The movie basically explains all the connections the kid has that enable him to know the answers.

I found out after I watched the movie that the same guy that directed Trainspotting (one of my favorite movies of all time) directed this movie. I loved Trainspotting because when I saw it I had just started college. I had, for the first time, hope that I could actually do something with my life besides waiting tables, or marrying someone just to have enough security for my kids. I got from the movie this underlying theme that materialism could numb you into a state where you wouldn’t be able to *live*, just to pay the bills and get by everyday.

I never thought about who the hell was Danny Boyle, the guy who directed the movie. I hadn’t been through any of my Info Science classes for my degree that forced us to think about who had the authority to talk about things, who had the real scoop on how a culture was so they could speak authoritatively about that culture. (I hadn’t met my friend Susan yet either…). Because that matters, should Danny Boyle be talking about poverty?

I do know seeing the little boy with the dirty tank top, mop top hair, and sticky-outie-ears reminded me very much of one of my brothers. I’m Indian (and my people are from N Georgia, not India), so just the way the kid looked was familiar. We were very very poor, but lucky in that we had both parents (and neither one drank or did drugs). So I understand this inherent belief that people who are *like that* can’t possibly have any amount of intelligence.

How many people are left behind because they are too poor to count? How much talent do we ignore because people look a certain way, act a certain way, or come from a certain background?

I have no idea if this movie did justice to India’s poor. Since it came from a Western lens, it made sense to me from my Western view of poverty. So I liked this movie.

It’s not OK to tell paying customers that their domains will be inaccessible for 24 hours. It’s not OK not to send confirmation if you get an email about a support problem.

I am starting to think you can’t give me what I need. I think we may need to break up. Sorry.

Love,

-Gina

Saturday my brother got arrested. I won’t go into too much detail, but I will say I don’t understand why you would put someone in jail for 30 days for not paying a bill if they don’t have the money to pay it. It’s a long story that hit right on the nerve of the economics of poverty, and I just can’t get started on it right now.

Of course I couldn’t let my brother sit in jail for 30 days. So I sent him what he needed (which in the grand scheme of things was really not alot at all). I mean, if he stayed in jail he would lose his job, and he would learn how to be a real scam artist in the meantime.

I had to Western Union the money because I found out about 5 PM Sat, and everything else was closed. I figured I’d do a cash advance on one of my cards. I went to the Western Union site, and tried to get the transfer to go through on one of my cards, and it failed. I called and found out my cash advance amount wasn’t very high (I never thought of using it before!). So I tried a different card on the Western Union site, which also failed. I called that bank and they just increased my limit. Problem solved. Right?

Not really. The Western Union site sucks. Horrible lack of feedback to the user. After trying a few more times to make the transfer work I decided just to call Western Union. They told me my account had been suspended for suspected fraud because I had so many failed attempts on the website. I asked how to resolve it, and was told it would take a few weeks.

This is when I lost it, and basically barricaded myself in the bathroom. Which freaked everyone out, especially my aspie daughter (who told me later that I am not supposed to freak out. Yes I am allowed to freak out!!).

I pulled it together, and I decided I would just go to an ATM, pull out the money, and take the cash to a Western Union office. But I needed my pin. Of course I look on the website for info, and there was a place to reset my pin. Which I did. Off we went, in the middle of the snow storm, to take care of getting my brother out of jail.

The craziness continues. I tried to pull the money out of the ATM, and it wouldn’t give it to me. We thought maybe it was something to do with the access the machine had since it was in a grocery store. We went to the bank across the street. Same problem. By this time Brian had come up with a different solution, and we went to the Western Union office. But the combination of Western Union reporting suspected fraud on my account, me using a cash advance for the first time since I had the card, and me changing my pin caused the bank to put a hold on my card for fraud. sigh. I cleared it up after 2 phone call….

We had to go to 2 Western Union offices before we found one who could do the transfer for us. Money sent to my dad. Problem solved — right?

Well, no. When my dad went to pick up the money at Winn Dixie, they would only let him have $1000, and told he had to come back in the morning for the balance. WHA??? Oh HELL no!! We paid some ungodly fee to Western Union to get my brother out of jail *tonight*. After a phone call telling off the people at Winn Dixie, we called Western Union who told us that my dad *should have been told* that he could get a check for the balance and take that to a different Western Union office.

Which is what he did. And got my brother out of jail. And my brother didn’t lose his job. whew.

One big crazy issue solved.

Yesterday, my son was driving my car and some girl on a cell phone veered into his lane. There was someone behind her and massive snow banks on his side, so even though he did his best to get out of the way but it was pretty much a head on collision. The other driver went to the hospital in an ambulance, my son went to the ER later. They just gave him drugs, I am not sure they really checked him out. That annoys me. But he seems ok. I think my car is totaled.

This crazy issue will take longer to resolve. We have been wanting a little truck — this just isn’t the time frame we wanted to do it in.

