#WeekendCoffeeShare (February 11, 2023)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m joining #WeekendCoffeeShare today. As usual, I already had my last cup of coffee for the day, although I’m earlier writing my post than I was last week. I do have Dubbelfrisss, a slightly carbonated drink. The staff probably also have various kinds of soda. Let’s have a drink and let’s catch up.

If we were having coffee, firstly I’d ask how your weather has been. Ours has been mostly sunny and not too cold. Today, the daytime temperature even climbed into the double digits and I wore my slightly less thick coat. Is there a word for that in English? In Dutch we call it a “tussenjas”, which literally translates to “in-between coat”.

If we were having coffee, I’d share that I’ve been doing lots of walking over the past week. I loved it! I probably didn’t manage as many steps this week as I did last week, but that’s okay.

On one of my walks across institution grounds today, the staff spotted butterflies and flowers painted on the path. I couldn’t resist the urge to take pictures.


If we were having coffee, I would also tell you that I took a trip to the next town to go to Action, a discount store. I originally intended on just buying T-shirts, but ended up buying a lot more, as usual when I visit that store.

If we were having coffee, I would tell you that my staff have been doing my hair several times this week. Today, my staff did a ponytail. On Thursday, the staff created two braids. I loved that look so much that I asked her to take a picture of me.

If we were having coffee, I’d share that I’ve been obsessing over creating my own breakfasts. I’ve been looking into making overnight oats and smoothie bowls. This afternoon, when I told the staff about the idea, we tossed around ideas and finally decided to create a basic smoothie that evening. It just had non-fat vanilla custard, milk and banana in it, but it was delicious.

If we were having coffee, lastly I’d announce that my support coordinator invited my mother-in-law and assigned staff to a meeting this coming Tuesday. I have no idea whether I’ve been invited too or what the goal for the meeting should be if I haven’t. I’m still pretty distrustful of this support coordinator and still feel this home isn’t suitable for me, even though the last couple of days have been okay. The reason that I still feel this home isn’t suitable is because it seems to be sheer luck when a day goes okay. I still wish to make it work, but I’ve pretty much lost hope that this home can truly provide what I need.

The Wednesday HodgePodge (February 8, 2023)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m joining the Wednesday HodgePodge once again today. This week, it has a love theme, which had me a little confused about the date, since Valentine’s Day isn’t till next week. However, who cares? Here goes.

1. Something you’ve done recently that might be considered a labor of love?
I honestly can’t think of anything. I don’t really do much for others, truthfully, shameful as this is. I still haven’t even crafted anything for my husband for Valentine’s Day yet, even though I usually do something each year.

2. What’s one thing you love about being the age you are now?ab
I’m 36. This means, or so I think, still being young enough that my body isn’t completely betraying me yet (although due to my disabilities aging is starting to set in), but old enough to have at least some knowledge of who I am.

3. What do you value more: careful planning or the freedom to be spontaneous? Elaborate.
A little of both, I think. I mean, my days are fairly structured with my day schedule and I still think they aren’t structured enough. My desire for more clarity though isn’t because I don’t want to do anything sort of spontaneously, but because any transition is hard for me. And there still are many in my current day schedule.

4. A home cooked meal or a fancy restaurant? pink or red? watch the sunrise or watch the sunset? wine and cheese or champagne and chocolate?
Home-cooked meal, just because I can’t stand fancy restaurants due to the expectation of my table manners. Pink. Sunset. Chocolate (but skip the champagne please). In all honesty, none of the above particularly appeal to me.

5. What’s your definition of romance? Are you a romantic?
I have no idea about my personal definition of romance. It probably has to do with showing your significant other your love in a special, attuned-to-them way, or something. I’m not a romantic at all. I usually think up ways to show my love in a particularly special way to my husband, but in the planning, things often go horribly wrong so that I end up with nothing at all. As with my idea for a Valentine’s gift this year.

