Traveling in 2011 and a scary 40 minutes back in 2010!

Hi there.  I am back from my trip to London and what a pleasure it was to have some grown-up time.  Even though our trip was also 'autism free', I did at times think of my Nick and his autism. As I dragged my case up and down the stairs of the tube stations, I thought, "there is no way Nick could cope with this".  As I blended in with the crowds at Buckingham Palace, I thought, "this would really freak Nick out".  As I sat down to supper at Jamie's Italian in Covent Garden, I thought, "there is no way that Nick could cope with the people, the noise, the heat from all of these people..... and the NOISE!"  In fact, exposing my kid with severe autism to all that I experienced in London would be very cruel and also a bloody nightmare for the both of us!  Do I feel guilty about leaving him at home? No, not any more - he is happier at home.  I do feel sad that he won't get to experience the excitement of traveling, however, to be honest......... I don't think he will ever realise what he is missing out on!


On the bright side, my boys were delighted to have me back home and I was thrilled with Nick's happy reaction when he saw me, although he did 'sign' for computer within seconds!!  I now need a few days to recover from sleep deprivation (snoring husband and no spare room to sneak off to!) and then I will be refreshed and raring to go! :)


Anyhow, because my brain is only running on around five cylinders at the moment, I thought I would just add a link to this post (you will need to scroll down to page 11 and 12) and if you want to read it you can............ if you don't want to read it, then don't!  :)


To give you some very quick info on the article that you will find ................ Many many months ago, (sometime in 2009 to be a bit more precise!) Jill Stacy from Autism South Africa invited me to give a presentation at an autism workshop to be held in Durban.  I really enjoyed figuring out how to put together a powerpoint presentation (thankfully I had some video footage which was perfect for the presentation, although the sound didn't work on the day!). However, I was absolutely petrified about speaking to a room full of people - around 270!!!!  Anyway, I survived the experience and ended up submitting an edited version to Autism South Africa which then went into their aut;talk magazine.


http://autismsouthafrica.org/aut-talk%20edition%2015.pdf


P.S. ASA forgot to put in my explanation marks and smiley face at the end of my last comment - the supermarket reference was meant to be amusing!! :)