It seemed like there was never a door, window or gate that’d get in Mari’s way. She’d simply open it and go where ever it is that interested her at the time.

In her last six months we had moved to a new house in Burbank, Illinois. I think it was in this house where Mari was the most active with trying to do whatever it was she wanted to do without any regard to the safety aspect so Mommy also had several minor heart attacks as a result. I have to smile now looking back on those times knowing how incredibly smart she was but her autism kept her safety awareness to that of about a two-year-old.

I remember the day I saw her in the living room. She was doing something. I had walked into the family room. Maybe thirty seconds to one minute later I saw her literally in the street dancing. My heart stopped. I quickly raced outside and got her back in the house. In just those few moments she’d lifted up the window, then the screen, climbed through the window and was out of the house.

I’ve talked about her ability to get up on the roof before. She never left what she wanted get in her way.

She loved our neighbors backyard so much that a couple of times she got out of our backyard and went into our neighbors because she liked their sandbox better than ours. We had to finally buy a chain along with a lock so she couldn’t get out of the yard that way.

Even the backdoor we thought would be perfect with having Mari because it was one of the deadbolts where you had to have a key from both the inside of the house and the outside to use it. What we did was lock the deadbolt and put the key on top of the door entryway door jamb. Well, our too smart for her own good little Mari decided to turn over our big laundry hamper and was on her way to climbing on top of it to get the key when I caught her. Again, she was one determined little girl.

So, our little Mari never let anything get in her way if she could help it.

O is for Outline

April 17, 2014 Kristena Tunstall 0

Or as I like to call it: Plotter. In writing a novel you have what we writers like to call either Pantsers or Plotters or somewhere in between. A pantser is someone who writes their novel, as they say, by the seat of their pants. In other words, there is…