#WeekendCoffeeShare (March 29, 2025)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone on this last Saturday of March. I’m joining #WeekendCoffeeShare today. It’s nearly 8PM as I write this, so no more coffee for me. However, a fellow client’s parents brought us cheese, sausage and maybe other little snacks to go with our soft drinks this evening. I’ll have apple and peach-flavored Dubbelfrisss as usual. Let’s have a drink and let’s catch up.

If we were having coffee, first as usual I’d talk about the weather. It’s been mild most days with daytime temperatures around 15°C, though night-time temps have been around freezing. We had a little rain on Sunday I believe, but I think that was before I woke up. Honestly, I’m pretty sure nature could use some showers.

If we were having coffee, then I’d talk about my physical fitness routine. I am still going strong with my goal of a perfect month on my Apple Watch and, on Thursday, got in over 20K steps again.

If we were having coffee, then however I’d moan about my tremors. I’ve mentioned a couple of times that my right leg trembles horribly sometimes and, usually when it’s been happening, the rest of my body follows suit and starts twitching. Yesterday, it was really bad. My intellectual disability physician usually says it’s most likely influenced by stress, though both of us know that my medication (particularly my antipsychotic) could be causing it too.

With respect to my meds, I’ve often been reacting out of fear of becoming unmanageable and for this reason asking for a very slow taper. My physician has been constantly asking whether my life will become more difficult soon due to for instance more temp workers, because apparently that’d be a reason not to taper further for a while. Now I’ve decided that being manageable is not a reason to put my body through the effects of strong meds. Besides, yesterday I had an aggressive meltdown precisely because I couldn’t cope with the tremors anymore. Now thankfully on Monday my staff will contact the intellectual disability physician, my GP or both.

If we were having coffee, I’d also moan about my shoes. I’d worn one pair of orthopedic shoes for only a week last Thursday and they were already badly damaged. The physical therapist took a look at them and said she thought the orthopedic shoemaker might not have done the last repair properly. I’m not sure that’s the reason they get damaged so quickly. On Friday though, the physical therapist came by and took a video of my walking, which she is going to compare to a video she took about half a year ago. I’ll see her again next Friday and hope she’ll have some ideas.

If we were having coffee, I’d share that I’ve been having bad memories of my time in the mental hospital. Like I said above, the intellectual disability physician here constantly talks about the possibility of more temp workers as an excuse not to taper my medication. This was precisely why I was prescribed medication in the first place: I’d become severely irritable because of the large number of temp workers at the time and my psychologist was threatening me with seclusion if I continued to have meltdowns. Similarly, when on the locked ward, I was literally told I’d be locked up in the “quiet room” if I needed more care than they could provide. I realize rationally that this is institutional abuse, but I’ve internalized a lot of all the bullcrap institutions feed me.

If we were having coffee, I’d end on a somewhat positive note by sharing that the behavior specialist finally filled out the forms to get the Center for Consultation and Expertise involved on my case.

Consciously Incompetent This Time

Posted on by Astrid

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been attempting several times to create a polymer clay trinket dish, with no luck. The first time, when I’d finally rolled the slab to the right thickness, it was too small for my trinket dish cutter; the second time, I couldn’t even get the clay to the right thickness without it being horribly uneven; and yesterday, when I actually got the slab to the right thickness and size for the cutter, it turned out that the bowl I used for molding my trinket dish into, was too big.

Several years ago, I’d have been content with my second slab and might’ve used it as a coaster if I hadn’t molded it regardless of the size of the bowl.

I am often reminded of the fact that, according to one of my college instructors, people start at unconsciously incompetent at a new skill, ie. overestimating their abilities, then move on to the stage of conscious incompetence, at which point I believe I’m now with some of my polymer clay, like with the trinket dish. It’s an incredibly frustrating stage to be at, because I constantly give up on projects that I want to pursue because of realizing they’re going to be a massive fail.

At least though, I try to remind myself that I’m not as clueless as I was with card making many years ago, because then I’d happily send out cards a five-year-old could’ve made in exchange for cards by semi-professional card makers.

