As well as being  Doctor Who Day , the 23rd November is usually  #deliaderbyshireday too (they moved it to Saturday this year in a kinda timey wimey way, figures) but let's celebrate all weekend instead with my tribute to the high priestess of British electronic music?   Plus I'm dead sure she was one of our mob! Nuff said.  

 Something to (hopefully) raise a smile this cold winter weekend. As some of you may - or may not - know young master Cassidy has always been slightly obsessed with Mark Mothersbaugh's Magic Pictures segment from that work of teevee genius that is Yo Gabba Gabba. To be honest I always assumed his love of Mark would be from an obsession with DEVO like me but hey ho, he'll get there eventually.  And for those of you who've never experience the sheer and utter joy of Mark's drawings here a wee taste:   Cass will spend hours drawing whilst explaining the pictures - just like Mark - and has also been known on occasion to paint on a wee beard and don an interesting hat to add to the effect, videoing his work and editing it together on his (overworked) laptop. This week tho' things change when he stumbled across Grok AI which much to his delight enabled him to animated his work much like Mark does each episode. Suffice to say no computer in the house is safe now from his a...

  Seeing as it's International Mens Day I thought I'd reshare the top Autism dad chat (featuring a fair few Actually Autistic peeps) we did for Scottish Autism a few years back....   Enjoy.     

  "Autistic folk don't like change."  My haircut at 15, my haircut in my 50s.  

On a brighter note, can't believe that's been a year since the opening of the Autism Through An Autistic Lens exhibition I was involved with. Time does indeed fly.  

 You know when you have one of those weeks/months where everything seems like shite but then, finally stuff starts coming together only for you to get hit by even more unexpected shite that even tho' it kinda gets sorted your Autistic brain goes "Yeah, I cannae do this anymore" and starts to slowly shut down leaving you feeling drunk, loose limbed and eyes that don't work properly whilst internally you don't know whether to laugh, scream, sleep or cry? Hello Saturday.   Normal service will be resumed when I can actually properly reboot my entire brain. Probably. 

Not posted a pesky health-based update for ages (like anyone cares) but just back from the hospital for my 6 month check up to see how my psoriasis treatment is going. You can read all about the previous exciting updates here and here if you so desire. But for those who can't be arsed clicking here's a quick rundown. I've had a couple of (major) bouts of psoriasis the last few years which my doctor reckoned was stress related (which kinda makes sense), the last of which flared up round about the time I was sorting out Cassidy's college and Social Work situation meaning I spent almost the last year with about 70% of my body covered in what looks like dragon scales that bled when I moved. Which is absolutely brilliant when coupled with that pesky Autistic body dysmorphia that a fair few of us have. Luckily it seemed to be getting a wee bit better of late, partly due to some terrific steroid spray from my doctor but mainly due to the changes that have occurred re...

Well, surprise surprise (no, really) the updating our Motability car appointment went brilliantly thanks in no small part to the salesman/rep from the garage we ended up having to go to. No pressure to update to super-alloy racing wheels, no go-faster stripes chat and no pushiness - he listened to what we wanted, didn't judge me for my lack of car knowledge/interest and basically made the whole process really easy and painless. And he didn't get annoyed once when Cassidy insisted he keep his glasses on.  Fantastic! And even better it now gives those folk on the interweb who hate the thought of disabled people being allowed cars another reason to hate us. Marvelous.    A lady (with a car) for illustrative purposes.   As you can understand we're actually quite pleased - and a wee bit amazed if I'm honest - that something has actually gone right for once which means we've finally been able to cross something off the 'needs doing' list so it feels like we should...

Been an exciting few weeks here and very busy. As I've mentioned previously we have the girls in college a total of 5 separate days now, which means we're having to take them/bring them back every day (the last few years we've been 'lucky' as it was only Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday) as well as organising things to do with Cassidy seeing as he no longer attends college which is giving us precious little time for things like shopping, getting (any) work done, laundry and the like (yup, still awaiting repairs). As you can probably tell we've completely given up on ever having any Social Work support after the utterly abysmal attempts of them to be helpful (or even remotely competent) last year so it's just the pair of us doing everything. As per normal.  Suffice to say we're both slightly knackered at the moment (and let's face it, we're not getting any younger - more attractive - yes, more powerful in the dark arts every single day? - obviously b...

  Can't believe that it's 42 years today since Will Byers went missing.....Remember the day with 60 (very) odd minutes of strange sounds from the upside down:  

In the middle of composing a fairly lengthy - and slightly sarcastic - post about renewing a Motorbility car here when all Hell broke loose. It seems that the girls bunk bed is in imminent risk of collapsing so need to order a new one ASAP. Like today.   Not our beds but just a photo for illustrative purposes to break up the text.   Embeth is inconsolable as she was worried she may have killed her sister had she been in it at the time (Amelia helpfully pointed this out to her) plus is upset as we now need to buy a new bed (which isn't the old one that she loves obviously) plus she's having flashbacks to Ice Age 4.  No, me neither.  Amelia on the other-hand is raging because it means they need to tidy up their room - and she loves drama. I'm trying not to think about it  too much as I'm kinda working on fumes at the moment. Rho is smiling and drinking tea.  Being unable to read social cues I've no idea what that means. And how's your Wednesday?    ...

      Celebrate Godzilla 's 71st birthday with 60 plus minutes of Gojira grooves, Kaiju cuts and massive monster mixes.