Archives for October 2011

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Groundhog Day

October 27, 2011 By

Edie sipped her tea while she waited for The Beast to boot up. She hated The Beast. It kept making her download updates that she didn’t understand, and most of the emails that she got were rubbish. Damien had bought it for her when he’d been transferred to Utah, insisting that they would have to communicate daily by email. She supposed that she shouldn’t complain. Other people’s kids moved away and forgot all about them. At least her son wanted to stay in touch, and to her surprise, their daily email exchanges had become a patch of sunshine in her otherwise monotonous days.

Edie’s gaze drifted to the picture of herself and Sammy that had been taken when they were both seven. They had been best friends: when Edie and her family had been rounded up and taken to the concentration camp, they had been thrust into a small, cramped room already occupied by Sammy and his parents. Sammy had taken her under his wing. Somehow he had made her feel less afraid.

The two children had spent hours playing in the tiny room, or on the small square of dirt outside. Whenever he eluded her during tag games, or outwitted her as they played with their makeshift Checkers set, he would smile, tap the side of his head, and say, “You gotta think like a groundhog.” Edie didn’t know what this meant or what a groundhog was, but it made her laugh every time. Despite the life they were living, they were happy in their own way.

And then, one day, Edie had come back to the room with her mother to discover that Sammy and his parents were gone. Edie did not need to ask where they were or if she would ever see Sammy again. She had become used to the people around her disappearing. She knew that they went into the big building at the far end of the compound and never came out.

Now, as she looked at the picture, she shed a silent tear for her sweet, funny friend. She wondered if he had been afraid while he was walking to his death. She gently touched his image and whispered, “You gotta think like a groundhog.”

The Beast had finally booted up. Edie opened her email and sighed as her screen filled with messages from people trying to sell things, tell her fortune, or entice her to try online dating. Damien called these messages spam, which Edie didn’t really understand.

In her haste to delete the messages, Edie accidentally opened one of them: an advertisement for Go Get ‘Em Exterminators & Pest Control. As she moved her mouse to the X in the corner of the message, a line of text in the advertisement caught her attention.

To catch the critters… you gotta think like a groundhog.

Edie stared at the screen in shock, her mind starting to race. Could it be possible that two people would come up with the same phrase almost seventy years apart? Or – Edie barely dared to allow herself to think it – could it be possible that Sammy had somehow escaped?

Could Sammy be alive?

With shaking hands, she picked up the phone and dialed the number in the advertisement. Although seventy years had passed, Edie instantly recognized the inflections in the voice that answered.

“Sammy? It’s Edie.”

This week’s Indie Ink Challenge came from Carrie, who gave me this prompt: A spam email that turns out to be more than expected.
I challenged  femmefauxpas with the prompt: Tell us a ghost story. The kind you would tell while sitting around a campfire eating roasted marshmallows.

Filed Under: Concentration Camp, fiction, Friendship, Holocaust, Indie Ink Writing Challenge, Reconnecting Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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Race-Day Etiquette: Ten Ways To Be Nice

October 26, 2011 By

So you’ve been training for weeks, and the day is finally here. You are excited, you are ready to go, and you can already feel the weight of the finisher’s medal around your neck. The start-line energy is so intense that you’re practically levitating. As the crowd of runners surges forward and crosses the start-line, your focus turns inward as you concentrate on your game plan for this race.

As much as you’re focusing on your own race, it doesn’t hurt to spare a thought for the people around you. Here are some points of race-day etiquette that are worth passing along. They are listed in no particular order.

