My Wildlife holidays.

yes I dont know when she will understand though or if she ever will or not cause iv been doing that for more than a few years now. unfortunatly she doesnt have autism support  groups or any other  autistic people like me to help her understand things just me. ever since i was younger shes allways only ever reached. out to people who are parents of people that arnt born with autism. the only parent she ever knew that had someone with autism she used to keep in touch with was a parent of someone called Rickie but she only spoke to the parents while i went off with there son. he had aspergers but also a speech disorder and behavior probloms. its the behavior problom bit there parents struggled with mainly. for me I dont have behavior probloms but due to my autism and learning disability Mum used to have probloms with me in shops or public places cause I got anxious or overwhelmed and I would either go quiet and not respond or the anxiety and my raiseing my voice un intentionaly and un awarely  in atempts to try and be understood due to whats causeing my anxiety and i struggle with exspressing my feellings in a way they can be understood when it comes to my autism and given i was only a child and i wasnt told i have autism until i was 10 i was very comfused and even after i was told the struggles remained and didnt get better if anything the struggle me and my family have when my autism came into play actualy  got worse as i got older rather than better particularly when i was in my mid to late teens but no one really helped not even my secondary school and college that was for people with autism and disabilitys. 

when at school  i would struggle and the anxietys from school would be brought over to my home life where any anxietys i had were like adding anxietys from both school and homelife were being added one ontop of the other. at school i had assembaly,  weather to work in class or outside of it, certain lessons i didnt know would be noisy the ones i got overwhelmed in were music and dance or parachuting amoung other school stresses so the sensory and other challanges of both were like building a sanswhich.

at home the main challanges  was doing certain things as a family coming across noisy restraunts without knowing they were noisy until visited or not knowing if a place is noisy or not until we get there. also a problom with other public settings. , crowded places,  changes, or undertsanding certain things  etc being diffucult cause of my autism caused her to incorrectly label it as a tantrum cause she doesnt know the right term and so would treat it as such i therefore got punishments and consequences for these autistic behaviors sometimes due to her losing her patiance  even though i didnt understand and wasnt naughty she also gets really stressed cause even though I usualy talk normaly I dont understand whats apropriate and whats not in a public place. if im talking about a special interest I may suddenly raise my voice and have no control over it and regulating my voice bringing it down a level can be close to impossible for me at times I  find it diffucult to lower it exsoecialy while simulataneously trying to focus on the priority of what im communicating and what they are at the same tome.

Mum often doesnt make me aware if iv acidently raised my voice but when she remebers she does even if Mum tells me to keep my voice down though theres the challange of regulation and  it can take a long time to regulate to a certain level they deem aproriate for the present place and situation and i dont allways understand either so she easily looses her cool with it and labels it things due to fustration. 

 I dont like raising my voice and am quiet a quiet person so i dont raise my voice on purpose nor am I usualy aware when and if i ever do cause it feells normal given how i feell or how i think andso when struggling to regulate my voice when my autism comes in  is eassily taken the wrong way in certain contexts. she knows that it is part of my autism and even told me and exsplained it to me when i was younger that its  part of my autism which is why it happens cause i didnt used to understand it and my research on autism has also supported the fact that it can be part of autism.  

 i could be happy or exited or any emotion at all but exspecialy when im passionate or trying to get a point across or feell strongly itd exspecialy diffucult,  ontop of that i sometimes use the in correct tone to how im actualy feelling also i might be say just passionate but cause i have allways had a naturaly deep voice and iv found it became deeper when i was a teenager  it comes out as if im angry and im unable to change my tone if i speak and comes out depper cause thats just the way i am and with a raised voice im not aware of along with it but then theres regulation cause its part of my autism.  it gets taken as an arguement or as something negative. then getting them to understand your not is notoriously diffucult and can be like talking to a brick wall. not that i have spoken to a brick wall but you know what i mean.  when im anxious my tone can also be in correct so my tone of voice doesnt allways congruent with the emotion im feelling in the moment  sometimes and my exspression doesnt allways match my tone of voice  either but i dont have any control over if or when that ocurs either and even i dont know then my body language isnt allways congruent either My Mum uses my apaerance to support her asumption of how im feelling along with the tone of voice im useing even though none of it is congruent with what i think and  how i feell inside. My Mum sometimes gets my autism and learning disability mixed up cause i have both and they both come into play so i sometimes have to remind her what is my autism and what is not its not just terms that come out due to frustraition that i have to bring them up on at times. 