6. Insert your own random thought here.
I am struggling with too many ideas in my head for crafty projects and not enough of something I can’t quite pinpoint to actually make them happen. It could be the fact that my ideas are a chaotic mess and I have no sense of how to actually go from idea to plan to project. Of course, I blame my day schedule, but I’m pretty sure that’s not everything there is to it. Yes, the problem is in part that watching a YouTube tutorial on something takes time, something I do have in only hour-long segments with no guarantee that, when I start on something with one staff (say, watching a tutorial), I can actually follow it up with them too. I am not sure this is the entire problem though.

Crafting Lately: My Latest Polymer Clay Unicorn, Yay!

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Here I am today finally ready to show you all my latest polymer clay unicorn. It wasn’t the last one I started – that would be the one in a lying-down position. Then again, I decided to put the clay for that one back in the packet because I didn’t like how flat its belly had become while lying on my oven-safe mat. This, instead, is the blue unicorn I’ve been talking about for weeks.

I started out by using ultramarine blue Premo for its body and head. Then, I created the legs in the same color, but added metallic silver Fimo Effect for the hooves. I always forget whether I do the mane and tail first or the ears first. This time, I think I initially did its ears first but then decided to do the mane first. These are done in blue agate Fimo Effect, as is its tail. The horn is done in metallic silver once again. Finally, for the eyes, I chose black Fimo Professional. I decided against doing an add-on nose this time, instead asking my staff to create nostrils with a dotting tool.

Usually, I have the mane run all over the unicorn’s back till where I’ll start the tail, but I had too short of a mane for this one. This was a great thing after all, as it gave me a reason to add Hotfix rhinestones to the unicorn’s back. I am so lucky, because someone from the Dutch polymer clay Facebook group sent me some samples and there in fact were blue ones among them.

I baked the unicorn at 130°C for 60 minutes. Possibly because of this, the blue agate Fimo is slightly darker than its original color.

After baking, I had my staff help me paint white dots in the unicorn’s eyes, as I usually do to make them look more alive.

This unicorn is only a slight creative detour from what I usually do, but I loved the entire process. I also am so happy because I did most of the creating independently.

Things That Made Me Smile (February 6, 2023) #WeeklySmile

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I had a rather difficult first half of my day. Slept rather poorly because of some worries about my care situation and, while trying to talk through my thoughts with a staff, got even more frustrated. The evening isn’t going great either: lots of random staff switches and a fellow client who spiraled into crisis when I was in the living room. What better time then the present to focus on the positives? As one of my teachers once said, you can only be happy once in your entire life and that’s right now. For this reason, I’m joining Trent’s #WeeklySmile. Here goes.

This afternoon, the new student staff took me on a walk. First, we went to the cafeteria in the main office building to get a hot cocoa for me and latte macchiato for her.

Then, we walked some more, while chatting about random things. At one point, we got to talking about positive thinking and she told me to throw all my negative thinking onto the nearby highway to be run over by trucks. I told her an elaborate story about how my husband, who is a truck driver, would run over all my negative ideas on his way to Hoorn, which is his default route, and catch unicorns for me while there to fly all positivity my way. After all, the symbol for the city of Hoorn is the unicorn.

Then we started singing children’s songs. I sang (well, in my out-of-key way) the English version of “The Wheels on the Bus” to her, while she taught me some modern Dutch children’s songs. We also remembered an older one that I happen to have sung at a Kindergarten contest.

The rest of the day was stressful once again, but I cherish this moment.

#WeekendCoffeeShare (February 4, 2023)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m joining #WeekendCoffeeShare today, even though I’ve long had my last cup of coffee for the day. No soft drinks or vitamin water for me today either. In fact, I actually now realize I forgot to ask my one-on-one staff for chips this evening, which we usually get on Saturdays. Oh well, the scale will thank me (I hope). Let’s have a drink and let’s catch up.

If we were having coffee, first I’d confess that I still write “2022” rather than “2023” as the title of my coffee share posts and other dated posts regularly. I don’t think I did this for so long during previous years, but “2022” comes out so easily. Oh well.

If we were having coffee, I’d ask about your weather. Ours has been mixed. Early in the week, we had some rain, but later, we’ve had nice winter weather. Daytime temperatures have usually been at about 8°C.