  1. Bandits begone! If you did not pay for the privilege of taking part in the race, graciously step to the side and get off the course. Run the route later. And definitely, definitely do not cross the finish line.
  2. Many races these days feature personalized race bibs that allow complete strangers to cheer for you by name. If a spectator takes the time to call out your name in encouragement, give them some acknowledgement: a thumbs-up, a smile, a wave – something.
  3. If you are, like me, a tens-and-ones runner, give other runners a heads-up that you’re about to take your walking break. Move to the right side of the course and raise a hand to indicate that you are slowing down.
  4. If you are a faster runner approaching from behind, an “Excuse me!” or “Coming through!” called out to the slower runners will alert them to your presence.
  5. Corollary to #4: if you are a slower runner and you hear the words “Excuse me!” or “Coming through!” coming from behind, move over so that the faster runner has room to pass safely.
  6. Porta-potty lineups should stay off the course, or if that’s not possible, as close to the side of the road as you can get. Runners should not have to trip over people who are waiting to take their bio-breaks.
  7. You know how you grab a cup of water at the water station and drink half of it before tossing the rest? Look before you toss, otherwise the runner coming up behind you might get drenched.
  8. While we’re on the subject of water stations, please remember to thank the volunteer who hands you your cup. Yes, you are tired. Yes, you have been running for two hours straight and your legs are turning to mush. But none of this could happen without the people who stand there for hours on end making sure you don’t get dehydrated. A small thank you goes a long way, and might even encourage the volunteer to help out in future events.
  9. If you see a runner in need of assistance, help them out. Whether it’s in the form of offering them a word of encouragement as they’re flagging towards the end of a race, or picking up something that you have seen them drop, it can make a big difference to their day, as well as making you feel great about yourself.
  10. When you cross the finish line, keep moving. Move as far down the finish line chute as you can. The runners coming in behind you are trying to get the best times they can – don’t make them slow down before crossing the line.

Runners? Any more tips to add to the list? Feel free to add them in the Comments section!

(Photo credit to the author.)

Filed Under: Being Considerate, Etiquette, Race, running Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,
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10 IEP Survival Tips For Parents Of Children With Autism

October 25, 2011 By

If you want an autism parent to break out in an instant sweat, just mention the initials IEP. The Individual Education Plan, which is theoretically in place to help children with autism and their families, can instead be one of the biggest sources of frustration. The IEP process, during which the child’s educational goals for the upcoming year are formulated, is about as much fun as a root canal. It is also just as essential. Without an IEP, our special needs kids would be eaten alive by a school system designed to teach “typical” kids who can do “typical” things.

Putting together an effective IEP requires collaboration between the parents and the school, and differing viewpoints can lead to difficulty. The school views the child as one of a number of students requiring IEP’s. They want to get the job done as quickly and efficiently as they can: the less interaction they have to have with parents, the better. From my experience, teachers like to draw up the IEP, send it home for parental signatures, and be done with it.  Parents, of course, view their child as a unique individual. They want their child’s IEP to be given care and consideration. They don’t want a cookie-cutter IEP; they want a plan that reflects their child’s needs. After all, the “I” in IEP stands for “Individual”.

It doesn’t have to this frustrating. There are things parents can do to derive real value from the IEP process. Today I want to share with you some tips that I have learned over the years, both from my own experiences, and from other people who have been through the IEP wringer. If you have tips of your own, please feel free to add them in the comments section.

1. Parents, educate yourselves. Find out the special ed laws in your area. Make sure you know what you as a parent are entitled to request on behalf of your child. Do research on the IEP process. If possible, try to get your hands on the IEP form if you haven’t already seen it. If you know what information the form calls for, you can be better prepared.

2. This is not a battle – or at least, it shouldn’t be. No matter how frustrated you are, avoid approaching your child’s teacher in a confrontational manner. You are not on opposite sides of the table. You are members of the same team, working together for the benefit of your child. If you adopt a collaborative attitude, chances are that the teacher will do the same. At the end of the day, your child will derive a lot more benefit from a cohesive team than from a roomful of bickering people.

3. There is another reason to play nice with your child’s teacher. The special ed community is fairly contained. There is a good possibility that the professional you are dealing with today will crop up in some other role in the special ed world at some point in the future. I’m not suggesting that you give in to what the teacher wants. I’m just saying, be nice. Treat all of the professionals you encounter with respect. Yelling at an uncooperative teacher may get you some short-term results, but it will also burn a bridge that you may need further down the line.

4. Be realistic. Your child’s goals should be formulated with reference to where they are today. A child who has not yet learned how to count to twenty is probably not going to be able to add triple-digit numbers.

5. Instead of requesting goals in absolute terms (“I want my child to be reading by the end of the year”), phrase them as an ongoing process (“The ability to read one- and two-syllable words, with a view to reading simple story-books.”)

