Season 3: The Empire of Friends Thanksgiving Special: The Man Who Saved Thanksgiving

 The Man Who Saved Thanksgiving

I talked about my Aunt Eva, my fairly new Uncle Zach, and their wedding in the very first installment of this season. Well, every Thanksgiving since she was three, Eva (and since their dating years, Zach) and my grandpa, who we call Pop-Pop, have come from Florida to Ohio. My parents, my three brothers, Ryan, Luke, and Josh, and I look forward to their Thanksgiving visit every year. Yet another thing this stupid virus has ruined!

The day before Thanksgiving, Luke complained about how much this Thanksgiving was going to stink. Not only were Pop-Pop, Eva, and Zach not coming, but our entire extended family would not be coming, we usually host 20-25 for dinner at our house. I was getting annoyed because he said everything I was thinking, but that I was trying to ignore. Luckily for us, there was one other person who could still come.

My cousin Austin was born and raised in Florida, and following in my dad's footsteps; he went to college in Ohio. Shortly after his graduation, he got a job in Columbus. He stayed with my family until he found his apartment. Saying Austin is eccentric is putting it lightly. He is the most quotable person I've ever met because he has a real knack for taking everyday situations and twisting them into pure comedic gold!

The last time we saw Austin was back in January for Ryan's birthday. After that, Austin got busy with work, and then you know, the world ended. At dinner the day before Thanksgiving, Josh texted Austin and asked him if he wanted to come over for Thanksgiving dinner.

"Mitchell-Maannn!" Austin exclaimed when he saw me.

"Austy-Aust!" I replied, mirroring his tone.

After a little more catching up, it was time for dinner. We said grace, served ourselves, and started to eat. I don't think I have laughed this hard for this long since early April, and I think my family would agree! Austin was exactly the boost we needed to start the holiday season!

Hope You Had A Greattastic Thanksgiving! 

J. Mitchie Ulibarri

Season 3: The Empire of Friends Blog 21: The Girl In The Church

 The Girl In The Church

August recently moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. After I got my driver's license, I texted the group chat I'm in with my "sisters" and told them the news. After everyone congratulated me August asked me when I would be driving up to see her. I told her not for a while because I wasn't confident enough to make the three-hour drive on my own yet. It was at this point that Aspen suggested that she and I drive up there that weekend.

We couldn't go that weekend because August and her roommate had not completely unpacked everything yet. We weren't able to go the following week because of conflicts with Aspen's schedule. So three weeks after I got my license, Aspen and I drove to Pittsburgh.

After nearly three hours of driving, Aspen and I drove through a tunnel, and on the other side was the magnificent city of Pittsburgh! As we drove through the town, we couldn't believe that we were still in the midwest because the curvy roads felt more like California than Ohio. After another 30 minutes, we found ourselves at August's apartment. After we ate dinner, August drove us around the city, then we went back to the apartment to hang out.

Back at the apartment, I started stimming (hand flapping, squealing, and bouncing on the balls of my feet) because I was excited to be there. Eventually, we went to bed and got up at nine the next morning. Because it was Sunday, we knew we had to go to church, but we decided to go at 6:00 pm instead of in the morning because of daylight savings time.

We explored Pittsburgh all day and the whole time, I was cracking jokes and making the girls laugh. Throughout our childhood, we had an ongoing joke where I would say I was the funny one in the group, and the girls would disagree.

"You really are the funny one!" August said after I cracked one particularly funny joke.

"I told you!" I replied.

"I mean, I think we're all pretty funny!" Aspen said.

"I mean yeah," I agreed, "but comedy is all I have!"

The girls told me I was wrong. I decided not to joke about my "blossoming" teaching career and love life because it would have been depressing. I kind of wish I would have gone for it, though, because retroactively, the joke would have been incredibly ironic!

