Asperger's and Violence

I decided to write about Asperger's and violence in leiu of the CT shooting that happened this past Friday. Now I am sure many of you have already heard that the gunman may or may not have had some form of Autism, possibly Asperger's but none of that has been confirmed.

What happened this past Friday was just plain tragic, first the gunman shot his mother, and then grabbed the car keys and decided to go to the elementary school where he went as a child and just start shooting all these innocent people; teachers, principles, and most tragic and heartbreaking- children. When I heard about this, my heart really just sank. What kind of sick and seriously disturbed individual this person was to do this. In my opinion, I think of the gunman as a true coward, after he killed a bunch of innocent people, he then shot himself, so therefore no justice will ever be served for the families affected by this tragedy. My heart really does go out to all the families who lost their loved ones, the parents who lost their children, as well as for all the surviving victims in this tragedy who will be for very a long time affected.

When I then heard a few days later that the gunman may or may not have some form of Autism, a lot was going through my mind at first. First me having Asperger's, I was thinking first how many people that I know know about it and second off if they were thinking in their mind that since I have Asperger's would I really actually be capable of doing such a horrendous thing. I decided to then call my sister Megan because I just didn't know what else to do and I was upset about it and Megan is my oldest sister, I come to her about anything and everything and she always gives me such great advice and she is always there for me and she is a wonderful sister. She calmed me down and she stated that there is just so much speculation about what Adam may or may not of have, but if in indeed he did have some form of Autism, then that would be the very least of all the mental/psychological issues that he had. I had think about it and process it over and yeah she is right, that would've been the very least of his issues that he had.

People with any form of Autism including Asperger's may have their own freak outs and/ or melt downs at times because we tend to get very stressed out and frustrated and sometimes we don't know how to handle our stress in a healthy way, so it is very normal for us to sometimes to lash out and have melt downs but that is not to say that we are violent in any way what-so-ever. We are generally gentle people who just think differently and we have to have time to process information in order for us to know what to say back in a conversation or when we are doing something in our daily lives like a project at work or something of that nature; now I am talking about us Aspies (nickname for people who have Asperger's, a high functioning Autism)...now as far for people and children who have other forms of Autisms that are on different parts of the spectrum like the non verbal Autistic people and children out there, it is basically for the most part all the same, they think and act differently than most people and won't be able to say anything if they are non-verbal and if they get too frustrated and stressed out, again they cannot handle that stress in a healthy way so they will also have melt downs but again even people and children who are non-verbal Autistic are generally non violent people, and they are gentle people who are just very unique.

So if you are reading this post, please just consider to take the time to think about people and children who have any form of Autism. We are generally non violent, we do have our occasional melt downs because we get frustrated and again may not know how to handle it in a healthy way but let me make it very clear that just  because someone has any form of Autism doesn't neccessarily mean that they are violent in nature.

I hope you enjoyed my intake on this matter and your comments are always appreciated but never expected. :-)

Thanksgiving

Well I decided to write about how my thanksgiving went, here is also a picture of Kadence and I that was taken Thursday as well below....

I spent Thanksgiving with Scott and his family, it went really well and I also had Kadence with me.. We went over to Scott's mom and step dad's house for Thanksgiving. I really couldn't of ask for a better group of people besides my own family to spend Thanksgiving with, I love Scott's family so much already and I think everyone had a great time.

We had a great and tasty feast complete with ham, dressing, cranberry sauce, and mashed potatoes salad... we also had pecan pie and sweet potato pie (which tasted a lot more like pumpkin pie, and not complaining :-)) for dessert and all of it was really yummy.

Kadence ate pretty well too although I think she could've eaten more but that's just her, she hardly ever eats a lot anyway but when me and her shared the dessert she was all over that! She loved the pecan pie and sweet potato pie a lot.

Afterwards we just decided to all sit and talk about various things in the living room, and it was nice.

I really did have a great time this Thanksgiving and I'm glad I got to a part of such a great family.

10 Things I Love About My Daughter

1. Her unconditional love that she has for me for right now in this moment in time, dear Lord please let the teenage years be far far far away from now, I'm in no rush at all for that!

2. The way she giggles when I tickle her

3. Her personality (she's so much like me it's not even funny lol)

4. The sweet innocent look she gives me when she wants or needs something and doesn't want to get in trouble for it (example: candy)

5. Her beautiful blue eyes with her long eyelashes (she didn't get those long lashes from me)

6. The way she still loves cuddling up with me while we're just laying down watching TV together or taking a nap together.

