A Few Pretty Intense Days

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. It’s been a few days since I wrote on my blog and I didn’t even check my feed reader yesterday at all. The last few days have been rather intense emotionally.

First, on Sunday, my husband picked me up at 8:30AM to drive to my sister and her family, who live across the country. Little Wolke, my baby niece, was, well, a baby. She didn’t really interact at all. Neither at first did Janneke, my older niece, who will be three in September. My sister did explain that “auntie Astrid’s eyes don’t work” so that’s why I can’t look at her, but she was still shy. Once my sister had taken the polymer clay bear I’d created for Janneke and let her undo the wrapping, she was a little more engaging. I did feel bad that, when she said the bear wanted a kiss, I told her not to (since I keep hearing mixed things about the safety of polymer clay in this respect). I did worry for a while that maybe Janneke was a bit too young for the bear, but my sister said she doesn’t put things in her mouth anymore and my husband said she has to learn.

My brother-in-law kept my husband occupied with the same old stories and jokes he tells each time we see each other. Meanwhile, Janneke warmed up to me and started inviting me in to her play. Janneke had hip dysplasia, for which she needed surgery last September. She still remembers in a way or so I think, as all her dolls needed to go to the doctor and get fitted with a cast (or have the cast sawn off).

At one point, my sister did start talking about needing to get rid of her pregnancy pounds. I felt a little uncomfortable about that, as she’s quite thin and I am still overweight. Then she started telling me about her career plans.

Overall, I did notice that my sister only talked about herself (and her kids). This is okay with me, but it does remind me of my parents often telling professionals that I am only able to talk about myself. It makes me feel as though the reason I’m not allowed to talk about myself is not that it’s about myself, but the fact that I don’t live a “normal” life. In other words, the contents of what I tell my parents makes them uncomfortable more so than the fact that it’s about me. Either that or my sister is somehow a lot more reciprocal with my parents than with me.

I do think I like Janneke after all though. Last time I saw her was at my birthday almost a year ago. My sister prompted her to give me her present, but she said: “No auntie Astrid not nice.” I felt that was both cute and a tiny bit upsetting.

Thankfully, my husband was able to drop me off in Raalte again in the afternoon. I arrived here with half an hour to spare before we’d eat dinner, which was Chinese takeout.

Then yesterday, which was a bank holiday, I spent most of the morning in bed, because a temp worker was assigned my one-on-one shift and the two most recently employed staff, neither of whom I know well, were working the regular shift. The temp worker tried to get me to go out of bed at first, but she had no idea about the activities I normally do during the day and I didn’t have the energy to explain them to her. Overall, I felt really powerless and like I’d rather not have someone there at all. Thankfully, today we’re more or less back to normal.

#WeekendCoffeeShare (June 4, 2022)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone on this warm but windy Saturday afternoon. It’s been a while since I joined #WeekendCoffeeShare, so I thought I’d participate once again. I’ve just had my afternoon coffee, but the other clients are still having theirs, so grab a cuppa if you want. I also have a delicious loose-leaf herbal tea that I swapped with my assigned staff for the lemon and mint flavored green tea that came in a box I’d acquired back in February when I had COVID. After all, back then the staff had taken the entire box to my room and only then realized that because of the risk of contamination, she couldn’t take it back to the kitchen. It contained four varieties of green tea: plain, lemon, orange and mint. I like plain and sometimes orange only, so now that I trust the box isn’t laden with viruses anymore, I gave the other two varieties to my staff. Anyway, the herbal tea contains cinnamon, lavender and I don’t know what else, but it’s truly lovely. Let’s have a drink and let’s catch up.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you that this week was rather intense emotionally. On Monday, we welcomed a new resident to my care home. She’s quiet and doesn’t seem to need a lot of care, but the fact that she can walk independently and yet does have a profound intellectual disability, does create some of its own risks.

The door to the home now needs to be locked for her safety. She can’t work keys, so the key remains in the lock during the day for me to open it. (At night, it’s been out for years already for my safety.) This does create some inner turmoil in me, both because of the lack of clarity (either the door is locked or it is not, in my mind) and because of my feelings about the presumption of competence for me. I mean, I am an elopement risk too and some recent events in which I’ve been quite a possible danger to myself while running away, do make me feel weird. On the other hand, I really don’t want to go back to my time on the locked psych unit.