6. Remember that kids don’t necessarily do the same things at school that they do at home. My son’s teacher, who is with him for the third year in a row, sent home an IEP draft that included the goal for him to rote-count to 100. I was initially perplexed, because he’s been counting to 100 since he was four, but it came out that this is not a skill he has demonstrated at school. Conversely, he has shown more promise in interactive play at school than he does at home.

7. Don’t be shy about writing comments on your child’s IEP. The IEP form does not allow a lot of space for comments – feel free to break out a separate sheet of paper, write your comments on that, and staple it to the form.

8. As a parent, you have the option to meet with the teacher, or to just add your comments to the IEP and sign it. I strongly recommend that you meet with the teacher. Even if it’s the same teacher for the second or third year, the goals will have evolved, and it can be very difficult to keep things in context without a face-to-face meeting.

9. If the IEP does not include a goal that you feel should be there, be persistent. You may need to compromise on the wording of the goal, but make sure it gets written into the IEP in some form.

10. Remember that the IEP is not cast in concrete. We don’t have crystal balls, and we cannot always say that the plan we come up with in October will still be valid in, say, February. If a strategy or goal that was written into the IEP is not working, talk to your child’s teacher about modifying it.

Filed Under: autism, Education, goals, IEP, School, Special Needs, Teacher Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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Ordinary People

October 20, 2011 By

If I had known I was going to meet the Queen I would have dressed up a little and put on some makeup. I wouldn’t have been in my sweaty running clothes, with a bleeding face and an ankle the size of a football. And I certainly wouldn’t have been cursing under my breath, using language that would make a sailor hang his head in shame.

Talk about making a good first impression.

I had woken up early, and because the morning looked so gorgeous, I decided to go for a run in Central Park. I only traveled to New York once every two years or so, and I relished the opportunity to run in the world’s most famous park.

On this warm Fall morning, the scenery was stunning. The sky was bright, bright blue and the vibrant reds and golds of Fall stretched as far as the eye could see. As I ran along at a brisk pace, admiring the scenery and letting the glorious sounds of early morning fill my ears, I felt at one with nature.

All of a sudden, right after I had started sprinting for my final stretch, the toe of my running shoe snagged on a branch that had fallen across the trail. I tried to right myself, but my forward momentum kept me off-balance, and I found myself crashing down onto the concrete pathway.

So much for being at one with nature. Now I was at one with the sidewalk.

With shaking legs, I got to my feet. I immediately knew that my ankle was in trouble. From the burning sensation on my cheek and the blood dripping down onto my shirt, I could tell that my face wasn’t in great shape either. My legs weren’t going to carry me very far, so I had two choices. I could stay on the path in a crumpled heap waiting for someone to help me, or I could stagger over to the nearby cluster of benches and wait until I had collected myself a little.

If I was going to wait for someone to help me, I would have died of old age, so I opted for the benches. All three of them were occupied. On the first bench, a couple were entwined in an unlikely fashion, snogging the daylights out of each other. An old lady sat on the second bench with her eyes closed, as if she was taking a nap. The third was occupied by a tall Jamaican man with purple dreadlocks, who was bopping energetically to the tune of whatever was coming out of his iPod. He was beaming beatifically at me, as if I looked like an angel instead of a road accident victim.

Hmmm. Did I want to share a bench with the canoodling couple, the bouncing music man, or the quiet old lady? I headed to the second bench, sank down onto it and closed my eyes.

My foot was already swelling up like a balloon, so I had to loosen my shoes to allow for the expansion. I tugged too hard at my shoelace and jerked my ankle, sending a wave of pain right through my leg. I swore in a high-pitched voice, using the kind of expletive my mother would have been horrified by. Then I remembered the little old lady catnapping on my left, and I clapped a hand over my mouth.

Using the water from my water bottle, I tried to rinse off my grazed cheek. I felt as if my face was on fire, and I kept cursing in pain. I kept my foul language to a whisper, in consideration for the sleeping old lady.

Clutching my water bottle, I looked around me for the first time, and almost jumped out of my skin. The sleeping old lady was no longer sleeping. She was wide awake, and she was staring at me with some bemusement.

“You seem to have had a bit of a tumble,” she said, in a posh British accent. “Are you all right?”