 an interesting thing about my autism that can cause people to mis interpret and how i speak and act is also that it might be a certain facial exspression and  body language iv llearned from a favourate character that iv learned to  associate with a particular emotion from my childhood and teenage years or even recently  due to not understanding what it means  regardless of weather it is or not for instance cause i copy my favourate characters how they speak and what they say and there body language and implement it into sociial interaction i have offline when im with people but it happens on a sub concious level. this is also part of my autism its a way of naviagtiing life and social interactions with others. 

all these things are part of the way i am. when it comes to raising voices if  I raise my voice or sound a particular way or look a particular way and how i respond to her or anything that she likes to call challnageing to deal with she gets advice for these things from the in correct people which means she doesnt know how to deal with me when it comes to these things and so when she reaches a certain point she  turns  to people who dont know how to deal with autism like my aunty or uncle who has children who are non autistic or advice from Rickies parents that punish him for his behavior challanges who she is no longer in contact with. 

i think its mainly the fact she didnt have the right people to go to advice or the right people to educate her  is partialy why she still has certain ways of thinking that are not acurate about autism and only draws on old infomation or uses terms that could be misleading.  

the memory card was ok  and convenient its phones that can be an issue. 

to answer your question il tell you abit more about my family when i come back cause i need to o out quickly but i have both an english and greek family. 

It is good that you are educating your family about correct use of terms and how sometimes they can be hurtful if always negative. Is he your biological father? I think your mum was just frustrated be she knew a way to solve the problem and she was worried about the time. It was probably difficult for her too.

Memory on phone and cards can be such a pain when it's running out. I'm glad that the sat nav eventually worked and that you got there. Many years ago when I used to use a proper camera (an early digital one), I had so many memory cards because they couldn't hold as much.

What a surprise to be on the water! Did you get a picture that shows how your accommodation was positioned? I can't picture it in my mind.

I knew that your family had other dogs. Was Wilbur not with you this time?

cause i dont like leaving details out of storys something that i meant to add as part of the story my family did drive there.  I got dropped off and we got ready to leave when they got in the car to get the sat nav ready and Dad took forever cause his phone kept telling him the wrong amount of space on his phone and once room is made would then later tell him it is full when he hasnt added any exstra space which is the same problom i have with mine. for me though it has afected contact with my other family cause it wont install whats app due to the problom but for Dad its the sat nav and the data on it that its impacting causeing him fustration so Dad was very fustraited Mum said hers works and offered to do hers but Dad said no cause he has to do his and not hers cause he knows how to do it and kept trying to persuade him but he kept saying no cause he can only use his cause he doesnt know how it works even though Mum could help and do it instead we were sat in the car so long Mum got inpatient and said right im going to put this up here otherwise we are never going to get to the cabin by 2 and we will be late and was about to put it up  but Dad then got more fustraited and took it off then he eventualy got it working and put it up. Dad wasnt born with autism and nor has he been diagnosed however at that moment in fustration and dis belief she said in the middle of shaking her head and sighing you have autism and so  made it sound like autism is a negative thing even though it isnt  

I have heard Mum say things like your a little autistic to my brother or pretty much anybody including things like your a little ocd and i know that some neurotypicals can use terms related to disabilitys in ways that  can be misleading so im ususaly  very quick to  bring them up on it as i do if they  says things that I know to be are un acurate or misleading and it has been used for real in correctly on lots of ocasions which is why I do that so I  do have to put up with people in the house useing mis leading terms sometimes 

so I was very quick to bring her up on it when she said that  so I asked Mum why she said hes autistic and she said cause hes narrow minded and he cant think for himself he allways needs me to prompt him amoung other things and didnt say any traits she considers a  positive aswell as. 

