Yesterday I was planning to go for an employment open day to a certain care company and later for an appointment with my job coach from a disability service. Those were going to be my opportunities to talk about my blog in a context of employment. And what happened was, first thing in the morning the job coach cancelled the appointment as she wasn’t feeling well, and then, just a few minutes before I was meant to get ready to go for the open day, the fire at my downstairs neighbours started.

I did discuss yesterday how I wasn’t willing to go and check if they are ok as I was trying to see the situation from their perspective: ‘they probably just can’t silence the alarm and if I go there they’ll think I’m complaining about the noise.’ For my defence, there was no other noises there, that you would expect during the fire – they only started at the same time when smoke started coming out from behind my fridge!

So the results are: I lost the opportunity to talk about my blog with strangers, didn’t get out of the house at all, except of that hour when I was told to wait outside when fire brigade was checking what’s wrong, my fridge is in the middle of the kitchen now as an electrician was meant to come and check whether I have any cables coming to my property from downstairs and so far they didn’t and my kitchen still smells of smoke. I had the window opened for like 5 hours yesterday and finally had to close it as it was raining, later on I sprayed with febreeze a few times and the smell of febreeze is now gone but the smell of smoke isn’t.

I’m not a fan of air refreshers at best of times – I have the impression they just mix with the smell that you want to cover and I can smell both of them at the same time, which is much worse than just having the offending smell. This is apparently due to sensory processing dissorder. I have the same problem with radio being used to cover the traffic noise, which some people used to do in my previous jobs – I just end up having two noises, nothing is covering anything, I can hear both of them the same. I was really surprised when I found out that most people doesn’t have that problem, I thought they’re just making excuses to have the music on.

However, I found that white or pink noise is better at covering the noises I found annoying, or possibly it just makes me relaxed? However, can you imagine suggesting your colleagues to listen to some white noise instead of the radio? I’d like to see their face expressions.

So, I didn’t have the opportunity to talk about my blog, but I’m thinking, if I left before the fire started, it would end up being much worse. Either no one would notice the smoke in my property and it would spread to every room and make everything smell really badly and I’d probably be unable to stay in for the night due to that, or someone would notice the smoke and the fire brigade would have to break in.

Ironically, that was exactly two years after my door had to be broken to section me. It is rather unclear for me how that happened if it’s against the law to section somebody in their own property, but it did happen to me. I was going to discuss that on the blog one day, so far I haven’t, I do apologise for that. However, what I was meant to say is, the door could possibly not survive another similar action. So I’m glad I stayed in but I feel defeated as my plans for yesterday were rather different.

The Boyfriend advised not to talk about blog with employers, but the problem with this approach is, if some care homes provide care for autistic adults and they ask me how much I know about autism, what do I say? ‘Well, yes… I know a little bit’? It just doesn’t seem right, does it? At the same time blog is an achievement, we talk about achievements during the interview, don’t we? Whether they are at work or outside.

Oh, and I didn’t manage to finish the post about the cat and the systems. I’ll go back to that as soon as practically possible, that means when I have nothing better to say instead.