“I’ll be OK,” I replied. “I’m very sorry if I woke you up.”

She nodded in acknowledgement.

Her casual attire was at odds with the sense of formality that radiated from her. She was dressed in gray sweatpants, a blue sweatshirt with frayed cuffs, and running shoes that looked like they had seen better days. Her neat gray curls were topped with a baseball cap emblazoned with the words “The Aliens Are Coming.”

As I peered at her, I realized that she looked familiar, but I couldn’t place her. I was undoubtedly seeing her out of context, but I definitely recognized her from somewhere. All of a sudden the synapses in my brain connected her face to a picture I had seen in a discarded newspaper on the subway the previous day.

The old lady must have noticed the spark of recognition.

“Oh, bollocks,” she said with a sigh. “You know who I am.”

This was utterly bizarre. Had the Queen of England just said the word “bollocks” to me? Was she really sitting here beside me wearing a cap that said the aliens were coming?

“You’re staring, dear,” said the Queen gently.

“Sorry!” I said. “This is just… it’s just that…” I gave up and gestured vaguely.

Then a thought struck me.

“Do the British people know you’re here?” I asked sternly, as if I was asking a teenager if her parents knew where she was.

“Sometimes I like to just bugger off and do what I want,” said the Queen, with an air of defiance.

I could understand that. Being the Queen must be dreadful sometimes. But she was sitting here in the middle of Central Park by herself. Wasn’t she worried about being mugged or something? I wondered if the occupants of the other two benches were bodyguards.

A man in his forties wearing a pair of overalls approached along the path, neatly sidestepped the branch I had fallen over, and stopped in front of the Queen. He offered her a Starbucks cup and said, “Here’s your coffee, Lizzie.”

Lizzie?

The Queen graciously accepted the coffee, and then politely rattled off instructions for the man to find a First Aid kit for me. As he trotted away, she turned to catch me gawking at her in astonishment.

“I’m sorry,” I said, my face turning red with embarrassment. “This is just so weird. I’m sitting in Central Park with the Queen of England. You’re wearing a baseball cap and you say words like ‘bollocks’. You drink Starbucks. That guy called you Lizzie.”

“Well, he’s been a close friend of my family’s for 23 years. What else would he call me?”

She had a point, I guess. I could hardly expect her friends to be calling her “Your Majesty” all the time. I glanced over at her to speak, and to my horror, I noticed a single tear coursing its way down her face. And with a flash of insight, I could completely understand why.

Here was this woman, rich and famous beyond belief, with all of the material possessions anyone could want. She had money, a family, a legacy, an indelible place in history. And yet in many ways, I had more freedom than her. I could go running in Central Park whenever I wanted. I could dress how I liked without worrying about what the media would think. I could walk into a coffee shop or a grocery store and just do my thing. If I needed a vacation, I didn’t have to sneak out of the country without telling anyone. This woman was owned by the public. Every move she made was watched. She was a public icon, sometimes admired, sometimes scorned. All she wanted was the opportunity to be an ordinary person once in a while.

The Queen, whose public image portrayed her as being tough and implacable, seemed suddenly to be a vulnerable old lady.

My face was still bleeding and I was a mess, but somehow I didn’t think she would care. Beside me, I saw a human being in need of comforting. So I reached over and gave her a hug.

Because that’s what ordinary people do.

This week’s Indie Ink Challenge came from Billy Flynn, who gave me this prompt: You sit down on a bench in Central Park. At first you pay no attention to the person next to you; when you do glance over you realize it’s someone who’s famous, super-rich or powerful – your call; how do you use this chance meeting?
I challenged Tobie with the prompt: You’re a nurse in a psychiatric hospital. One of the patients, who is known to be delusional, tells you something that could solve a decades-old murder case in your town. Do you believe the patient and investigate? Or do you write the patient off as being an unreliable source of information?

Filed Under: Central Park, Costs of fame, fiction, Indie Ink Writing Challenge, Queen, running Tagged With: , , , , ,
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2011 Run For Autism

October 17, 2011 By

It is 8:55 on a cool Sunday morning. I am standing on a street in downtown Toronto, with about 15,999 other people. The atmosphere is buzzing with the collective energy of the crowd. As the national anthem, performed live, comes to an end, the crowd breaks into cheers and applause. And then, at 9:00 sharp, a siren sounds and the crowd surges forward as the race begins. This is it. My 2011 Run For Autism, the event that I have been training for all season. As I cross the start line, I am choked up with emotion as I think of the reason I am doing this run. My son George, my boy with autism and tons of love, my inspiration.