We got to the church right as Mass was about to start. August got into the pew first, followed by Aspen, and I sat at the end of the pew closest to the aisle. On the other side of the aisle, in another pew, was a beautiful woman. She saw me, and immediately she started stimming. I don't mean anything subtle; I mean full-on, bouncing her legs, rocking back and forth, and squealing! On top of that, when it was time for us to receive Holy Communion, I ended up in line behind her, which caused her to stim even more!

I don't bring this up to call out this woman on her stims. I bring it up because this girl thought I was cute, and while I will never see her again, at least I know there are some people out there who do. Sometimes you can assume the worst things about yourself and your future, especially now… But no matter what, those negative thoughts are always wrong!

Have A Greattastic Day and Be Safe!

J. Mitchie Ulibarri

Season 3: The Empire of Friends Blog 20: Game Night!

 Game Night!

As I stated in a previous installment, over the summer, Marshall worked in Montrose, Colorado, helping run the machines that remove contaminants and sanitize N95 masks. While there, Marshall worked with a man named Tim. After introducing themselves, Marshall asked Tim where he was from. It just so happened that Tim also lived in Columbus before getting the job! After working together with the whole summer, Marshall and Tim's site closed down, but they promised to meet up when they were back in Ohio.

As a result of the summer job, Marshall got a full-time job working as a research associate at P&G! Between the new job, still going to school part-time, and all the other crazy variables of life, Marshall and I haven't been able to go on as many adventures as we did Pre-Covid. Now that doesn't mean that we haven't seen each other most weekends. He usually comes to my house and does homework while I do writing stuff. There's not a lot of content to write about for these events because it's the same thing every weekend—most of the time.

The last time he came over, we had a "break day." The weekend before was Tim's girlfriend, Holly's birthday. In the middle of our session, Marshall and I drove to meet Tim and Holly to give her a gift. We had to get back to work, so we left fairly quickly, but this led Tim and Holly to invite Marshall and me to a board game night with them and one of their friends the next weekend.

We spent Sunday afternoon playing tennis with Kid, and around 5:30, Marshall and I drove to the other side of town to Tim and Holly's house. We walked into the house and were immediately met by Tim and Holly's dog, Samson. Samson is a puppy, maybe a few months old, and let me tell you; he liked me! The entire night as we ate dinner and played games, he was either looking at me or jumping on me.

After Tim and Holly calmed Samson down, they introduced us to their friend Janeel. We sat down, and Marshall and I spent most of the time… Okay, fine, who am I kidding? I spent most of the time telling stories about Marshall and my adventures. As I told our stories, I came to a sudden realization! 

COVID-19 has completely wrecked this year, and I don't think anyone would argue that. Those new human interactions, those chance meetings, those crazy nights, or a lack thereof have made this situation so hard and complicated. It's not that I haven't known this since early April. Still, that fact has become diluted by the isolation and the abnormality of life. I hope and pray that someday soon, we can all be together again! 

Have a Greattastic Day and be Safe! 

J. Mitchie Ulibarri

Season 3: The Empire of Friends: Blog 19: The Rubber Ducky Incident

 The Rubber Ducky Incident

We have a flat roof over our back patio, and this summer, Mom was growing tomato plants on it. One day it had been very windy, and some of the tomato plants had been knocked over. I was brainstorming what I would write for the Rules For Greattastic Life installment that week when Mom came in and opened the window to water the plants. When she saw the knocked-over plants, she exclaimed, "Aw, poor puppies!" Even though she was referring to the plants, I immediately thought that somehow little dogs had ended up on the roof. I'm very high functioning on the autism spectrum, but there are a lot of times when I still don't understand things as much as I "should."

Case and point: Dad owns an art studio, and if he finds random stuff, he thinks of something that he could use it for. We've had this rubber yellow rain suit for years. Mom recently found it, and Dad asked if she could bring it to the studio. Mom left it out but forgot to bring it with her when she went in. It was supposed to rain pretty heavily that night, and I had to ride my bike to work at six.

This suit came in two parts. The top half was just a yellow rain jacket, but the bottom had a few problems. First of all, they were way too big for me. Second of all, they had suspenders on them, and I didn't know until later that I was supposed to wear the suspenders under the jacket. I got everything on, looked at myself in the mirror, and thought, Yeah, there's no problem with this.