If we were having coffee, I would tell you that, yesterday, I got in almost two hours of exercise according to my Apple Watch, most walking and a little dancing. “Dancing”, in my book, is usually just walking with some arm swaying to the tune of some upbeat music. I got in over 13K steps. Today, I got in nearly 11K steps too.

If we were having coffee, I would share that, like I said in my post on Wednesday, the home’s kitchen renovations are over with. On Thursday, the living room furniture got moved back to its proper place. I notice I was almost used to the temporary arrangement.

If we were having coffee, I would proudly announce that the theme for this month’s challenge in the Dutch polymer clay Facebook group is unicorns. It was chosen in part by me. I am looking forward to showing the blue unicorn that’s been waiting to be cured in the oven since Tuesday.

After all, like I said last week, someone from that group sent me some Hotfix rhinestones to try to decorate my clay sculptures with. When they arrived on Tuesday, I immediately tried them on the blue unicorn. I can’t wait to show her, the group and the world. Let’s hope the rhinestones won’t fall off.

If we were having coffee, lastly I would tell you that I had another nice visit from my mother-in-law on Tuesday. We went to Burger King to have lunch. Our food was lukewarm by the time it arrived, but that’s almost to be expected with burger chains these days. We also went to an arts and crafts store, but I decided not to buy anything, as I was rather overloaded already.

See, I did it: I created a coffee share post without complaining about my care home situation. It isn’t because it’s better. Well, today is a pretty good day for once. Let’s celebrate that and be thankful. But still all please pray I can get out of here.

Chasing Perfection? #SoCS

Posted on by Astrid

Whenever I think of how bad I feel about my current care home situation, I am reminded of two seemingly contradictory statements from my staff. One is that I think every place is horrible anyway. The other is that I had “gold in my hands” at my old home. These seem contradictory, but really aren’t. They are two sides of the same coin: I am thought of as chasing perfection.

There may be some truth to this idea indeed, but that doesn’t negate the fact that one can learn and this place is definitely bad. It isn’t like I just need to accept what I have now just because I can’t have it all. Besides, if people – the powers-that-be, such as the behavior specialists – just had been honest with me about the fact that, indeed, to live with people of higher IQ would mean more expectations and less support, I’d have declined to move. That was, after all, the comment I put at the bottom of my “housing profile”.

And it isn’t like I chase perfection everywhere. Or honestly that I thought, at the end of the day, that this place would be perfect. Yes, when I read the home’s profile on the website, I thought it’d be, but that leaflet is either outdated or simply incorrect. But when the behavior specialist for my old home explained some things about the home, I did realize it wasn’t perfect. Same when I visited here twice. But then again, perfection doesn’t exist. And I was willing to make some sacrifices to live on institution grounds and have fellow residents I could chat with. But not everything I had: all the daily structure, all the useful day activities, all the proper help with ADLs and, interestingly, behavioral regulation too. Because, despite the fact that this home is an intensive support home, which means the residents have significant challenging behavior, whereas my old home was a care-based home, I see more people managing huge wildfires of escalating behavior without realizing the proverbial cigarettes they’ve thrown onto the ground themself.

This post was inspired by today’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday: “perfection”. I am sorry for being repetitive yet again. This whole care home situation is getting old, but I wish that meant I’d actually adjusted to it. I’m not sure I ever will.

It’s All a Blur

Posted on by Astrid

It’s all a blur, this life of mine. Moments, days, weeks, months – maybe soon years, who knows? – roll into each other. I don’t like it one bit, sorry not sorry.

I may not be able to fully lay the blame on my current care home with its chaotic and yet oh so boring routine and no day activities whatsoever. I might be able to create my own routine that would somehow differentiate between mornings and evenings, weekdays and weekends, summer and winter. If only I knew how.

This post was written for this week’s Six Sentence Stories link-up, for which the prompt word is “blur”.

My Life Story Isn’t Over Yet

Posted on by Astrid

Hi all. Today I’m joining Tranquil Thursday. This replaces Throwback Thursday while Lauren is dealing with her health issues. This week’s topic is (un)written aspects of our life story.

I am 36. On average, this means I’m about at midlife or slightly before there. This should mean about as much of my life story has been written already as the part that’s still unwritten. I struggle to see it this way though. In my mind, I’m perpetually in end-of-life mode.