If we were having coffee, I would also share that, on Wednesday, my assigned home staff captured one of my child alters on video while playing with one of the new resident’s sensory toys. She later asked my permission to forward the video to the other staff and the behavior specialist. I at first said yes, then felt a little anxious but eventually decided to give my permission after all.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you that I did finish all the presents for my sister and nieces on time for my visit to the family tomorrow. Besides the earrings I created for my sister and the mobile for little Wolke (that’s the baby’s name), I created a polymer clay bear for Janneke, my older niece.

Deciding when exactly we wanted to visit, was a bit of a hassle, since I’d forgotten my sister and her children of course need to sleep during the afternoon and I had more or less filled in for my husband that a morning visit wouldn’t be possible because of the long drive. Finally though, we agreed that we’d be at my sister’s by 11AM tomorrow and have lunch there. My husband insisted on picking me up here in Raalte tomorrow. Now that I think of it, I realize that it makes perfect sense, since he, unlike me, is a morning person. Oh well.

If we were having coffee, I would share that I went clothes shopping this morning with my staff. I bought three pants and two shirts and immediately wanted to put most of my old pants in a bag for the charity shop, because they’re way too wide. I didn’t in the end though, because I want to give it some more thought.

If we were having coffee, lastly I’d report that I’m now under 69kg, yay! I have now lost exactly 3kg since starting my healthier living journey back in January. Of course, that’s not much, but it’s better to go slow and keep losing than to go fast and then gain all the weight back because you’re tired of the healthy lifestyle after a while.

How have you been?

Book Review: I Just Want to Be Loved by Casey Watson

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Like I said when writing my reading wrap-up last week, Casey Watson had a new foster care memoir out. Actually, it came out in mid-April already but I didn’t find out until a few weeks ago. Even though I was worried that Apple Books might mess with the book, I decided to buy it anyway and guess what? It was fine! Here’s my review.

Summary

After taking a few weeks off work, Casey is presented with a new foster child: 14-year-old Elise, whose Mum left her at just five years old.

At first, she’s no trouble at all, that is until she falsely accuses another carer, Jan, of acting inappropriately towards her. It turns out this isn’t the first lie Elise has told – her previous carer was constantly following up allegations Elise had made of people bullying her, trying to have sex with her, or hurting her physically. With some reservations, Casey agrees to take Elise on long-term, but when she makes some dark claims about her mum, Casey doesn’t know whether to believe her. In any case, she is determined to find out the truth…

My Review

As regular readers of this blog will know, I love foster care memoirs. I especially love reading about older children and teens, as their personalities are usually more formed, for the obvious reason, than those of young children. That doesn’t seem to be the case with Elise at first: she seems really shallow. This does get me wondering whether this book is going to be boring. But the exact opposite is true.

Most foster care memoirs aren’t too fast-paced and I can usually see the twists coming. This one, though, was far from predictable. Since the chapters also didn’t have titles, I couldn’t guess what was coming from there.

The story was written in such a manner that I kept going along with the characters’ emotions. As such, at first, I felt like Elise, much like the teen in one of Casey’s other books was quite difficult, to the point where, if she’d been an adult, she’d be diagnosed with some cluster B personality disorder. Of course, this makes the dramatic change in Elise’s behavior after her disclosures hard to believe, but then again she’s a teen, not a grown-up.

Overall, I found this story really evocative and gave it a solid five stars. I liked it at least as much as the one I linked above, which I also gave five stars.

Book Details

Title: I Just Want to Be Loved
Author: Casey Watson
Publisher: HarperElement
Publication Date: April 14, 2022

My First Crush

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Today’s topic for Throwback Thursday is first crushes. Let me share.

