Okay, so there has been a lot of hype over the last few months about the Revised FTC Endorsement Guidelines, especially as they apply to bloggers.

Since I have gotten a few free books and other products to review on my blog over the past couple of years, I figured I’d better get my act together and write my own disclosure policy. I will be putting this up as an official page on my blog shortly.

I really wasn’t sure what to say though, so I checked out DisclosurePolicy.org first. They actually have a little wizard that will generate a disclosure policy for you to use on your site. Unfortunately, I couldn’t really figure out where I fit in for some of the questions and was a bit confused by the whole thing, so, I’m just going to tell you how I do things and hope I cover it all. If you have any questions about this information, you can contact me at trish1225(at)gmail(dot)com.

My Official Disclosure Policy

1. I do sometimes receive free books or other products to review for my blog. I always mention in a review if the item was given to me, and I will often pass it on via a giveaway if it is practical to do so (i.e. the book isn’t damaged or highlighted to death or it’s not a consumable product that I had to use to do the review).

2. All opinions expressed are my own, regardless of whether an item was given to me for review. I will admit, however, that I hate to slam anyone or anything and that, if I wasn’t a big fan of something, I will try to focus on the positive aspects of the book or product. If I really think something is not beneficial in any way, I will either post that opinion or decline to do the review at all.

3. I do not publish paid content or sponsored posts and have never received payment for a review.

4. I am involved in affiliate marketing. At this point, the only affiliate links are through Amazon.com. If you click on an ad banner or book/product link that takes you to Amazon, it is most likely an affiliate link, and I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make from them. If I form any other affiliate relationships, I will disclose them as well.

5. Oh, I just remembered this one… I have a GoodSearch & GoodShop widget on my blog encouraging you to use their services to raise money for ASD HOPE. I am a (volunteer) board member for this awesome 503(c) non-profit organization, which helps local families who are getting started on the path of helping their child with autism. If you do choose to use any of the GoodSearch/GoodShop services, you can choose what organization receives the money and also change the designated charity at any time.

Okay, I think that just about covers it. I’m curious how many of you have a disclosure policy on your blog. I would love to take a look at what you have to see if I forgot anything important, so please feel free to leave me a link in the comments if you have one.

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• Give Me Five Monday
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I have been reading so many great posts by bloggers lately, and whenever I see something that really speaks to me in some way, I feel an urge to share it. Rather than flood Twitter or Facebook with links that may or may not be seen by anyone, I decided to list a few of them here.

So here are some things that caught my eye in the past week:

On Advocacy – a subject that is near and dear to my heart:
What Is Advocacy? An Inside Scoop From Pathfinders For Autism from The Gift: A Blog for Caregivers of Sensational Children

An Amazing Moment When a Kid is Just a Kid
The Power of You and I from Welcome to Normal, Population 0

Insights Regarding the Division Between Biomed Moms and Neurodiversity
Desperate, huh? and Bridging the Gulf from Life as the mother of 4

Practical Tips
Simple Accommodations to Help Your Autistic Employee Excel from Spectrum Siblings

Autism Treatment – How to Use Supplements to Treat Autism, Part 1 and Part 2 from Dr. Kurt Woeller’s Autism Recovery Treatment Blog

And on a separate, somewhat superficial note, did you know that you can now put a Facebook “Like” button on your web site? It allows you to see how your Facebook friends are interacting with sites around the web. I put one on Another Piece of the Puzzle just for kicks, so feel free to pop over and “like” me (and let me know if you add one to your site)!

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• Sunday Best, August 22nd
• Sunday Best & Giveaway Winner
• The Results from our Pfeiffer/DAN! Visit
• Our First Visit to Pfeiffer Treatment Center
• To-Do Tuesday with Biomed Update

Besides catching up on dishes and laundry and dental work and doctor’s appointments and little things like updating Michael’s behavior plan and adding a safe crisis plan to the IEP (more on those topics later), I have had some time over the past month to think about where I want to go with this blog.

