25,000 X the mercury...

Take note of this, then go listen to that beautiful soothing music I put underneath this post. Sheesh.

Voice of an Angel - Lib and I cannot get enough of this beautiful song

Bleach vs H2O2

I got an email today that I am sure has been passed around a few times, extolling the virtues of hydrogen peroxide vs chlorine bleach. We've been told not to use bleach around Liberty, but you know there is the matter of cleaning the toilet. I was looking around for some more information on the uses of hydrogen peroxide and I stumbled upon Green Living Tips. I got a lot of great ideas from this site, and have already made up by 50/50 mixture spray bottles for the kitchen and bathrooms. I like information like this. Non-toxic, and cheap!

I got an email today from an organization which I guess I signed up for last Christmas. I really like it. HealthyStuff.org is kind of a watchdog for toys and other consumer products that may or do contain unsafe levels of lead and other metals. I checked out the list and decided to post the link. It is kind of unreal what is showing up with high levels of lead. It's in shoes and sunglasses and popular toys. Because Lib had surprisingly high levels of lead on his very first metals test, it is of particular concern to me.

Every time I pick up something that says made in China, I am apt to put it down--oh, yeah, that is just about everything I touch. Are any of you old enough to remember when "made in Japan" meant something was cheap? Now, you rarely see that and if you do, grab the item and save it. It could be valuable!

The world has changed so much.

I never expected as a parent I would have to keep an eagle eye on our environment. And by environment, that means everything inside and outside of my skin! I was reading this morning on the blog, The Upside of Downsizing, about VOCs in shower curtains. I love Elizabeth's site because she always give you suggestions for replacing the offending items. She also describes the best plants to help clean your environment.

Anyway, you might want to check out Healthy Stuff and see if anything you have around the house is listed there!

Chelation

Liberty had a great weekend and first round of chelation. He is doing better than ever, though I still knock on wood, throw salt over my shoulder, and say some Hail Marys each time those words escape my lips. I am hearing more and more words, though nothing is strung together in a sentence...yet. Will keep you posted. I have to keep a wary eye on the yeast/gut factor from flare-ups during the chelation. But, I'm very happy. I feel like we are indeed on a good road again, after taking a detour.

And, that's all I have to say about that, as Forrest Gump would say.

Other than that it is raining cats and dogs here today and STILL the little hummingbirds brave the weather. It is a lovely deep green outside, but the grass...oy! high as an elephant's eye.

A New Beatles Fan

Liberty has discovered the Beatles, a mere 44 years later. What can I say? I am teaching the basics of music appreciation. I was six years old when this movie was made. Hard to believe. He loves this one:

A Good Read

I am always looking for something good to read. It's no secret that I am passionate about Pat Conroy and consider him one of the most brilliant contemporary writers. But books like Pat's don't come along but once every five to eight to even 10 years. I also don't like books that are turned out in a mill. If I see a writer that is too prolific, I bypass them because I am afraid they will be too fluffy, too amateurish.

Yes, I am a book snob. Utterly ruined by Anne Rivers Siddons and Pat Conroy and others.

But wait! I found another who turns out really good reads. They are funny, thoughtful, contain great dialogue and I find myself totally engrossed after the first page - books you can lose yourself in. Sometimes for me, that is just what the doctor ordered.

I am talking about Elizabeth Berg. I recently read Open House which was hilariously funny and a great tale about a woman who undergoes a divorce and takes on boarders. The next one I read of hers was Home Safe, about how a woman copes and finds her balance after her spouse dies suddenly. The one I read this past weekend which had me studying much of the dialogue was, Say When. Oooh, I loved this. Not a voluminous book, I read it in a day. It's about a marriage on the brink of divorce told from the man's point of view. I re-read many things the female character said...thinking, "I've said that." And looking through a man's eyes is interesting. I was really glad I read it.

Check out her website, then check your library. You'll be glad you did!

It's always hard to post something about September 11, 2001. One of my blogs I visit often has a good post regarding "the worst day" by someone who was actually there. You can peruse it here.