It had been raining pretty heavily when I was getting everything on, but it was only a sprinkle by the time I got to Kroger. So I went into the store to clock in, looking like Georgie from "IT," and people looked at me and snickered. At this point, I realized I'd made a bad fashion choice and had a few very traumatic flashbacks to sixth grade. I checked to see what time I was on carts, and the schedule said I was on right away. I said to myself, "Self, you're going to go on carts, and then you're going to go to the break room, and take this off and forget this ever happened!"

I went outside, and as I was about to bring in my first row, I heard someone call my name from behind me. I turned around and saw my coworker Maya sitting in her car, motioning for me to come over.

"Mitchell," She asked. "Why are you dressed like a freaking rubber ducky?" I let her have her moment of glory and talked to her for another minute before returning it to work. After getting a few more rows of carts, I saw a motorized cart for older people sitting out in the rain. There was a massive puddle in the chair, but I assumed I was waterproof because I was wearing the "ducky" suit.

Unfortunately, as I said before, the pants were too big for me, and the jeans I was wearing were very loose-fitting. So I sat down on the electric cart, my butt displaced the water, and as it rose, it went down both pairs of pants. When the cold water got to my crotch, I jumped up in shock, and it ran down my leg!

I waddled back to Maya (fulfilling the prophecy and becoming a full-on rubber duck) and told her what happened. After I explained it to her, I tried to rationalize my way out of the situation by saying, "I can totally take this off, I'll just tell them what happened!"

"Mitchell," she replied, "You look like The Man with the Yellow Hat! No one is going to believe that story; they'll just think you are saying that to get out of the awkwardness of the situation!"

I decided to stay on carts for another hour until my pants had dried. But as soon as I made that decision, the light sprinkle that had still been going on this whole time stopped completely! So I ended up walking around in this yellow abomination, with no way to take it off, but no reason to be wearing it! Everything ended up alright in the end. It was a problem that resolved itself, but it was very frustrating! I just thought I would tell you because I think it's funny, and these are the sort of things that happen to me.

Have a Greattastic Day And Be Safe!

J. Mitchie Ulibarri

Season 3: The Empire of Friends Blog 18: Play Another Song

 Play Another Song

About a year ago, I mentioned that my goal was to get my driver's license. Shortly after introducing you to this goal, I made my first step towards achieving it by getting my temps. I mostly practiced driving by going to and from work, and because my parents were so busy with their art studio, we didn't practice much more than that. When Covid-19 hit, I still didn't do a lot of driving because there wasn't anywhere I needed to go during the lockdown.

When the lockdown ended, my parents became busy with the studio again. In July, I knew I had to make practicing for the drivers test my priority because my temps would expire on 11/15/2020. Because of Mom and Dad's busy schedule, I asked my grandpa, who we call Papa, if he could take me to practice. My first few times in the car with Papa, we only drove around Clintonville, the community where I live. We only started working on maneuverability at the beginning of September.

At the same time, I had a meeting with my counselor. I told her that I hadn't scheduled my driving test because I still had two months before my temps expired. I was also just about to start practicing maneuverability. She told me that I should probably schedule it sooner rather than later because the BMV has been busy due to the lockdown. I scheduled my test for 10/21/2020, and Papa and I spent all of our time practicing maneuverability.

The Ohio maneuverability test is set up as follows: Two cones are placed parallel to each other nine feet apart. Two more cones are put in the same position, 20 feet behind the first two. A fifth cone is centered another 20 feet away from the second two. To pass the test's maneuverability portion, a driver has to pull up to the first two cones and line up front bumper the car with them. The driver must then look both ways and drive between all four cones without hitting any of the cones. Depending on the instructor's direction, the driver must turn right or left at the fifth cone, straighten the car up and stop with the back bumper lined up with the cone. After that, all the driver has to do is reverse back through the cones, again without hitting them.

