Tag Archives: LEGO

Feeling A.A.L.I.V.E.

Posted on February 6, 2013 | Leave a comment

DSC_0052Last weekend we visited the Wolf Sanctuary of PA  for the Full Moon Tour …  listened to wolf lore by moonlight, warmed our cold feet by a huge campfire, got to know 40 rescued wolves, gazed into their yellow eyes and heard their lonely howls.  It was under 20 degrees F, but we walked around for two hours and Jose still wanted to keep asking questions as we were leaving. We warmed up at Cousin’s Pizza at 1030 at night and told our favorite wolf stories.

Our trip to New York City last month was a beautiful unseasonably warm and sunny day strolling the pedestrian street at Times Square, eating lunch at the HardRock cafe, and seeing a ‘sensory friendly’ production of ‘elf’ off Broadway. We checked out the New Year’s ball that we had just watched on New Year’s Eve, does it sit up there all year long?!  and we watched the skaters at Rockefeller Center before we boarded our own private, quiet and not too crowded bus back home to Pennsylvania.

DSC_0067

Rockefeller Center, New York City

This past year we have had box seats at minor league baseball games (box seats IMG_0639so we can walk around, have our own bathroom, eat Crab Fries and be somewhat flappy without bothering others)….. watched the spectacular Disney on Ice, spent a week at the beach, seen the most amazing jelly fish at the Baltimore Aquarium, met the HARLEM GLOBETROTTERS!, gone to the China Buffet once a month or so where we can eat lots of fried dumplings and make ice cream sundaes with unlimited whipped cream for dessert…… and amazingly we got to geek out at the New York City Comicon where we talked Anime/LEGO/ Ninja Turtles non-stop for 6 hours.

DSC_0269

We’ve learned to tolerate … maybe even enjoy….each other in the van on the way to events; gotten comfortable in restaurants; learned to make it through (without meltdowns) the dreaded ‘getting ready and loading up’ period before each excursion, learned that new places and faces don’t have to be scary, and formed close, trusting relationships with our dear A.A.L.I.V.E. family and friends who we see on many of our trips.

Priceless…

And just how do the guys get to do this on $698 dollars a month?

A.A.L.I.V.E.  Adults with Autism Living with Independence, Value and Esteem.

Money is tight for many people who have a disability and who are trying to create a fulfilling, productive, independent life for themselves.  Even when you’ve been able to put some money aside for a fun trip, it is difficult to structure an outing to meet the needs of folks with severe sensory issues and a fear of new environments. It’s a strange, scary, noisy, crowded world out there!

WE ARE SO LUCKY to live in southeastern Pennsylvania!

Colleen, Frank and Brian Foti, Founders of A.A.L.I.V.E.

Colleen, Frank and Brian Foti, Founders of A.A.L.I.V.E.

 

The A.A.L.I.V.E.organization has evolved into an amazing resource for adults with autism … and it’s such a GOOD IDEA… to structure experiences for folks like the Juniper Hill guys so that they can venture out of their comfort zone and see and do amazing things.

You COMPLETE us, A.A.L.I.V.E….

THANK YOU!

→ Leave a comment

Posted in acceptance, Adults with Autism, Asperger's, Autism, friends, friendship, Holidays, housing and autism, Living independently, travel

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Friday Night Funnies with a bunch of autistic guys

Posted on January 19, 2013 | 4 Comments
DSC_0234

Jose Jalapeno on a stick

I sat by the fireplace listening tonight… quietly… but laughing laughing laughing inside, at times just marvelling at the magic… as I wished, as always, that I could record the after-dinner conversations going on in the room. Some of the conversations were an exchange between two friends, some were a give and take with characters not visible to me, and some were just musings, no audience necessary.

These guys are FUNNY.  Deliberately funny.  They play off of each other like a seasoned comedy team.  They take each other’s quirks and they run with them.  They accept the jokes about their own quirks that others are making, and they make them even funnier.  They interject pop culture humor, so SouthPark and Family Guy and Jeff Dunham are often partners in their act.  (…Jose aka Jose Jalapeno on a Stick thinks his nickname is pretty cool.) And when the comedy routine takes a turn for the intellectual as Ray expounds on a joke in excruciating detail, everyone yells NO MORE, RAY!! and the comedic exchange returns to the ridiculous.