When I started training for this race in the Spring, I had a goal to finish in less than two hours. I knew that this would be ambitious: last year, I clocked a time of 2:22:38. Knocking 23 minutes off would be a tall order indeed. But if I formulated a good training plan and then stuck to it, I might just have a shot.

It has been said that life is what happens while we’re making other plans, and that was definitely the case with this season’s training. In the Spring I had a bout of bronchitis that put me out of action for a few weeks. I also had to deal with events like the brief hospitalization of one of my kids and a shoulder injury that sidelined me right in the middle of the season. Not to mention the fact that I got married in April.

Still, I somehow managed to salvage something resembling a training plan about six weeks before the race. I ran a couple of interim races and did OK, and then, right when my training was supposed to be peaking, I caught a nasty cold. I considered running through the cold: conventional wisdom is that it is safe to run as long as all symptoms are above the neck. But I knew from prior experience that running with a cold would slow my recovery and could jeopardize my race. So for once I exercised common sense and rested. Following the advice of my friend Phaedra, who is the kind of runner who wins in her category, I adjusted my training plan and made it to race day more or less in one piece.

It was obvious to me that two hours would not be doable. I considered following the 2:15 pace bunny but when I worked out the average pace that this would require, I realized that I would likely drop further and further back and just waste energy on being stressed. In the end I came up with a goal of 2:20. This struck the perfect balance between being achievable and being challenging.

I started out with the strategy of running the first 5km at an easy pace, without worrying about what my average pace looked like. If I fell behind my target pace, I would have 16km to make up the lost ground. I needn’t have worried: I was running at my goal pace by the 4th kilometre. I was running tens and ones – meaning that I would run for ten minutes and then take a one-minute walk break. During my ten-minute running stretches, I was getting ahead of my goal pace, and this provided me with enough of a buffer to stay on target during the one-minute walks.

Throughout the run, I was following my Dad’s strategy of “fishing for runners.” It’s a simple but effective strategy: you pick a runner about 200m ahead of you, reel them in by gradually catching up to them, and then run in their slipstream for about 500m before passing them and finding another runner to fish for.

For a while, I worried that I was matching my goal pace too easily. Either my energy would run out long before the distance did, or I had seriously underestimated myself during training. I tried to rein myself in but my body wouldn’t let me. I felt good, and I just had to go at the pace that my legs were dictating. It was only in the 18th kilometre that I started to feel the exhaustion. By then, I had less than 3km to go. I was faced with a choice: I could let my mind trick me into slowing down and missing my target time, or I could dig deep and just find the energy to keep going.

I chose to dig deep. I thought of my son George. He has to live his entire life with the challenges of autism, I told myself. The least you can do is run for another fifteen minutes.

All of a sudden, I was turning onto Bay Street for the final stretch and I had just 500m to go. Both sides of the street were lined with hundreds – maybe thousands – of spectators. My personalized bib was allowing people to cheer me on by name.

300m to go… I am exhausted and my legs feel like jelly, but I can see the finish line right up ahead of me. The closer I get, the louder the cheering is.

200m to go… a little bit of vanity takes over. I want a good finish line photo, so I start positioning myself in such a way that I will cross the line without being obscured by other runners.

100m to go… someone yells out, “Congratulations, Kirsten!” I raise my hand in acknowledgement and sprint for the finish, just metres away now. As I’m crossing the finish line, I somehow find a smidgeon of energy to raise both arms in the air in a gesture of triumph.

I have done it. I cannot believe that I have done it. I have run this race, beaten my goal time, and set a new personal best time for myself.

2 hours. 19 minutes. And 46 seconds. Every single moment of it dedicated to George.

Filed Under: autism, Race, Race Strategy, running, Running for Autism, Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Races Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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A Letter Of Thanks

October 13, 2011 By

Dear Doctor P.,

Hootie And The Blowfish were playing on the radio when the baby growing in my belly died. I could tell from the cramp that tore through my body, from the sudden spike in my body temperature that left me reeling, and from the change in energy that comes from a soul winging its way to another world.

