I have an admission. I have made zero progress on The List. In fact, I didn’t even participate in Unplugged Monday this week. I was having a bad day and I wanted to watch a movie, so I did. I’m not proud, but at least I’m a little less cranky.

I’m feeling unmotivated and scared to work on The List. I have one item lined up (listen to live music with my kids—I’m going to see the Indigo Girls with them, my husband and some friends) but the rest? I’m a little scared. I want to do these things, but I need a little push. I need your help.

I also want to add an item I accidentally left out. Getting my ears pierced. Not for a second time, not in the cartilage, just the regular ol’ ear piercing. Yes, I am extremely dorky, thank you for noticing. But a needle through my ear? Scary. So scary that it needs to go on The List.

With that said, I hope you’ll participate in a little poll. You’ll need to visit and like the MAEVE Facebook Page to cast your vote.

What should I do on my next Unplugged evening?

-Get my ears pierced

-Give five strangers compliments on the street

-Start sewing my own dress

-Take photos of ten strangers and post them to the web

Thanks for your help! I promise to do whatever the majority rule dictates. MAEVE is a democracy, right?

The Unplugged blog post series are written by Shalini Miskelly. Shalini is a librarian and writer in Seattle. You can find her at http://readingandchickens.blogspot.com and on twitter @booksnchickens

I forgot that this week’s unplugged evening fell on the same day as a cross-country flight. After flying three thousand miles for almost six hours, waiting around in airports or at bus stops, the last thing I wanted to do was go get a pedicure or compliment people on the street or be a better version of myself. What I wanted most was a warm bed in a dark room so I could go to sleep.

This means that there has been yet another week of no progress on The List, but you know what? I made a few dents: I sent out some adorable postcards (these ones) to friends and family that evening, and I managed, somehow, to make dinner as well, from scratch.

While I was on vacation, my sister-in-law told me of a friend of hers who instituted Slow Night. In short, on slow night, no electricity is used (but it’s not a hard and fast rule). A simple meal is served by candlelight, and there might be someone who breaks out a banjo or a guitar while kids dance. I may have made up that last part, but it’s so darn cute yet prosaic of my vision of a slow night, I’m going to declare it fact. So shall it be written, so shall it be done!

It’s too bad that the only guitar player in our house is my six-year-old, who will not play for family members, and who only knows Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star and The Farmer and the Dell. But! I made a meal without electricity! OK, that’s a lie. I tried to make a meal without electricity. I decided we could cook some pizza on our charcoal grill in the backyard, but when I went to roll out the gluten-free dough (I’m newly allergic to wheat), it fell apart. I told my kids there would be no grilling, or our pizza would end up in the coals instead of on our plates. I had to make this thing in the oven. My sons’ faces crumpled.

Have you ever met a three-year-old? They’re not exactly rational human beings. Mine screamed, “Then I will NEVER EAT FOOD AGAIN!” and stomped his little boot on the ground and started sobbing. I don’t usually give in to tantrums, but man was I tired. I was having visions of my warm fluffy comforter and my soft bed. So I gave in. I told them we could grill some broccoli, and that’s how I made slow night into even more of a carbon waste than normal! I used the oven for the pizza, roasted the broccoli, and had the kids pick peas (child labor!).

We lit candles, which was a shock to my children. “Candles are only for birthdays!” my six-year-old told me, scandalized by my lack of knowledge of some unwritten rule.

“We can use candles whenever we want,” I told him.

“When…EVER we want? Really, Mommy?”

“Really!”

“And can I blow them out like on a birthday cake?”

I looked at his pleading little face and shrugged. “Sure, I guess.”

So he blew out a candle.

“Me too!” my irrational three-year-old screamed, and then promptly put out the candle near him with more spit than effort. I relit them and the boys stared at the flames, and blew them out again. Who knew children liked fire? My six-year-old screamed with joy, “It’s so dangerous!” He laughed and then asked to juggle some knives. (No, not really.)

The gluten-free pizza was so-so and the broccoli tasted more like charcoal than broccoli. I wasn’t allowed to eat many peas, as my three-year-old bogarted the bowl for most of dinner. It wasn’t a glittering success, but it was good enough.

As for next week, I already have a plan to get out of the house and tackle the list. I spotted a few murals I love, and with the help of my husband, I’m going to take some photos near the murals. It’s a silly thing on my list, but it’s my list, and I don’t care. I’m doing it. After all, if candles can make an interesting night, who knows what can happen outside my own house.