IMG_0117.JPG

There’s magic here. We love and accept some of the guy’s imaginary friends.  The imaginary friends are funny too.  They have names and voices and places they like to sit or sleep and rules they think we should all follow and lots and lots of things that they do that are WRONG and it’s a good thing the imaginary friends can’t really get in trouble because EVERYONE would get them back for it.

DSC_0023

and I just can’t imagine anyone else’s dinnertime being this much fun.

Of course… things are not always this way.  Sometimes a glance at the wrong instant becomes a serious insult, or the timing of a joke sends anxiety through the roof.

But there is something about Friday nights.

Maybe it is the anticipation of a lazy Saturday morning with bacon… and NO STAFF in the house.

Or the complete and utter shutdown after a week of intense thinking about how to load a dishwasher … or worrying how not to drink more than your share of DSC_0192orange juice … or the guilt about how you should save money towards something practical when all you want to do is coerce your support staff to drive to WalMArt IMMEDIATELY because that $5 in change in your pocket needs to be spent on a LEGO or there is no future and you can’t relax until that money is GONE.

OHHHHH the pressure!

DEEP BREATH.  It’s Friday night. All those things you tried to learn this week, already a distant memory.  Let the dishes pile up.  Bring on the OJ.

Let’s laugh.DSC_0141.JPG

→ 4 Comments

Posted in acceptance, Adults with Autism, Asperger's, Autism, friends, friendship, Living independently

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Fear and the fragile friendship

Posted on November 13, 2012 | 5 Comments

New York ComicCon 2012

Michael called tonight… thankfully at a very reasonable 730 PM, not midnight.  He touched base with Ray, as he does almost every day (too often at midnight).  They share the day’s HALO/Bionicle news, the latest on the Disney Star Wars’ purchase, and the plan for the next get-together, as distant as it might be.

On the Farm

Michael and Ray have been friends for four years.  They met by chance at the Goshen Country Fair, where Michael and his family volunteer each year.  At the time, Ray was living independently in the same town. They struck up a conversation, found they had many interests in common, were able to plan and get together on Friday nights for the next two years…and the rest is history. Michael lived here at the Hill for a year while he was finishing up his transition program in high school, and now lives back home with his family about 40 minutes away though he makes it down to the farm on weekends regularly for HALO marathons….

These two best friends share their interests, their possessions, often their money, and their secrets… and they happen to also share an autism diagnosis. They help each other through their sensitivities, annoying habits and meltdowns, and almost always remain true to the other, no matter how disruptive they become.  They have two very very different dispositions, yet it works….  They are a couple of lucky guys, and they know it.  Many folks, with or without a diagnosis, could benefit from their recipe for true friendship.

What is this recipe exactly?  Patience, trust, familiarity, tolerance, compatibility, convenience…. and TIME……all of the qualities that one would guess….. plus a healthy dose of luck and  ’perfect timing’ no doubt.

Now if only we could replicate this recipe again and again.

Too often, what I see with folks on the spectrum and other disabilities is a desire for friendship, but an overwhelming fear of intimacy, change, and sensory overload. Confusion about what friendship is, and what expectations are involved. An ambivalence about leaving that comfort zone where one can immerse themselves in special interests without interruption…. and a need to be alone to control all input. Sometimes it can be just a simple preference for convenience over company.  The fear of disappointing, and disappointment. The fear of the unknown. The fear of vulnerability.

FEAR.  That’s a big one.

Things don’t always go as smoothly as Ray and Michael, when forming a new friendship.  And this week, I have a new respect and appreciation for the bond that they share, because I tried to help a couple of other guys get started with a new friendship.