I have loved blogging since the moment I started over two years ago, but I have also put a lot of unnecessary stress on myself trying to reconcile my analytical side that wants to write only helpful, informative posts about things like advocacy and therapies and resources with my more stream-of-consciousness side that wants to talk about whatever is on my mind at a given point in time, good or bad.

At one point, I actually did set up a separate blog called Autism Interrupted, where I would go to ramble if I felt too depressed or frustrated to write something coherent and positive for this blog. After thinking it through, I think what I really need to do is separate the two blogs by purpose rather than by how I am feeling. (Yeah, sometimes it takes me a while to figure out the obvious! )

Okay, so all that is to say that I have decided to continue both blogs, but with a much clearer vision for what they will represent. I even wrote a new tagline and short description to clarify my purpose here:

Another Piece of the Puzzle

Awareness, Resources and Hope for Autism Spectrum Disorder

Another Piece of the Puzzle is a blog designed to raise awareness of the challenges facing parents and children dealing with autism and to serve as a resource for anyone affected by the disorder. Through this site, it is my desire to offer information on topics such as IEPs and advocacy, behavioral and sensory strategies and a variety of therapies and treatments related to autism spectrum disorder. Above all, I want to let you know there is hope for a better tomorrow!

While there may be occasions where I cross post and include personal stuff here that relates specifically to autism, in general I am going to post about my own journey at Autism Interrupted. So for more on what’s going on with me personally, feel free to pop on over!

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• No Related Posts

My regular readers may have noticed that I haven’t been blogging much lately. Although I have enjoyed the last two-plus years of blogging and all that it entails more than I can say, I am in a place right now where I must focus on some other areas of my life that are sorely in need of attention.

It really comes down to this issue I have been dealing with of recognizing your limitations and accepting them. That is especially hard for me when blogging is something I love, but I have come to accept that for right now I just cannot continue to make it a priority.

I am going to leave this blog up for the time being and may return to it in the future. If nothing else, I hope that it will serve as a resource for other moms and dads who are looking for information on autism — if you are just stumbling upon my blog now, you can use the nested menu at the top of the page or the category list and search features in the right sidebar to see if I have posted about the topic you are looking for. The Archives menu in particular includes a link to a list of my Autism Resource posts and a list of the posts I did for 5 Minutes for Special Needs.

For anyone who wishes to keep in touch, feel free to connect with me on Facebook or email me at trish1225[at]gmail[dot]com. The comments on this post will be open for a few days and then closed.

And, by the way, just because I’m not blogging doesn’t mean I’m not still decluttering, so if you committed to the challenge, you’re not off the hook! Check out Suzanne’s 365 Days of Decluttering blog if you need some additional inspiration to keep going.

Related Posts:

• Too Cluttered to Think Straight
• Beyond Ordinary Blog Carnival: The Puzzle
• LIFE is the Puzzle
• Where to start?

Just the other day, a comment was left on my blog regarding a new service for allowing readers to link up to your blog, called inlinkz. Since I am just getting ready to start using that sort of thing with the 365 Days of Decluttering Challenge, I decided to check it out.

Here’s where you can read the whole story about how impressed I am with the people behind this, or you can jump down for the bottom line.

When I first went to the site, most of the links to more information weren’t working, but within a couple of hours, I had a comment from one of the site developers letting me know that they were actually in the process of going live at that moment and that the links would be operational very soon.

So I went back and signed up and did a test list on a draft blog post. When I entered my link and name, both items showed up as a two-column list on my blog. I realized that could get very long and messy, especially if people were linking to a specific blog post. Since the developer had left me a comment, I emailed her and let her know my initial thoughts.

To my amazement, she emailed me back and said she would add more options to the site for how to display each list and asked me to let her know about anything else I was looking for. (You can follow inlinkz on twitter to keep up with them as well.)