Thank God for My Earth Angels

Liberty's new teacher has finally arrived. I got a lot of correspondence from her last night, including about a four-page questionnaire to fill out about all things sensory, what Lib loves the most, his eating habits, dressing, grooming, names of all family members, pertinent things that I feel she should know, what I want to see this year, etc. She also included a full page bio about herself and her experience.

To say I am thrilled is an understatement.

Did you see Julie and Julia? Well, she reminds me of Julie a lot.

Yesterday, I picked Lib up a little early and went to Robert's for a haircut. Robert is one of our angels. We walked in to soft music playing (a guitarist name Govi..ah, he's wonderful), the smell of peppermint in the diffuser, the stained glass water fountain decorated with pumpkins and fall leaves. Instead of immediately trying to get Lib to sit in my lap with me, Robert and I just talked softly and let him wander around. I finally used the noggin for more than a hat rack and put Liberty in a long-sleeved shirt so the hair falling would not bother him. He came and sat with me in the barber chair, facing me. Robert dipped a comb in water and started to comb Lib's hair, and then my hair. Usually averse to this sort of thing, Lib instead closed his eyes like it felt good, and then he started stroking my hair and smiling. Yes smiling. Robert turned on the electric shaver (no response from Lib) and proceeded to give the kid the cutest haircut he's had in a long time.

Sigh....I am just going to bask in the "things that are going well" light.

I think of other people I consider angels who have no idea how well they are thought of, or that I even think of them. For instance, there is a guy at the Target garden center. I don't know his name, but we recognize each other all of the time. We always exchange greetings and chat about this and that. This man is one of the happiest souls on the planet. He radiates joy. He is always smiling and ready to laugh. So, he registers on my radar. He uplifts me during my day. I consider him one of my emotional supports. He is the reason why I feel that, when I have nothing else to give, a smile can mean everything to someone. So I give it readily, even if people don't smile back.

When I thanked Robert yesterday and told him he was A1 on my list, he said simply, "I just feel I'm doing an important service."

Yes you are, sweetie. Yes you are.

Connecting the Dots

Liberty came home from school today and played in his room as usual. He wanted me to get some more toys down from the top shelf of his closet. He knows I hide them under a blanket. Over the summer, I had let him run amuck because he was so bored and he had every toy that he has ever owned on the floor in a great big heap. Monday, I put everything up in the closet except for a select number of toys I knew he loved most.

He indicated by gesture that he wanted his toys down. I very calmly told him that he would have to put away all of his cars, first. He went over to the heap of cars and put them in their bin. After he did that, I said, "Put up your dinosaurs if you aren't going to play with them, and we will get down two more toys to play with." Sure enough, he put away his dinos.

Then he took my hand and led me to the closet. We got down two more toys.

This has never happened. In the past, the usual scene was that he would get excited and have a fit if he heard "no" in my voice. Forget instructions or bargaining. He did not get it at all. It would be a crying, whining fit, especially if I walked away.

This time, however, he followed instructions. He got it.

Later, I was on the phone, and it is not a portable one. He kept trying to pull me off the phone and I gave him the "wait" sign. He was boring holes through me with those big brown eyes, trying get me off the phone and then he left. I finally was able to get off the phone and I heard plastic rustling. I thought he might be climbing his closet and getting things down - or worse - taking all of his clothes off the hanger and throwing them in a heap. I went running to his room and passed the bathroom and saw him out of the corner of my eye.

There he was, digging through the cabinets, trying desperately to get the toilet paper out of its package. He had pooped in his pants, took those off by the toilet, and had apparently exhausted all of the wipes that were left on the counter. I was so proud of him. He gets it!

I got him some more toilet paper and after he finished wiping (well, we actually had to put him in the bathtub at this point) I high-fived him and he gave me a big smile.

Finally, my boy is understanding more and more.

From now on, I will have the toilet paper out of its package ready to go, and I will have plenty of wipes.

And I will honor his silent plea to get off the phone.

More Cowbell!

Lib and I were riding in the car today listening to a homemade CD of old songs. I cannot listen to Blue Oyster Cult without cracking up anymore. Anybody remember this? The great Christopher Walken, Will Farrell, and cast of Saturday Night Live. Watch Jimmy Fallon crack up.

