About Sweetboy
Hi, my parents call me Sweetboy, but it’s not my real name. It’s a nickname. I’m 13. My favorite things to do are listening to music, going on hikes, and watching TV. And I clean up my toys once a week, but that’s it! I’m learning how to play the piano and the guitar and ride my skateboard. I love looking at books. I like anime. Graphic novels are one of my favorite things. I love looking at maps and Google Earth on my iPad. I love making lists of songs to listen to. I have a black cat named Luna. I am friendly and funny, and I have an autistic brain and ADHD. I don’t have a plain brain. I’m happy that I’m homeschooling.
About Sarah McInnes
I once dreamed of a tree with many branches, all of which were imbued with parts of who I am: mother, creative, writer, worrier, daughter, introvert, intelligent… and so on. Growing out of the branches were ornate masks like you would see in Mardi Gras or a masquerade ball. The masks were both part of the tree and not part of the tree.
Why did I tell you about a dream I had many years ago? Probably to explain, in a roundabout way, that I feel awkward writing “About Myself” summaries. What to highlight vs. what to gloss over. How much to reveal in what is meant to be a brief introduction. I’ve read many other bios, and they all either seem perky and upbeat or dull and professional. Then there’s mine. I’m rambling on about weird dreams.
I’m a New Yorker by birth and a Chapel Hillian by choice. I’ve been living in Chapel Hill, North Carolina since 2006. I’ve been married for nineteen years with one son, nicknamed Sweetboy.
I was thirty-two years old and four months pregnant when I graduated with a B.A. in Women’s Studies from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. After graduating from UNC, I worked for Kaplan Test Prep as an LSAT instructor before becoming a stay-at-home mother, then a writer, and now a homeschooling-writer-mother-website content creator. (Not to mention chauffeur, cook, appointment scheduler, laundress, special occasion planner, and filler of the Advent calendar.)
My longest love affair has been with books. My mother says that once I was introduced to the idea of reading, there was no stopping me. My favorite childhood novel, which I read and reread, was A Little Princess. Now I love reading women’s fiction, literary fiction, nonfiction, and the occasional cozy mystery or summer romance. I love words. It feels inevitable that I became a writer.
I write about women’s lives, neurodiversity, education, parenting, homeschooling, creativity, literature, and pieces of my past. I have ideas for stories for early readers, too. The story features a fun and adventurous autistic kid inspired by my son.
As for my own wiring, my quirks and challenges make sense in light of neurodivergence, but I suspect that my accumulated traits would be subclinical were I to seek a professional opinion. I’m hovering somewhere in the limbo of Broad Autism Phenotype. (I wouldn’t be surprised if this concept is dismissed in a few years as diagnostics evolve.) I’ve taken several questionnaires with the same results every time. “Your score indicates you are borderline autistic.” So at this point in time, I think of myself as “subclinically neurodivergent.” Not a diagnosis, but not quite like neurotypicals either. It’s an awkward space to be in, but feeling awkward isn’t new to me, so I guess it fits.
Fortunately, our little family of me and my husband, our son Sweetboy, and Luna the cat is a safe space for awkward moms and different thinkers to belong. I hope you feel welcomed here, too.
Some of my other writing can be found Here on Medium. You can also find Smart Noodle on Facebook and Instagram.
Read more here about Smart Noodle Homeschool.
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