Category: Journal

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Separation

In the period since the start of December, our family has fallen apart to the point where I’m currently living at the office to give Bern the head space she needs to sort out what she wants, and what is best for her and the girls.

I’m pretty broken up about this, but the reality is, it is mostly my fault. Over many years, I have failed to cherish my wife the way I should, and I’ve put business ahead of family.

I’ve had a wakeup call and I’m now ready to change, and in fact I am changing, but it may be too late..

watch this space.

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Jessica Watson: True Spirit

I finished True Spirit by Jessica Watson yesterday. It is her autobiography of her successful attempt to become the youngest person to sail solo around the world, non stop. I always find it sad finishing a book, but thus one made me sadder than usual. What this young lady has accomplished at the age of 16 feels much greater than what I’ve managed to do in 39 years. Of course, our goals are different, and I have a beautiful wife, and two lovely children. I’ve built a business from nothing etc, but her story still makes me feel inadequate. Inspired, but inadequate.

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Larmenier

The Next step in Beccy’s Aspergers journey has been her enrolment at a second School, Larmenier in Hampton (55Km each way from home) four days per week. Larmenier is designed as a school for children with social and behavioural issues, and is currently about 32 students for the whole school, which is slightly bigger than Bec’s normal class size. Larmenier class size seems to be about 6-8 students. They do all the normal work, plus lots of social skilling, and fun subjects like science, cooking, and probably more computer work than the average Mainstream School. The process is well organised and Beccy will be spending her Tuesdays at SPJ and then Travelling about 1.5 hours each way to school Mon, Wed, Thurs & Fri.

Today was her second day, and things have gone really well so far. She has made friends with the two other girls in the school, and made Hamburgers for lunch today in the cooking class. The travel has been a drain (on us all) and Bec tends to snooze a lot of the way home.

It looks like we have found a little office to work from in a strip of shops nearby, allowing us to setup a satellite Tech Doctor office and work during the day, rather than travelling back and forth twice.

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Journal

Aspergers Diagnosis

In March, Beccy was formally diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome a form of High Functioning Autism which, to paraphrase Wikipedia results in a lack of nonverbal communication skills, limited empathy with their peers, and sometimes a tendency towards being physically clumsy.

During the diagnosis process, we learnt a lot about Asperger’s, and I have now put myself in the category of Self Diagnosed Asperger’s.

What does it mean? Mainly that I know now, why I do some of the things that I do, why big family (or other) gatherings can be overwhelming (massive over stimulation, particularly auditory), why parenting Beccy can often lead to a meltdown in both of us (you cant win an argument with an Aspi, so 2 of them arguing is a recipe for disaster).

I’m sure there will be more to come.

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Beccy’s Limonade Stand

In the rain, in the middle of nowhere, Lilydale VIC, Beccy has a lime cordial stand out the front of our house and made $17.25 in about 1.5 hours.

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Oops

Bern was involved in an altercation yesterday which saw her car totally written off when it ran into the back of 3 other cars (nose to tail). Everyone is fine, but Bern is fairly bruised and sore. By the time I arrived the kids and already been whisked off to School and Kinder by other families we knew who were passing by and stopped. Thanks so much to everyone for your care &amp:: concern..

Some Photos:
Bern’s Car
The Other Car
with the number plate
and again

Jase has some more, including some of the inside, I think, but he’s away for the weekend and has lent me his car:
Jase's

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Happy birthday – google style

Lizzie said today that we should check what the picture was today on google, because it’s daddy’s birthday and they have special pictures on special days. It was really cute, and it turns out she was right,  it was the 25th anniversary of the Bucky ball, a particular Molecule named after Richard Buckminster Fuller

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Clearer, Sharper and 25% Geekier

It kind of had to happen, I guess. I now have glasses!

There wasn’t anything majorly wrong, I have an astigmatism which I think means that my cornea is more like a football than a disc, and now things that I never really noticed were blurry, are actually really sharp.

Another thing the optometrist said is that I might have less trouble differentiating between what is almost a square and a true square, which might explain why I sometimes have trouble working out if a screen resolution is the correct aspect ratio for a particular screen.

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sometimes you need to read the whole story

I received this alert in my inbox last week:

if you were just reading the headlines, you could easily be a little worried. Here’s the slightly extended version…

The truth is I get these fairly often, and by the looks of it Leading Senior Constable Snell is doing a great job protecting the fine people of Bendigo.

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Journal

Brush-cutting Incident

Being a long weekend, we decided it would be a good time to tackle a bit of the gardening, so we imposed on my brother-in-law to borrow his brush cutter to speed up the problem, especially up around the “pool” area.

We had the required lesson when I borrowed it about how to use it, and safety and maintenance. I made a deal and said I’d make sure I could still count to ten when I finished. It turned out when I finished I could still count to 10, but could also count to 4 using just my wasp stings!

I must have disturbed a nest up near the pool gate, and I could hear them buzzing around me as I started to run. I flipped the face shield off near the rumpus room doors, jumped down the three stairs at once, frightening the life out of Bern at her computer. I realised the brush-cutter was still running at this point so I turned it off before dumping it on the desk.

Bern realised something was up, but I could hear a swarm buzzing around me so I remember slamming my hand on the door to say no, don’t come out. I fear I may have paniced, but I guess I’ve been heavily influenced by seeing movies like The Swarm as an impressionable little kid.

* We are going to get rid of the pool, it is a 30year old vinyl pool, and last year we used it for about 4 days in total