Come Back to Me

Here is my sweet little boy before the vaccines took their toll on him. In fact, this is the only picture from that time around 2003 that I have from my computer that crashed a few weeks ago. Always remember to back up your photographs. I didn't and I lost over 1100 photos. Am I crazy? Yes I am. Absent-minded is more like it. This particular picture makes my heart ache. My son used to throw a ball. Here he is on our old playground in our old neighborhood running to the basketball court. He would stand under it and wait for me to lift him up so he could put the ball through the hoop. He could not get enough of watching the big kids play basketball and I had to hold him back from joining in their games! He had not been walking that long, I remember.

Well, this is what my biomedical recovery journey is all about. Chelation begins Friday for real. It is my hope to dump the lead and other metals out of his little body that has been there for so long, I can't think about it. I am unaware of what he has spilled over the years though just through natural chelation. We give him methyl-B12 shots in combination with N-acetyl-cysteine (NAC) and folic acid. I know that the NAC is a natural chelator of mercury. The fact that Lib is getting better is testament to all that we are doing. And if it's not due to the biomed treatments, well...at least what we are doing is not hindering him in any way, and for that I am so grateful.

My little boy still has that little sprite of a spirit, so innocent and joyful. I ache to hear his voice. Perhaps it will still happen. I still believe and I still have hope that he will come back to me.

New Blogs on the Block

My new friend L has two great relatively new blogs: Grey Street and Southern and GFCF. Grey Street is her blog about her journey through recovery with her lovely daughter Miss B. Please stop by and welcome her to our blogisphere. She has a lot to contribute to the autism community and is a rather cool person, too! She is looking for recommendations for books for her child to order for Christmas, as well, so if you can help, leave her a comment.

You know, we all have our personal hell we have been through with the diagnosis, before, during, and after, and need love and support. Often our familes can't provide that for whatever reason, and we rely on friends whether in cyberspace or in person. I am so grateful for my blogger friends with whom I have formed an on-line community.

L's recipe blog is one I have added to my cache of GFCF meals, because you can never have enough good-tasting gluten free and casein free foods. I'm always on the lookout and directing other parents to easy meals to make for their kids on the diet. And, being from the South, I am especially happy about this! Her cornbread chicken stuffing? You bet I will be trying that one.

This reminds me of long ago when my dad used to make really great bread, and one of his specialities was cornbread in a skillet using Martha White cornmeal. Always the character, at the end of all of his hand-written recipes for me, I remember he used to write "Loosen belt before eating."

Welcome L & Miss B!

The Art of Placement, or Thoughts on a Tuesday

Here is a fun blog I found when I was researching feng shui. Feng shui is a Chinese phrase meaning "wind and water," but, generally speaking, it is the art of placement. Elizabeth Chamberlin is a green interior designer and her blog, titled "The Upside of Downsizing" has a lot of nice videos on the site and tips for greening your environment along with using the ancient art of feng shui.

For most of my life, I have been what you could call a chronic furniture re-arranger. When people tease me about it or ask me why, all I can say is that the energy suddenly didn't feel right and I had to move things about. What I was probably feeling is what the Chinese call "chi" which is another word for life force. Karen Kingston is possibly the queen of feng shui. I have her book called Creating Sacred Space with Feng Shui. In the book, she teaches you how to do space clearing, which is basically clearing out old, stuck energy. Why do that? Clearing spaces and arranging objects in your home (and outside environment) actually can support you physically, mentally, and emotionally.

Did you know that the root word for clutter is "to clot?" I can really relate to this. I feel down when there is clutter everywhere, especially in closets and halls. I feel like I can't move forward, literally and metaphorically.

Yesterday I spent the entire morning in Liberty's room cleaning up his messes. He loves to take things apart and throw them over his shoulder in one giant pile. He reminds me of the rat Templeton in Charlotte's Web, if you remember him. I have watched him swipe a little jar of face cream or my toothbrush and run back in his room and throw it on the heap! He just loves to have a pile of some objects near him. And then he takes from the pile as he plays with things and throws it over his shoulder again, and the pile moves to the other side of the room.

