(This post is directly from Stella. These are her own words, even her own choice of title. Out of the blue tonight, she said she wanted to update everyone on her life.)

I am now nine years old, and almost ten. I play guitar now, and I love sushi. I love learning about different cultures, like Japan, China, India and Native American peoples.

I have a dog. His name is Kansas and he’s really cute. I like how much energy he has and I like how he’s funny. He rolls around on soft things and he loves fish. He’ll pretty much eat everything. People say he looks like a little pig, and is shaped like a sausage. And I’m teaching him tricks because he’s growing up–he’s five years old.

In Kindergarten, I had an awesome teacher who taught us how to be kind, how to read, how to write, and how to be inclusive. Her name was Miss Bernhard. And I had an awesome gym teacher called Mrs. H–she worked all our muscles, and made sure we had good health. She taught us about nutrition and what’s good for us. And there are two dogs at school. Their names are Bunny and Ollie, and they belong to the principal, Barry.

In first grade, I had a really good teacher and her name was Miss Zubair. She read us cool books at story time. She taught us about math, and history. For our ticket to outside, she would ask us different math problems. When we got it right we got to go outside.

And in second grade, I shared a classroom with third graders and made new friends. I had a teacher named Miss Bond, and in the other class there was Miss Frizzle. Her real name is Nancy King. And she taught us to love geography.

Third grade. I had two teachers named Elana and Miss Shumway. At first Miss Shumway wasn’t with us, in the first days, because she was pregnant. And she had a baby boy named Lou. Elana and Miss Shumway taught us fractions, and I had an awesome French teacher, and she taught us all kinds of words in French. We shared a classroom with the second graders.

Now it’s summer, and next year I’m going to be ten and in fourth grade.

And now my mom works at a design agency, and she’s written really cool stuff. And I remember when I was little, her showing me a comic she wrote with her friend. She used to work for a youth company on Whidbey Island.

(Note: Here I asked Stella if she remembered anything about her early days with the feeding tube or vision therapy, as that’s a lot of what readers know from this blog, and how her story has helped people.)

I remember having a feeding tube. I remember it going into my nose and, I think, down my throat. And I had to go to eye games when I got my glasses, and I think I’ve had about four different pairs. And I’ve had to go to eye tests, and I remember the eye drops, like dropping orange formula into my eyes and it feeling like I was swimming in a chlorine pool with my eyes open. I remember them taking pictures of my eyes to do tests on.

And I’m an advanced human. That means I have no wisdom teeth. I want to be a punk rocker when I grow up, and I’m really good at guitar. I go to the School of Rock for lessons, and I used to have a teacher named Jane. Now I have a teacher named Dave. I’m working on five songs, and they have Rock 101 lists and “Helter Skelter” is one of my favorites of their second list. My favorite of their first list is “Rocking in the Free World.” Dave told me he was gonna teach me a song called “99 Red Balloons.” And the German word for it is “99 Luft Balloon.” The story is about a girl and a boy blowing up all these red balloons and sending them into the air. And the Army spots them and thinks they’re a kind of danger and everyone was worried they’d have an accidental war.

Since I need a little help with math, I go to Sparkle Spot every week, and they make math really fun. This is another good solution for autistic kids who have trouble with math. And I’m enjoying it.

The most recent fun time was my first go-karting trip. I went with my friends Avi, Ryan and Elliot. It was fun–the only part I didn’t like was when the others bumped into me. And another hard part was getting my glasses on while wearing my helmet. And my friend Avi’s dad used to teach go-karting so he taught me and my friends some techniques. At the end, I had low blood sugar and right after I had a snack in the car, I felt peaceful.

And I love swimming, and what I love most is swimming in the ocean and deep ends. I love swimming in the ocean because I get to swim with fish and I love animals and sea life. And why I love swimming in deep ends is because I love doing flips and diving and seeing how long I can hold my breath. I feel like when I’m deep underwater it’s cool. I go swimming the most when it’s hot out and at beaches. And if at the bottom of a beach floor, on a hot day, it’s cold and refreshing. And I love jumping off diving boards.

–Stella