This post was written for the Six Sentence Story blog hop, for which the prompt this week is “card”.

Book Review: Will You Help Me? by Maggie Hartley

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. As regular readers of this blog will know, I love memoirs. I particularly love books about fostering and special education. I however hadn’t read such a book in a few months, but last week, I decided to buy Will You Help Me? by foster care memoirist Maggie Hartley. Here’s my review.

Book Description

‘Please help me,’ he said in a small voice. ‘Will you help me?’

Six-year-old Ralph has only been in the care system for three days and has already been rejected by three different foster carers. After hitting a teacher at his school and causing mayhem since he arrived four months ago, staff are unable to get a hold of his mum and her partner.

Social Services are called and when Ralph turns up at Maggie’s house, she knows immediately it’s going to be a challenge. Within a couple of hours, Ralph has trashed Maggie’s house and spit on her face. After a nightmare first day though, Maggie notices that Ralph is limping and a hospital check reveals broken limbs and several injuries that are months and years old. Can Maggie help this troubled little boy who has been rejected by everyone in his life find his forever home?

From Britain’s most-loved foster carer, a new powerful true story of abuse, family and hope.

My Review

Most foster care memoirs I’ve read are on the predictable side and this one isn’t terribly twisty either. However, it’s less predictable than other memoirs I’ve read.

This book also made me feel a rollercoaster of emotions. I could relate to Ralph in some ways and this made me root for him even more than I otherwise would have. The book describes Ralph being restrained (in a cuddly way) several times. This triggered me, because I too have experienced being physically restrained. It was, however, good to feel the feels when it’s someone else being talked about.

This book reminds me of the time I read Who Will Love Me Now?, also by Maggie Hartley, which I (reviewed in 2020. I think I love both books equally.

#WeekendCoffeeShare (March 22, 2025)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. It’s nearly 10PM here. I really wanted to write today but, for reasons I’ll explain in a bit, didn’t get to it. I’m joining #WeekendCoffeeShare. No more drinks for me except maybe some water, but if you’d like to, feel free to grab your favorite beverage.

If we were having coffee, first I’d talk about the weather. It’s been absolutely delightful. Yesterday, the daytime temperature was as high as 22°C and I wore a skirt. I usually don’t wear skirts in colder weather because I don’t like wearing tights. It felt so good to be able to wear a skirt. I also loved the sunshine.

If we were having coffee, then I’d tell you that I got in a lot of walking again over the past week. I really liked being active.

If we were having coffee, next, however, I’d share that I’ve been struggling badly again. I had an unannounced visit from the behavior specialist on Monday. My initial question was whether any progress had been made in involving the Center for Consultation and Expertise on my care. The answer to that was “No” and the behavior specialist didn’t offer any clarity on when she was going to get the ball rolling. My feeling is it’ll be 2034 by the time they get involved.

She did, however, have a lot of new so-called “agreements” (I’d call them executive orders) on my care. She pretty much ignored my input and there’s nothing about the things I said in the bullet points my assigned staff wrote in my records. Some of the new rules include:


  • New staff get only one chance to be oriented to me for each task (activity, morning routine, meal) and then they’re supposed to be “regulars” and can be assigned to me whenever the staff want. If I am not accepting them for their orientation time, it’s a missed opportunity on my part. I didn’t find out about that last bit until today.

  • I can be physically dragged to my room if I’m having a meltdown in the communal areas.

  • Staff will no longer be forced to rotate almost each support moment. Sounds good and it was what I wanted, but now they’re supposed to decide at the end of each moment who will come for my next moment, giving me only half an hour to adjust.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you that the staff tried to orient three new “regular temp workers” (that’s an oxymoron in my opinion) to me within the next three days. I didn’t accept two of them. One because it was the evening after the meeting with my behavior specialist and a relatively new staff would be orienting her colleague. The other, I never said I wasn’t accepting but I was in a lot of distress and somehow my assigned staff made up that it was because of the new one.