The Unplugged blog post series are written by Shalini Miskelly. Shalini is a librarian and writer in Seattle. You can find her at http://readingandchickens.blogspot.com and on twitter @booksnchickens

Well my trip to France with my family arrived so quickly. And now it is going past so quickly. One week in Paris. Five days in Nice. The days are flying by. I thought the days would be longer, but each one that passes us by seems to be shorter. The knitting continues.

I have knitted at: the Louvre, the Museum of Modern Art, in our apartment, at breakfast, on the train, at Versailles, on a boat in Nice, on the beach in Nice and I am sure a few other places that I have forgotten.

It’s amazing that when you are so far away from home, something as simple as knitting can make everything seem familiar.

I was having a tuff day. I essentially threw a tantrum and in my wisdom, stormed off, went and sat myself down in a park. I took out my knitting, and in my fury, started. I forgot everything around me, why I was upset in the first place, where I was, what the time was, and just ploughed though, putting my hands to work. Distracting myself was the best idea.

I love that I now have something to do whilst I am waiting. I seem to be waiting everywhere in France. Everybody is so slow. Everything moves at a different pace. Knitting seems to make the time that would usually be redundant more productive. It helps with the little patience I have left as well.

Although I am knitting for charity, a common theme throughout this “journey” is one of patience. I am feeling a little bit guilty that I am getting so much out of this experience when I should be giving to others that are less fortunate. I have everything I would ever need or want. In fact I have never wanted for anything, but I still feel a sense of emptiness which the knitting is filling. I think I have mentioned before, I now have a hobby, something that has been missing for a long time.

The original idea behind knitting to save (eating less, spending less) has been slow to nonexistent (it is completely impossible in France to eat less and spend less) but I have found so many other avenues along the way. I am content where I am now.

Good news, square two was finished today! 14 more to go….

Lierre Bayley is a Melbourne based MAEVE reader who has embraced the Born to Knit campaign. Supporting Save the Children as they attempt to knit 15,000 blankets for children in third world countries. Here we’ll update you on Lierre’s progress as she knits her blanket.

As I was knitting my last row for tonight, I had a thought (well more than one, but only one that didn’t involve me cursing at my knitting needles). This knitting challenge is like a relationship that is doomed from the start.

It starts off well. Discovery. You discover each other (well I discovered the knitting needles so to speak). Everything is amazing and new! You learn things about each other, spend so much time together, share everything with each other, talk incessantly about the other person, almost to a point where you are driving everyone mad – people call it the “honeymoon period”. It can be a little tense, awkward even embarrassing, but you get over it and move on after a pash.

Then after a couple of weeks, the things that were once new, are now getting really old, quickly. Where you had the patience earlier to listen to his stories that go on forever with no ending, now you ask- is there a point? At around the fifth time you go out, you realise you cannot stand the way he eats, speaks and breathes. It was all a mistake – what were you thinking. You were blindsided by the attention, excitement and newness of it all.

Then comes the end. You know it is over, but you just want to give it another week to see if it works out. There is no one else waiting in the sidelines, but you are starting to consider that you would be better off alone than with this person (or the knitting). The attention that one has from being in a new relationship is now over and people have started to accept that you are together (or that you will take your knitting everywhere), you will arrive together, leave together, be invited to parties together, but you want to once again be an individual.

I guess the point of this post is that it’s so easy to get caught up in the excitement of something new. But everything tires. Hopefully a stint in Paris will inspire me to be enthusiastic again.

Lierre Bayley is a Melbourne based MAEVE reader who has embraced the Born to Knit campaign. Supporting Save the Children as they attempt to knit 15,000 blankets for children in third world countries. Here we’ll update you on Lierre’s progress as she knits her blanket.

The last time I wrote here, I vowed to make more of my unplugged evenings, tackling a list of items I’d always wanted to accomplish, but claimed I never had time to do. I haven’t actually started on the list, but I’ve done one better than that, I haven’t been on the Internet or watched much TV for three weeks now.

 A few weeks back, I travelled across the United States to visit my parents’ and my in-laws’ families. Since my computer was busted, I left home without a computer. Their homes are with limited computer access, but there wasn’t time to do so much as sit down and check my email. Instead, I’ve been visiting with long lost relatives, getting three shades darker in the North American summer sun, watching my boys go swimming and run through sprinklers and consume more popsicles than they previously ate in their entire lives, combined. It’s been a nice vacation.

Maybe it’s been a bit too nice. I’ve barely checked in with friends I’m normally in contact with through instant messenger or email or video chat or phone calls. I haven’t wished anyone a happy birthday on Facebook, which is usually the only time I wish anyone a happy birthday anymore that doesn’t live with me. I didn’t even remember to write this blog post last week, even though I pride myself on my reliability. I hate people who don’t follow through, who drop all contact with others without so much as a goodbye, and yet here I am, doing the same.