The Bottom Line

Inlinkz is very simple to use and configurable in terms of what shows up and how much space it can take up on your blog. You can put end times on your lists, moderate them, edit the configuration and even see stats of how much each link was clicked on.

I’ve put a simple one-column list with an end date of January 31st down below if you’d like to try it out. Just click the “add your link” button and enter a link to your blog homepage. (Fine print: links going to any weird locations will be deleted!)

I entered my own link so you could see how it will look – the text shown will be whatever you put in the “Description” field.

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Well, I by no means think I am deserving of this award, but I am thankful to Leah at Just Me for letting me know I am appreciated. If you haven’t met Leah, she is a pastor’s wife and mom to 4 girls, one of whom has special needs. She has also embarked on a spiritual journey that she is blogging about at 90 Days of Solitude.

I’ve been somewhat on again/off again with blogging in recent months, but every time I question whether I should continue, I realize how much it means to me to have this little place of my own and to connect with so many wonderful people. So I am working on not feeling guilty for posting irregularly or for not having time to visit other blogs and comment. I just try to enjoy the time I do get to spend online.

I have, however, spent a little bit of time working on my blog admin lately, and one of the things I did was to close the comments on posts older than 90 days. I hope it doesn’t turn people off, but it has really cut down the amount of spam considerably. Anyone who wants to contact me directly with any question or comment can still easily do so through my contact form.

I’ve also been playing around with the new version of my blog theme (Thesis 1.6) and was very happy to see the ability to assign colors right from the options page. With the nested navigational options, I was able to include my main categories at the top along with the pages I wanted but not have it look too cluttered or overwhelming. I can easily change the background image whenever I want and modify the text/link colors to match.

A couple of other things I did were to add a widgetized fat footer (thanks to this super-easy tutorial from Thesis Theme Tools) and to put my blogroll back in the sidebar. The blogroll only shows the most recently updated blogs, but you can still see the entire list via the Blogroll link in the footer.

Oh, and one last thing. Through a post on Howtomakemyblog.com, I found a plugin that allows you to add your Twitter ID in your comments on my blog. You just enter your Twitter username (no html or @) in the box below the comments box before you submit your comment, and a link to your Twitter profile will appear below your name. You only have to enter your Twitter ID one time and then it will save it just like it saves your name, etc.

Let me know what you think about any or all of the changes. I’d love any feedback or other ideas you have.

And then go visit some blogs that truly deserve a Best Blog Award —

• Simple Mom
• Steady Mom
• Zen Habits
• Becoming Minimalist

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It’s 1:01 pm on Saturday, and I am starting a new blog post. It’s part of the Mom’s 30-Minute Blog Challenge over at SteadyMom, so I am giving myself 30 minutes to write this post and publish it. I will have to go in on Tuesday to link up to the challenge, but that’s it.

So, what to talk about? Well, I wanted to tell you about my amazing new discovery (new to me, anyway) that has gotten me back into the fun of blog hopping and commenting while still keeping up with my favorite blogs. It’s the Next bookmark in Google Reader.

I found it by clicking on the Settings link and then going into the Goodies section. All I had to do was drag it to my toolbar and then I can click it at any time to go to the next unread blog post in my Google Reader. I can leave a comment, click around, do whatever I want, and then just click the Next button again when I want to read another post. I love it, and it has gotten me totally turned back on to commenting again!

You may have seen this before, but I thought it was cute. This is the page I saw when I clicked Next after all the posts had been read:


And when I clicked on the “End of the Internet” link, this is what I got:

So, if you saw a comment from me today, please know I have been reading your blog all along but just gotten out of the habit of clicking through to leave a comment. Shameful of me, really, because the interaction and community is such a critical part of why we all do this.

I also wanted to share a couple of the things I read today that really caught my attention:

• How To Give Yourself to Whatever the Moment Brings, and Forget Stress at Zen Habits
• The Sparkle Effect at Adventures in Autism (this one made me cry in a good way, and not just because the story takes place right next to my hometown).