Check out this wonderful movie about a friendship like this…
http://www.youtube.com/movie?v=tDJZO-QUS2A&feature=mv_sr

Several months ago, nurturing these types of friendships became my livelihood, when I went back to helping others …. young folks just like Ray and Michael and the Juniper Hill guys….  set up independent living in the community.  It’s not so difficult to find a place for people to rent, or to make sure they have the supports needed (help with cooking, cleaning, budgeting)….. or even to find two or three people who want to live in the same place at the same time. Sounds complicated?  It’s the easy part.

After the furniture is moved in and the kitchen is stocked, real life begins and new housemates unfamiliar with each other have to spend lots of time together. It’s not so difficult, when the support people are there too.  Helping with decisions about what to eat for dinner, where to move the couch, what to watch on TV.  Helping with facilitating conversation, especially. But then the support people leave, and the chores are done, and no one is reminding anyone of what ‘s next.

It’s scary, but it’s fun.   It’s confusing….but it’s exciting.  Its empowering, but at the same time old insecurities surface.  It’s evolving, and it takes time… lots of time… for trust to develop.

And sometimes before that trust develops,… the whole thing just blows up. And then you have to help them pick up the pieces, and figure out how to help them move on. And that has been my life these past two weeks.

Ray and Michael, you sure made this look easy.  Keep taking care of each other, you are truly lucky.

→ 5 Comments

Posted in acceptance, Adults with Autism, Asperger's, Autism, friendship, Living independently, Support workers

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Juniper Hill two years later.. a reflection on what we’ve become

Posted on September 30, 2012 | 3 Comments

Shelly, the crayfish

Happy Anniversary to us!  Tomorrow is Ray’s 27th birthday… and it is this weekend that he moved into the green house on Juniper Hill, just two years ago.

He moved in with a blue crayfish, giant bins of LEGO/Bionicles, plus one GIANT bin which contained the cardboard /packaging of all of his LEGO/Bionicles …. because they have information on the cardboard that he wants to remember… just in case.

Jose had also just moved in,  to the cottage at the top of the hill where he  joined Brent who had been alone since his housemate of 12 years had moved out three months before. Andy had been visiting for weeks at a time during the summer, and had decided that he, too,  could leave his parent’s home after all, and move out on his own.

And so the ‘core four’ began their life together on the hill…. navigating social interactions  and the well-stocked pantry of available food. That first weekend all together, Ray asked if his best friend could visit for the weekend … and so we met Michael. He became a regular visitor, and moved in some months later while he finished out his last year at school.

October, 2010

We had a plan, my friend Mollie and I.  We would all live happily together and grow giant fields of sunflowers and other cut flowers for bouquets, and we would work the fields with help from all of our other friends who happened to have a disability.  Our flower business would thrive, and we would make flower arrangements for events, wreaths for Christmas, and hand deliver bouquets for all holidays. We would have herds of fiber animals, and after we sheared the alpacas and combed the cashmere goats and angora rabbits, we would process the fiber and spin it into luxurious skeins with our spinning wheels as we sat by the fire on cozy winter nights. And then come spring, we would travel all over the East Coast selling our wares at farmer’s markets…. and we would earn enough money for all the guys to have a decent income, plus become a non-profit and get start-up grants to get it off the ground.

Ready… set… go!

Go?

Reality check.

Live happily together?  But he’s LOUD.  He hurt my feelings. He stole my … _____ (LEGO, money, chips, favorite shirt).  He hogs the TV.  He hogs the computer.  He swears. I hate his music.

Grow giant fields of perfect flowers?  Not if the groundhogs and deer, weeds and stinkbugs have anything to say about it.

Work in the fields? In the dirt?  With bugs?  In the sun? For how long?

The toilet’s broken again…. a gallon of milk, a dozen apples, and two bags of chips just disappeared in an hour…… and there is a mystery $300 dollar overcharge on the Comcast bill.

Farmer’s  Markets all over the East Coast? You mean, like when we are not busy weeding?  Like on Saturday mornings? When we are sleeping until noon because we are tired from our busy week?

It’s midnight and the dishes are done and the kitchen is clean and the guys seem settled and getting along… guess I should write that grant now.

And weren’t we going to learn how to spin?

Sigh….

Here’s what we DO have here on Juniper Hill, after two years.