 I think that’s what’s so difficult about this project—I don’t just want to stop checking email so much and stop communicating through technology. I want the entire world to change with me. When I vowed to spend less time on chat, I felt better. My eyes weren’t red and strained, the kitchen was cleaner every evening,  I spent more time exercising and reading and pursuing creative endeavors instead of shooting the shit with friends over instant messenger. But I also missed out. I didn’t know when a friend was having a bad day and wanted me on instant messenger.  I didn’t share with anyone else how anxious and worried I was when we thought my six-year-old went missing at his aunt’s house (he was fine, hiding with his uncle and cousin, reading a book). So while in some ways, life without Internet has been better, in some ways it’s been worse. Who knew technology could improve lives? You heard it here first!

 I don’t know where this brings me with this project. I still intend on tackling my list but I also want to engage more. I’m going to vow to get up a little earlier to send emails, to send out some postcards to friends and let them know to pick up the phone and call me when they can.  

 I guess, like every other post here, I struggle with how to incorporate the right amount of Internet with the right amount of living in real life. I suppose this is something I will always struggle with, so long as I have open and free access to a computer or a smart phone or a TV. I don’t have any easy answers, or experiments with hypotheses to test out this week. There aren’t any Oprah A Ha! moments to share at the end of this post. I just have more living, more experimenting, more figuring out what works and what doesn’t.

I don’t feel like a particularly responsible person. At the same time, I realise that I appear incredibly capable. I have quite a lot of responsibilities, I suppose. Perhaps I don’t think about them unless it is in the context of my inadequacy. You just do what you’ve gotta do. You know?

Autism Spectrum Disorder, oh, so that is the answer. Three words which are the culmination of an investigation into my daughter that I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to explore. It wasn’t really sudden, a suggestion out of the blue, and I think that helped. What, exactly, I’m not sure, but we were already on a journey to discover “how her mind works”, reasons for her reactions to things and understanding of her perspective on things. From the start of discussing my daughter with her teacher, I was clear that my goal was not to change her. Nor was it to define her, for the sake of a definition. Primarily, as with most parents I imagine, I just wanted to understand her. To see how she saw things, to look at the world through her eyes so that I could help her to cope better. So that her school could help her. So that we could react to her in such a way that situations didn’t get worse. And if she stopped running away and hiding, or melting down and needing to be put in the car kicking and screaming (or if I didn’t have the car with me, as was more often the case, being carried home), you know, that would be nice.

It is now a year since her diagnosis and she is 7, my 5 year old son has also been diagnosed with ASD and we are keeping an eye on number 3, at 1 year old. And, at the moment, I’m a bit tired. But that’s ok.

On Ash’s report from the psychologist, one of the features he was listed as displaying was that “The general impression is one of autism”. That was a statement to stop me in my tracks. Even though I already knew that. I had suggested the possibility, another psychologist had indicated it, his pre-school teacher had been surprised that he wasn’t diagnosed and that was the reason for the assessment. But still, this seemed so stark, so black and white. I don’t see my children that way, I see them in glorious shades and colours. To realise how others might see them can be a bit disconcerting.

More than that, I was suddenly confronted with how I identify myself. The mum with the autistic kids… Well, you know, that’s ok. But when I still struggle, at times, to get my head around being viewed as a mum first, regardless of the other layers of my identity, this just added a whole new layer to that conflict.

I don’t like whinging. But I don’t like glossing over, either. The internal dialogue that goes on is incredible, every scrap of patience and gentle voice, every exercise of self-control and mental gymnastics working out what is likely to overwhelm one, or both, of my children, every moment is an internal conversation with myself, and a censorship of my thoughts. The complete opposite of their entire way of being, in fact. My children have virtually no filter, for things going in or coming out, and so I need to filter all the more.

On the other hand, I have no basis for comparison. Often, our days seem so normal to me that any kind of diagnosis is a surprise. Admittedly, both Sienna and Ash have mild autism, not severe, so the more dramatic stuff that happens is not always happening every day, and I feel genuinely blessed that I can connect with my children on a daily basis. As I’ve yet to raise a neuro-typical child to pre-school age, I’ve no concrete idea of what that experience feels like. Our family is my world, and that world is on the Autism spectrum. Times two. Or more, possibly (my husband is mid-way through the diagnostic process himself).

I have a lot to learn. My daughter likes to be wrapped in a light green blanket, underneath her regular quilt, every night. I really had linked this with her love of routine and only a couple of nights ago connected the habit with a sensory need to be enclosed. Lightbulb moment number three hundred and forty six. I have no doubt there will be many more.