Pulling through the cones wasn't as much of a problem for me as reversing through them was! My first time practicing, it took me about an hour and 50 minutes out of two hours to get a streak of successful times going. My second time practicing, everything was going perfectly until about 20 minutes in, I hit a cone and started doubting myself. As my mental state deteriorated over the next hour and 40 minutes, I gradually hit more cones.  

The third practice went very similarly to the second except toward the end of the two hours when my doubt was at its peak; Papa told me to turn the car off come over to him. He asked me what was wrong, and I talked him through everything that was going on.

Papa sat, I thought for a second and then said, "You know what you should do! You should imagine the cones as people!"

"Yeah, cuz that’s gonna help with the stress!" I replied sarcastically.

"I'm serious!" He replied. "Think about it, what do you do when you have a song stuck in your head?"

"You play another song," I answered.

"Exactly!" Papa exclaimed. "Right now you're overthinking, but if you focus on making the cones people it would distract you you'll be overthinking more about that than the fact that this is practice for a test!"

I got back in the car and imagined cones one and two as August and Arden, cones three and four as Aspen and Kid, and cone five as Marshall. When we practiced for a fourth time a few days later, I only "killed" Aspen once over the entire two hours! Quite honestly, over the remaining practices, Aspen was the hardest to keep "alive," but I eventually managed it.

In my original plan for this installment, this last paragraph was going to be about the test itself. Honestly, however, there's not enough content for me to write regarding it. The only thing you need to know is something you probably already figured out —I passed!!! I'm so excited to finally have my license and I can't wait to see the new possibilities that this opens up!

Have a Greattastic Day, and Be Safe!

J. Mitchie Ulibarri

Season 3: The Empire of Friends: Blog 17: More Years Lost

 More Years Lost

    Eleven years ago today (10/15/2020) started the worst week of my life. On this day in 2009, my best friend Samantha McCarthy, who I lovingly refer to as S.M, passed away after a long battle with a rare blood disorder called Fanconi Anemia. I haven't talked about S.M. recently because all of the Sam's Fans events that I would be heavily involved with were all moved online due to COVID-19. For those of you who don't know, Sam's Fans is a nonprofit organization that raises money to support music and art therapy in Ohio hospitals, founded by S.M's mom, Nikki! I make an effort to go to her grave two times a year; once on her birthday, March 15th, and once on the anniversary of her “heavenly” birthday, October 15. This year, S.M's birthday landed on the weekend, just when the quarantine started. I could not go on March 15th, so I made an extreme effort to go today.

I got into the driver's seat, and Mom and got into the passenger seat with the flowers I had bought yesterday. When we got into the cemetery, I drove to St. Elizabeth's lot, and Mom and I got out of the car. As I put the flowers on her grave, I started to think about the problems I have with this day:

    I didn't find out that S.M. had passed away until the morning after. When Mom and Dad told me, I didn't completely believe them. Not that I thought they were lying to me about it, but when you are told about the death of someone you love, it takes a while for your emotions to catch up to the facts- at least that's how it worked for me. It took me until the night of the viewing to realize that S.M. was gone. Standing in the funeral home with her family and friends made me face the reality of the situation. From that point on, I considered October 15th the worst day of the year. Even after I started acknowledging my grief and reconnected with S.M's family and joined Sam's Fans, October 15th was still a day that I did not enjoy. That remained true, until last year.  

    My birthday is on August 19th. As a present last year, Mom and Dad bought me an airline ticket to visit my "sister" Arden, that September. I stayed with Arden for two weeks, and one night we went out for dinner. Over dinner, we started to have a deep conversation, as I typically do with Arden. It happened to be about S.M. and some lingering grief. Arden gave me the best advice that she could, and I wrote a blog about it. Unfortunately, sometimes the English language fails to describe emotions correctly, which was one of those times. I wasn't accurately explaining to Arden what I was going through. As a result, the advice she gave me was partially incomplete. Luckily S.M’s mom, Nikki read the blog I wrote, and she filled in the gaps with what I was trying to say and added onto Arden's advice. Arden and Nikki's joint advice helped me finally accept everything that had happened after nearly ten years.