We also noticed dripping in the basement, and inside my daughter’s bedroom wall. We have a enormous ice dam. Last night we drove all over looking for a roof rake, but no one has one. This morning I got out the push broom and pulled lots of snow off the roof. I did it because I am alot taller than Brian, so I could reach more. It’s supposed to be warm for the next few days, so we’ll see what happens…

I think that crazy issue is solved. I may need to go brush more snow off the roof later, but at least we have a plan of how to attack it.

Plus I am working today. I have 3 things to finish up before my vacation can start. It’s been a crazy week so far…………..

I have been feeling extremely homesick. I can’t figure out why, but I just want to be home.

I wonder what’s coming?

I need to clean up some things on this blog. I will be moving my grad school portfolio over to this domain. I want to upgrade this version of WordPress but it’s going to be such an undertaking. Maybe over the holidays I will have time.

I’ve been missing lots of Autism stories, I have a lot to catch up on there!

Please bear with me, this space will be back up to snuff very soon.

I enjoyed this post that analyzed one of Jenny McCarthy’s media events to hype her new book. This post talks about the costs of autism treatment. Our work is providing treatment costs for children under 12 with an autism diagnosis. Not really helpful to me, but at least it’s a start.

So we didn’t think too much about the kidney thing, as he seemed very happy and stable.

Until about a week ago. He tried to go outside. Which he never ever does. Brianna is at home all the time because she almost broke her ankle, and Velvie drove her crazy with his crying this week. Then every time someone would turn on the water he’d hope on the sink and beg for a drink.

We were going to take him in Monday to see what was going on. But yesterday he started acting really bad, like he had a stroke. It got worse and worse and worse. He couldn’t walk. Couldn’t cry. Nothing.

We took him to the vet ER at Tuft’s. And they put him to sleep.

He was a good cat. He’d get up early in the mornings with me and look out the window while I did work on the computer. Then when I’d get in the shower, he’d get on my pillow and make lovey eyes at my boyfriend (his true owner). Velvie was so in love with Brian, it was a little disturbing. And he knew he was not supposed to be on my pillow. As soon as I would come in the room he’d jump down.

I also think he had sensory issues. He loved getting deep pressure pets, which calmed my daughter down so it was a good match.

Here is a picture from before he got so skinny:

More pictures of both the kitties are in this flickr set.

I’ll miss his company in the mornings.  I hope he didn’t suffer too much.

First of all, throughout the entire dream I was making pasta from scratch. Rolling out the dough, and cooking the dough.

The main part of the dream was about this huge machine that was located in a secret warehouse. The machine was round and flat (think wheel of fortune shaped), and about three stories high. There were steps going all around the machine, and at the top center there was a platform.

The machine gave people superpowers. But only a select group of people got the superpowers. These people would walk up the steps of the machine, stand on the platform at the top, and get zapped with a blue bolt of energy that inoculated them with the powers. The powers were designed and written into a codebase. The group would come get the new powers that had been engineered by getting zapped with the machine’s blue lightning when the codebase was revisioned.

In my dream, the villains (all superheroes have villains you know!) hacked into the codebase and got the latest revision of the superhero inoculation code. This was bad because the villains had their own superpower machine, and when they got the superheroes’ code they knew how to counteract all the superheroes’ powers, as well as how to write their villain code to defeat the superheroes!

In my dream, we were racing around to find all the superheroes, and tell them to get to the machine and get the latest revision of the powers (which was Rev 19) because this had the fix that would block all the things the villains had learned about the heroes.

That’s the main part of the dream. Also, while we were looking for the superheroes, we kept ending up at a mountain. There was a big piece of stone that jutted off the mountain, and there was shell-shaped indentation in the middle of that piece that was jutting out. If you stood or laid over that indentation, the winds would hit you just right and you would fly. Well, hover over the indentation, but it looked like flying.

Brian thinks it’s about work. I keep sharing my big ideas about social media with my group, and I get told that we can’t act on the ideas. But I am starting to see neutered bits of my ideas popping up as projects, and I am not allowed to be involved with these projects. So, the machine’s code is my ideas, the villains are the people preventing me from working with my ideas, so I need to keep coming up with new ideas to go do the work I want to do.

I don’t know about the pasta dough.  The issue with the pasta dough is that it was taking so long to cook the fresh dough, about an hour. People were getting annoyed with me for that. Maybe I just need to keep coming up with my ideas, and be more patient?

The only thing I can think of for the flying part is that when people stepped on the indentation, they could fly – defy gravity. Just like Elphaba. The words in the song where she finally takes flight just ring very true for me sometimes!

What do you think my crazy weird dream means?

Larry Welkowitz, one of the college reps gave a very thorough wrap-up over on his blog. Larry’s been working with the topic of Aspies and college for several years, and it was great to meet him in person!

I talked about using technology to help your kid when they call you freaking out. If they text you instead, you can help them figure out that next step they need to take. They won’t have to leave the room, deal with language, etc. They can just text back and forth with you, and look like any other normal college kid.

Maybe I need to write a short course on Texting for parents.