Show me a rural community that maintains an annual lecture series, and I’ll show you a community where hearts beat a little stronger.

Clyde River is such a place, and the schedule for its 2018 lectures has just been released; judged by the Verna Clow lecture we had the pleasure of attending two years ago these are events well worth attending, and events you should show up early for to ensure a seat.

A tradition we started in 2015 with Episode VII. I’ve nowhere near the Star Wars affiliation that my little brothers do, but I’m a sucker for secular tradition, and the movie was the best one in a long while. One piece of advice for you, gleaned at the snack counter: avoid kale chips; they are a crime against nature.

I wrote yesterday about how Christmas stress gave birth to the crosswords-as-airlocks system, and suggested that 2016 holiday travel “stretched our little troupe to near our breaking point.”

Here’s part two of that story.

After a pleasant week spent between Napanee (Catherine’s family) and Burlington (my family), during which waffles were consumed, Math Minute invented, and a new coffee place discovered, we were set to fly back home to PEI on New Year’s Eve.

For reasons that escape me now, our plane was scheduled to leave Pearson Airport in Toronto at 7:00 a.m. Given that we were in Burlington, 45 minutes drive away, that we had to return a rental car, and that it was a busy travel day, this meant leaving our Burlington hotel at 4:00 a.m.

What was I thinking?

When the hotel alarm clock went off at 3:30 a.m., it became immediately apparent that this wasn’t going to work out: Oliver entered a state of complete apoplexy, and, if only to avoid waking up the rest of the hotel, I sent him and Catherine back to bed and retired to the calm of the washroom to see what alternate arrangements I could make.

Air Canada, bless its soul, rose to the challenge: I got through to an agent on the phone, with no need to hold, and explained the depths of our situation. The agent quickly arranged for us to change our reservation to a later flight, at no charge. Which allowed us to get up at a (more or less) normal hour, and reboot the day.

Mid-morning we made our way to the airport, returned the rental car, and assembled the horses to go through security. Mindful of our challenging experience on the way up, I went ahead and identified the “special services” line we could go through, and beseeched the agent at the entrance to security to wave us right through to that doorway, which he agreed to do. No more than a minute later when we arrived at the line and presented ourselves to the selfsame agent it was like a brand new day, with beseeching forgotten and insistence that we could go through the regular old line like everyone else.

I insisted; they relented; and we were ushered through to the special services line.

We’d had positive experience with special services lines on earlier trips: at Heathrow in 2015 they were a Godsend. And so we had high hopes for smooth sailing.

Our hopes were quickly dashed.

To be honest, I have little memory of the chaos that ensued, but suffice to say (a) Oliver returned to a state of apoplexy, (b) the CATSA staff appeared to have little or know understanding of the anxiety challenges presented by the mix of autism and airport security, nor any sympathy for we supporters thereof, (c) the general vibe was “this kid’s freaking out; are we going to let them through at all,” and (d) in Oliver’s understandable physical reaction to the overwhelming stress of all this, my glasses got knocked off, fell to the ground, and lost their left arm.

Somehow we made it through, got ourselves to a quiet restaurant, plonked ourselves down, and allowed ourselves time to decompress.

A few minutes later, I snapped this selfie:

That’s documentary evidence of me in a state of stress and exhaustion and parental worry.

The flight home, by my recollection, was relatively uneventful. Although looking in my Google Timeline right now I see that we had a four hour layover in Montreal that I have absolutely no memory of whatsoever, so who knows.

There is a silver lining in all of this, remarkably: the stress of Christmas travel, and Oliver’s general late-2016 challenges with stress and anxiety, prompted us to seek help. This resulted in our acceptance, almost immediately, into the Strongest Families program, which was an enormous and transformative help to all three of us.

While 2017 was not without its challenges, the year for Oliver has gotten better and better every week, and we greet this (travel-free) Christmas as a family happier and more resilient.

Oh, and the wonderful Gaudet Optical in Halifax repaired my glasses, under warranty and at no charge, and they sit, restored, on my face as a type this.

A year ago this week we were heading to Ontario for Christmas with my family and Catherine’s. While spending time in the warm creche of those we know so well was aces, the trip itself–the getting there and getting back–stretched our little troupe to near our breaking point.