The third one, I accepted without protest for my morning routine even though I later found out staff are supposedly first oriented to an activity. The staff being oriented kept asking me whether I’d explain things to her if she forgot. Well, actually, no, since I’m pretty easily overloaded by lots of questions. “She does pay attention, don’t worry,” the regular staff told me. Well, I do worry.

Unfortunately, I got a lot of negativity in my records for my behavior and yet there wasn’t the slightest acknowledgement of the fact that I’d accepted the third new staff without protest. That feels intensely unfair to me.

If we were having coffee, I’d share that the support coordinator did, for some reason probably only he knows, decide the new “regular temp workers” can’t be assigned to me yet even though by the behavior specialist’s rules, I’ve had my chance with all three. I am grateful for this, although I do understand I’ll need to accept them soon enough. That, hopefully, will go okay.

If we were having coffee, lastly I’d share that I’ve been writing up positives and negatives of the day each day for a few weeks now. Looking over these, it shows that I do appreciate small joys.

For example, there’s a new sensory room on the other side of the home and I’ve been eager to use it. I’ve also donated some stuffed animals and cushions to it.

An Allergic Reaction

Posted on by Astrid

Hi all! Today I’m joining in with the Writer’s Workshop. One of the prompts is to write about an experience of having an allergic reaction.

I have never had very strong allergic reactions to anything. However, the fact that I would not classify my allergic reactions as strong, is probably because I haven’t fully figured them out.

I am allergic to nickel. That is, that’s what my parents have always told me. I never knew how to recognize an allergic reaction though and, with the fact that it can take some time for your body to react to nickel, even if I knew I had an allergic reaction, I wouldn’t always be sure of the cause.

When I was 15, I got earrings. After the little studs you wear for the first six weeks, I immediately switched to long, heavy, silver rings I got from my mother. No-one had told me not to wear heavy earrings for the first year. Or that silver earrings, especially those made back in the day, could contain nickel.

My earlobes started getting inflamed pretty soon, but I didn’t actually realize this was abnormal. It could’ve been the nickel, but I also constantly fidgeted with my earrings, thereby touching my pierced ears.

After a few months of wearing all sorts of, mostly quite heavy, earrings, I was wise enough to give up. For over two decades.

And then, the whole saga started over. I got new studs put in, because my old earring holes had long formed scar tissue. This time, I googled what to wear and not to wear while getting used to earrings. I only wore small studs.

However, I was unable to make sure that my earrings didn’t contain nickel. In the EU, nickel is no longer allowed in jewelry, but no-one ever checks manufacturers for compliance.

I got silver studs that the vendor said were nickel-free. Though I was fine for a few months, my ears eventually started getting inflamed again. I tried ignoring the issue, believing it would get better over time. Which, if it’s truly my nickel allergy acting up, isn’t true. In fact, the opposite is true: an allergy keeps getting worse the more someone is exposed to the allergen.

Eventually, after several attempts wearing various studs, I gave up. And this time, I’m hopefully not going to ignore my body again and have another go. Whether it was my nickel allergy acting up or I was just touching my ears too much, we’ll never know. Now I’ll just wear necklaces and bracelets, so that when I fidget with them, I’m not essentially touching a wound.

Today’s Small Joys (March 16, 2025)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m struggling a bit but don’t want to share why. Instead, I’m sharing some small joys from the day again today. I’m participating in Sunny Sunday. Here goes.

1. Sunshine. It’s chilly (about 9°C in the afternoon) but sunny. With this being the case, my partner and I were even able to sit outside for our lunch.

2. Good coffee. The lunch we had was a bit disappointing to me especially considering how much it cost, but the coffee was good.

3. Being able to wear a nice, handmade necklace and being complimented on it by my spouse. I bought glass beads and wire a few days ago and I created my first necklace with them yesterday. I wore it today, which made me feel good.

4. Finding a couple more necklaces, most handmade by me many years ago, in the bag my spouse brought me after clearing out the house.

5. Unicorn soft toys. I was clearing out my box of stuffies this evening, because my spouse had also brought me some stuffed animals and my box was already quite full. I didn’t seriously know how many unicorn soft toys I have. Those, I all kept.

