out of control (these poets can be a hot headed bunch) and serving up exquisite banquets.
The Querulous Squirrel
An intriguing little fluff ball this one. A critter not to be messed with. So many dark and dangerous traps to be found in her neck of the woods . This little squirrel madly gathers little nuggets of delight from all around, hides them in assorted places, and retrieves them when she needs to create a delectable feast of flash fiction. She was recently awarded a trophy for most productive squirrel in the blogosphere.
Benedicte’s Blog/Carnet de dessins
Benedicte is a lovely French artist living in Montreal. She is funny, wise, immensely talented and has great tastes in cartoons and chickens. She stumbled across photos of my darling Chinese Silky Chickens, Pompadour and Snowy, and felt a compulsion to draw the little beasties. Benedicte posted the wondrous drawings on her blog and a magical roundabout of chicken stories, poems and portraiture had begun.
Aletha Kuschan’s Weblog
Aletha, artist extraordinaire living near Washington DC, loves to draw the fish Koi and they are so splendid that anyone looking closely feels that they may jump right out of the picture and start flopping around on the floor. Do you remember in ‘The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader’ how the painting of the ship becomes real – you get my drift! Aletha owns a hamster called Blanca and Blanca has an ‘online’ friendship with Pompadour. Aletha, Benedicte and myself have developed a collaboration that is centred on the aforementioned magical roundabout of chicken stuff. We are having a lot of fun.
Tennessee Text Wrestling
Let me tell you a little secret about Thomma Lyn Grindstaff. There is nothing she likes better than a nip or two. That would be ‘nip’ as in Novel in Progress. Yes, she’s absolutely mad about writing novels. Not content with the fabulous ‘Mirror Blue’ she has adopted the pace of Kathy Freeman and is continuing the writerly race while under the influence of a couple of strong nips. Thomma Lyn also loves cats, growing vegetables, and hiking through the mountains. We in the blogosphere get to see lovely photos of her adventures.
Maekitso Cafe
Brad Frederickson is an intriguing and battle-scarred poet. His poetry has a mathematical and philosophical flavour and his tweets and emails are imbued with metaphorical colouring. A combination which is probably bad for your physical health, like excessive drinking, but good for social and creative health. He also does pretty cool stuff like printing Haiku onto point of sale receipts. His posts get comments like ‘I’m Speechless….I just dig you man!!!’ (Bindo).
Poum
I stumbled across this blog written by screamish, a mother of twins living as an expatriate in France. She entertains the masses with tales (and photos) of all things exotic, such as delightful looking half-naked French men wearing white cotton skirts, wrapped in leather and buckles, fighting each other (an image forever burnt into my brain) as well as heartfelt poems and stories. By strange coincidence she also owns a farm in Childers, a town about 30 minutes drive from where I live, and she used to be an archaeologist (just like my stepmother). Spooky.
Gingatao
I’ve left my favourite to last. Paul Squires, wise and wondrous Brisbane-based poet and author of ‘The Puzzle Box’ was recently voted poet laureate of the universe by his own fans from his blogosphere. He is a magical enigma showering the great unwashed with phantasmagorical poetical and prosical stardust (yes, I made that up – he does it all the time so that’s OK). We all remained unwashed as we want the stardust to remain forever on our skin.
I hope you enjoyed meeting my friends from my blogosphere. Aren’t they a terrific multicultural and multi-talented mix? There are others but I haven’t room to mention them all, plus they don’t comment enough – ha,ha,ha (gotcha!).
Run for the hills – the Gabe files
Run for the hills
In 1999 I had a very vivid dream. In the dream I am standing at the base of a high-rise building. It’s the Brisbane Stock Exchange. Suddenly a large jet airliner crashes into the building. The plane emerges out of the other side and the building collapses. The devastation is immense and all that is left is a large hole in the ground. I am safe but everything around me is destroyed.
