The Maroon Diaries

Today is World Autism Awareness Day. Many people in the autistic community would prefer it be known as Autism Acceptance Day, or even Autism Appreciation Day. For me, the acceptance and the appreciation flowed very easily, once I had the awareness I had been missing most of my life. Ten years ago, I had no idea that I was autistic. I didn't see myself as being anything like the image I had of what an autistic person is like, which was probably, as for many people of my generation, associated with Dustin Hoffman's Rain Man . Looking back, the first clue could have been reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon . Did you ever have the feeling that there was something about you that was so very different to everyone else you knew, that you felt you were completely alone in this experience? And then one day, did you happen to discover, through chance or as a result of your own investigations, that there was someone else out there who felt the sam...

I got a new tattoo a little while ago, inside my left forearm. It was pretty damn exciting. It's been fifteen years since I last got a new tattoo. This tattoo is a little different to most, in that it has a very practical function. It's a medical alert tattoo. People have been telling me for years that I really should get one of those medical ID bracelets, but I was not at all attracted to the idea. I don't like to wear much jewellery at all except for dress-ups. I find it so annoying and fiddly to have bits of metal or whatever dangling off my person. And they only end up broken or lost and have to be replaced. No, I couldn't put up with it. But then I happened to hear about the relatively recent phenomenon of medical alert tattoos. And I do love tattoos.  So I looked into it. When I started to come across more and more anecdotal evidence that suggested that the people most likely to get a medical alert tattoo are paramedics and ER workers, I was convinced. I ...

It was a late night for the Maroon Household last night. Yesterday afternoon, Mr. CJ managed to bang his head hard enough to be concerned about a concussion. The thing to do in these situations, of course, is to keep the person awake for a decent amount of time, twelve hours being a pretty good rule of thumb. So we prepared our favourite caffeinated beverages and settled in for a late night. We watched Pirates of the Caribbean , and some Stargate SG-1 . I read my current library book, Hallucinations by Oliver Sacks , which caused me to occasionally open the computer to google things like interictal personality syndrome ,  palinopsia and  the relationship between spirituality and temporal lobe epilepsy . I kept an eye on Mr. CJ to make sure he wasn't falling asleep. He's fine, by the way, and didn't fare any worse than a nasty headache. Amongst all these noctural activities, I somehow had a thought, a memory, come to me quite strongly. I was thinking about a series of ...

One of the more profound honours in my life is to be goddessmother to a certain little lady who happens to be one of the most extraordinary people I have ever met, and she's only nine years old. I remember the moment back in the summer of '02-03 when I read in an email from Majikfaerie  that she was going to have a baby. A physical presence landed in my belly and in my heart. I knew from that instant that we were part of each other's lives, that I had a charge and a responsibility come into the world. I had to wait a bit to get to meet her and to find out what an amazing person she would become. Oh wow, did I luck out in the goddessdaughter department. Littletree is sweet-natured, funny, thoughtful, kind, caring, and so bloody smart that the whole world had better join me in hoping that she continues, as she grows up, to use her powers for Good and not Evil. And that's not even to mention her incredible sense of fashion and style. I can't imagine what will ha...

At first, I wasn't planning on including book reviews in my blog. So, when I first found myself composing blog posts in my head about the books I was reading, I discarded them and thought about something else. Last night, I finally finished reading  The Emperor of Scent - A Story of Perfume, Obsession, and the Last Mystery of the Senses  by  Chandler Burr . It was a heavy one to get through, so it was with some sense of satisfaction and achievement that I closed it on the last page. My mind was just thronging with thoughts and interpretations which wouldn't be discarded. They just kept typing themselves out on my mental screen, until I was starting to wonder whether book reviews might actually be the right thing for my blog. Then today I had a visit from a friend who has a dodgy internet connection at home, and hadn't seen my blog yet. I loaded it up on the screen and we scrolled through the pages together. She said ooh, ah, wow, and all such appropriate interjections, ...