6. Looking forward to the sensory room the staff are creating on the other side of the home. I actually plan to donate some of my unwanted soft toys to that project.

7. Finding one of my first polymer clay creations in the bag too. It’s a baby. It’s extremely ugly, so I threw it away. However, remembering my making it, as well as realizing how far I’ve come along on my creative journey, made me smile.

Honestly, many of these things are more nostalgia-inducing than purely joyful. Remembering the good times is a positive thing though, so I’ll still focus on that.

March Memories

Posted on by Astrid

Hi all! Can you believe we’re already halfway through March? I honestly feel that time flies. Today, I want to share some random memories from Marches (is that a word?) gone by.

First, a year ago, I had just recovered from second-degree burns that I sustained in a crisis. Looking back, my life is much better now than it was a year ago, when we were in the midst of a weird idea from the staff that said I had to compensate for every minute I needed support outside of my designated one-on-one hours because of distress. I sort of understand the reasoning, because, at the end of February, I had shared with my behavior specialist and some therapists that, in an ideal world, I’d be able to rely on staff all the time. What I didn’t realize at the time, thanks to all the words about “unsupported time” in my day schedule, is that this is basically already the situation in 24-hour care. Of course, I can’t always expect a staff to show up in no time when I need one, but it isn’t like I’m ever truly supposed to be self-reliant. That’s until that crazy idea about compensating came to be, because, as one of my staff said it, my “unsupported time” was supposedly my structure. Let’s just say I disagree and am so happy that, after a month, the system was abandoned at the end of March again. Now, it’s actually in my day schedule that I can rely on the staff for support when in distress during my times of doing my activities by myself.

Two years ago, I finally had a meeting to discuss my leaving the intensive support home. I’m so very happy I insisted. I remember the intensive support home’s behavior specialist was a bit critical, because, well, I apparently hadn’t left the care facility in Raalte in 2022 completely voluntarily. As it turned out, some staff had been more happy that I’d finally gone than they had admitted. This is somewhat understandable, given that all other clients there had severe to profound intellectual disability and no or minimal challenging behavior.

I can’t believe I’ve been at my current home for eighteen months already. As I share these two snippets, one from 2024 and the other from 2023, I am intensely grateful. I am still struggling at times, but then again I was even at the best of times in Raalte.

Sharing this post with RDP, for which the prompt today is “March”.

#AtoZChallenge 2025 Theme Reveal!

Posted on by Astrid

Hi all. How is it almost time for the #AtoZChallenge already? I love participating each year, but sometimes flake out midway through the challenge. I’ve noticed that this mostly happens when I don’t have a theme.

For 2025, I’ll be writing about personal growth and self-improvement. Think the Enneagram, Myers-Briggs, attachment theory, etc. I know these are often my less popular posts, but I like to write them, so who cares? I’ll try to explain the concepts I write about. Hope you’ll enjoy reading my posts!

Young At 40 Yet Old At 36

Posted on by Astrid

Hi all! A few weeks ago, my spouse sent me a YouTube short about millennials’ reactions to the idea of midlife. According to the American Psychological Association, or that’s what the YouTuber said, midlife starts at 36.

Then I read a blog post today in which the author, now retired, reflects on how she imagined retirement to be when she was still young… at 40.

I am 38. Does this mean I’m in midlife or does it mean I’m still young? It probably depends on your perspective.

After all, with respect to my daily life, since I don’t work or study and since I’m childfree, it allows me the same freedom a retiree would have. I also enjoy many things older people enjoy, such as crafting. That is, often younger women do craft, but it’s more for their kids.

With respect to my health, it’s a mixed bag. I am physically healthier than I was five years ago thanks to weight loss and moving more. I however do notice the effects of my disabilities (and probably my history of obesity too), in that I’m probably less fit than many women my age. For one thing, I do find that my knees hurt regularly.

All this being said, age is in many respects just a number for me. Sometimes, I feel like a lady in her seventies, while at other times, I feel quite childlike, both in a positive and a negative way.

