Thank You #VOTY

Yesterday I found out that I won kind of an award. In the world of blogging I think it's kind of a good one, in my mind it's definitely something to be proud of. In BlogHer's Voices of the Year, I won the People's Choice Award in the category Heart.

It was for a post I wrote a few months back about bullying. Regular readers will know that Child 1 is headed off to Middle School next year and I'm having a bit of a freak out about it. So I wrote a post asking parents of typical kids to have a talk with their children about mine. About how he is different, but that's okay.

I nominated myself for VOTY mainly because I wanted to get the information in that post out as far and as wide as possible. What's the point in writing something to a general audience if nobody will see it, right? I submitted my nomination in April, I think, and then the voting period closed and I thought that was the end of it, but it clearly wasn't. Apparently it takes a while for the judges to read 2600 submissions!

But yesterday they told me I won the People's Choice Award. That means, I think, that my post got the most votes in my category. And I didn't even ask for votes, really. I posted on Facebook a few times, but it wasn't like I was on a campaign. I just... won it. I can't even believe it. I've never won anything before, and for a post that means so so much to me? I want to cry from the magnitude of this.

I haven't been blogging much lately, in case you've noticed. The reason is the same as the reason I posted about back in December.  But now that I'm a motherfucking People's Choice Award winner? Maybe that will inspire me to try harder.

But, really, this post is just to say thank you. Thank you for voting for me! Thank you for picking me as the winner in this category. Thank you for reading that post and for helping me spread the word. Thank you for reading this blog, at all. Thank you for encouraging me. Thank you for your comments and messages. Thank you for loving and supporting my kids along with me. Thank you for loving and supporting me.


Edit: Forgot to mention that I won't actually be attending BlogHer. I hadn't thought about it before and now it's too late to get any affordable airfare or a hotel room. Next year, though!

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Snark, saying thank you, and the color blue

I'm sorry, that Oxford comma was not the way I was taught and even though it is correct it just feels weird and wrong to me.... WEIRD AND WRONG, I TELL YOU.

I’m at the park right now writing this. It’s fucking February and I’m in the park with shorts and a t-shirt and no shoes. I know, you Canadians want to tell me to fuck off right now for actually complaining about that, but this shit is lame! Where the hell is our winter this year?? I WANT WINTER, DAMMIT.

Anyway… so you know how we autie parents spend so much time complaining about all the people in our lives who just don’t “get it?” Well, I thought I’d take a moment to show some appreciation for some people who do get it. It will be a nice change of pace, don’t you think??

Today we have an IEP meeting. I’m not expecting anything unusual, it’s our annual and we’ve already had an emergency meeting this year to discuss “the incident,” so nothing today is going to be very earth shattering, with the possible exception of me saying “I’d like to opt him out of The Test,” and the SPED representative giving me the same line of horseshit that she gives me every year about how "he’s going to be taking tests his whole life so he might as well start getting used to it now!" Because my kick ass advocate will be there, and she’s going to say “SHUT THE FUCK UP, TINY DISTRICT WOMAN” (she’s kind of a “force,” my kick ass advocate. I’m pretty sure her business cards actually say “Kick Ass Advocate,” instead of just the usual “Advocate.”) Anyway, according to the chart up there, we are in our usual state of Blue: even if things will go smoothly, there’s always a little bit of misinformation and guile to be expected. You know, like “he’s going to be taking tests his whole life so he should practice for them now and the reason we don't want you to opt him out has everything to do with his future test taking abilities and nothing to do with our participation percentages or anything like that no I swear that’s really really the reason.”

Anyway, back to appreciating people. My awesome tutor will be coming with me to this meeting, which means I don’t have my usual afternoon babysitter, so I’ve asked my friend Cathryn to watch the kids (I’m using her real name because she has no online persona and therefore no secret identity to protect). But Child 1 doesn’t like having to go places, in general, really, but in particular if I’m not there, so Cathryn is coming over to my house, with her two kids, and she’s watching all four of them for however many hours this is going to take. Isn’t that just the coolest thing?? I’m so happy that I have a friend who understands and is cool about weird autism things. Her kids aren’t autistic, she’s just one of those incredibly cool people who “get it.”

And so, I would like to dedicate this post not only to snark but to my friend Cathryn, who “gets” it. She probably won’t read this unless I tell her to, and MAN will she be embarrassed when she does. HA HA HA HA HA!! I think I’ll just leave the screen open on my laptop when I leave for the meeting and have her stumble across it accidentally…… SURPRISE!!!