    

    As the 10th anniversary approached a month later, I wasn't feeling as bad as I usually did. I'm not complaining, I took it as a good sign, but I didn't think it would last, especially not this year. S.M. was 11 years old when she died. In Nikki's own words from today on, "we will forever be going in the direction of more years lost than what we had." I guess what I'm saying is even though I am as okay as I am ever going to be with this, I feel guilty for not being as sad as I used to feel on this anniversary. Especially this year because it is such a monumental moment. But I know S.M. doesn't want me to be sad; that's not the kind of person she was. She was one of the most positive people I have ever met. So for all of the people who knew her, do not be sad. Instead, spread positivity because that's what keeps her spirit alive! Every time you make someone smile, or laugh, or help them work through something, you are doing what she would have done.

Have a Greattastic day and be safe!

J. Mitchie Ulibarri

You can find more information about Sam's Fans at www.samsfans.org or by following them on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @samsfans15!

Season 3: The Empire of Friends Blog 16: Flat Earthers Got Nothing On Us

 Flat Earthers Got Nothing On Us

August’s 24 birthday was on 9/29/2020. Originally Arden, Marshall, and I planned to surprise August, Aspen, and Kid by having Arden fly in from Colorado for her birthday. The plan was for Arden to fly in on the 24th and then we would hike the Smoky Mountains on the weekend. The problem was that August had to have surgery to get some hardware removed from her arm. She had a sledding accident a few years ago and recently it had started causing problems. The reason she had to get her surgery directly before her birthday was that on 10/6/2020 August will be moving to Pittsburgh. As a result of the surgery we had to keep the weekend pretty low-key, and just by sheer coincidence, everybody found out about the surprise.

Upon hearing about Arden's return for the weekend, Ben, August’s boyfriend decided to come to town from Pittsburgh to celebrate as well. We had an amazing weekend and did a ton of insane stuff. However, the thing I'm going to focus on now is an argument that pinned August and me against Arden and Aspen!

It started when we were all sitting around the kitchen table talking about small hikes in the area. Someone made a comment about Aspen not being an outdoorsy person. Her defense was that it wasn't that she wasn't outdoorsy it was just that she didn't like Ohio’s spin on nature because it's all the same.

“Well, all nature is the same,” I replied.

“What? No, it's not. Is a hill the same as a mountain?” Aspen retorted.

“Yes, they are!” I said matter-of-factly. “Generally speaking, both are mounds of earth that build to the sky. The difference is one is bigger than the other!”

Aspen and I went back and forth, escalating the conversation with each word until we started talking about the ocean. Aspen said that the ocean is different from the rest of nature and I said, “The ocean is not part of the earth though!”

“Yes, it is!” Arden and Aspen exclaimed.

“Guys,” I explained, “If you take water off of the Earth it's just the crust! The water is on top of the earth!”

 I will admit, while I was arguing my point, it was not as clear as it was in the quote above. It is clearer here because I’ve had a week to think about this. Even though I wasn't saying exactly what I wanted to say, August still understood my point and took my side. We spent about 15 minutes arguing back and forth before August, abandoned me because she got tired of fighting!

Without August to back me up, the other two won the argument, at least that is until Arden knocked a cup of water onto the kitchen floor. “See!” I proclaimed pointing to the water on the floor, “The water is on top of the floor!” This reignited the fight and after about five more minutes we figured out that we were saying the same thing, We were just defining what the word “Earth” meant differently.

Arden and Aspen were talking about the Earth as an ecosystem and August and I were strictly talking about the globe. After a week of not trying to think about this incident, I realized how this argument serves as a great depiction of autism. When talking to people on the spectrum, sometimes if what they are saying doesn't make sense at first, it could be exactly what you are thinking!

Have A Greattastic Day And Be safe!

J. Mitchie Ulibarri