Statistically speaking, I do realize I’m at midlife. This sometimes causes me to worry about aging, but then again I always had this worry that I’d die young. That’s not necessarily specific to midlife. I am pretty sure, in fact, that now that I’m physically fitter, the worry is less about myself. That doesn’t mean the worry has gone, but now it’s more of an existential dread regarding the world as a whole. I don’t think one is easier to deal with for me than the other.

I’m linking up with Talking About It Tuesday and #WWWhimsy.

Share Our Life (March 2025): An Average Day

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone! Today I’m joining Share Our Life, a linky with a monthly theme. This month, it’s to describe an average day in your life. Unfortunately, taking pictures is not part of my average day. I really want to change that, but for now, just text will have to do. I didn’t pick a specific day to describe.

I usually wake up at around 7:30AM when the staff are helping the resident in the room next to me with her morning routine. Since my first support moment isn’t until 8:15AM, I usually have a little snooze.

8:15AM is when my staff come to wake me up and help me with my morning routine. I hate showering, so don’t do it each day. I get dressed and have breakfast – usually quark with muesli and blueberries. My morning routine, including breakfast, can take up to an hour.

At 9:15AM, I’ll usually lie back in bed for a little slumber while listening to music on my music pillow.

My first activity time slot starts at 10AM. I sometimes extend my lie-in until 10:15 or 10:30AM. I start my activity time slot with coffee and then I’ll usually either play a card or dice game or go for a walk.

By 11:30AM, my staff leave to prepare my lunch. I usually eat two slices of bread with peanut butter and a cracker with speculoos (Biscoff). I also consume a serving of veg with my lunch. My lunchtime is at noon.

By 12:15PM, I’m done eating and will be on my phone for a bit, reading the news or texting or calling my spouse, who is then usually taking a break.

My two-hour activity time slot starts at 12:45PM. This time slot was originally intended for more time-consuming activities such as a bigger polymer clay project, going out to the nearby town, etc. Occasionally, I’ll use this time slot for cooking dinner for myself and my fellow residents. Often though, I can be found walking grounds with my staff. I’ll end my activity time slot with coffee, although I might also have a cuppa by 1:45PM already.

My staff go into handover at 2:45PM and I’ll most days use up the 45 minutes until my next supported moment with some online activities. By the way, handover doesn’t take 45 minutes, but it’s not like I need one-on-one all of the time.

During my 3:30PM activity time slot, which lasts an hour, I commonly play a dice game. I sometimes also go for another walk. I have unsupported time again for 30 minutes after this while my staff help the other clients with their dinner. My dinner is at 5PM. I am a rather fast eater, so am frequently finished by 5:15PM. My staff have their break at 5:30PM.

At 6PM, my final activity moment for the day starts. I have an activity list, from which I can choose what we’re going to do. What we’ll do, is too often related to the staff supporting me. I really want to change this, but it’s hard.

I’ll have my final coffee at 7PM and then have unsupported time again until it’s time for my late evening meds at 8PM. I’ll most commonly use this time and the rest of the evening for blog-related activities.

Like I’ve shared many times, I usually have Dubbelfrisss in apple-peach flavor with my evening meds. I also will eat a serving of fruit. Then I’ll be told which staff will be in the home the next day. Some days, I’ll hang out in the living room for some time then, while at other times, like today, I’ll head straight back to my room and go online. I used to be phoning my spouse a lot late in the evening too, but now we’ll often talk at other times.

At 8:45PM, I’ll sometimes have a little snack. Then I’ll go online again until my staff come to supervise me brushing my teeth and to close my door to the yard at 9:30PM. After that, the staff will leave the home and I’m supposed to rely on the night staff in the main institution building for support. My fellow residents all go to bed before then, but I’m allowed to stay up. I’m a true night owl, so most days it’ll have been past 11PM before I’m in bed.

All this sounds incredibly boring and unproductive. I really want to put my unsupported time to better use, because currently most of the time I just end up scrolling.