 I told her that haveing similar traits to autism like other disorders it doesnt nesacerilly mean you are born with it but  doesnt mean arnt born with it either anyone can be narrow minded amoung other traits that  you may or may not interpret, think  or view to be similar to autism

but she calls him all sorts of things including narsisistic theres no fixed name it can be absoloutly anything at all and there usualy all a wide  variety of names and terms related to those some that can be ofensive if put a certain way  but has also called him names not associated with disabilitys aswell though

shes not the only one that does this though and cause autism amoung others  do have  stigma attached  and phrases that can be used in a  misleading way   atached It does get my atention since she has a tendancy to do this and makes me very uncomfortable she doesnt undertsand how certain terms that can apear seemingly harmless can actualy turn out to  be steriotypes or even misleading terms so i try to get her to understand it she doesnt use them all the time though thankfuly.  that was a big bother before setting off but the rest of the drive evrything was fine. 

the drive took a couple of hours as previously but we did stop at service stations. ziggy was with me in the back  cause him and Alphie dont like being next to each other. auto correct corrected me and said bag but anyway I normaly see wildlife at service stations so i sometimes use my camara but we mainly stayed in the car. I was mainly eating or on my laptop or something I usualy have stuff to do on the journey as soon as we arived Mum told me it is on the water and that made me curious. we went inside and put our stuff down and i imedietly when outside and looked at the pond. 

now later I put my memory card in my laptop and guess what happend a bird apeared or a duck this happened every day in a very timely way as if they knew when i was going to put my memory card in my laptop so i literaly kept having to take it out, take pictures and put it back in. I did get a breack at one point and succesfuly transfer the photos from that day though.

I also went for a walk with the dogs and then went somewhere else but that is in the next part 

I mainly transfer them to my photos app but I do back them up sometimes. I have managed to convert my photos for the next part to gb to send on the forum and the wifi has been stable  so far now but only so far though 

WiFi can be such a pain when it goes.

Do you back up your photos too? If not, it's worth getting a little portable drive to back up to. I have a bad experience of losing photos, and have backups now.

im going to try and get as much of it done as i can for now while the wifi is staying on longer than 5 minutes which is a first for the wifis average duration today. cause i want to get it done today and i dont know when its going to go off again

sorry about the hours long gap between the posting  wifi has been really bad and the photos are only on my laptop. I prefer to transfer things to my laptop cause it has more storage space rather than my devices.   I was in the middle of doing the post  underneath  when the wifi suddenly went off when i pressed send so had to wait until later for the wifi to come back on then it worked and so it sent thankfuly. now iv had to do the same thing again and while iv been doing the next part  of the post the wifi has suddenly gone off again but now its back on. 

I love the duck close ups!

I can imagine tricks in the water - but what tricks do you do in the washing up bowl? I'm really intrigued!

I love the crashing of waves. There is no other sound like it.

belive it or not the ccabin is lteraly ontop of the surface of the water in other words in it but not entirely submerged. 

the other half  the entrance you go into the cabin  is on the ground while the middle is stood up on the surface and the balcony so the legs are grounded on the floor under the surface of the water so it is built literaly in the pond and not just looking over it. theres no ground if you look over the balcony just water this is the case from right to left the only way out of the cabin is the top upstairs. 

I have a thing about water I love water. i love going in the sea,

i like ponds, i like the hot tub cause i like doing tricks in the water same with baths 

im not as keen on swimming pools and also like doing tricks in washing up bowls when washing up

and i also live rivers and streams. i basicaly get hypmotised by the patterns I prefer beaches ponds and hot tubs 

overall i basically i like water alot as you can tell. I like all the patterns and reflections in water 

and if im ever in water i love doing water tricks. i couldnt go in the pond and most ponds i cant but

i find them hypnotic as times not just the sound but other things when i looked into the pond with my long lens 

to see if I could see the ducks I saw the movement and patterns being made by the ducks and possibly 

other creatures under the water aswell as droplets from trees 

thats ok

The longest op I have ever read..... but wholly legit.  Nice to see experience and reality.  Thanks for posting here.

