#WeekendCoffeeShare (September 19, 2021)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi all on this late Sunday evening! Boy, am I late joining #WeekendCoffeeShare. I’ve had all my coffee for the day and even had my last soft drink. If you’d like one, I’m sure I can still pass you one through the Internet though. Let’s have a cup of coffee or another drink and let’s catch up.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you that the weather is still pretty good for September here. Temperatures rose to roughly 20°C in the afternoon and it’s been mostly dry with some sunshine and some clouds. Today while in the car being taken back to the care facility from Lobith, my husband even said I had to wear sunglasses. Now sadly the sunlight wasn’t particularly bright to my (almost) totally blind eyes, but yesterday I’d gotten a headache from what might’ve been exposure to bright sunlight that I wasn’t consciously detecting.

If we were having coffee, I’d share that my husband and I had our tenth wedding anniversary today. We celebrated it yesterday with a large Domino’s pizza. We each had a milkshake too, but it was far too thick for my liking. I couldn’t finish drinking it, whether I tried the paper straw that came with it or my own silicone straw.

If we were having coffee, I would finally show you the picture of the present I gave my husband for our anniversary. It’s a polymer clay heart with the text “Assie houdt van je” stamped into it. Assie is my nickname (and no, in Dutch, there is no connotation to asses) and “houdt van je” is Dutch for “loves you”. There is magnetic tape at the back so that my husband could hang it on the fridge.

Polymer Clay Heart for My Husband

My husband really appreciated the gift.

If we were having coffee, I would tell you that the rest of my week was okay. I was a little sad and grieving the loss of my eyesight, as well as worrying about my upcoming care plan review. The review won’t be until September 30 and of course it doesn’t involve judgment and it isn’t a test.

However, I have been increasingly aware of my inner fight regarding my wish to stay here in Raalte and yet my feeling that I ought to be looking for another care facility or working towards living with my husband. In my paragraph about the bright sunshine, I almost wrote I was taken “home to the care facility” rather than “back”, as if our house in Lobith is less of a home to me than the care facility. My support staff would consider this progress, in that I’m beginning to feel safe here at the care facility. However, there’s an inner voice that tells me that this is betraying my husband. I know he supports me staying here for now, but I also know he struggles with the distance. Ugh, this is so hard.

If we were having coffee, lastly I’d share that I’m very curious about iOS 15, which will be out tomorrow. Like almost every year, there is one critic on the Dutch VoiceOver E-mail group who warns all of us to wait because it’ll be drama. This year though, the accessibility bugs seem not as serious as last year and especially the year before. Still, I’ll probably wait at least a couple of weeks until at least some of the other members of the group have actually installed the official release. I am really curious about live text in photos and improved VoiceOver image recognition though.

How have you been?

28 thoughts on “#WeekendCoffeeShare (September 19, 2021)”

    1. Thank you. As for iOS 15, I tend to recommend waiting to all not-too-advanced users. I forgot to mention that, unlike with previous upgrades, you can stick to iOS 14 and still receive security updates. Back with iOS 13 and 14 (and everything before that), you at one point would have to upgrade or your phone wouldn’t be safe. I will definitely upgrade at some point within the next few months, as iOS 15 certainly has some features I’d like and of course some app developers will eventually stop supporting iOS 14. However, now we’re not hurried by Apple itself.

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  10. I’m glad your anniversary went well. 🙂
    I’m sorry the upcoming care plan review brings you so many stressful and worrying thoughts, seems understandable though in your specific situation that it all feels very difficult to think about.
    I’m quite curious about iOS 15 as well and not going to upgrade just yet either. I looked on AppleVis and while it does seem like there’s fewer as serious and major bugs as there were at the beginning of iOS 13 for example, there seems to be lots of small but pretty annoying ones. Some people seem very gutted about that on there. I’d think unless someone really likes and has the ability to test things and knows exactly what they’re doing it’s always a good idea to wait with a major upgrade, especially that Apple is still going to support iOS 14.

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    1. Thank you for commenting and for supporting me re my upcoming care plan review. Re iOS 15, I looked at AppleVis too and the fact that, with some of the bugs, I have no clue what they’re talking about, makes me not so eager to upgrade.

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      1. I would actually think that that’s a good thing because then these bugs are less likely to affect you and the way you use your iPhone. 🙂 But I also agree that hearing about some weird bugs that you have no clue about what they are can feel very intimidating.

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  11. Hi Astrid, I don’t recall that you ever addressed this topic before in your coffee shares. I’ve wondered how hard it must be, needing to live away from your husband as you do. I can’t imagine it, but think, from my limited point of view, that you have a pretty healthy mind-set about it. It must be a fine balance of wanting to be back with him, sharing the same home and such while needing (for now?) the medical support of your team. It sounds like the right decision here is what you’ve done, but it still had to be a hard decision. I’m glad you shared it. I think you must have blogging friends around the globe who care about you and appreciate knowing the real situation.

    Blessings my friend.

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    1. Thank you so much for your supportive words, Gary. Oh, I had no idea I hadn’t shared about this issue before in my coffee share posts. The thing about this situation is though, it’s not just “for now”. Here in the Netherlands, you don’t get long-term care unless you need 24-hour care for the rest of your life. This doesn’t mean I’ll never live closer by my husband, but I’ll never live with him again. This realization makes me sad for both myself and my husband at times, but it’s the way it is.

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