So, that’s it for me right now. It’s 1:21 pm, and I am getting ready to hit the publish button. And just in time really, because me son is calling me to come and see what he is working on.

*****Visit the 30-Minute Blog Challenge to read more posts or find out how to join in.*****

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I was so touched to be named as an inspiring blogger by Mia of General Hysteria, especially after being so hit and miss this summer. I am so hoping to get into a better routine now that school has started, although the first week was very up and down for us!

For those of you who don’t know how these shameless bits of linky love work, here are the rules:
• You must thank the person who has given you the award.
• Copy the logo and place it on your blog.
• Link to the person who has nominated you for the award.
• Name 7 things about yourself that people might find interesting.
• Nominate 7 other Kreativ Bloggers.
• Post links to the 7 blogs you nominate.
• Leave a comment on which of the blogs to let them know they have been nominated.

So, now onto my lists:

7 Things About Me You Might Find Interesting

1. My maternal grandmother was born in Scotland, although her family moved to the U.S. when she was around three or four.
2. My paternal grandparents used to take each of us three kids camping once a week each summer. They were in a camping club, and it was a highlight of our summer (well, mine anyway, I don’t know about the boys).
3. From the house I lived in (in Rock Island, Illinois), you could reach the Mississippi River by going either one mile west or one mile north.
4. Our high school mascot was a rock. (The Rock Island Rocks, get it?)
5. There really is a giant rock out front of the boys’ gym at the school, and the rival team in the next town over would occasionally spray paint stuff on it that had to be sandblasted off, thus making the rock ever so slightly smaller each time.
6. We just put over 2300 miles on our car to drive out to Illinois and visit my family and show our son where I grew up. Ergo, the litany of hometown related facts.
7. I am also slightly punchy after composing a very long email to the special education supervisor over our school describing an unfortunate incident that occurred on Thursday wherein the school secretary picked up my seven year old son and carried him into a room that he did not want to enter and, in fact, had told his classroom teacher he would rather die than go back into.

7 Kreativ Bloggers You Will Definitely Find Interesting

Storm at All Things Cherished – I always look forward to her Thought of the Day for encouragement or just something to make me think.
Lisa at Crazy Adventures in Parenting – She is so much more than just the person who holds me accountable for my to do list, although that’s how I found her.
Territory Mom at Delayed But Not Denied – Another encouraging mom walking the special needs path; I love her First Diagnosis & S-List.
K at Floortime Lite Mama – A sweet and genuine mom who shares from her heart about her journey with a child on the spectrum.
Anissa at #FreeAnissa – The beloved and funny mom from Hope for Peyton is striking out in a new direction and is definitely keeping it real.
2Shaye at Miller Memories – An all-around great lady whose blog I found not all that long ago but highly recommend.
Stimey at Stimeyland – An always entertaining look at life, autism, and gerbils.

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I have been meeting a bunch of new bloggers lately, and one of them is a fun lady named Super Mommy. In addition to posting reviews and freebies, she has also started sharing about her two kids, one of whom has autism.

For the blog hop, she is asking us to tell what our blogs are about, how we got started, and how long we have been blogging. So here goes…

I published my first blog post on January 26, 2008, so as of right now, I have been blogging for a little over 16 months, and it has been an exciting adventure. I started out just wanting a place to express my thoughts and “find myself”, and then I discovered this amazing community of mommy bloggers and parents of special needs children who want to connect with and support each other.

Tomorrow I will have been married to my husband Bob for 17 years, and we have one son, Michael, who is 7 years old and getting ready to start first grade in a regular classroom with behavioral support. We live in South Central Pennsylvania and attend a wonderful non-denominational charismatic church where I am involved in the special needs ministry.

I work part-time in the promotional products industry (anybody need any mugs or pens with their logo printed on them??) and spend the rest of my time juggling housework, errands, and sleep with being Michael’s case manager and advocate.