I think that you were very brave and you have a good attitude to trying things.

Even some people who are not autistic would be scared in a cabin by themselves. My wife just can not bear to be alone. She is not autistic. In the past, when I had to go away, she'd always arrange to stay with family or friends - even if it was just one night.

Dogs are brilliant companions - and even though the picture was just to illustrate the story, it was lovely to see Wilbur.

I look forward to hearing about you recent holiday - but remember that there is no hurry.

I'm about to set off to look after a dog overnight while her family go out. She loves seeing me. I'm like a 3rd parent.

I think a few people have tried your Guess Who.

I only  sent wilber cause it had to do with the story. I have a problom with being away from my family which is the same problom wilber has cause he doesnt like being away from the pack and gets sad if left alone. Iv allways had a problom with being away from my family simce i was little but it got worse when I got older and became stronger this is due to circumstances at college and after college plus the traumatic exsperiance and depression, plus  deaths not caused by natural causes in the family over a short time frame every year and the events that ocured , afterwards after college i thought everything was over but it was not as I inevitably discovered and due to the circumstances then  and circumstances still present I struggle with being apart from my family it makes me insecure and causes lots of Anxiety but can also cause fear and panic attacks as in this case. iv never been im a different compartment to my family when staying somewhere with my family as much as I would of dome anything to not go in at the last minute I simultaneously was pre occupied with this unque opportunity i may not nessaceraly have again with my family due to money to be in a tree house bang in the middle of the forest away from the road but still atached and nearby. and it that led me to belibe it may not be as bad i thought. i imagned myself in the tree house om the balcony out in nature and it judt felt very me and to let anyome disuade me good imtemtioms or not or to let my fear of being seperated prevent this would of meamt i wouldnt of been able to do what i clearly truely wanted to do and not let the fear hold me back so that also became quiet a theme during my holiday. my fear of the dark and hallucinations and going out in the dark and then going to the cabin in my owm in the dark was also a factor in why i was afraid even though I had a sensory light on a light that changes colours so i had that phobia moxed in. in the evenings i wanted wilber just cause im on my own and also cause im nervous so wilber played a big role in helping me with my first time away from my family at the same place on holiday at night and he usualy prefers to sleep with mum and dad but didnt mind sleeping with me and found it relaxing 

the squirrel yes I found it very interesting aswell cause I didnt know that they had a behavior unique to this county and im interested in animal behavior so it was double interesting 

it aas one of my favouratebparts and if i didnt go I would of missed out on one learning about it and two spotting on the stump eating on the way back to the cabin 

yes 

That was fascinating about the squirrels eating habits!

I liked seeing Wilbur particularly because I love dogs - he looks lovely.

I think you were wise about the owl and not posting. 

It is a shame that you ran out of time without being able to see everything. When an event like this is of a fixed duration (a fixed amount of time) sometimes you need to make tough choices to make the most of it. Like talk more, or listen more? I think you got a good balance because you still saw lots of stuff but were able to ask lots of questions.

Was this the final part of your previous holiday?

im going to send the one from my current holiday but thought i should finish the final part of my other   holiday first.

im back. I went home and stayed until the evening after tea then got dropped off back. 

twe carried on. I saw all the pine trees in the bracken and thought it would make a good picture. 

tthen he showed us some badger sets and told us about badgers

afterwards he told us about a project there doing in the field 

he also told us how to identify certain plants and trees and did do you know this or that quizes for me 

