Season 5 Thanksgiving Special: Lost In Tradition

 Season 5 Thanksgiving Special: Lost In Tradition

OCALICONLINE accidentally worked out perfectly for me schedule-wise because the conference happened a week before Thanksgiving, and I only had to work Monday and Tuesday the week of the holiday. This meant that when I drove up to New Story the day before the conference, I only had three school days before break.

On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, at 7:30 p.m., I picked Noah up at his house and we went to dinner at Applebee's (or “A-pplib-ees” as Noah calls it). While we were there, they started playing Christmas music. Usually, I'm very anti-Christmas music before Thanksgiving, but last year my phone stopped working shortly before Christmas, and I didn't get to listen to my Christmas playlist as much as I'd wanted, so I was here for the early music.

After I dropped Noah off at home, I went to my parents' house, but before I went inside I realized that everyone was at my childhood neighbor’s house. I ran in and saw, Megan and Rachel, their parents Stephen and Robin, our friends Tim and Kristin, and Ryan who was back from Chicago. After hanging out for a little bit, my brothers and I drove to the airport and picked up, our grandpa, Pop-pop, and our aunt and uncle, Eva and Zach.

The next day, we went out to lunch at a place downtown called The North Market, and that night I showed Pop-pop, Eva, Zach, and Dad the recording of my OCALICONLINE session (which I only have access to for a short amount of time). On Thanksgiving Day at 1:30, people started showing up. First Mom’s parents/step-parents (Nimba, Papa, Grandpa, and Nana) got here. Then my cousins’ family, the Mitreys (Aunt Melissa, Uncle Andy, Alex/his girlfriend Emma, Maci, Nicholas, and Ellie) arrived, followed very closely by, Aunt Cyndi, her fiance, Jeremy and her kids Kaitlyn and Cameron, and eventually my cousin Austin.

After my family dinner, I went over to my “sister’s” parents' house to see, August, Arden, Kid, Marshall, Barbara, Rich, and a Priest friend that they had over. To my surprise, they were also homing a puppy named Jr. who was in training to be a seeing-eye dog over the holiday. After I hung out with them for about an hour, I returned to my parents’ house and we started playing a game called Catch Phrase (if you don't know what that is look it up and buy it it's amazing!)

Finally, on Friday night, Megan, Rachel, Stephen, and Robin, came over to make cookies, and visit with Pop-pop, Eva, Zach, and Austin, and my parents' best friends from college, Ron and Anita came too!

I'm not gonna lie, I struggled to write this installment… but I think I know why. I think the most Thanksgiving-y Thanksgiving I've experienced since I was a little kid, was Thanksgiving 2020 because Austin came and made my family actually laugh for the first time since the pandemic hit. What I’m saying is usually I'm very good at living in the moment, but on Thanksgiving and other Holidays, I tend to get lost in family traditions… I don't want to speak for everyone, but until someone fights me on it I'm going to say that most people would agree with me. So I'm making a resolution, for Christmas, and all future holidays to make an extra effort to live in the moment!

Hope you all had a Grattastic Thanksgiving!

J. Mitchie Ulibarri

Season 5 Who Am I? Blog 29: OCALICONLINE- Only One Place I Can Go

 OCALICONLINE- Only One Place I Can Go

Last Monday, November 14th, after school I walked around the building, saying goodbye to my coworkers and telling them I would not see them till next Monday (two days after the posting of this installment). One of my co-workers Savannah, who you, the audience, all know as the bride in “A Wedding In Wooster,” was helping out in the after-school program, and she asked, “Wait, why aren't you going to be here for the rest of the week?”

OCALICONLINE was happening from Tuesday to Friday. As a brief refresher, OCALICON is an annual conference with speakers to promote awareness about students with autism and low-incidence disabilities, and this year it's online. My public speaking mentor, and family friend Dr. Brooks, along with Noah's soccer coach Katie and I, were doing a presentation called “Using Contact-Based Interventions to Create Inclusive Learning Spaces.” I didn't blame Savannah for forgetting because the presentation for OCALICONLINE had to be pre-recorded. So at the end of September, I had to take a half-day to record it, and on top of that in October I took another half day to do a separate public speaking event in Dr. Brooks’ class.

While I was excited, since I've been working to get to OCALICON since the summer of 2019, I was slightly disappointed that it was an online event. “Like yeah,” I said to Savannah, “this is going to look great on my resume, and I'm still going to be able to network, but if it was in person I would have gotten to stay in this Swanky Hotel downtown and…you know me, I'm way too social for virtual!”

Savannah laughed and said, “Mitch, you're already off, don't just stay at home…go to a coffee shop and attend. Treat yourself!”

“Savannah, You're a genius!” I exclaimed.

On Tuesday at 11:45 a.m. I went to Crimson Cup Coffee, got a frozen hot chocolate, and waited 15 minutes until the conference kicked off. The conference started with the three keynote speakers, Haben Girma (the first Deafblind person to graduate from Harvard Law), Judy Heumann (who has been a disability advocate her entire life after contracting polio and becoming wheelchair-bound at age two), and Temple Grandin (an American scientist who has Autism and is most famous for her work on animal behavior and for the humane treatment of animals going to slaughter). As I watched I thought to myself, someday I'm going to be a keynote speaker!

