The Pepsi Refresh Everything campaign is giving away millions in grant money to fund non-profit ideas.  I am a 33-year old woman who was diagnosed as an adult, with Asperger’s, which is on the Autism Spectrum, in 2004.

A friend of mine (who will be the director) and I have applied for part of this grant award. 

Our idea is to establish a Center for adults with Autism, in Central Maryland.  Currently, a kind friend drives me an hour north (sometimes 1.5 to 2 hours in Beltway traffic) to Baltimore for any Autism resources I may use.  There are few resources for Autistic adults in Central (Annapolis, Anne Arundel County, Bowie, Prince George’s County, etc)., Maryland, and many for children.  My goal is to provide resources for when the autistic children in this area transition into adulthood.

The favor I am asking from you is for one free click and vote.  You get a vote Per day for our idea for October.  Please vote daily or as often as possible. 

The more votes we receive, the more likely we are to get the grant award.    Please share this information with your contacts, your family, friends, co-workers, and acquaintances.  We have to be in the top two to receive funding.

4 Clicks  (I highly recommend you sign in with your Facebook account,  it is easier that way).

1.        Please go to http://www.refresheverything.com/autismadultsmd

2.       Click the Browse Ideas and Vote button on the right-hand side.

3.       Next, please log in on the bottom left-hand corner of the screen.  You can either use your Facebook account or your email address to create an account with a password.  Please press the vote button on the right.

4.      Please do this every day or as often as possible!  Please forward this to as many people as you can.

Hey, as long as your checking your email or Facebook, why not click on over?
Thank you for voting for my endeavor.  If you have any questions, please feel free to respond to this email.  Voting starts on October 1^st and ends on September 31^st.

Have a blessed day. 
Bridget

PS.  If you or someone you know is affected by Autism, your vote every day truly helps.  Thank you.

So today I was reading about/discussing with people the perception of disability from the non-disabled population. This got me to remembering a pretty disastrous visitor I had a year or so ago. I'd been in one of those internet friendships for nearly ten years with an American lady, who, despite strong misgivings on my part, insisted on actually meeting me face-to-face. The friendship did not survive.

One of the big issues was that she expected me to decide where we were going, when we were going, and how we were going to get there. My spatial awareness is literally non-existent; I'm in the bottom 1% of the population, according to my neuropsychologist, and I have difficulty seeing at night as well. I explained all this to my friend, at length and a number of times over. As an added bonus, public transport in the place I was living in at the time was limited during the day and nonexistent during the night. So, we didn’t go out at night and she told me it was fine. When I drove her places during the day, she utterly refused to help me with maps or directions. She would hand me the street directory at stop lights though, that was something, but she was really impatient when I got lost or was confused. I ended up taking her to a small zoo one day and, sick of it all, handed her the map. A3 sheet, colourful, very simple. Pretty drawings of animals. She freaked the fuck out and I took it back and navigated again. I can read a map, just...slowly. And with lots of mistakes.

And when she went back she told me how terrible and hurtful it was that I didn’t take her out at night, it was all my fault she had a terrible time, that I didn’t take her where she wanted to go...

Just to give you an idea of her level of functioning, before she even came we spent three hours- THREE HOURS- IMing each other about several rainforest tours offered by the same company. She suggested these, absolutely refused to make any sort of decision between them. Instead she whittered, blathered, cried, “What if I choose the wrong one?!” for THREE HOURS and, after my exasperated offers to pick one myself, flip a coin, draw slips out of a hat, contact the company itself for more information, decided that she simply couldn’t pick and we wouldn’t go on any of them. The only places she actually told me she wanted to go was a graveyard and a planetarium, and as it turns out, it was closed when we got there. She decided she wanted to go, but didn’t bother to check that it would actually be open. *sigh*

The thing that pisses me off is that she would tell me that she has ‘tendencies’ towards ASDs. And then she expected me to take complete care of her, and when she went back to the USA, told me that I probably didn’t know it, but my interpersonal relations suck. No! Really?

So I guess this post is aimed at three separate topics: trouble getting around, clashes with people with different disorders (because if this chick didn’t have OCD and anxiety issues I’ll eat my keyboard without condiments) and clashes with people who tell you they know all about ASD/NLD because they have it, and then go onto point out well known characteristics of these disorders like they’re your personal failings and that you should really get over it.

I’d love to hear others’ take on these things.