7. The way she hugs me when she really wants a hug, she'll put both of her arms around my neck and literally cling to me and hug me so tight.

8. Her sweet smile.

9. The way she is interested in everything I do, she will follow me around everywhere in the house and always likes to know what I'm doing.

10. The way she kisses me on the cheek, sometimes for no reason at all, I just love it.

Week In Review

Okay so I thought I would do a week in review. Let's see Monday I headed on back to work, I really do like what I do. I work at a medical equipment store and I help people stay out of the hospital basically, at our store we sell different things, a lot of the items are covered by insurance if you have it and some are just strictly cash sale only meaning insurance will not cover it. However even for our insurance covered items, you must have a prescription from your doctor first for insurance to cover it. We sell things like nebulizors, oxygen, cpap and bipap, and just really other various items. I really like working there not only because I am helping people but I get along for the most part with my co workers and working Monday through Friday 8-5 is always nice too, and the starting pay is great too.

Anyways so it was my first day back Monday because last week, I was pretty sick with Bronchitis and still at the moment trying to recover from it, still have a pretty bad cough, I worked through Wednesday and left at lunch on Wednesday the prior week before and then I called in that Thursday and Friday because I just felt awful. Anyway so when I came back to work on Monday, I had to do a ton of catch up work, scanning documents and faxing various stuff to doctor's offices and such but it wasn't that bad. I also had so many patients come in all week long and I had to set them up with various supplies they needed (when I do a set up for a brand new patient, that means there is a ton of paperwork that they need to sign and all) but I really don't mind when patients come in and having to set them up because it makes time go by faster anyway.

The week went by pretty fast lol thankfully and then on Friday after I got off work, Scott and I and his two older kids headed up to the city to get Kadence for the weekend, it was also payday for both of us and that is always nice but with all the bills we had to pay a lot of it disappeared pretty quickly. When we went to the city, we got Kadence and decided to go out to eat, nothing too fancy just decided to go to Wendy's, it was fun, on our way there to Wendy's I kept missing my exits lol but we did finally make it there.

After we ate, we headed back and his older kids stayed the night, we didnt get back til like after 10 pm that night, at the moment even though Scott does have full custody of his older kids, they do stay with their gradma and they go to Ardmore schools instead of out here in the Lone Grove area (really small country town just right outside of Ardmore).

My weekend with Kadence was great, we slept in on Saturday and then we watched cartoons :-), I love spending as much time with her as possible because at the moment I really don't get to see her as much as I like to. Every moment with her is just so precious and I enjoy every minute of it. We were going to go to church on Sunday but we slept in too late but we still had a great time just hanging out.

After Scott got off work at 4, we headed back to the city to drop her off with her daddy but first we decided to stop in Pauls Valley (about 30 min away from the city) to eat some dinner. When we got to the city we met at our usual meeting place in Moore so I don't have to drive all the way into Edmond where O'Dale lives. She hugged me so tight and kissed me and said that she would miss me and that she loves me, it is just so hard sometimes to see her go and I always hate having to say goodbye to her but I just have to remember that I will see her again. O'dale is even letting me have her for Thanksgiving so that's good, picking her up again on Wednesday after I get off work and then returning her sometime on Thursday after we are done with everything, because unfortunetly I do have to go back to work on that Friday but oh well at least I will still get to have her this Wednesday evening and Thanksgiving.

I know some of you may think that I really didn't go into detail about what I did all week long but really theres not much to tell, I went to work all week long came home and Friday after work I got Kadence lol what else is there to say? I basically have a routine life and nothing really interesting happens in my day to day life and if it ever does believe me I will be sure to blog about it. Plus if I went in to detail about this week I would probably bore a lot of you with all the details lol so a lot of times I just sum up a lot of things that went on.

Well that's my week in review, if you made it this far reading this entry then I'm glad that I didn't bore you so much that you didn't exit out of my blog lol. Rememeber comments are always nice and appreciated but never expected. I will be blogging again sometime this next week probably. :-)

Where in the Heck Have I Been?

Hi everyone who reads my blog! Yes I know it has been over a year since I last posted and A LOT has happened since then. Where should I begin? Hmmm....well last year in the summer (that's 2011) I relocated to OKC with my daughter and my now ex (yes I did say ex) fiance. I did graduate from college and got my degree in Medical Coding and Billing and we wanted to move up there for one to have better career opportunities for me and two I think he wanted to be closer to his family.

