A Night at the Airport

I am certainly not what you would call a "frequent flyer." I have been a passenger on planes, ships and trains, but my preferred mode of transportation is definitely a car. This year I have been on a plane twice so far. I always find it kind of interesting to "people watch" in an airport. You see just about one of everything. Families, businessmen, businesswomen, kids, babies, senior citizens, teens, entire sports teams, etc. Traveling by plane always seems to take such a long time, especially if you are crossing over time zones or have layovers. Earlier this year I was flying back from the East Coast by myself and ended up at a busy Midwest airport. I was there waiting to catch the last leg of my flight back home and the airline decided to cancel my flight completely because the weather was really bad. After that happened , I had to wait in a huge line to get a voucher to use towards the cost of a hotel room close by. I remember the people behind me saying they were going to rent a car and drive to where they needed to be. It's safe to say that the people waiting in that line were not a bunch of happy campers. My feeling was it's out of our control, just try to make the best of it. I did not have access to my suitcase (not sure where that spent the night), but luckily I did have cash on me, not a lot, but enough, because after about 10:30 or 11 p.m. all the shops in the airport closed. The voucher that we got really wouldn't have covered much of the expense of a hotel stay, so I decided to spend the night at the airport and catch the first plane out the next morning. There were some other hardy souls (actually quite a few) that decided to stick it out like me. My initial thought was, do I try to sleep? Given that I didn't have an alarm clock on me, I was going to try and stay up all night. Haven't done that since the sleepovers of my girlhood youth. I did have a laptop with me and a DVD to watch. Trying to find an available plug to use the laptop proved to be quite difficult. I had to probably walk about a 1/2 mile (well okay, it felt that way) to find a plug. I eventually did and started watching my movie. One of the employees of the airport I think felt sorry for me and said, "Miss, did you know we have some cots set up around the corner?" I thanked her for her assistance but told her I was fine. After my movie was over I was thinking, okay, what do I do next to entertain myself. I had already read all my magazines I had brought, so I was starting to get a little bored. I remember walking around and finally about 2:45 a.m. or somewhere around that time finding a set of seats to hang out in. The next thing I knew I think I must have fallen asleep because I opened my eyes and my mouth was kind of slacked open. I looked around, but everybody else was either dozing off, sound asleep and snoring or talking with their friends. About 5 or 5:30 a.m. one of the only restaurants getting ready to open was McDonald's. Even before they officially opened, there was already a line forming. I quickly got into that line and got something to eat. About 6:30 a.m. they started calling my flight to board. There was no way I was going to miss that boarding call. I'm happy to say that I made it back home safely. It was truly a one-of-a-kind experience!

Those "Steps" to Independence Can Be Hard

We are heading towards 600 orders for Dominic's business. Since our long-term goal for Baked Goods By Dominic is having a "brick-and-mortar" and hire those with disabilities, it is essential and imperative that I continue to teach him all parts of the business. Since I prompted Dominic for so many years for speech, he has become "prompt dependent." What that essentially means is that he will look at me for a prompt, like, "what do you do next?" I do that one a lot. Dominic has been going to a private speech therapist for over ten years and she reminds me often that Dominic usually will know the answer, if I am patient and wait for him. That has been a very hard habit to break! Dominic has an incredible memory, so I put it to the test this morning. I didn't write out the steps, I wanted to see how much he could do completely on his own. We have a customer picking up his order today, but the only thing that had been done is putting the cookies into t...

Why We Pursued Guardianship of our Son with Autism

Last Thursday morning, my husband, Dominic and I went to our county's Probate Court and had Dominic's Guardianship Hearing. My husband and I are Co-Guardians, and we were granted "Partial Guardianship," which means Dominic can make some of his own decisions (future educational and vocational placement options, what to wear and how he wants to spend his free time), but my husband and I will make his medical, health care, legal, contractual and major financial decisions. The subject of Guardianship in the disability "world" has been and continues to be a controversial and divisive topic. I was a panelist for an Autism Conference this past summer and presented on what it's like to have a child with Autism. Towards the end of my presentation, I mentioned that Dominic had just turned 18 and that we were going through the Guardianship process. When the attendees could ask questions, the first person that went up to the microphone started telling me that I was...

Presume Competence

Since we have traveled outside of the United States since Dominic was very small, we have had to get him a Children's Passport every five years. Since his current one expires in February of 2024 and he is now 19, we had to apply for an Adult Passport. I don't know why my husband and I picked Dominic's first day of school and Michigan State University moving in their students, but the appointment was yesterady at 3 p.m. We had gathered all of the documents needed and then went into a special room in the East Lansing Post Office just for Passports. The three of us sat down and the clerk asked Dominic his age. He said, "19." Since we were also getting his picture taken for the Passport, he went into a separate room, where she took a picture of him and then let him look at it to make sure he liked it (it will be his picture for the next 10 years)! He said he did, so he sat back down with us. The clerk filled out a bit more of the paperwork and then she let Dominic s...

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