So, yesterday, I was able to put things on shelves and some things in bins and hide them in his closet so he can only play with a few things at a time. (This summer was a free-for-all where I lost my control and he played with everything he owned all at once).

The difference in his room was astounding after I got through with it. Don't laugh but I had some beautiful quartz crystals from long ago that I buried in the earth about a week ago to cleanse and charge them. I put a new one in Lib's room on top of a shelf and prayed some prayers into it. Crystals amplify thought, so I thought, why not enhance this renewed energy in the room?

Lib came home and instead of being agitated that most of his things were gone, he played quietly in his room and started first with his jar of plastic dinosaurs and bugs. Then he moved happily to some playing cards and his matchbox cars which were in bins. You could tell he felt good. He smiled at me and hugged me. Wow, no whining or crying over missing toys!

I recently went to Elizabeth Chamberlain's site and watched some of her videos for the art of placement in various rooms of the house. For instance, she says, and this is well-known "fact" in feng shui, that you should always keep your toilet lid down and fix any leaking water faucets because it is symbolic of your money going down the drain (or toilet)! There is a feng shui grid that you can place over the outline of your house (referred to as the "bagua") that tells you what room falls in what category. For instance, it just so happens that our bedroom falls into the money part of the grid. I looked around and there were clothes stacked on the dressers, papers that had not been filed in the file cabinet, and generally, nothing was well-placed. So, I got rid of the clutter and in front of the mirror I put a nice jade plant (also known as a money plant). Mirrors are powerful magnifiers so I made sure that there was no clutter in front of the mirror, or bills. Don't want more of those. About three days later, I got two unexpected checks in the mail from our insurance company. They actually paid for chelation and some other drugs that I did not expect them to pay for at all! It was a nice unexpected $100!

Now, I don't know if it was due to all of the feng shui "fixes" that I did, but I do know that a ritual such as feng shui does help to anchor your intentions and focus your energy. It's no wonder that ritual is the biggest part of religious and spiritual practices all over the world. This is the main basis for all ritual.

At any rate, my main point is that environment does play a big part in our overall health. I have been told this repeatedly by Liberty's DAN doctors and practitioners. We do have computers and wireless in the house which is supposed to not be so good with all of the electromagnetic frequencies (EMFs) they emit that interfere with brainwaves. My recent DAN told me that watching too much TV or the computer screen could possibly trigger more seizures in my son. Hearing this only frustrates me more. We live in a world full of EMFs - our new technology's unwanted side-effect. Karen Kingston says to get an atomizer and fill it with water and lavender oil and spray down toward electronics and floor frequently, and that this will somehow help deflect these waves. I don't know if that is true or not, but I like the smell of lavender and I love that particular ritual, so I am definitely going to try it. And, I will also just limit how much time we have the computer and tv on around Lib. My doctor also told me that a cordless phone is awful to have in the house and that I should use just a regular plug-in phone.

I think it's nice to know that there are things that you can do around your home to not only make it a soft place to fall, but also to create a kind of sacred space that supports all who live there in mind, body and soul. I have always looked at life in terms of energy, so feng shui makes so much sense to me.

In my grid of my house, the "children" part of the house falls in the kitchen, where happily, I have the correct color scheme, according to the chart. I put a happy, smiling picture of my boy on the refrigerator there.

I have a hanging pot of flowering portulaca or moss rose hanging just outside of the office window and a hummingbird feeder beside it. No one had to tell me how to place these things. Just that placement alone has brought me so much joy. I have never had the pleasure of watching hummingbirds so close by. Sometimes they stop and look in the window. The ginger plants are blooming right beneath the feeders, so I know it must be a wonderful heady pit-stop for them.

I am interested in hearing your experiences with feng shui, if you have ever tried it, or do your own brand of the art of placement in your environment.

On a bigger scale, PBS is planning to air Ken Burns new series on the history of the National Parks. Can you imagine what life would have been like if we did not have these beautiful places exempt from building? It airs September 27. It took six years to make the film. You can go to the site and watch a trailer from the series. It looks fantastic!