My first crush was a boy called MJ (that is, he had a double first name). I think he was a year younger than me. I was ten at the time and in the fifth grade at the school for the blind. Back then, we would always say we were like 90% in love with the other one. I don’t know where the percentages came from or if kids in other schools used them too. I certainly remember telling MJ that I had a crush on him and at that point, several kids in his class pushed me to kiss him. I gave him a quick kiss on the cheek but till this day feel intense shame about it.

I don’t remember feeling heartbreak when that “relationship” ended. It only lasted for a couple of weeks anyway. I do know that MJ passed away when I was in high school, something I didn’t find out about until many years later.

My second crush was a girl named Layla and I’m not even sure I’m spelling that right. I was fourteen at the time and had only met her once. She was in the grade below me at secondary school. At the time, I was still about as clueless about love as I’d been at age ten. After that first encounter, I never met Layla again and so I never told her I had a crush on her.

For years, I’d have fleeting crushes on various girls and boys who paid me attention, but I never told them. I never quite fantasized about having a husband (or wife, since same-sex marriage is legal here) when I’d grow up. In fact, when my now husband told me he was in love with me, I wasn’t so sure whether to reciprocate it. I did like him, but did my feelings go beyond mere friendship plus a little puppy love because he was paying me attention? In the end, it didn’t really matter, as our relationship and now our marriage is a happy one.

Things That Have Changed Since I Started Blogging

Posted on by Astrid

One of Mama Kat’s writing prompts for this week is to share what’s changed since you started blogging. My current blog turns four next month and not much has changed over those years. However, I’ve been blogging on WordPress for over fifteen years and a lot changed in those years.

Back in the day, blogging was still the main sort of social media. I think Facebook might’ve existed and Twitter certainly did, but neither was as popular a means of connecting with other people online as they’d become over the next couple of years. Don’t even get me started on Instagram, on which I uploaded five photos tops since getting an account in 2017. I just don’t get it. Not that I ever really “got” Twitter or Facebook. Give me my blog please.

Back in the early days of my blogging journey, I wrote mostly about my own life, but this quickly changed to blogging about disability advocacy. I participated in an annual event called Blogging Against Disablism Day on May 1 and would connect to many of the bloggers I met there throughout the rest of the year. Many would follow me on Twitter, Tumblr (which again I didn’t really get), etc. I loved being part of a community working towards the greater good!

I stopped blogging on that blog in 2011 or 2012. In August of 2013, I started Blogging Astrid, the blog I usually now refer to as my “old blog”. I started it on Blogger but moved to WordPress in November. This is when I started to interact with the Writer’s Workshop community and learned about link parties. For a while, I blogged more for my stats than for self-expression or the greater good. Getting tired of that was a big reason I moved on to my current blog, which had as its original aim that I could write from the heart. As had been the case in the very early days of my original blog and even before, when my original blog was still an online diary.

Until I started this blog, I didn’t really know there was a community specific to WordPress.com and that it’s still alive and kickin’, despite the folks at Automattic trying to kill it off by making WordPress less and less attractive particularly to new customers. Then again, maybe blogging is dying after all. I try to realize people have said that for at least a decade and I still can find a pretty large circle of people to interact with in the blogosphere. They aren’t usually the same I’ve known since 2007, but that’s totally okay.

Mama’s Losin’ It

Five Things I’m Glad I Bought #5Things

Posted on by Astrid

Today’s topic for #5Things is things you’re happy about having bought. I have bought a lot of things that I later regretted buying, most recently my Bose QuietComfort 45 headphones. Thankfully, after a long ordeal with the vendor, I got my money back. Hence, here are five things I’m actually happy about having bought.

1. my iPhone. I’m currently on my second one, having used the previous model for nearly three years. The current one, I’ve had for two years tomorrow I think. It’s an iPhone SE 2020. My previous one was the original SE. I am still debating with myself whether I want to get the SE 2022 or wait if they’re going to release a 14 Mini in the fall. I originally got an iPhone because of its more advanced accessibility features compared to phones running Android. Even though iOS has been causing some more or less serious bugs with each major update since I got my original iPhone except for iOS 12, I still agree iPhone’s the best.

