February 2025 In My Kitchen

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone! A while ago, I discovered Sherry’s In My Kitchen linky. As most of you know, I don’t have a kitchen, but of course my care home does. I’m using this opportunity to share some thoughts about the foods I’ve prepared and/or consumed lately. Do polymer clay-related musings count too, since polymer clay is cured in an oven? Just kidding (a bit).

Last week, like I think I shared, I visited the next town’s market and bought olives, fried chicken and peppers. I also bought arugula at the supermarket. My staff whipped up the most delicious salad out of these and some carrots that were in our fridge. I had some the next day as well. Sadly, I was under the impression that the staff had used up all peppers, only to be told yesterday that there were still peppers in the fridge. Those had by then gone bad.

I also bought blueberries and have been adding those to my muesli and quark that I eat for breakfast almost each day.

I’ve also been making smoothies lately. For example, a few weeks ago, we had lots of bananas that were on the ripe side, so we chose to whip up a smoothie with them. My current blender has only a 1 liter container, so at first I used to make only about four cups of smoothie and share them with my fellow residents who also stay up later.

Yesterday, a staff offered to help me prepare a smoothie for the entire home that we could use in place of our evening soft drink. Looking back, creating more smoothie than my container can hold is as simple as pouring the smoothie into cups then reloading the blender. The staff peeled and cored the apples and pears, something I think I could’ve helped with too, but oh well. I chose to add cinnamon, cardamom and clove, as well as soy milk as a liquid. The smoothie was absolutely delicious!

For the upcoming month, I’m really hoping to do more in the care home kitchen. Honestly, I feel I could easily be whipping up my own salads and do more in the smoothie-making process. I’ve also been looking at treats and even main meals to cook. I mean, I have the two-hour supported activity time slot in the afternoon and this often is currently spent on nothing more than a walk. I have been nagging my staff for a more structured activity schedule for months, but this seems to be rather difficult. One can always hope though.

Book Review: Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. A few weeks ago, a person on Reddit was looking for books with queer, neurodivergent characters. Someone recommended Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle. All I knew about the book before starting to read it, was that it’s horror about a gay conversion camp and that the main character is autistic. I’d hardly ever read horror, but somehow, the book appealed to me. Tonight, I finished it, so here’s my review.

Book Description

A searing and earnest horror debut about the demons the queer community faces in America, the price of keeping secrets, and finding the courage to burn it all down.

They’ll scare you straight to hell.

Welcome to Neverton, Montana: home to a God-fearing community with a heart of gold.

Nestled high up in the mountains is Camp Damascus, the self-proclaimed “most effective” gay conversion camp in the country. Here, a life free from sin awaits. But the secret behind that success is anything but holy.

My Review

The book started out quite weird. Honestly, I had no idea what was happening until midway through the book. That, at first, frustrated me. However, having finished the book, I now feel this unknowing fits in nicely with the plot.

Once I got beyond the first half, I started rooting for the main character and her friends. I really feared the book would have a horrible ending. I felt all kinds of feelings as I made my way through the second half and was chilled to the core whenever something bad happened to the main character or her friends. I also didn’t expect the ending. Honestly, I still have many questions now.

The main character, Rose, is autistic like I said. This isn’t a main focus of the book, but the presentation of her autism is a bit stereotypical. That’s not a big problem though.

I don’t really know what I think of this book. Its weird first half sticks with me, but at the same time, I’m pretty excited to read the author’s next book. As pretty much an intro to the horror genre for me, it’s really good. I hardly do Goodreads anymore, but if I had to rate this book, it’d get 4 out of 5 stars.

#WeekendCoffeeShare (February 22, 2025)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m joining #WeekendCoffeeShare once again. It’s almost 10:30PM here, so no coffee for me. Since this is a virtual get-together, you’re free to grab your own beverage of choice. Let’s have a drink and let’s chat.

If we were having coffee, first I’d talk about the weather. It’s been all over the place with freezing night-time temps and daytime highs hardly above freezing early in the week, then a daytime high of 16°C yesterday. Today the daytime high was 12°C, which is still quite warm for late February. Unfortunately, it was raining most of the day today.