It all started when we arrived at Charlottetown Airport on Christmas Eve.

Oliver is challenged by the fundamental nature of airport security: the palpable tension in the air, the prospect of separation from us, the being-ordered-around. So we’d developed a routine of requesting a physical search that, previously, had worked well.

Things were looking up when we lucked into a CATSA agent for the search that we’d worked with before, but things quickly went off the rails when he introduced the possibility of a search in a “private room” into the mix. This not only introduced an element of choice, but also changed a routine we’d already mastered.

And there was the room itself: a tiny room that me, Oliver, Ethan the Dog, and two CATSA agents crowded into; a tiny room that was already packed with surplus equipment.

It all became too much for Oliver, and, in the meltdowny flail that resulted, I got accidentally knocked into a pile of metal desk parts. We emerged, battered and chastened, a few minutes later once the agents got done what they needed to get done.

Oliver has no issue with flying itself, but it takes him a while to calm down from stressful wringing experiences, and so he was still quite anxious when we boarded the airplane and got seated. Searching for a quick way to redirect his attention and bring some calm to the scene, I pulled out the En Route magazine from the seat-back and found the crossword puzzle.

It was at this point that I discovered that Oliver and I share a facility and affection for crossword puzzles.

I had no idea.

Working on the crossword puzzle had its intended effect: by the time we landed in Toronto a few hours later we were on an even keel.

Over the next week, as various and sundry travel stresses presented, and we found ourselves En Route-less, I turned to making up crossword puzzles on the spot to inject a needed dose of calm.

These are not New York Times-style crosswords; they’re an easier-to-make-up-on-the-moment-without-exploding-my-brain format, and because they’re created in the moment, they draw from local conditions.

Like this one, constructed about Island Fringe shows that we’d seen that very day:

Once we got home, I continued the tradition of crossword-puzzle-making, building it into Oliver’s bedtime routine (go upstairs, have a shower, brush teeth, get pajamas on, do crossword, go to bed).

And so, as the end of the year edges closer, I’m coming up on 365 crossword puzzles authored.

I’ve made up crossword puzzles about the planets, the days of the week, and LGBTQ issues. I’ve made up crossword puzzles about colours, and kitchen utensils, and family members, and breeds of dogs. I’ve made up crossword puzzles about the streets of Charlottetown, and the countries of Africa, and parts of the body.

When I leave home for travel, I make up a stack of crossword puzzles for Catherine to build into her nighttime routine with Oliver.

While the original crossword puzzle was injected as a sort of fire extinguisher, today the nightly crossword exists as what I like to think of as an airlock.

Changes of state–transitions–are one of the challenging hallmarks of living with autism, and, just like one seeks to ease the transition from space station to space walk with an airlock, anything that can smooth the myriad transitions of life is a welcome tool. For us, at bedtime, crossword puzzles are that thing: rather than just opening the door to the outer space of sleep, we step inside the airlock of the crossword, and by the time we’re done, 5 minutes later, pressure has equalized, space suit is on, and outer space can be comfortably confronted.

Along the way they’ve become an airlock for me too, of course, and a welcome part of my nighttime routine.

I was reading the interesting web page Are You Old Enough?, on the Province of PEI’s website when I came across this passage in a section about alcohol:

If you are under 19, a parent or spouse can give you an alcoholic drink like a glass of wine with Christmas dinner.

I was curious to find the legislative backstop for this statement, and so scoured the Liquor Control Act, where I found what I was looking for.

Section 40 starts off with a blanket ban on supplying liquor to those under 19 years old:

No person shall knowingly sell, give or otherwise supply liquor to any person under the age of nineteen years…

Later, however, there is section 40.6, Exception re minors:

This section does not apply in the case of liquor given to a person under the age of nineteen years by his parent, guardian, or spouse for beverage purposes, or administered to him by a medical practitioner or dentist for medical purposes.

This, then, is the “glass of wine with Christmas dinner” exemption.

The year one spends as an 18 year old–just 8 months away for our Oliver–is a odd Sargasso Sea of an age.

Once you turn 18, you’re allowed to vote, get married, see explicit movies, get intimate body piercings, and get tattoos.

But you must wait until you’re 19 until you’re allowed to purchase alcohol, buy cigarettes, gamble or buy lottery tickets.

