judiff says

Yesterday when we were walking around Leamington Spa with lovingboth we found a surprise Elephant Playground (er like a playground for small humans that is elephant-themed not a playground for elephants). It’s really cool but we forgot to take a picture of the climbing elephant becos we were like too busy interacting with it

It’s quite new and we found this news article about it:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1j96pnxde2o

(No, I don’t like know why the climbing holds on the elephants are aeroplane themed - they look like weird aeroplane parasites).

There weren’t any like chronological-children around so we got to play a bit (there wasn’t like an age limited written anywhere). There was a super cool thing of like a mosaic of different ground textures that you could like jump between and some inset-into-the-ground trampolines as well as like balancing logs and usual playground things (and some playground thinks adapted for wheelchairs etc.). And a Widget symbol Communication Board which was cool.

It felt like safe to do the balancing logs with lovingboth around becos he like mostly gets how our dyspraxia works. (We can like handle about the same level of challenge as like primary school children but obviously children’s playgrounds aren’t built for adult bodies and adult playgrounds are usually just “Green Gyms” which as well as being boring* are like often too much sequencing and coordination). And we did swinging on the Wooden Elephant’s tusks (there just like aren’t enough opportunities for supported brachiation in most human-built places). But we didn’t have the breath to use the trampolines for long. We did do some jumping on the different textures. It was very exciting and we got a bit of like the good-flavour of sensory overload where our words start to go but it’s happy.

lovingboth like slightly climbed the Wooden Elephant and bounced on the trampolines (but there wasn’t a spider web swing like the one he a bit used to monopolise at Big Bi Fun Day). He is like a good person to go to a playground with.


* I don’t like know why grown ups aren’t allowed cool stuff like elephants

Happy Box Day - like hoping you have like gotten to do as much sitting in a box as you like.

So, like I think there are fewer big boxes that a grown-up-size person could sit in around now. But it might of just like seemed like there were more really big boxes when our body was smaller? Becos our like reference was smaller so they seemed big? But like I think big things get packaged differently now (and things like tellys are a different shape now anyway and come in flat boxes you can’t sit in).

Wondering why one of the Sensory Toy/Disability Aid companies haven’t thought of selling people-size cardboard boxes as like a sensory diet thing (like unless the have but the algorithms hate sharing the boxy good news?)

We are feeling a bit not well so we like tried making homemade spaghetti hoops as like a comfort food (well, not like making the hoops - we like bought them as dried pasta - but cooking them and making the orange sauce).

We used the recipe in Catherine Phipps’ Everyday Pressure Cooking (but like halved becos it’s like written to be enuff for four people) only without sticking in an onion or any fresh basil (we didn’t have any). And it does taste mostly like tin sgetti hoops but not quite as soggy. But the sauce is more red than orange so we like need to experiment with that a bit

So like becos of ill and like being exhausted-but-not-sleepy and how being on steroids makes are eyes want to do screen-ness less we are like listening to lots of audiobooks. We like set one to play for a chunk of time (it’s like nice if they have longish chapters* so we can set it to finish at the end of one and not having to just pick an arbitrary time) and if we drowse part way though we can like re-listen and if we are still awake we can play another chunk

We are like not quite half-way through one about the great library of Ashurbanipal - The Library of Ancient Wisdom by Selina Wisnom

Like becos the clay tablets got accidentally preserved by being “baked” in a fire the “library” includes a bunch of tablets that prolly weren’t meant to be kept along with ones Ashurbanipal’s librarians were like deliberately curating. And that includes some that are like obviously students learning to write in cuneiform. I really liked hearing that there’s one with a bite mark - they can tell from like dental analysis that the student must of been 12 or 13 years old which is not like typical toddler biting-all-the-things age. So I’m wondering if they were like maybe dyslexic and getting really frustrated and bit in anger or if they were autistic and just really needed to stim?




*sometimes the setting it to turn off after playing more than one chapter thing works and sometimes it doesn’t. Don’t know why and like don’t have spoons for trying to find a fix right now…

So we rewatched Paper Girls (it’s on Amazon) and it’s like sooooo Good (well like the characters and actors are soooo good - some of the CGI is like a bit Rubbish) and now we are all annoyed again that there wasn’t a second series and it ends on like kind of a cliffhanger …

(And like even if it got rescued now for a proper ending like Farscape did then the Paper Girl actor girls are like prolly already too old to be the Paper Girl character girls)


But it is like worth watching because having SiFi about cool 12 year old girls on bikes is Awesome. And it’s like realistic about like how stuff like having your first period when you are (like not by your own choice so you dint get to pack supplies) time-travelling would work…
And there’s like lots of cool women and Queer rep and talking about sexism and racism and society stuff as well as laser guns and robots (and like without the sociology stuff taking over and stopping it being a good story)




(Like I know we could read the comics to find out what happens next but comics are like hard for our eyes/flavour of dyslexia)

Happy Bunny Festival / Spring Equinox

Like wishing you all Sunshine and Stompyness (and chocolate)

We’ve been watching Star Trek:Lower Decks.

It’s like cool and I like the references to other Star Treks (Stars Trek?) but we can only watch a bit of it before we get like overwhelmed and headachey. We’ve like had that with some other animated shows before (but like not everything animated).

Wondering if it’s like a visual stress thing from the frame rate (cos the animated bits of the cross over with Star Trek Strange New Worlds felt easier) or if it’s like a more general sensory thing to everything being bright and loud and fast?

So like the illegally released lynxes in Scotland that keep being in the news? Do they smell like horrible teenage boy deodorant/body spray?
Or Do they just smell equally strongly/bad end that was the inspiration for the spray?
Or do they just smell like cats really and are like being like horribly slandered by being compared to teenage boys who like use so much smell spray they are almost flamable?


Hoping that these lynxes like find a nice home and there can be properly rewilded ones doing (and maybe not so smelly) wild lynx things

conflux like suggested we could tell people our nephrectomy scars are from a Velociraptor attack if we don’t want to have to do lots of complicated explaining…

But like Velociraptors are only about half a metre tall so it would like be hard from them to reach kidney height. Do you think people would believe us if we said it was a pack of Velociraptors on Pogo Stocks?




We have never seen that Jurassic Park film - it came out when we were at Uni and like pretty much only went to the arty cinema that was like kind of a semi detached part of the Film and Photography Museum (where the Clangers lived) but one of our favourite podcasters (Hannah McGregor from Witch Please, Material Girls and Hot and Bothered) has like written a book about it. She did like a quick mentioning it at the start of one of her podcasts (even though the main subject of that one was a soppy Romance filium not dinosaurs) and she said that the Velociraptors in it are like Feminist Role Models and we need to “embrace the mantle of the Velociraptor and devour the oppressor” …

When we went to Kew with Dad (and saw lots of really cool trees) we found a stuffy grey squirrel. Which is really exciting becos most stuffy squirrels are red (which means like orange) and we are like not completely convinced that red squirrels aren’t like mythical (whenever we go to a place where they are supposed to exist we never see them. Like even if someone points to one that is like allegedly right there it’s always like mysteriously moved right before we look … which seems like suspicious). And we’ve been wanting one that looks like the actual squirrels that we see in the world.

Now we have one - and it’s just in time for Squirrel Festival/Autumn Equinox so that’s extra cool.

One of the Smalls wants to call hir Jeremiah but we don’t. It would only end up with lists of gloomy squirrel prophecies and like no one wants that…