Goin' up the country where the water tastes like wine

The boy and I are running away for a night in magical Dunolly on Sunday.
We're booked into a history tour with the local historical society and we get to meet up with some fabulous people again.
Their immediate reaction to hearing that Aspie teen was Aspie was "Ok, cool, our minister has a son on the Spectrum, too. Want another home made cream cake?"
And a former school teacher was so excited to hear we were homeschooling, asking loads of questions, telling me how she thinks it's wonderful and a great way to teach kids.
Oooooooookay, completely arse-about reaction we get with a lot of people in the urbane city!
The magic of the country town is the lack of smog, lack of noise, no street lights (!), no constant rumble of traffic, streets so quiet we've spied kids playing street cricket and footy - something you so do not see in the 'burbs these days.
We approached the one and only pedestrian crossing and were a good 10 metres away from even stepping onto the crossing...but drivers slowed down and stopped in readiness.
OMG - old fashioned values!
Freakin' awesome!
Shop keepers made eye contact with a smile and remembered our names after one months gap in our visits.
No judgments,  no pigeon-holing, just acceptance and friendliness.
Do we really have to come home on Monday....?

Happiness is going to bed before the witching hour!

We've slowly debriefed ourselves from our whistle-stop trip to Bendigo and have plans to both return to see more and to do a wander through Kyneton.
Aspie teen has remembered how to negotiate his schoolwork each day with me instead of having monsterous meltdowns because he's brain isn't clicked into gear for coping with maths or literature comprehension, etc.
Writing contracts on the back of envelopes helps as does sticking them on the fridge so they jump out at ya first thing in the morning.
Also, I took a leaf out of Madmother's book and added Evening Primrose Oil to the Flaxseed and Fish oil; possibly may be seeing more connections and less fritzing on the wiring.
We let him have a normal burger from the House of Jack Who is Peckish and we've seen a few little hiccups of behaviour - whether it's the gluten in the bun or just Aspie teen, who knows, but we're in one piece with no bruises and nary a scratch on the house or the contents (yippee).
Yes, we count our blessings tiny though they may be.
Just negotiated 8 pages of text book exercises with an episode of Glee which has highlighted another of his strengths - love my boy who can't figure out most social situations but who can clearly see that homophobia is so frickin' last century.
Who are the ones with the disability again?
Anyways, last night we got more culture than just the tub of yoghurt when we let him watch a production of Coppelia on the idiot box - that's a classical ballet with a loopy toymaker thinking he can make his doll turn into a living chickybabe - heartily approved of by Aspie teen who is asking to see a ballet on stage, now.
I'll just hunt down the leprechaun with that pot of gold.....