I spent Tuesday through Thursday, going to presentations, getting people's emails for later networking, and learning a lot about advocacy and what other people are doing. Then on Friday morning, at 8:45 our session started. It began with Dr. Brooks explaining the class she teaches at OSU to incoming gen ed teachers on what inclusion is. She gave some stats about how many special needs kids are in the gen ed system, and how she knows me. I then took over and gave a condensed version, of the presentation I give in her class, which is basically a bunch of stories about my experiences in school. And finally, Katie took over and talked about her and Dr. Brooks’ findings about the impact of my presentation.

Basically, each time before I would speak in Dr. Brooks’ class, the students would fill out a survey, and they would fill out the same one afterward. I'm not even going to try to touch on the statistics, mostly because I’m the least academic out of the three of us, and I couldn't do it justice in that format, but in extremely dumbed-down terms, having someone on the spectrum explain their story, put a face to Autism and positively impacted these incoming teacher’s understanding of why inclusion is critical to their role as teachers. The recording ended with Dr. Brooks saying, “Hope everyone has a great day…or a Greattastic day as Mitch would say!”

“You beat me to the punch.” Recording me chimed in. As the session ended, I smiled because I knew that there's only one place I can go from here- Up.

Have a Greattastic day and be safe!

J. Mitchie Ulibarri

Season 5 Who Am I? Blog 28: What's The Verdict?

What's The Verdict?

After work on Saturday, April 30th, 2022, Arden drove to August’s apartment. When she drove up she saw an older woman wearing a yellow sun hat and yellow pants sitting in the garden watering plants. August came out to meet her and after they hugged the two walked inside. As they passed, the older woman yelled, “Hi Arden!”

Back in February, I saw August and Kid waiting in the circle when she had come to town. We hung out as much as we could, but August, Ben, and I all needed to get to bed since we all had a big day coming up. Despite the fact that we didn't really do anything, August inspired me to once again make a surprise trip up to Colorado. I didn't want to go anywhere for the upcoming spring break because when I went to Colorado over spring break 2020 the world ended so there was just a little too much PTSD. However, I had only used one PTO day for my cousin Paige's wedding, so I had a few to kill.

Kid had a project for her photography class due on Easter Monday 2022, so on Holy Saturday she and I had a photoshoot. When we got back to her house to upload the photos to her computer Kid was texting someone very excitedly. I asked her what was going on and she replied, “Arden is moving to Cincinnati!” I immediately called Arden and she said that she was still “trying to get her ducks in a row,” but so her roommate Taylor could plan, she needed to know in two weeks. Coincidentally two weeks was when August and I had planned for me to go up to Colorado and surprise Arden and Ben.

I flew in on Thursday, April 28th, 2022. That night I met August’s roommate, Gill, and we surprised Ben, though it was not as epic as we had hoped. Now, August and Gill lived in Arvada, which is an hour away from Fort Collins, where Arden and Taylor lived. Arden was working for a group of hospitals that she would rotate between. She worked at one on that Saturday that was very close to Arvada.

On Saturday morning, August and I got coffee and did some work that we had to do. When we had finished, we rushed to the thrift store and bought a yellow sun hat, and yellow maternity pants. When we got back to the apartment I threw on one of August’s shirts, the sun hat, and the pants, and eagerly waited in the garden for Arden to arrive.

“Hi Arden!” I yelled as they passed. The look on Arden’s face when she realized that I was the older woman was priceless… It looked like she was malfunctioning. We spent the night, hanging out, talking to Gill, and then we all watched a movie. When we were getting ready for bed I asked Arden, “So…what's the verdict? Are you moving to Cincinnati?”

In typical Arden fashion, she replied, “Well… It's still a little unclear, but that's the hope!”

On Friday, November 4, 2022, I drove to Cincinnati to celebrate Arden finally moving back to Ohio! As I pulled into town it was hard not to laugh at myself. As you may remember, Arden moved to Colorado at the very beginning of this series, and I spent the entirety of Season 1 having an existential crisis because she and my other “sisters” were moving away. While that whole situation was important because it forced me to grow, I think it’s hilarious that I spent so much time stressing out about it when now 3 of the 4 now live back in Ohio! The moral of the story here is don’t stress out because, in the end, everything works out the way it is supposed to!

Have a Greattastic day and be safe!

J. Mitchie Ulibarri

Season 5 Who Am I? Blog 27: The Portal (Part 1)

 The Portal

In the first season finale of this series, I helped my “sister” Arden make a surprise trip back from Colorado for Christmas. From that point on, these surprises became a regular occurrence in our friend group, The Greattastic Adventurers, even becoming the main story arc of season two. In November of 2021, August followed in Arden’s Footsteps and moved to Colorado. By the end of January 2022, I knew that August’s (now ex) boyfriend, Ben, would be moving out to Colorado too, and it just so happened that he moved there on the same day that I ended up moving into my apartment. Finally, “the circle” as it is lovingly called is a cul-de-sac that is right outside my parents' house.