A rare picture of the three of us together

Our Two Kitties

Feel free to look around a bit and let me know what you think. I am always thankful for feedback on how the site looks and works for you. Here are some of the highlights (in my opinion, anyway):

• A couple of my favorite posts are Where to start? and LIFE is the Puzzle.
• I am also very proud of the resource posts I have written (something good has to come out of all the hours I spend reading!)
• You can learn more about me on my (appropriately named) About page or in my 38 Things list.
• You can also check out who I like to read on my Blogroll

Thanks so much for stopping by! I’d love to know you were here, and you can subscribe to my feed or follow me on Twitter if you’d like.

Check out Super Mommy’s Blog Hop post to meet her and join in, and her Melamine Snack Set review to enter a giveaway.

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Someone asked me the other day how to “follow” my blog, and I quickly realized they were referring to the Google Friend Connect widgets that are ubiquitous on Blogger blogs. My first instinct was to let them know this was a WordPress blog and suggest that they subscribe to my feed, but then I decided to do a quick search and see if it was possible to get in on the following fun.

And guess what, it is! You can add Google Friend Connect to a WordPress blog (at least a self-hosted one, which is what I have – I have no idea about a WordPress.com blog).

It was really easy too, which is always a good thing in my book; the whole process took about ten minutes.

Here’s what I had to do (disclaimer – this may be slightly different for you, but I’m just sharing how it worked for me):

1. Signed in with my Google ID (my Gmail username and password).
2. Under “Set up a new site,” selected the option for a standard website (as opposed to a Blogger blog).
3. Filled in the information about my site.
4. Downloaded the two files they provided, and then uploaded them to my site (I wasn’t sure what folder to put them in so I just put them in the main file area and it worked okay).
5. Configured the members widget and then pasted the code they gave me into a widget on my sidebar.

You can see what it looks like in my sidebar. It seems that if I put it in my post, the sidebar widget won’t show up, which I’m guessing has something to do with trying to run the same script in two places on the same page. Hey, I never said I actually knew anything about computers!

Of course, I had to test it out, so I joined myself and, sure enough, it shows up on my Blogger profile and on my Blogger Dashboard as a blog I am following. Pretty cool, huh?

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Quite a post title, huh? So I get ready to come back and post again after a month off and find that the subscriber count on both of the blogs has gone up by about 100! I mean, I’ve seen Feedburner fluctuate before, but it usually goes down and makes you wonder what you may have done to offend 50 people all at once.

I did a little digging, and the best I can figure out is that Feedburner is now counting all the lovely people who subscribe to my FriendFeed. For a minute I thought I was more interesting when I wasn’t posting anything.

Well, June has been quite the month. Thanks to everyone who commented while I was away (I was online here and there but not as much as usual by any means). Here’s the shortened version of what I’ve been up to the last few weeks:

• Started working mornings instead of afternoons. Although I’m not a big fan of getting up early, it is really nice to be done with work at 1:00 and move on to the rest of my day. (Especially since I’ll have two hours before my son gets home from camp for the next three weeks!)
• Found a new therapist and talked to my doctor about the medication I have been taking for depression. I am going to be trying out a new combination of meds in an effort to find the balance between complete lethargy and a total state of panic.
• Started major house decluttering, involving much moving around of furniture and getting rid of things. I have discovered Freecycle, and it is awesome! If you ever want to feel really popular, post something great on Freecycle and watch the emails pour in. I am also going to try Craigslist for a few items that may actually be worth something and see how that goes.
• Took my son to a new DAN! doctor. I really liked him and we are doing some testing to see where we are at with everything. I’m waiting for them to resubmit the insurance paperwork with the correct (non-mental health) codes to make sure we will be able to afford to go back, but am hopeful that we can at least get a good picture of his nutritional/gut status and see what supplements and/or treatments he is in need of at this point.
• Switched to paper for my calendar/to do list organizing. Although I liked the electronic/online things I was using, it wasn’t very convenient for sharing with my husband where we were at and what needed to be done. So I got a little weekly planner and a couple of mechanical pencils and am back to writing out a new to do list whenever the old one gets too messy.
• Spent a day with my husband’s family when my nephew had a soccer tournament in the area. His team won, despite playing much of the time in pouring rain!