Regardless, it’s nice to find that we’ll be able to have wine with our Christmas dinner this year and not feel like we’re breaking the law by pouring some for Oliver.

A couple of weeks ago I was in Receiver Coffee to pick up the peppermint tea that I often pick up on my way to the office.

While I was waiting for the tea to be assembled, I heard personable Joel, my server, refer to one of his co-workers by name.

“Can you get that for me, Alex?”, he said. Or something to that effect.

Which is how I came to know that Alex’s name is Alex.

I thanked Joel for his service, and he repaid the thanks by casually referring to coworkers Lauren, Luke and Danielle by name.

So now I know their names too.

I immediately made a note on my phone of these names so that I would recall them in the future; names are not my strong suit, so I need all the help I can get.

With echos of Michael Scott, I made a brief notation beside each name, so that I now have memory aids like:

Lauren (that will pop right up)

and

Alex (scruffy hat band guy)

This is an echo of a conversation I had over dinner at my parents’ house with my friend Morgan and his consort back in November. The conversation at the table turned to lubricants for the social graces, and Morgan offered up the suggestion that, upon being introduced to someone, you immediately turn around and call them by name.

“Morgan, this is my father Norman,” I might say; and Morgan would return “Hello, Norman, pleased to meet you.”

Thus imprinting my father’s name in is memory.

The Morgan Strategy (or the Joel Strategy, as it were) has been a great help to me in the closing days of 2017; I’m well on my way to learning the names of all the box office staff here at The Guild (a minor miracle, as there are seemingly dozens of them).

This is a first in a series of year-end blog posts I call Things I Learned in 2017; stay tuned for more.

When the weather started to get cold and damp last week, I noticed that our Jetta was struggling to start in the morning. I never reached the point of needing a boost, but I came awfully close, and I made a point of backing in wherever I parked, just in case.

With Christmas holidays—and the really cold season—coming on, a trip to Dave’s Service Centre was in order, and I dropped the car off this morning.

When I returned at 5:00 p.m. to pick it up, I learned that my battery—the original, 18 year old battery, remarkably—was only cranking out 250 amps, barely enough to start the car on a good day.

Dave swapped in a new battery, with 800 amps of cold-cranking power, and the Jetta starts like new.

Technically batteries aren’t supposed to last 18 years, so kudos to Volkswagen for quality parts.

In the midst of all this, I made a trip to Canadian Tire to get myself an emergency battery booster (I have an inordinate number of friends and neighbours with cars with batteries tucked in the back, boost-unfriendly).

I found, to my surprise, that the worlds of mobile phone chargers and battery jump-starters have merged: I came away with a paperback-book-sized box that will charge my phone and boost my car both, and is a flashlight to boot.

We’re ready for winter.

This year’s Christmas tree, procured from the Charlottetown Farmers’ Market, fit sideways in our trunk.

I was talking to my old friend Stephen Southall on the phone earlier this week. Stephen was at home in Ontario; I was in my car, talking to him on my cell phone’s speakerphone, driving up North River Road, here in Charlottetown.

The quality of our conversation was similar to what one might have experienced from a ship-to-shore telephone in 1947: there were swaths of his conversation that I couldn’t hear, swaths of my conversation that he couldn’t hear, and a lot of jumbled speech in the middle.

Stephen made the cogent point that despite all the supposed advances in technology in recent years, there has never been a worse time to make a clear telephone call: if I’d called Stephen land line to land line in 1995, our call likely would have been clear as a bell. And if it wasn’t, I could have called Island Tel to complain about it.

Thinking about this today, I realized that, sitting here in the Reinventorium at my desk, I have at my disposal eight different ways of making telephone calls.

I decided to call my office voicemail from each of these, and read the identical phrase, by way of allowing me to contrast and compare their voice quality. Here are the results:

I am not an audiophile, so I’m not as well-equipped to judge the results as others, but I find the variation in quality interesting, and also find that samples that “sound worse,” seem to allow for a higher comprehension rate.

The Amazon Echo and Google Home, for example, both sound clearer on the surface, I find it easier to understand the speech on my cell phone, which is less clear, but seems to have a wider frequency range.

It’s also kind of freaky to realize that I have so many options at hand for making telephone calls.