Well we moved in late July and everything, first we settled on living in a hotel for a about a week and then we decided that that wasn't going to work so we moved in with O'dale's best friend Andrew...eeek which really wasn't the best of ideas either in my opinion. In short, I can't really say what was to blame for O'dale and I's break up but maybe we just weren't compatible I guess, we fought more than we got along and he hardly ever wanted to spend time with me.

We ended our 4 year long relationship in January of this year, and I admit it was hard at first but I am really just doing okay now. And since our breakup I had had to move 2 times, first moving into a hotel because Andrew kicked me out of his apartment because I got into it with O'Dale and I had no place to go, I really had to rely on my dad, and it took about 3 hours before I was able to get settled into a extended stay hotel ( I really just don't understand how someone can just kick you out on the street like that with no place to go and not give a crap where you end up but anyway we won't go into that, I am not one to diss anyone on the internet lol) and second time was actually getting enough money saved up a long with a little bit of my dad's help too, I moved into my own apartment.

On a brighter note on to more happier things, I am in a new relationship, his name is Scott, he is 36 and the love of my life. He has 6 kiddos altogether, 2 of them are with his first wife, Rebecca who 15 and David is 14 and then he has 4 younger boys with his second wife ages ranging from 2 to 7. I've only got to meet Rebecca and David so far and they seem like pretty cool kiddos and as far as I know they think I'm okay too which is good I guess right? lol.... We met on Christian Mingle which is a Christian singles dating site, we talked for about a week before we met. At the time he lived in Ardmore, and one weekened when I was off, I went down to Ardmore, not only to visit my family but also hoping to meet him finally(it wasn't planned though, we made no set pre-planned arrangements until the actual day of).

It was kind of spur of the moment, I actually wasn't planning to meet him that weekend it just sort of happened lol. I texted him in the afternoon, he was at work, he told me he got off work in a little bit and that he would be at Hastings (movies, music, entertainment store) and he said I could come over there if I wanted to meet up with him. So that evening I decided to, it was great meeting him although I have to admit I was pretty nervous lol but we had a great time. We had about 3 dates in one night, we went to Starbucks for coffee, we went to Denny's for a late night dinner, and we went to the lake just to sit and talk more, it was a really great night. From that night forward, we just clicked so much and we just decided to go exclusive right then and there that night on March 17, 2011 (St. Patrick's day, lol).

Since that night, there wasn't a moment that hasn't gone by where we didn't text every day and we talked to each other every night as well. After only dating a month as this may sound too soon but when you feel what we feel for each other, it just seemed right, he moved in mid April. Everything was great, although I don't know why but for some reason I did decide to quit my job and everything that month as well and I look back at it and I don't even know what I was thinking. He found work at a few places and finally in the summer in July I was able to find a job I really did love but only got to stay for about a week and a few days.....we had to move back to the Ardmore area due to a lot of financial stress.

So in short, flash forward to right now, we are living out in the Lone Grove area for the time being, we both have jobs in Ardmore and we do hope to one day move back to The City (around in Oklahoma, The City is Oklahoma City for all you out of state folks that read my blog). We are doing okay and our relationship is still just as great even almost 8 months into it we just gotta get more financially stable.

I am sure a lot of you are wondering about my daughter Kadence, well she is doing great too, although as of right now, I do not have full custody of her or even shared custody of her, her dad has full custody for the time being but I have gotten to see her so much over the summer (like weeks at a time) and even after we moved back here I have been able to get like up to 5 to 6 days at a time of getting to see her and have her home with me, I have gotten to pick her up in the city and as well bring her back. However since I have gotten a full time job, it is back to every other weekend with her for right now.

I do hope eventually that I might can get at least shared custody with her because I think not only do I deserve it but she does too. She does need her mommy more constantly in her life than she does right now and I just think it's not fair at all. Recently we celebrated her 4th birthday on November 3rd and I was able to attend her party at Chuckie Cheese in OKC, and even my oldest sister and her two girls went too, it was a lot of fun and I think she had a blast too! :-)

Well anyway that it is just a little quick catch up as to where I am at in this chapter of my life, my life is a never ending novel and I am no where near finished, I do believe only the best is yet to come, it is always best to remain optimistic no matter what life may throw at you at times!