My baby girl, gone before she could be born.

For ten weeks you had brushed me off and dismissed my concerns.

“Women bleed during pregnancy all the time,”  you told me.

In the beginning I listened to you. You seemed so composed and your explanations made sense. You were immaculately put together, with your tailored suits and your perfect hair and your flawlessly applied crimson lipstick. You looked every inch the professional. Anyone looking at you would have had no doubt that you were competent in a cold, calculated kind of way.

I may have felt intimidated by you, but I had no reason to doubt you.

I didn’t even doubt you when, ten days after the bleeding had started, you continued to tell me that nothing was wrong.

Although I believed you, I hated you. I want to make that absolutely clear. I hated your air of superiority and your utter lack of compassion. I hated the way you told my husband – even though I was sitting right beside him – that I was “acting in a paranoid and unstable manner.”  I hated the way you ordered me not to do research on the Internet, as if I somehow didn’t have the right to the knowledge. I hated it when you insisted that an ultrasound would not be helpful, that it could in fact harm my baby.

I despised you and everything you said with an intensity that was almost poisonous.

And yet, I respected you. Somehow, despite everything, you were credible. You made me believe, with medical jargon that was beyond my realm and yet somehow logical, that it was OK for me to be bleeding from Week 8 until Week 18 of my pregnancy. When you finally deigned, in your God-like way, to allow me to have an ultrasound, you effortlessly explained away the too-slow growth and the irregular fetal heartbeat. You even succeeded in convincing me that I was crazy to think my baby was dying.

As I lay there on my kitchen floor that day, doubled over with pain and the beginnings of grief, with Hootie and his gang mockingly blaring out, “It’s gonna be a bright, bright sunshiny day,” I couldn’t help wondering what the doctor would say now.

When I walked into your office and told you about my dead baby, were you still going to somehow convince me that everything was OK? Were you going to say, “Oh, don’t worry, it’s perfectly normal for women to lose their babies after ten weeks of untreated complications?”

I want to thank you, Doctor P. Whether or not you contributed to the loss of my baby, and to the unbearable heartbreak that my husband and I endured, I am truly grateful to you. You opened my eyes, you see. You taught me not to trust the professionals I turn to for help, to question everything I hear, and to view life through shades of scepticism.

Thank you, Doctor P., for making me grow up.

This week’s Indie Ink Challenge came from Kelly Garriott Waite, who gave me this prompt: Take a person – in your fiction or your life–whom you despise. Now write a piece–a letter, a scene, whatever – showing love, admiration, or respect for that person.
I challenged Diane with the prompt: Tell the story of a telemarketing call that takes a very surprising turn.

Filed Under: Doctor, Indie Ink Writing Challenge, Pregnancy, Pregnancy Loss Tagged With: , , , ,
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Small Bloggers In A Big Pond

October 8, 2011 By

Yesterday I had the opportunity to attend an event called Social Media Masters. It was a one-day conference featuring experts from all over North America, who gave presentations about how businesses and entrepreneurs can effectively use social media. I went in my capacity as a freelance writer, to see if I could learn how to leverage tools like Facebook and Twitter, not only for myself, but for clients.

The sessions did not disappoint. Some of them were geared more to large corporations than to individuals trying to make it on their own, but I learned from all of the presentations and exchanged contact information with some people who could play a pivotal role in the realization of some of my goals.

Interestingly, the refreshment and lunch breaks provided just as much of an education as the sessions themselves did. I found myself talking to all kinds of people about how they use and monitor social media. These breaks provided a fertile ground for the exchange of ideas.

At one point, I was sitting drinking my coffee, listening to the conversation around me but not actively participating in it. It became clear to me, from the snippets of conversation that I was hearing, that there is a definite pecking order in the blogging world. I have been vaguely aware of this before, and I have in fact read blog posts addressing the subject, but I had not really appreciated just how cutthroat the blogging world can be.