Originally I had planned to move out of my parents' house about a week before it ended up happening because the bureaucracy of getting approved delayed my plans. Two days before I moved into my apartment, Mom, Luke, Shane, and I, went to the store, bought a few things for my room, and then went to the apartment to open my mattress and let it air out. Coincidentally while we were there, August texted me and asked for my address and if I had moved in yet. I said no and explained the updated plan.

The following day August called me. At first, our conversation was normal but I could tell that she was a little out of breath. “Are you okay?” I asked.

“Yeah…” she said, “I’m in the Rockies, and it's so cold I'm pretty sure I'm going to die!” I laugh at the dramatic way she said it and that egged her on. She kept getting more and more dramatic until she eventually exclaimed, “Oh my gosh, what’s that?!” After a brief pause, she continued, “Mitchie! Go outside! I see a portal that opens to the circle!”

All I wanted to do was go to bed because I knew that moving out was going to be a big ordeal. As a result, this was a very rare occasion in which I was not in the mood for shenanigans. After she tried to prompt me for a little bit, the phone crackled and she hung up. I texted her to see if she was okay and she just continued to prompt me to go to the circle.

After about five minutes, Kid texted me. The text basically said that she was doing homework, but August was harassing her saying to send me out to the circle to see “a portal of some sort.” As soon as I read the word “portal” in Kid’s text, it all clicked. August was in town, to drive with Ben to Colorado and she had asked me for my address, hoping that I had moved in, so she could surprise me at my new place. Since I had not she had to come up with a half-baked slightly lamer plan.

“August, I know you're in town!” I said after she pick up the phone.

“No, I'm not, I'm in Rocky Mountain National Park!” she replied.

“Fine!” I said, “Send me a picture!”

She sent me one and it was indeed of her at Rocky Mountain National Park. However, being the genius that I am, I saved the photo to my camera roll, and it was time-stamped for 2:30 pm the day before!

“Oh…I didn't know you could do that…” August said as I ran out of my parents' house to meet her.

To Be Continued…

Season 5 Who Am I? Blog 26: Maintaining The Empire

 Maintaining The Empire

My goal for Season 3 was to build an “Empire Of Friends.” This was originally my goal In Season 2, but Season 2 ended with Covid hitting America. Since Covid was still a major thing in Season 3, I was not able to achieve my goal, at least in the way I originally intended. In the season finale, I came to the realization, that I already had this “Empire Of Friends.”

Last month, Marshall, Kid, Granny, and I, went to see Hamilton. In the installment I wrote about that event (Wait For It), I mentioned how, my friend Greg, originally introduced me to the musical. Well, as I was writing the paragraph about Greg, I suddenly realized, that I had not seen him since his, and Temi's wedding, in June of 2021.

Okay, I say, “suddenly realized,” but that might be a slight exaggeration. See, at the wedding, I reconnected, with Greg's sister, Melody, and she has since introduced me to her boyfriend, Rob, and so I either hang out with one or both of them, from time to time. This is to say that Greg has come up in casual conversation before, and so I’ve been aware of how long it's been since I saw him… But when I was writing about him in this particular instance, it just hit me. I mean this is a guy who I love as a “brother” in the same way that I love the Andersons as my “sisters” and I haven't seen him since June of last year let alone talked to him…there's something wrong here!

As I was kind of freaking out about this, I had to tell myself a lot has changed for me since the wedding. I’ve gone through two breakups, started my job at New Story, and quit my job at Kroger. I've moved into an apartment and got a roommate…and all the drama that goes along with that. Greg has been pretty busy too. I read on Facebook that he graduated from Cornell in the spring and that he and Tami have since moved to Nashville so she can go to law school!

Our busy schedules have not been the only issue. Object permanence is the ability to know that something still exists when you're not looking at it. I don’t struggle with this ability more than the average person, except when it comes to texting. I will get a text and see it and think, I will reply in a few minutes, and then I’ll put my phone away and completely forget about it.

Last Tuesday, November 1st, was the night that Greg and I had scheduled our phone call for. We talked for about an hour and a half and caught up on each other's lives. During our conversation, Greg told me about how over the pandemic, to stay in contact, he and his Cornell friends, started playing games online together, and he asked me if I wanted to start joining them. I said yes so that we can continue to stay in contact.

I have a ton of friends. Honestly, it’s more friends than I thought was possible, back when I first got my autism diagnosis. But this situation taught me that I need to put more effort into maintaining “The Empire Friends.” Like yeah, my “sisters,” Marshall, Noah, Anna, and my family know that I suck at texting, and communicating when I'm not literally standing right next to them…but, I think I need to start reaching out more to everyone else!

Have a Greattastic Day and be safe

J. Mitchie Ulibarri

Before I end this installment, I just wanted to say congratulations to Noah for making it onto the first-ever blind soccer men’s national team! Never doubted you for a second man!!!