Where Have I Been?

Wow I cannot believe I let it go by 3 months without a post, that has to be a record for me I think. Well to start things out, I wanted to let everyone know that I have started working, I began working part time at Wal-mart as a cashier in way for to get extra money coming in. It isn't the greatest job in the world and I am glad I won't stay there for long since I am going to be graduating in August (woo!) but it does help O'Dale with the bills and it also leaves me some extra money to spend. I was working all these different hours that I didn't enjoy at all, usually in the eveningings. So I changed my availability from now I will be working Monday-Thursday 8a-12p and then I will be off Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. It will just be better for me to work in the mornings 4 hrs a day and 4 days a week in the long run.

Kadence is doing really well, cannot belive she will turn 3 in less than 4 months really and just this Thursday she has come back from spending a whole week with O'Dale's parents and also she spent a few nights with her aunt Rochelle and they all live up a couple hrs away. I think she really did enjoy spending time with, and probably especially her cousins Luke and Cassidy, she hardly ever gets to see them so I am sure she had a blast but it was very hard for me after the 4th day of her being gone but also a good little break too at the same time. It was great to see her when she came home on Thursday.

Here is a picture of her sleeping, just took this pic, that's how I had time to write this post (haha!):

I only have one more class to go, can you believe that? Because I sure can't. Just one more class that starts on July 3rd and it will last last until August 9th and than I am D-O-N-E with school, sometimes I even have to pinch myself to know that this is real and I will be graduating in less than 2 months.

Well at the moment I cannot say when I will be able to post again, just whenever I can I guess. At the moment I cannot guarantee to post on a regular basis like I used to, because I just have too much more stuff going on now adays. I will post whenever possible though.

A Community I Love- Twitter a Community of It's Own

This photo courtesy of tiago_custodio's photo stream

Hello readers, recently I have gotten on Twitter. I have been on Twitter for a while but I wasn't really tweeting a lot until just the last couple of months ago. Yes, I do consider Twitter as a wonderful community. I have found so many new friends on there on Twitter who know what I go through with my Asperger's. I am friends with moms with kids with different types of Autism including Asperger's and dads with kids who have Asperger's as well as adults living with Asperger's. Everyone on Twitter I have met who has been affected by different types of Autism and Asperger's has been so nice and so accepting. I always am connected to finding the latest on articles, blogs, ect. of different topics for Autism and Asperger's. I am so thankful for Twitter because it has helped me realized that just because I have Asperger's doesn't mean that I can't function normally in everyday life, although I have know that for awhile, it's just that I never realized so many people are affected out there by the developmental disorder and so many people are out there with this disorder just functioning normally and living an everyday life that has normalcy.

I know of even some people I just talk to on there that I have been friends with on there since I first started tweeting, this one particular person didn't even stop following me just because I wasn't tweeting a lot, and a lot of people did. That just goes to show what kind of person she really is, and she really is a great friend. I also have another friend on there that I went to high school with and she is really nice, I didn't know she had a twitter but apparently she has been tweeting for awhile because she has over 5,000 tweets, and now we are both following each other on there.

I was somewhat concerned and semi-upset when a lot of people like moms with their kids who are in school with Asperger's mentioned on Twitter considered their kids to have "special needs". I immediately took that as a personal offense, I was like I DO NOT have special needs and I was very upset, because I know I don't have special needs, but my sister Megan pointed out that in the public school system, kids with Asperger's have to be considered "special needs" because of the way their brain takes in information and how one learns information, so I guess in a way it makes sense. I just always looked at that word "special needs" at face-value, but I never really looked into more than what I thought of it. It is actually a good thing kids with this developmental disorder are able to get the extra help that they need in school. I know when I was in school, no one even heard of this high functioning type of Autism, but I knew (although I was self-denial about what was really going on with me for a long time) that something about me was different from the rest of my classmates in school; from the way I learned to the way I socialized with my classmates. I realize now that why I was so painfully shy and why it was so hard for me to make eye contact with my classmates and teachers.

If any of you out there have any developmental disorder such as Asperger's or anything else, or if you are just looking to connect with people who have the same interests as you, I can guarantee you, you can find people on Twitter. I just find Twitter an excellent community filled with such great people, I urge you to join if you aren't already on there. You can even start following me if you would like, my name on there is TheSassyAngel, I hope to see you on there and always thanks for taking the time to read this post!