At the top of pile you get the “big” bloggers, the ones who attract thousands of visitors a day, and whose posts generate hundreds of comments. At the bottom are the new bloggers who are trying desperately to gain some kind of following. They religiously comment on other blogs and they tweet like crazy in order to drive traffic their way. And somewhere in the middle are the bloggers who have been at it for a while. They have a few subscribers and most of their posts will generate a handful of comments. But try as they might, they just cannot seem to hit the blogging big time.

Many of these bloggers are perfectly content to stay where they are. Perhaps they feel that a huge following would put them under pressure to cater to what the blogosphere masses want instead of being true to themselves. Or maybe they just don’t have the time to read and respond to hundreds of comments.

For those who are trying to make it big, though, the road can be tough. The blogging world can be an incredibly cliquey place, kind of like high school. If you’re a big fish, you hang around with the other big fish, and the circle is so tight that it’s virtually impossible for the not-so-big-fish to break into the ranks.

This is not intended as an indictment against the big fish – I know several of them and like them a great deal. I am simply stating a reality of human nature. We tend to spend our time in circles of people we have something in common with. The more common grounds there are, the stronger the circle.

So where do I fit in with all of this? I am a not a big fish, not by any means, but I am not a baby fish either. I am a medium-sized fish. I put up a blog post three or four times a week. I have some subscribers, and many people follow my blog through social media. I get several hundred hits a month and most of my posts generate comments. A decent number of them gets shared or retweeted. Sometimes a blog post will earn me a new subscriber or a new follower on Twitter.

I am content to be where I am in the blogging world. I feel that my blog and my online presence are growing at just the right pace. I care about my readership and I want to continue to create content that engages people.

This blog is mostly about parenting, autism and running. But from time to time – like today – a different topic will grab my interest. I am very fortunate to have a forum where I am free to talk about the things that are important to me.

I am grateful to everyone who takes the time to visit my little kingdom to read what I have to say.

Filed Under: blogging, Social Media Tagged With: , , ,
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A World Of Anguish

October 5, 2011 By

CRASH!

The entire house seems to shake as my seven-year-old son screams and bangs his head on the hardwood floor. He raises his head to bang it again, but I reach him first. I have no idea what has triggered this meltdown, and right now, I don’t have the time to try and guess.

My son is long and lanky: he is far too big for me to carry, but I have to get him away from the hardwood. Yes, I know what the so-called experts keep saying. When a meltdown happens, you have to ignore it. Paying any attention to him while he’s melting down will reinforce the behaviour.

Yeah, well, while I’m ignoring the meltdown, my child could be giving himself a concussion. This frantic headbanging isn’t anything I haven’t already seen. There are so many dents in my drywall that the inside of my house looks like a giant golf ball.

I half-lift, half-drag my son into the carpeted living room. I grab cushions and blankets – anything soft that’s within my reach – and I pad our immediate surroundings to stop my boy from hurting himself. Using a technique borne of experience, I wrap my arms around him and use my body weight to keep him still, to keep him safe.

While all of this is happening, he is kicking and screaming. They are not screams of anger, but of frustration. They are the screams of a child who is locked inside his own head and cannot find the way out. He looks directly into my eyes, and his expression is one of desperation. I am reminded of a caged animal who wants nothing more than the ability to run free.

As I look at my beautiful child, as I see him in such anguish, I want to cry. I fight back the tears. I have to be strong right now. Later on, when this has passed, I will have my chance to cry.

In my mind, I start talking to Autism as if it were a real person and not merely the name of the condition affecting my son.

“Damn you, Autism. There are times when I don’t mind you so much. There are times when I am completely comfortable with your presence. Hell, sometimes I even like you. But at times like this, Autism, I hate you like you wouldn’t believe because of what you do to my child.”

My son and I lie there on the living floor for what seems like ages. Slowly, so slowly that it’s barely perceptible, the screaming becomes less intense. The weight of my body provides him with the physical pressure he needs to become grounded again. And eventually, the screams stop altogether and I can loosen my hold on him. We curl up on the couch together. The silence is punctuated by an occasional hic.

I look at my child’s angelic face and tenderly smooth my hand over his hair. His eyes are closed and I think he’s gone to sleep. But then he opens his eyes and a special look passes between us, a look that no-one in the world apart from the two of us would ever be able to interpret.

