Hi Everyone

Hi everyone,

I did reply in the introduce yourself thread when I joined a number of weeks ago but I thought I'd post a longer introduction.

My name is Anne & I'm 64. I live in Toronto, Canada. I started paper scrapping in the 90s, switched to digital about 2000. After taking a break for 5 years, I've taken up digital scrapping again.) I'm dabbling in and enjoying designing paper & elements. This site is incredible, what a wonderful resource.

I'm happily married (35 years next week) with a married adult daughter & late son. Our daughter and son-in-law live in our basement apartment so we've been able to see them throughout this pandemic.

We lost our son 5 years ago at age 25 to SUDEP - Sudden Unexpected Death in EPilepsy. In addition to epilepsy, he had severe nonverbal autism with severe behaviours, atypical bipolar disorder, severe intellectual disability and an extra Y chromosome giving him extreme height. (He was 6'10"). Despite his many challenges, he had a wonderful sense of humour and was a real character. Although he lived in an excellent group home (after his hospitalization in a locked psych ward for several months when the bipolar developed), we visited him frequently. We miss him greatly.

His joint brain donation pages are here: https://www.autismbrainnet.org/donor/graham-brown/ and here: http://sudepregistry.org/our-stories (about halfway down the page, there are others on the SUDEP page. He had my husband's last name, Brown. Sadly whenever I visit the SUDEP page, more people have been added.

I was out of the work force for many years because of our son's disabilities but originally I was a children's librarian. A few years ago, I returned to work as a supply (substititute ) teacher for elementary & middle schools, a variety of classes jk-grade 8 but most often, my preferred classes, special education. My parents are elderly (in their 90s), now needing increasing help so I retired early when we moved to our present house 4 years ago. Although I call them frequently and video conference with my mom, it has been hard not seeing them during this pandemic. (They are only living separately because of my mom's Altzheimer's, she lives in long term care, he's in a retirement home.)

My husband just turned 65 & we're hoping his vvarious government & company pensions come through soon so he can retire (he's been working night shift throughout the pandemic.)