Organic and Sustainable Living Festival

Today we went to the Penguin Organic and Sustainable Living Festival. The boys got to give some piglets from Mount Gnomon Farm a pat (we visited the farm a couple of years ago).

  

 Loo was very excited to see the bee display. Shmoo was very curious too and had lots of questions for the bee keeper.

Loo's First Day @ Early Intervention...

   

Psych Assessment Results

Shmoo had another couple of sessions (last Friday and Monday) with the psychologist, E, to complete the assessments. I went back by myself today to go over the results with E. She hadn't had a chance to finish the official report but we were able to review his scores. There were no real surprises, it just confirmed what we've known for a while now. E is hoping that she'll be able to mail a copy of her final report to us next week (as well as sending a copy to TASDAS).

The results for the ADI-R were all well above the cut-off scores, indicating definite ASD traits.

As for the other tests, Shmoo scored really well on perceptual reasoning; and he also did really well on the reading and language sections (but not so good at applying language to a social context). He got a very low score for working memory, which E thinks is due in part to his perfectionism - he checks every single thing over and over again instead of relying on his working memory. Also did very badly on the maths sections, again partly due to the perfectionism/working memory thing. He scored low on all of the timed things as well because he did everything very slowly and carefully, trying to get everything correct and neat (yep, perfectionism again!). E also picked up on Shmoo immediately saying "I don't know" to problems he could probably work out with a little thought but he was so convinced that he wouldn't get it right so didn't bother trying.

Anyway, there was a lot of other stuff that I can't remember so it will have to wait for the final report.

(After Monday's session we finally had enough spare time for Shmoo to check out the really cool trees across the road from the psych. They'd been pruned so that the only branches were low and ran more perpendicular to the tree trunk... perfect for climbing and swinging on! It was an interesting sensory experience too. The branches were smooth and flexible; and the dark green leaves, glossy with serrated edges.)

Secure Tree Services

Remember this and this when we were getting one of our trees cut down towards the end of last year? Well... so 'Not happy, Jan' (remember that ad?). We're giving Secure Tree Services of East Devonport (TAS) a huge thumbs down.

As I mentioned in one of the previous posts, the tree has been looking increasingly unstable and it has a lean so that if it comes down it will land on our house and powerline. We get some extremely strong winds and have lost a number of trees and branches in the last year so it's something that concerns us a lot. The original job as discussed with STS was to cut down the tree to below the powerline and put some kind of anti-growth stuff on it. Simple and logical enough, right?

1. They knocked down part of our front fence. Granted, it was an old wooden fence so not a big deal really and The OH fixed it easily enough, but still...

2. They crushed our bordering neighbour's electric fence under a large branch. Not only that but they left for the day either without noticing (hm, really? /:) ) or without bothering to tell us or our neighbour. We only found out when our neighbour informed us later that day. He was due to have some new cattle arrive and needed to put them in that yard... except there was a huge branch across the fence!! Now that was a big deal.

3. They were supposed to return and finish the job but 4+ months later the tree is still a couple of metres above the powerline and sporting some bushy regrowth.

4. To top it all off, tonight the guy told The OH that he doesn't remember the job description as we do and that there's no way he's going to be bothered coming all the way out here to chop off a couple of metres of tree. X(

The OH is on a disability pension. I'm a full-time stay-at-home, homeschooling mum to 3 kids. We're not exactly rolling in money here. We paid STS to cut down the tree so that it wouldn't damage the powerline or our house. If the tree falls now it will still do both.

Got any trees you need cut down? Stay well away from Secure Tree Services!!