Hanging Up My Blogging Hat for Now

Trish — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:48:05 +0000

My regular readers may have noticed that I haven’t been blogging much lately. Although I have enjoyed the last two-plus years of blogging and all that it entails more than I can say, I am in a place right now where I must focus on some other areas of my life that are sorely in need of attention.

It really comes down to this issue I have been dealing with of recognizing your limitations and accepting them. That is especially hard for me when blogging is something I love, but I have come to accept that for right now I just cannot continue to make it a priority.

I am going to leave this blog up for the time being and may return to it in the future. If nothing else, I hope that it will serve as a resource for other moms and dads who are looking for information on autism — if you are just stumbling upon my blog now, you can use the nested menu at the top of the page or the category list and search features in the right sidebar to see if I have posted about the topic you are looking for. The Archives menu in particular includes a link to a list of my Autism Resource posts and a list of the posts I did for 5 Minutes for Special Needs.

For anyone who wishes to keep in touch, feel free to connect with me on Facebook or email me at trish1225[at]gmail[dot]com. The comments on this post will be open for a few days and then closed.

And, by the way, just because I’m not blogging doesn’t mean I’m not still decluttering, so if you committed to the challenge, you’re not off the hook! Check out Suzanne’s 365 Days of Decluttering blog if you need some additional inspiration to keep going.

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Odds and Ends

Trish — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 04:26:50 +0000

I just thought I would wrap up the week with an assortment of the stuff that is floating around in my brain. It has not been a good decluttering week, although I am getting better at only saving the important school papers instead of throwing everything in the file box. I have spent a lot of time this week on various appointments and meetings, as well as following up with several insurance issues that had come to my attention.

My Sleep Goal

So, I said yesterday that I was making a goal of getting 8 hours of sleep every night. I managed to get 7 last night — I stayed up a bit too late after finding out that my weekend plans were changing and thinking about how I was going to work everything out. But tonight, I should be able to get 8 hours, and maybe even a bit of a nap tomorrow since we aren’t planning to go out due to the snow.

Anti-Depressants

Did anyone else see the article in Newsweek about anti-depressants? They are saying that they have not actually been shown to be effective in treating depression and that it hasn’t really been proven that raising serotonin levels affects mood. I have not heard this before and thought both of those things were accepted truth, so I am interested to find out more about this situation.

The article did say, however, that there has been some positive effect in treating more serious or long-term cases, so I’m not sure where exactly I fall in that continuum. And, of course, you should not stop taking anti-depressants without your doctor’s help because you can experience withdrawal effects (I know from personal experience this can be pretty bad).

Michael’s Progress

Well, it has been a long week, but I have been able to cross a few projects off my list at work – thanks in part to two coworkers who have been able to help with some of it. I also went to Michael’s parent-teacher conference today and was pleasantly surprised to see both the Learning Support teacher and the SLP at the meeting. I was able to let them know that he is due for a re-evaluation this year and will be receiving a Permission to Evaluate form soon.

Michael has been making good progress with his IEP goals, especially now that he has such a good TSS with him, and he seems to be handling the ups and downs of the day much better. There have been a couple of days in the last month that were rough for him, but overall we are seeing improvement. I am hoping we will see some lessening of his anxiety and some other issues once we get his supplements back on track with his current nutritional levels (we are going to a new place in March).

My Cute Story for the Week

Sometimes after I turn out Michael’s light, he still wants another story, and so I try to make one up for him. This is NOT a strong point of mine! The other night when I was struggling to think of what to say, he was trying encourage me and said, “It’s okay, Mommy, it can be anything–fantasy, non-fiction, human interest…”

Well, my ears perked up at that and I turned to him and asked, “What’s human interest?” I couldn’t wait to hear what he was going to say; sometimes I get some very interesting responses when I ask him to define something he just said.

“Touches the heart,” he says to me.

“Where did you learn about that?” I ask nonchalantly.

“Skills group,” he tells me.

He is in a second-grade reading group! I can’t even tell you how old I was before I knew what a human interest story was, and I probably couldn’t have described it in less than two sentences even a couple of days ago. How funny is that!