If we were having coffee, then I’d share that this week was a mixed bag mental health-wise. I’ve mostly been quite tired, but the bloodwork I had done on Monday came back all clear. I wish there was something simple that could explain my daytime tiredness, but I’m pretty sure that if I pressure the doctor to do more testing, they’ll just say I shouldn’t give in to fatigue, as I was told the last few times (many years ago) that I complained of being too tired.

Yesterday was a good day, but today I felt a bit irritable and overloaded.

If we were having coffee, then I’d share that I spent a lot of time early in the week switching web browsers. Somehow, with the latest update, Edge for iOS is pretty much impossible to use for me. Whether this is an actual bug in its accessibility with VoiceOver or it’s just that things have been switched around like crazy and I’m not tech savvy enough for it anymore, I don’t know. I tried getting the freakin’ Copilot (Microsoft’s AI) that was constantly in my way to disappear, but it wouldn’t.

So I decided to leave Edge behind altogether and switch browsers, because I don’t like using one browser on my iPhone and another on PC. I finally settled on Chrome and, though I’m still figuring things out, mostly it works okay.

If we were having coffee, I’d then tell you that a (now former) staff came to say goodbye on Monday. I gave her the “bull in a china shop”, ie. the polymer clay elephant in a mug I’d created last week. She loves unicorns and elephants, but she already had a unicorn.

This time around, I didn’t get a proper description from the Be My Eyes app, because it judged the mug to be its body and the letter J (for the staff’s first name) to be its tail.

If we were having coffee, I’d then tell you all I had a good day yesterday. I walked a lot, but also visited the next town’s market. I had originally been uncertain as to whether I wanted fried fish (or shrimp really) because of it being quite a high-calorie, high-fat food. I eventually said “screw it!” and considered yesterday a total cheat day. I, after all, also had fried chicken for dinner. Granted, other than that I only had a salad.

If we were having coffee, then I’d share I do really need to lose weight though. I’m about 2kg overweight, which doesn’t seem like a lot given that I used to be 20kg heavier than I am now. However, the “screw it!” thoughts are pretty commonplace especially given the current state of the world. For example, my unhealthy voice is telling me it’s not a problem if I risk getting a heart attack ten years from now because, for all we know, the world may’ve gone up in smoke by then anyway. I, thankfully, do still have more tangible reasons to lose weight or at least not gain any. Like, I still want to be able to wear my favorite pants.

If we were having coffee, lastly I’d share that I am still going strong meeting my movement goal on my Apple Watch each day this month. I’m really hoping for the perfect month award. That being said, I’m not overcompensating for my having indulged in too many “cheat” foods. Not that I believe in cheat foods anyway, since there are no bad foods, just less healthy habits. And overexercising can be a less healthy habit too, as my dietitian reminded me on Wednesday. Not that I’ve ever truly done that, honestly. The bottom line though is that I’m not engaging in compulsive eating habits or exercise. I feel things might need to be a little more controlled, but I’m not sure how to do this.

Today’s Accomplishments (February 15, 2025)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Over the past few weeks, all I seem to have done is hang out on social media, talk randomly with my staff and lie in bed. That isn’t entirely true, since I’m still managing to close all of my activity rings on my Apple Watch everyday this month. However, this month so far feels horribly unproductive. I think in part this may be my mindset, so to turn the tide, today I’m once again listing my accomplishments for the day.

1. Showered even though it wasn’t one of my designated shower days. Like I said in my post on spoon theory, showering costs me a lot of energy, so it’s actually quite an accomplishment that I did it on a day I wasn’t required to.

2. Went for an hour-long walk. This isn’t a huge achievement, as I walk most days, but still, I shouldn’t downplay it either.

3. Completed the friends quest with my partner on Duolingo with me having done only slightly less than my spouse. The quest was to complete 50 lessons with 90% accuracy. The accuracy isn’t the problem for me, as I’m doing intermediate English and early B2 is still quite easy. However, over the past few weeks I’d only done a lesson or two a day.

4. Created a “bull in a china shop”, as I call them, out of polymer clay. It’s an elephant that sits on top of a cup. I had been planning to make it for a few days, but always procrastinated on it even though it turned out I could finish the thing in half an hour. No picture yet, as it still needs to have its eyes painted.