Here’s Michael with all his cousins at Red Robin:

And with the “young cousins” and Uncle Andrew on our cuddle chair (reclining chair and a half):

Not very exciting stuff, I know! Anyway, I’d love to hear from all of you how you are doing this summer. I got a little carried away cleaning out my Google Reader and may have deleted too many feeds, so please leave me a comment so I can make sure I am still subscribed to you.

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Even with the stressful IEP meetings over and the stress of our kindergarten-year schedule coming to a close, I am still finding it hard to put together a coherent sentence. Which in turn makes it hard to turn any of the ideas swirling around in my head into something worth posting here.

So I have decided to cut myself some slack (for once!) and take a break from posting here for the next few weeks. I may still pop on to Twitter or find myself rambling and venting nonsense over at Autism Interrupted, but then again I may just take Michael to Hersheypark every day in June and never even turn on the computer!

Here’s the proof that I am in need of some serious R&R:

Your Mind is 83% Cluttered

Your mind is incredibly cluttered. You have so much going on in there, it’s hard to think straight. Consider talking to a therapist. It’s a good idea to sort through your thoughts, if only to see which ones are worth hanging on to.

How Cluttered is Your Mind?

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If you are reading this in a feed and don’t see a black box with the word “decide” on it, click here to visit the post.

Go ahead, click on it! Enjoy your Saturday!!

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I mentioned last time I posted that I was trying out a new, cleaner layout for my blog. One of the things that I had in my sidebar for a long time is a widget for my Google Reader shared items.

These are things that I thought were worth sharing when I read them in my feeds, but I don’t really think the widget got clicked on very much. The links do show up on FriendFeed and Facebook, so at least that’s something, but I thought it might be a better idea to just share my favorite posts here once in a while.

So, besides the posts shown in the list above, here are some things that I have enjoyed lately:

• Asperger Land from Moms of Special Needs Children – a game for moms of kids with Asperger’s; you can’t help but love the “Ka-Ka Hitting the Fan Cards”!
• beyond the window of opportunity from Floortime Lite Mama – some reflections on the sense of urgency often instilled in moms of young children on the spectrum
• On Motherhood from Whiskey In My Sippy Cup – a profoundly moving essay about why we moms all do what we do
• How to Create a Minimalist Computer Experience from Zen Habits – some great ideas on how to clean up your computer desktop and interact more efficiently with your computer. I followed his suggestions about removing everything from my desktop except for a beautiful picture for the wallpaper and am now using Launchy to open any programs or documents I need. I love it!

What’s the best post you’ve read lately? Please share it in the comments on this post!

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I have been trying to simplify things in my life lately, including changing the look and feel of this blog. I am now using the Thesis theme and have gone back to my original puzzle piece header image.

The new layout is set up with just one sidebar and a lot less clutter on the page, although I can easily change it later if I wish, since it is more of a framework than a theme, without worrying about messing up the formatting like downloading a new theme might do.

I also condensed my categories from 23 to 13 and removed a lot of the extra buttons and icons from the page. I do plan to add pages for my blogroll and social networking stuff, and I am still working on adding a three-column footer so I can tuck some general information down there. (Hey, simplifying is a process. )

It’s taken me a long time to even start trying to figure out PHP and get into my WordPress theme editor, but now I am learning about hooks and how to use them (made easier by the OpenHook plugin). One great thing about Thesis is the awesome support forums; I had a question the other day and posted it in the forum and got an answer within a couple of hours. Pretty cool!

Let me know what you think about it so far and what you think are the most important pages or other features I should add. Thanks!!

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