Hi everyone. I’m joining #WeekendCoffeeShare again. I’m starting this post at 5:35PM as my iPhone is upgrading to iOS 26. I’ll probably finish this post after my evening coffee at 7PM. By the look of it, the iPhone update might not even have been completed by then, as my Internet is incredibly slow. Anyway, let’s have a drink and let’s catch up.
If we were having coffee, first I’d talk about the weather. Early in the week, the daytime highs were like 14°C and we had a little rain. No more rain today or yesterday and the temps have dropped to 10°C. That’s still warm for this time of year.
If we were having coffee, then I’d share that I’m still going strong meeting my movement goals on my Apple Watch and it’s now finally decided to actually add days to my streak. I broke my streak record a few days ago. The previous record was 309 days and it was set in June of 2023. However, of course I cheated with this one, as I paused my rings while sick last September.
If we were having coffee, then I’d tell you this week is a mixed bag. Early in the week, I found out that, as of next month, all self-employed temp workers will be let go. That’s understandable, as a self-employed person actually doing the same things as regular employees, is considered tax evasion on the part of the employer (in this case the care agency). The Tax Service had originally planned on handing out fines for this starting this year, but due to the problems in care and other sectors, it postponed this a year. I had known that this was going to happen for years, but due to the care agency’s careless attitude, hadn’t been sure that the care agency was actually going to follow through this time.
On Monday, one of the regular staff here, who is responsible for planning, said it’s indeed true and that this will likely lead to more staffing issues and possible cuts to our care. Other staff have been reassuring that my one-on-one hours have already been approved until late 2026 and I need not worry about cuts to my one-on-one. All this makes me quite worried regardless, as I’m just now learning to actually fill my one-on-one with enjoyable or meaningful activities.
If we were having coffee, then I’d talk about these meaningful activities. On Monday, I finished the Christmas decorations I crafted last week. No photo of the individual pieces, sorry, as my staff hung them on the branch that we use to decorate for the seasons before I remembered to snap a picture. I do, however, have a few pictures of the entire scene.
As a side note, my staff also borrowed some of my clay cutters for creating more decorations. These, I believe she is now finishing and will be putting up soon.
If we were having coffee, next I’d tell you that, yesterday, I visited the next town’s market again. I love going to this market, which is quiet enough that I don’t get overloaded yet there are enough stalls to buy all of the things I’d like to buy. I had fried shrimp at the fish stand. Well, one of two fish stands, actually. It turned out I usually go to the other one and like that one better, but I was with a staff who’d never been to this market. I also bought olives, mixed nuts and candy.
If we were having coffee, lastly I’d share that I finally got my mother-in-law’s access to my records at the care agency revoked. I had originally asked that she’d be given access because, for some stupid reason, the powers-that-be wouldn’t give me access. Their reasoning was that it’d lead to too much distress, something I now realize isn’t grounds enough for denying a patient access to their own records. However, due to this decision, for many years, nobody had access to my records, so the staff could basically write down whatever they liked. That’s why eventually I asked my mother-in-law be given access. Not that she ever reads my records or that I trust her to respond appropriately if she does. Now nobody has access again, but I’m soon going to persuade the behavior specialist and manager to give me access after all.
A Multitude of Musings 
It is a big problem what these people say about you. I think there is a lot of opinion goes in there, rather than objectivity. My friend finally got access to her records but so much had been redacted thatthey were useless.
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Oh wow, that sucks so bad about your friend’s records having been redacted! I think this may happen a lot here too. Also, my former support coordinator at the intensive support home changed my crisis plan without my knowledge or consent and kept the old dates and names of people creating it so that it looked like she hadn’t changed it. Thankfully, I had my original crisis plan in a folder. Thanks a lot for understanding me.
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I’ve seen it too opften – where prejudice is the basis for the type of help people receive. Or whjether they receive help at all.
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True indeed, sad as it is.
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It worries me that our respective health services are unaccountable. Anyway, have a good Sunday evening.
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It worries me too, but I try to take it one day at a time. Hope you have a nice Sunday evening too.
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It does seem unusually warm considering the time of year!
Well done with meeting your movement goals.
That is a worry about the potential staffing issues at your home. I am sure it will all be OK in the end.
The decorations are beautiful!
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Thanks for stopping by. Re the staffing issues, my wife says things’ll turn out okay once every care agency has gotten the message so to speak and kicked out all self-employed workers, because well these people need to eat too and they can’t get unemployment benefits once kicked out because well they’re self-employed. Then they’ll have little choice but to become regular employees either for a specific care agency if they want this or for a temping agency if they want to keep the flexibility.
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The Christmas decorations look very nice. Thank you for your weekend coffee share.
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Thank you so much! 🙂
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The decorations are lovely.
I think it’s ridiculous that people can’t see their own health records. I’ve had that experience too. Hope you get to see yours!
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Thanks so much for your supportive comment. Re the health records, there’s an exception to patients always needing to have access for when the clinician has grounds to believe the patient will experience significant psychological harm from accessing their records.
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I like the decorations… we have decided not to really decorate this year. There has just been so much going on and we need to work on making more space in the house so instead of bringing stuff in and then back out to decorate we are doing VERY little.
I do not understand why you cannot get access to your records. We have a system called My Chart here that lets us access clinical notes from the doctor after each visit. That is the physical doctors, not my mental health care givers. I did receive all my session note from a certain time frame when I needed documentation about my depression and anxiety for my disability filing. There really wasn’t anything in there that I did not already know. I hope you succeed in getting access. Enjoy the rest of your week!
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Thanks for the compliment on the decorations. These are in the living room, for clarity’s sake. I only minimally decorated my own room and hadn’t yet when I wrote this post.
Re the records, I used to have access to my primary care records too but somehow this was disabled after I moved to the main institution. I used to think it’s because the GP surgery here doesn’t use the record access system but they do, just probably not for institution residents (they’re a town-wide practice). My comments though were about the care home staff’s notes about me.
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You’re welcome. I see. I still believe that if it is notes about you, you have a right to see them.
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Agree completely.
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