Adventures, Misadventures , Reflections and Profanity

I used to get migraines. Have you ever had a migraine before? It is like a headache, but so much worse. It starts with some vague nausea and fatigue. Then the pain begins, usually behind my eyes and that is when the light sensitivity creeps in and I find myself squinting in even dimly lit rooms. Gradually the pain increased and eventually explodes, peaking with exposure to light or sound. The only thing I can do then is lay down in a dark room in silence and do nothing, waiting for it to go away, which can take hours, or sometimes, even days. Migraines are hell. I used to get them 1 to 5 times a month and it was severely impacting my life in a very negative way. You can't really get much done when you're floored by horrible pain that makes you vomit. I had a really wonderful boyfriend at the time (whom I have since married). He happened to come across an article about theories on why women suffer from migraines at a rate so much higher than men. The most promising theory was ...

So it has been over a year since the Pokemon Go! phenomena first launched, and I am not at all ashamed to say that I have been a player ever since. A lot of people got real cynical and mean about how excited the players all were, but I just have never understood what the hell there is to be so mad about! It is a free app that you download on your phone that immediately encouraged people to get outside, go for walks, get exercise and socialize in a perfectly harmless way while filling the world with whimsical little cartoon creatures. What is so bad about that? Oh! And the people talking the most trash usually have Candy Crush installed on their phones, like that is somehow less stupid than Pokemon Go!... Right. LOL. It is hard to go out looking for the little bastards in the summer time when the weather is so dreadfully hot, but I still get out and go "hunting" once in a while. Last summer when the app first launched, every park in the city was filled with people of all a...

So here is something hilarious that happened to me at work a while ago that I wanted to share: I have been working with children affected by ASD (autism spectrum disorder) for over a year now. My most recent vocation in this area is as an independently contracted home school teacher for a single child with ASD and ADHD. I love this kid and I love what I do. A while back we were working on some social studies assignments, one of which was on the executive branch of government. We were discussing what the president does, how we elect a president and why it is important to vote when you are old enough. Then we talked about a few of our past presidents and things that they have done. I always like to get the kids I work with to try to relate to whatever we are learning about and to encourage them to express themselves and to form opinions about things because these are often very difficult for kids with ASD to do. So, I ask my student, "If you could meet any president in the histo...