A growing community of friends who happen to have autism, or other disabilities.  A group of friends who care about each other, who trust each other, and who get together once a week to work for an hour or so, here in the fields and then hang out over a fantastic lunch made by Jose, who loves to cook and feed people.

A group of WWOOF (http://www.wwoofusa.org/index.aspx) volunteers who help out on the farm when the guys just can’t (those bugs and that dirt….)

A medium sized field of flowers, but sunflowers only, kind of weedy.

A place at the local West Grove Farmer’s Market, which runs on Thursday afternoons…. only. Close to West Grove’s ice cream shop, the library, and Chinese restaurant… for market breaks.

the market ….where we sold all of the sunflowers that the groundhogs didn’t eat. and where we show off our future with fiber (cause this coming year, the guys are really going to learn to love making things out of felted alpaca! Right?!)

One toilet fixed, one more to go.

No start-up grants or non-profit, went back to working instead.  So I now help other people with autism and other disabilities, to set-up their own independent housing in the community.  I have a regular paycheck, and it pays for fencing.

And here on the hill are a group of guys who have learned to live together, play together, share their space, their food, and the TV. They take care of the farm animals, do daily farm chores, learned to cook, have great support staff who have hung in there for the entire two years….

they have lost a ton of weight and learned what healthy eating choices are, found volunteer jobs and paying jobs… and they are happy, self-confident adults who are great ambassadors of autism when we are out on our many wonderful trips together, courtesy of AALIVE (http://www.aalive.org)

It was always supposed to be about the GUYS.  And it is.

And no, I haven’t learned how to spin.  But the WWOOF volunteers came with a spinning wheel and cozy winter evenings are coming up… who knows?

→ 3 Comments

Posted in Adults with Autism, Asperger's, Autism, Farmer's markets, Farming, Fiber, Fiber and Felting, friendship, Funding, Living independently, Sunflowers, Support workers, Uncategorized

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

So, about this autism and empathy thing….

Posted on April 1, 2012 | 4 Comments

People with autism lack empathy.

Really?? ….I’m confused. Do the people who say this actually live with a person with autism… do they spend a lot of time getting to know people on the spectrum?  Have they experienced sad events together with their friends who are autistic?

I have.  Many many times over the years.  I’ve seen their anguish when a friend or animal is sick or hurting…. and I’ve seen how quickly they respond when a stranger needs help.  I see …and yes, I can feel…their pain when they have unknowingly hurt someone’s feelings or disappointed someone that they care about. I hear their apologies, and those apologies come from a place so deep and sincere that I expect that any second they will shut down completely out of sheer empathy OVERLOAD.

Lack empathy?  Not a chance.  But I do understand why so many neurotypical folks PERCEIVE a lack of empathy in their students or acquaintances with autism.

The other night around 10… Ray and Michael grabbed the lantern and headed up the hill to Ray’s house.  Down at the main house, I was checking Ray’s mouse live- trap, since we have had an influx of cute little meadow mice lately with the coming of spring.  I opened it up, and one of those cute little meadow mice jumped out of the trap and into the sleeve of my shirt and ran up my arm and onto my stomach… under my shirt. Now… I am not afraid of mice. Or snakes, spiders, rats or scorpions.  I live with them, Ray collects pets like this. I like all these critters almost as much as Ray does.

courtesy of bluebison.net

But it caught me by surprise and I screamed… LOUDLY.  and CONTINUOUSLY for what seemed  a very long time… because I could not get the thing out of my shirt and it was running around on my body.  Andy and Jose just watched me jumping around… and afterwards, Andy says ‘WOW! You scream like a girl!’

Ten minutes later, Ray and Michael return, carrying LEGOS of course.  Still excited, Jose and Andy tell the mouse story…. and Michael says…..

‘we heard you screaming all the way up the hill when we were walking up.  It sounded like you were really hurt, or like something was attacking you’

and I said ‘then why didn’t you run back?’

and Michael says..’ well  we were pretty intent on finding this LEGO piece that we were missing.  We’re back now.’

Uhh OK.