The dream had such an impact on me that I began to fear travelling in airplanes. Every time a plane went overhead my heart would beat a little faster. I got married later in 1999 and my husband and I flew to Far North Queensland for our honeymoon. I remember telling him on the plane about my dream and how I was a bit scared. We both laughed at how silly it sounded.
The day of the terrorist attacks in New York, September 11 2001, I saw a version of my dream played out on every television channel. I couldn’t believe what was happening. My psychiatrist told me that all dreams represent something that has occurred in the previous 48 hours.
I have another dream which bothers me. It’s a recurring dream that is also very vivid and I think about it often. It takes a number of forms but basically I am living near the coast or in a city with a river running through it (yes, that would be Brisbane). Suddenly there is a tsunami and the sea rises up and destroys the town. Everyone is madly running as fast as they can go, trying to outrun the waves, trying to get to higher territory. The waves do not retreat and the place is completely swamped.
I make it safely to higher ground, along with a small group of family, friends and some strangers. We travel as far away from the town as we can get, still fearful of the rising waters. We travel into the hills, to the most beautiful place in the world and we are safe. We decide to make that place our new home. Most people have not survived and we are very grateful that we did.
I had my first tsunami dream the day before the Banda Aceh tsunami of December 26 2004. It was probably just a result of over-indulging on bubbly on Christmas day but you never know.
I live in a small seaside village called Woodgate on the shores of Hervey Bay in Queensland. It’s a low lying place and 7,000 years ago the seas reached about 1km inland. You can still see the ’second ridge’ – the elevation of the original beach, now covered in vegetation.
Earlier this year a cyclone hovered about 100km away from Woodgate and we could feel the winds from the edge of the low pressure system. The wind created large waves which pounded on the shore and one day the waves started to break through the ‘first ridge’, something which the locals had never seen happen. After about 10 days the cyclone eventually moved further out to sea.
One day I think we may have to ‘run for the hills’.
Chook-Induced Anxiety (CIA) The Sequel
Pompadour
My chooks are older and fluffier now. I still suffer from CIA but at a reduced level, probably 5 out of 10 on the ‘CIA Scale of Discomfort’. This is down from 9 out of 10, so from a clinical perspective I have improved significantly. From my perspective, it’s still a pain in the butt.
I fear the only way to eliminate my CIA is to have no chooks. But I have grown fond of my feathered hens and I won’t get rid of them. They live for about 9 years so I’ll have to cope until they have gone to that great free-range farm in the sky. God doesn’t eat caged-chicken eggs!
I have five fabulously outrageous Chinese Silky hens. They are soft, docile critters adorned with lovely pompoms. Silkies are a great bird for the novice poultry keeper and are terrific for ‘tame’ children aged 6 and over. They lay little eggs weighing 40 grams. This means you will need a little teaspoon to fit in your soft-boiled eggy. If you are a horrible person and desire to eat a Silkie you will find the meat to be entirely repulsive and dark in colour.
My chickens are Pompadour, Snowy, Vegemite, Miss Eagle and Henny-Penny. Pompadour, the most arrogant of the hens, has the finest pompom. Snowy is a pure white hen and Vegemite is the colour of yeast extract. Miss Eagle is a suspected impostor having no pompom at all. I was running out of names when I got to Henny-Penny.
These chooks live the good life. They free-range all day and put themselves to bed at dusk. Sometimes I top up their dry food with fresh greens or, if they are really lucky, worms from my worm farm. As a result, when I open the gate to the backyard they go crazy with love and run towards me. This makes it all worthwhile. At night the door is shut securely on their coop. The fluffballs sleep snuggled up against each other.
PS. I have a confession to make. Due to my CIA (totally irrational) I just can’t bring myself to eat my feathered friends’ little eggs. But that’s OK because everyone else does and when we have too many eggs we trade with the neighbours, who give us seasonal produce. Everyone’s a winner. And yes, I am told, free-range, organic eggs definitely taste better.
Here is the link to my first story Chook-Induced Anxiety (CIA)
Pompadour and Snowy - the girls discuss affairs of State!
Gabrielle