I of course asked lots of questions and told him about things i know but Dad was also chatty and asking lots of questions which meant allot. of time was used up talking and we saw less than we would of but I wasnt aware of this and thought he was going to show us everything he planned to show us. but he showed us how to identify badger and squirrel tracka and signs and we went to a place near where we stayed that we have been before to show us. he told us that the gray squirrels there in this county bite nuts in a half entirely and that they unique to the county rarely stand up and eat and usualy have a stump or bowl to eat at often instead 

he showed us what the stumps look like. they usualy look like this and have bits of  nuts on it from where its been eating

I did tell him that actualy they do also stand and eat aswell and that I got lots of pictures of it standing and eating. 

like here 

but he said they do but most  often eat on a stump instead there could be many reasons why I observed over a 5 day period 

gray squirrels standing and eating every few hours at the cabin and that the forestry comssion have observed the oposite being true - most often on a tree stump but either way the habit is unique to the county and it was very interesting. 

he did show me that there is a tawny owl box there monitering and said its ok to take a picture of it when i asked  but I dont know where I stand with sending a photo to be on the safe side im not going to send it on the post this is just in case people may visit the part and as a result go looking for it and  cause disturbance when the animals welfare comes first. it can happen. not allways but since i dont know where i stand with that im not going to send it.

he told us interestingly on Wednesday night was a real boom for bats and they were everywhere and asked if i saw them but unfortuantly cause i was with wilber i didnt that night so answered no he told me to keep an eye out cause they get them.

before the forest ranger  activaty thing started  i did tell him im born with  autism so that hes aware. so he alreeady knows this so i didnt have to say i have autism so that he undertsands anything or why i may act differently. he told me how he moniters the bat population and I had a question for him. I said you know people say bats use echo location right and that it is beyond average human hearing? well I dont think its acurate cause I when bats fly around I can hear them making there noises that they make when useing echo location  they fly about so its not entirely true. he found this very interesting that I can hear them and said that i make a good point and that it is valid  I told him i have hypersensitive hearing which is part of my autism but that doesnt mean other people cant hear it aswell so he said well thanks for telling me that that was very helpful. 

he was going show us snakes but didnt have time. we mainly talked and answered questions at the end but showed us a river with coots. I had alot of compliments about my camara and how he thinks its very good on the trip when i took pictures. 

so at the end he said of course its time to go now but as we left said oh year and nice camara by the way so I said thanks again and we said bye as we went off we chanced on a squirrel at its stump eating nuts which i filmed then after it left i took pictures 

after we came back dad was wiped out but i wasnt and in spite of the pulled muscle i had to be careful of throughout the activaty and battery on my camara everything went well and I ended up glad that i went and even though i was disapointed about not seeing the sankes due to lots of talking we learned alot alot i already knew but simultaneously also things i didnt know and i could well of missed out on this exsperiance with me and Dad if i stayed behind cause of my pulled muscle. 

Dad was wiped out and had aparantly over done walking due to the trip while even though i sat down  I still had energy left and said im not exhausted Mum am I can you tell. my pulled muscle eventualy got better as the day went on and that night was the last night at the cabin with wilber. I was no longer scared on my own in the cabin but felt less lonely from being away from Mum and Dad and more comfortable with wilber in the room with me

tthat evening i saw a moth 

the day after it was time to go so I took pictures of the tree house 

tthis was my room i stayed in with wilber 

iv run into abit of a problom so Im going to try again later otherwise it will have to be after i come back from holiday but iv managed to send these so far 

this was the first thing the forest ranger showed me and Dad it is called Artists Bracket there is a similar species but the forest ranger and other rangers have been able to identify it to this species. they know this area very well it is an uncommon fungi but very interesting. the tree wont be about for long cause its a diseased tree but if you ever come across a Artists Bracket  then your lucky 

thats ok you two. im going to be doing the final part of my last holiday this evening but I dont have time right now cause im packing ready for tomarow 

il be doing it later on 

You are so kind! I feel I was most like the green veined, but it did have the trimming like the orange tip. I'm going to say green veined for now. I'm going to look at the video that I got. We have loads of cabbage whites in our tiny garden and they seemed different to them.