This is not lack of empathy.  It’s something else, hyper focus …or something.  To their credit in this particular case, I truly believe that sometimes the guys here assume that I am some kind of super human that can not be physically hurt… similar to a Bionicle or HALO individual perhaps, guys?…. (perhaps it is my ‘Bossy Big Sister‘ New Yorker attitude).

I am neurotypical but have lived with adults on the spectrum for 30 years. This kind of focus is going on all the time here.   Often, a problem will arise around a disruption of focus…of hobbies… or computers, televisions, or music…. something in the present environment that has to be shared with others.  And when this kind of focus is interrupted, these guys often have little tolerance or understanding of the person who is interrupting them.

I have tried to get them to explain to me how they are feeling, but I’ve never once succeeded at the time it is happening. It is during these instances that you see another side of these generally kind and gentle, compassionate guys. No matter how many times they are asked ‘how would YOU feel if …… ‘   or… ‘don’t you think it’s time for someone else to get a chance, you’ve had your chance for 4 hours’… there’s just ALWAYS a reason (actually, many reasons) why they shouldn’t have been interrupted because what they were doing was very important. So sure, in that particular moment, there is not much empathy… anywhere.

but by the next day…. they always rationally discuss possible solutions to the problem… and they apologize to everyone involved.

So am I missing something here?  Is this what is meant by ‘lacking empathy’?  I respectfully disagree.

April is Autism Awareness month, and tomorrow is April 2, World Autism Awareness Day.  The numbers are out and autism is now 1 in 88 births… we are past ‘awareness’.  Isn’t it time it became ‘Autism Appreciation and Acceptance’  instead?

And that is my rant for the month.

The border collie puppies visit the Hill

P.S. And speaking of empathy… in case you missed it, the family dog passed away recently, and I blogged about it here

→ 4 Comments

Posted in Adults with Autism, Asperger's, Autism, friendship

Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Social Group.. Support Group… awww let’s just hang out

Posted on February 20, 2012 | 4 Comments

Jose and his other girl, Kit

No plan, no formal discussion, no agenda… just food…seems to be a fairly successful recipe for a get-together so far.  We had our third ‘hang-out’ day today at Juniper Hill, and it felt like a great day.  Seven or so very local folks on the spectrum, along with a parent.. stopped by for the afternoon, and it’s feeling more and more comfortable each time. The front half of the house now becomes the HALO/Lego area … with the pool table completely covered with figures, and surrounded by guys discussing the latest releases.  Others in the room sit on comfortable couches talking …… not everyone finds HALO fascinating!

Outside, some folks take walks to visit with the goats, the rabbits, the pot-bellied pigs, or to get more SPACE

In the dining room, the parents gather at the table and talk about navigating the ‘system’ after age 21 and finding support. Young people come in and out as they need to, when the Lego room starts to buzz with too much conversation… or when they just need to touch base with a parent…. or to sit by the fire with a book for awhile.

and in the kitchen… the island is filled with home made mac and cheese, fruit salads, biscuits, veggies and dip, homemade chocolate chip cookies… and more.  Everyone  forages for food when they feel like it, there is not a set ‘meal time’.

and it just works…

We didn’t plan to not have a plan… it is just evolving this way.  Each month we say ‘let’s sit and talk about what we want from this group’ and ‘let’s go around and introduce ourselves and find out what other’s interests are’… and it never happens.  People show up and go about their business, and each time the young people spend more time together, away from the dining room and their parents.

So, it feels like it’s working… and relationships are happening without any extra forced effort on our part… so why mess with it?  This is what we hoped for… so

let’s just hang out

Afterwards, when everyone had left and the Juniper Hill guys had scattered to the far corners of the Hill to recharge after a very social day… I sat down to relax and read my email and had a good laugh at this new post by  Dude I’m an Aspie, with his version of a ‘support group’… click on the yellow link below, and check it out!

Dude I’m an Aspie

Recharging

→ 4 Comments

Posted in Adults with Autism, Asperger's, Autism, friendship, Living independently, Uncategorized

Tagged , , , , , , ,