5. Wrote a few thoughtful (if I can say so myself) comments on Reddit. I go there everyday now that Facebook is no longer safe, but I try to actually have something meaningful to say too.

6. Wrote this blog post. Does that count? Yes, if I say so, it does and it’s probably the greatest achievement of the day given I had hardly come on WP over the past few weeks.

Limerick: Rage

Posted on by Astrid

When I scream out of rage
Some staff won’t engage
Others let me cry
Until my bad mood passes by
Then I can turn the page

This was seriously my first attempt at a limerick in I think it must be more than 25 years. I don’t honestly think it’s funny, but at least I gave the challenge a go. This one’s for Esther Chilton’s prompt, which is “rage”.

Spoon Theory

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone! I’m back after more than a week of not touching the blog. I feel horrible for having neglected something I really love over the past few years, ie. my blog. However, I just don’t seem to have the spoons for it.

Spoons? This week’s prompt for #SoCS is “spoonful”. I immediately thought of spoon theory.

Spoon theory is a way of describing life with a chronic illness or disability that limits someone’s energy levels when compared to non-disabled people’s energy levels. I haven’t delved deep into it, but the way I understand it, each person has a set number of “spoons” or spoonfuls of energy. However, for a disabled or chronically ill person, daily activities take up more spoons than they would for someone who is currently healthy and non-disabled.

I was thinking of this when, after a dispute with one of my staff over temp workers, I wanted a way to explain how hard it is for me to deal with a temp worker, especially when they haven’t been told what to do with/for me, because “she can explain everything really well”.

For example, let’s say we each have ten spoonfuls of energy a day. The actual number doesn’t matter, but the point is it’s the same for someone who isn’t disabled, like the staff, as it is for me. For a non-disabled staff, their first spoonful of energy of the day might go to showering. For me, it goes to processing the staff’s greeting in the morning and figuring out who is going to help me with my morning routine. Then, if it’s a temp worker, the next spoon goes to introducing myself and figuring out whether I “know” them already (as some of them claim I should “know” them when they’ve been my staff just once many months ago). Then, another spoon goes to thinking of whether it’s a day I’m supposed to take a shower (which I hate, so doing it everyday to skip this step isn’t really an option) or just do a quick wash. Showering costs me at least two additional spoons, often more. Then it’s not even half an hour into my morning routine and I’ve already spent half my spoons for the day. I accept this reality, but additional spoons go into explaining my routine to temp workers even though a lot of it is in my day schedule. When a temp worker (or even a regular staff who rarely works mornings) helps me with my morning routine, this usually means I’m overloaded by the time I’ve finished breakfast.

And just so you know, getting up on my own and doing my entire morning routine independently, would mean I’d spent all of my spoons by the time I had gotten dressed or even earlier. I tried this when at the intensive support home, where the reasoning was that if you can do something physically, it doesn’t matter how much energy it costs. I was then told I was being “negative” for going into bed right after my shower.

For your information, spoon shortage does not just result in physical exhaustion. For me, it often results in mental overload, which I may show as a meltdown. Then people reason that melting down costs energy too so why am I “choosing” to spend my spoons on that? The thing is, meltdowns aren’t a choice.

I honestly feel that staff in general, not just the staff who refuses to support me after said dispute, need to be more aware of spoon theory. Then they’d understand better why I can walk for 45 minutes but not do my personal care completely independently. Hint: walking is just one action for me (putting one foot in front of the other). Oh, that’s two because I have two feet. However, my point is that walking isn’t nearly as complex a task as personal care is.

That being said, I feel that spoon theory would not just help me, but the other clients too. There’s a client here who “takes advantage” of the others by not doing any chores, according to the same staff who tells me I can explain everything perfectly fine so the temp worker doesn’t need introducing. She’s all for fairness and equality and everyone being the same. Newsflash: we aren’t. And who knows how much energy goes into this client’s everyday activities?

Okay, this post goes into the “Awareness” category because it’s not really a ramble. Well, it is, but it is also a post to raise awareness. I haven’t added the “#SoCS” ending to my post title because, well, not sure why but it didn’t feel appropriate. I hope that’s okay.