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Happy Thanksgiving, nutjobs!!!

YES, I'm talking to you. YOU. You're the nutjob. Happy Thanksgiving, crazy people!

We had a last minute change of plans and I AM doing Thanksgiving at my house this year. That makes me VERY happy, and as I write this, on Wednesday afternoon, my fucking kick-ass gravy is on Day #1, happy bubbling away on the stove. KICK ASS.

I'm not going to spend too much time on this post, because probably nobody will read it, since everybody is spending the day either cooking or getting drunk or avoiding having to sit next to that one relative you hate, or all of the above, so I'll just say... I'm thankful for all the people I have met in the last year and a half, since I started blogging, who for some reason keep coming back to this lame ass blog day after day and humor me enough to tell me I'm funny, even though we all know you're full of shit (you must want something).

Here are some gifts I got you; straight from the internet! Except the last one. That last one is a picture of me holding a gravy bowl.

Gobble gobble, motherfuckers!!

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A quick note about today's quick note about yesterday's post

In all seriousness, you guys are the fucking BEST. I saw you clicking yesterday, and I see you clicking today, and really, putting aside for a moment all my gawdy whorishness about this stupid voting thing that means nothing and isn't important, thank you for humoring me. And thank you for reading. And thank you for commenting. And thank you for laughing, even if it's at me and not with me; I'm cool with that, too.

I'd like to give you guys a non kitten rainbow related present for being so awesome. Actually two presents.

First, here is my favorite cartoon in all the world that my friend Robin gave me years ago and that sits right above the top of my monitor, pinned to the bulletin board behind my desk and that I look at every time I'm trying to think of something witty to write about:

And second, have you guys heard The Head and the Heart? Good fucking stuff. Here's Ghosts. You're welcome.

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Song of the day: Why Do I

Oh, thank you to Dani at I'm Just That Way and That's Just Me for saying "Hey, you and I seem to have similar tastes in music, have you heard of Joe Purdy? No? Let me email you some."

Oh, thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.  Lyrics here

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Singing thanks for the unsung heroes

The Me Gusta Turkey, stolen from reddit

Every year Thanksgiving, for me, is a two day cook-fest. On Wednesday I prep and chop my vegetables and get everything ready for the big day; I can do it all in one day, I just like to spread it out because it's fun for me; also so that I can start drinking as soon as the turkey goes into the oven. This year, however, I'm sick. Yeah, I've got a frickin' cold and I feel shitty on Day 1 of my Two Day Cookfest. Bummer. So, I can't really cook, I need to spend the day in bed getting better so that I can cook all day tomorrow, except there's no school today. Why is there no school today? Probably because a lot of people take this day off, anyway, and the district doesn't want to lose all that ADA money, so they just close the damn thing down and add another day at the end of the year. That would seriously piss me off if I had a regular 9-5 office job, but today it's just an inconvenience because I want to sleep but my kids are home and need entertainment; plus I need them to stay away from me so that I can sleep.

Luckily, however, I've got family in town; family who never get to see these children of mine, and who volunteered to come over this morning so that I could lie in bed and complain quietly to myself (and the Twitter world).

Now, your typical adult, I've found, has no idea what to do with a child who has autism. They ask questions like they would of any other kid, and when they don't get an answer that they're expecting, I think they kind of panic. "What am I supposed to do now??" So, it's one thing to volunteer to hang out with the NT 5 year old who asks a million questions and constantly chatters on and on with insightful and hilarious comments, but another, entirely, to volunteer to hang out with the autistic 8 year old who doesn't answer your questions, who talks in an inaudible mumble most of the time and who only cares about BART trains. It's rare that I encounter an adult, who not only "gets it," but who feels at ease with the kid with the obvious differences, and when I do, I feel compelled to sing their praises.

So, I would like to do just that for both of my cousins, who are awesome and wonderful people, and in particular my cousin Emily, because she is not only not afraid of the autism and the weirdness, she enthusiastically took him out on a BART ride while I lay in bed, quietly complaining to myself (and to Twitter). I wish she lived closer. THANK YOU!

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Thank you!

Somebody posted a link to this blog on Facebook today and I have been getting a SHITLOAD of traffic as a result. I have no idea who it was but I can see it in my site stats that all kinds of people are coming over here from Facebook.

Whoever it was: Thanks! :) You've made my day!

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