You know what it’s like, he says to me with his eyes. Sometimes you can see into my world.

Yes I can, my eyes say back to him. But it’s only because you trust me enough to let me in.

And secure in the knowledge that he is not alone, he falls asleep in my arms.

This week’s Indie Ink Challenge came from FlamingNyx, who gave me this prompt: Describe “that” look you got in a secret moment of knowing. That look that no-one in the world would understand and can only pass between you and “that” person. 
I challenged The Drama Mama with the prompt: Tell the story of a policeman who died in the line of duty, from the point of view of his eight-year-old child.

Filed Under: autism, Empathy, Indie Ink Writing Challenge, life, Meltdown, parenting Tagged With: , , ,
post

Rain In My Running Shoes

October 3, 2011 By

I have never been one to let the weather stop me from running. While I prefer clear, cool conditions, I have been known to go out in the rain, wind and snow in order to rack up the miles on my running shoes. From time to time, the seemingly adverse weather conditions have worked to my advantage. It is amazing how refreshing a light shower of rain can be during a long run.

And so, when I woke up yesterday to the pitter-patter of raindrops against the window, I was not deterred. I had a long run planned, and nothing short of a meteor hitting my driveway would stop me. This was to be my last long run before my half-marathon on October 16th, so I really needed to get out there and get it done.

It was cold enough for me to abandon the running shorts in favour of my longer fall-weather running pants. I stuck to the short-sleeved tech shirt, but added a lightweight running jacket. Although the sun was not shining, I wore my hat: the peaked cap is a great way to keep rain out of my eyes. I stocked my fuel belt, cued my music, laced up my shoes, and hit the road for a 20km run.

Sometime during the second kilometre, I became aware that the gentle rain had intensified, and that raindrops were now hitting my face from the side, hard enough to feel like tiny little pellets. By the time I had completed 5km, I was running in a torrential downpour. The wind was buffeting me from side to side and I was wishing that I had brought my gloves. Worst of all, my socks were squelching inside my running shoes. I had to stop twice to pour water out of my shoes.

Still, I soldiered on. People driving by in their cars were looking at me with astonishment, as if to say, “You’re running in this?” I felt validated when, in the fifteenth kilometre or so, I saw a fellow runner braving the elements. It always helps to know that I’m not alone in my running insanity.

After more than two hours of running, I came to a stop in my driveway, having run my allotted 20km. My hands were so cold that I struggled to fish my front door key out of my pouch. Fortunately, my five-year-old son was waiting just inside the door for my return, so he spared me the necessity of actually having to unlock the door myself.

Twenty-four hours later, I am still hurting. My legs are chock-full of lactic acid, and my left ankle is aching. I feel as if I will never walk normally again (I will, of course, be fine by tomorrow).

There are those who wonder why I put myself through this, what possesses me to go out in dreadful weather conditions for the privilege of having sore legs for the next two days.

Part of it is the joy of the sport, the sense of freedom that comes with being out on the open road, the “Runners High”, and the sense of accomplishment when the run has been completed.

Part of it is that I don’t have a naturally fast metabolism like some people, and if I don’t stay active I fall out of shape very quickly. Running is the only form of exercise that really works for me.

The biggest part of it, though, is that I’m doing it for my kids. In two weeks, I am lacing up for my third annual Run for Autism. All funds that I can raise leading up to this event will go straight to the Geneva Centre for Autism, to be used for much-needed services for children and youth with autism.

It is services like the ones provided by the Geneva Centre that have helped my son achieve phenomenal things in the four years since he was diagnosed with autism. In order to see a continuation of the progress, we need a continuation of the funding. This facility really does help people with autism to touch the stars, while also providing support for their siblings and parents.

Ultiimately, I run so that I can do my own small part in making the world a better place for my children. I think that’s a pretty darned good reason to go running in the wind and the rain every now and then.

To sponsor me for my half-marathon, please visit my fundraising page. All sponsorships are being matched by a donor who wishes to remain anomymous, so any funds raised will be doubled!

(Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/13013135@N00/5879848337. This picture has a creative commons attribution license.)

Filed Under: autism, fundraising, Geneva Centre for Autism, Rain, running, Running for Autism, Weather Tagged With: , , , , , ,