Especially since moving to my current care home, I no longer make plans. I blame the chaotic situation here, but I’m not sure that’s all there is to it.

I do look back at a life that has been hard, but it definitely has had its positives. Meeting my husband and getting married is an absolutely amazing thing about my life.

As a teen and young adult, I always wanted to write and publish my autobiography. I obviously never did. It had as its working title “Some former preemies will go to university”, after the title of an article in the newspaper my parents read in 2004. The article was about giving preemies born at 24 weeks gestation a chance at active treatment. The neonatologist arguing for this said that some preemies will later go to university. In other words, they’ll prove their worthiness of having been treated actively.

As regular readers of this blog will know, I received active treatment as a preemie too, even though my parents weren’t completely sure I should. I did, indeed, at some point go to university. And failed miserably. But I did sort of prove my worth. Or did I?

My life story isn’t over yet. I might indeed someday be relatively successful at life, whatever that may be. Or I might deteriorate even further than I am now. Then again, everyone deteriorates in old age. And if you need to have had a college degree and worked for 40’ish years before that in order to prove your life is worth it, human values are rather distorted.

The Wednesday HodgePodge (February 1, 2023)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi all. After a month on hiatus, the Wednesday HodgePodge is back and I’m joining in. Here are Joyce’s questions.

1. Tell us anything you want about your January.
It was such a looong month. Oh, that’s a cliche, but who cares? I shared my monthly reflections yesterday.

2. Lake Superior State University posts a list each year of words they think should be banished from the Queen’s English for misuse, overuse, and/or general uselessness. The 2023 list includes GOAT, inflection point, quiet quitting, gaslighting, moving forward, amazing, Does that make sense?, irregardless, absolutely, and it is what it is.
Which of these words/phrases do you use regularly? Which of these words would you most like to see banished from everyday speech and why? Is there a word/phrase not on the list you’d like to add?
I use “absolutely” and “amazing” a lot. I also have a lot of other words I use way too frequently. It’s probably because my written English isn’t as good as I’d like it to be. As for a word or phrase I’d like to see banished most out of this list, it’d be “it is what it is”. That’s just such a useless statement. By the way, I have an inkling “GOAT” when spelled in all-caps means something other than the animal, but I have absolutely (see, here I go again) no idea what it means.

I don’t know which words or phrases I’d add to the list in general, but I’d erase “obviously” and “definitely” from my own personal vocabulary if I could (and replace them with a dozen synonyms). Oh wait, I could do that, but I’m too lazy to use my thesaurus.

3. February 2nd is Groundhog Day. What’s something that feels repeated in your life right now?
Wow, this HodgePodge is a true English lesson! After all, I had no idea what groundhogs even were or what they had to do with repetition. That being said, my days at this point in my life are one giant string of repetition, truthfully. In a way, they’re very unpredictable, but since there is no rhyme or reason to my weeks, the days all roll into each other.

4. What’s a food you love that’s named after a place?
I really don’t know all that many foods named after places. I was going to say “mexicano”, which is a type of rectangular mince snack, but that would be named after the ethnic group. Besides, the mexicano has nothing whatsoever to do with Mexico or Mexican food.

5. What’s the best season of the year to visit your part of the country? Tell us why.
Spring or summer. I live in a part of the Netherlands where the summers can get hotter than, say, in the coastal provinces. However, there’s a lake quite near where I live now, which is good for swimming (we used to go there when my family still lived in Apeldoorn). Spring would also be a good time to take walks around here, I guess, but I haven’t tried that yet as I moved here in the fall.

I wouldn’t recommend visiting the Netherlands during winter at all, as we hardly get snow and, even if we do, we don’t have mountains so it’s no use for skiing.

6. Insert your own random thought here.
My care home’s kitchen renovations are done! They were actually finished nearly a week early. I’m so happy about it, as it means I can finally cure my polymer clay creations in the oven. It also means the living room furniture will be moved back to the actual living room soon rather than all of my fellow clients gathering in the hallway right across from my room. That’s been quite disastrous. Honestly though, I still do want to leave this care home, as the real problems aren’t temporary.