Monthly Archives: April 2015

#NepalEarthquake Donations – Canadians

Not something I would normally post on my blog, but it’s a relevant topic at the moment, and I just found out something that can make it a bit easier for us Canadians who can’t afford to donate cash but may have an Airmiles card to help.

For those of you in Canada who have Airmiles, you can chose as a Dream Reward for 190 airmiles to donate $20 to the Canadian Red Cross Relief Fund for the Nepal Earthquake.

There are also four other charities you can donate to (with links) – WWF Canada, Kids Help Phone (this is 175 airmiles), Trees Ontario, and Motionball in support of the Special Olympics Canada Foundation, but given that the Nepal Earthquake is a sudden, recent event, I thought I should probably advertise this. It means that even if we can’t donate money or food, we can still help.

A copy of this post is going up on tag’s Haven.

*hopefully yours* tagÂûght

#SensoryIssues: Be Still, My Beating Heart

Or at least, either calm down or render it so I can’t feel you again….

Gah. For the last several days (almost a week) I’ve been able to feel my heart beating pretty much anytime I’m not focused on something specific/concentrating. Especially when I’m trying to get to sleep at night.

It’s not that (as far as I know) my heartbeat is currently abnormal. I think it’s a sensory issue having to do with interoception. (Check out Musings of an Aspie’s post defining interoception and detailing some of the things it involves.) But the basic definition is that interoception is the perception of things that are internal to your body – temperature, organ and muscle feelings, hunger, thirst, need to use the toilet, etc.

Read on for details

ASNL Chapters Fundraiser Update

So, I finally have (and am putting up) the results of the ASNL fundraising promotion at Chapters on April 1st.

Together, Chapters and the Autism Society of Newfoundland and Labrador managed to raise $206.19 (Cdn) for the ASNL Library fund. Yay! And Chapters is also interested in doing more with the ASNL – Double Yay!

So, thanks to everyone who came out and contributed by buying books during that period; it helps a lot.

🙂 tagÂûght

Open Letter to ASNL: About LIUB

The following is a letter that I will be sending to the Board of Directors of the Autism Society of Newfoundland and Labrador concerning the “Light It Up Blue” campaign. At the bottom of the post is a link to the PDF version.


Dear Mr. Crocker and Members of the Board,

Once again this April, St. John’s/Newfoundland has tried to demonstrate and/or encourage “autism awareness” (or “autism acceptance”, as most autistics prefer) by “Lighting It Up Blue” on Cabot Tower and the Confederation Buildings. And I really have to protest.

Continue to read letter

Let’s Talk About: The Meanings of “Obsession”

So, at Social Club (at the Autism Society for NL; it’s basically a small group getting together for social activities – playing games, doing art, etc.) this past weekend, we had a new person there. And that person mentioned that xe was obsessed with one particular topic (I can no longer remember what it was, that wasn’t the important thing), “like with OCD” (obsessive-compulsive disorder).

On my post about Hyper-Focus vs. Lack of Focus, Unstrange Mind called me on using the term “special interest” for interests that we have and like to focus on – a term that I used to replace the term “obsession”, which tends to carry a negative connotation. She suggested using the term “passion”, which I thought was a very good idea, and have since cleaned up my vocabulary that way. 🙂

Anyway, getting back to the topic of the post, I was rather disturbed by the way that person was using the term “obsession” to define a particular area of interest, because at one point, my mother suggested I might be OCD, and I asked my psychologist about the matter. And what he said was something of an eye-opener.

Read on for more details….

Recommendation: G is for Giraffe by Unstrange Mind

And it’s another recommendation of a post from Unstrange Mind’s A-to-Z April Blogging Challenge, this one “G is for Giraffe“.

What do giraffes have to do with autism, you ask? It’s all about symbols and symbolism. The majority of the Autistic community do not care for the puzzle piece symbolism, for fairly clear reasons – there’s nothing about us that’s missing, for one thing – and it was a symbol created by allistics, not autistics. We need our own symbols.

And that’s what Unstrange Mind’s post for today is about – what are the autistic-created symbols for autism? Read, and find out!

🙂 tagAught Âû

StimTastic: First Look

So, another April post. This one also about things near and dear to our hearts – stimming. (No, it’s not the post I’ve been promising for two years now. Sorry. That one’s still going to take some time to do.) No, this one is a first look at Musings of an Aspie’s company, StimTastic.

Note that I say “first look” because I haven’t yet received any of their products. However, hopefully next month after my birthday I’ll be able to provide some specific product reviews…. 😉 (Yes, some stuff from StimTastic is first on my birthday list.)

Read on!

Recommendation: E is for Empathy by Unstrange Mind

Heh. Remember when I said in the last post not too expect too many recommendations this month, despite the posting volume on Autistic-oriented blogs? Well… there was another wonderful post put up today that really needs signal boosting.

Unstrange Mind is doing a series this April for the Blogging from A-to-Z Challenge (check the following post for the link if you’re curious), and she’s hitting things hard, the way they need. And today’s post (well, all these posts she’s writing, but today’s happened to strike me) is about something that is a huge problem in trying to gain acceptance for autistics. The Empathy Question.

Please, read through the post E is for Empathy – it highlights a number of problems with the idea that autistics have no empathy (talk to my mother, or my best friends; they’ll dismiss that idea immediately). It even mentions a new study that brings to light some problems with the “well-known” Sally-Ann Test, a study that I hadn’t heard about before.

Not to mention the ludicrous treatise she mentions that says something about since autistics have no empathy, we have no sense of community. *cough, cough* Um, what do you think my blogroll list is?

Anyway, she also provides links to another blog post about empathy, that in turn provides links to more. Please, take a look at them, and absorb the message we’re trying to send.

Recommendation: Autism Awareness by Andraya

There are a lot of good posts going up for April that have nothing to do with Autism Speaks (at least, not directly), and I honestly wish I could recommend them all, but I’d probably overload my blog with posts if I did that. (Though don’t be surprised to see a few of them going up as rec posts over the next few months! Also, feel free to poke around my links page and check out the blogs I’ve got there, most of which I would be recommending from.)

This post on autism awareness by Andraya, of Asperger’s and Me, definitely needs to be signal boosted and pointed out to people, however. It points out something to people that helps explain part of why Autistics in general have no interest in being “cured” of our autism. Aside from the fact that it’s a huge part of who we are… most of what people/parents with autistic children who have extreme difficulties are looking at: Is Not Autism. Epilepsy, GI issues, Depression, Anxiety… they are not the same as autism. Yes, autistics may be more likely to have these issues than the general population, but as Andraya points out in this post, females are more likely to have depression and anxiety than the “general population”.

A very worthwhile post to read.

🙂 tagAught