2. My laptop. I got my first laptop when I was eleven and got my current screen reader, JAWS, when I was fifteen. In fact, yesterday marked twenty years online for me. I had to buy my own laptops from age twenty on. I use a Windows laptop and yes, I’ve tried a Mac but no, that one’s not for me. Oh wait, I didn’t actually buy my current laptop, since my mother-in-law paid for it in exchange for my Mac. Never mind.

3. My current headphones. Okay, they’re only three weeks old, so I’m still waiting for them to bite the bullet as my Bose ones did. However, those crashed within just over two weeks, so the current ones have already surpassed those. Besides, the Bose headphones cost €240, while these cost €50. They’re a Chinese brand, which is why I can’t for the life of me remember the brand name, but my husband Googled it and said it’s a good-enough Chinese brand.

4. Lots of polymer clay and crafting supplies. I mean, of course there are a couple of things I don’t really use, but most things I bought myself, I do actually love. Most recently, I bought a hand drill and a huge set of small drill bits, to drill holes into my earring pieces etc. I had some trouble figuring the thing out and for a bit thought I shouldn’t have bought the things, but now that I know how to use the drill, it’s fab.

5. Books. I don’t normally buy books, as I get most of them on Bookshare. That being the case, when I do buy a book, it’s usually one I won’t regret having bought. Most recently, I bought the latest Casey Watson foster care memoir and, while I feared the Apple Books app would have trouble with it, it didn’t.

What is one of your happiest purchases?

My First Proper Pair of Polymer Clay Earrings

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I finally have been motivated to actually make something out of polymer clay again. I guess last Saturday I kicked myself in the behind with my post, saying I fully intended to actually be crafting again rather than just looking at crafty YouTube videos. In fact, these earrings aren’t based on a YouTube tutorial at all. That’s honestly because I still consider the YouTube tutorials a little out of my ability range, but oh well.

I say these are my first proper earrings because I previously, about eight or nine months ago, created a pair of “boiled egg” earrings. I think I showed them here too, but anyway, VoiceOver, the iPhone’s built-in screen reader, guessed that they were two halves of a boiled egg. They were rather ugly in terms of color (yellow in the middle, then white, then purple) but more importantly, I’d glued the earring studs to the polymer clay using a cheap brand of jeweller’s glue. Now for those not familiar with polymer clay: most glues don’t work well with it. Only superglue gel will do and I’ve even heard mixed results about that. Don’t bother with E6000, let alone cheaper glues like the one I used. Bottom line: the earring stud fell off within several hours.

Now on to these earrings I created yesterday. First, I decided to roll out a slab of caramel Fimo with my pasta machine. I had to do this several times over because I kept getting horizontal roller lines in my slab. Finally, once I was satisfied with the result, I cut out the flower shapes. I later learned that it is recommended to lay a piece of copy paper over your slab and lightly roll your acrylic roller over it in all directions. This is called burnishing and should even out any ridges in your slab. I then had my staff poke a small hole into my pieces with a bead piercing pin. This is to guide my drill later on.

Then I baked my pieces at 130°C for 45 minutes. (For those reading the Fimo packaging that says to bake no longer than the recommended 30 minutes, this is flat out wrong.) I baked the pieces on a sheet of parchment paper which I’d put onto my ceramic tile. The oven I use is a convection oven where the fan can’t be turned off, so I had to put an aluminum container over my sheet of parchment paper to prevent it from flying all around the oven. Unfortunately, the parchment paper might’ve flown a little underneath the container, as my pieces did turn out slightly crooked. Either that or I should’ve used copy paper rather than parchment paper, as is recommended by some.

Once the pieces had baked for 45 minutes and then cooled down completely, I drilled the holes into the earrings. I had already decided I wanted to decorate the edges with gold Fimo liquid, but this was my first time drilling actual holes into polymer clay pieces, so I was too curious to see how it’d go to wait till I’d finished the project. I did the drilling mostly independently, only needing my staff to hold down my pieces because I needed two hands to drill.

I then sanded the pieces. There was a bit of a bump on both of my earrings, one bigger than the other. I’m not sure it was an air bubble, as sanding it didn’t leave a hole. I think I did an okay job of sanding them away.

I then decorated the edges with Fimo liquid. I needed some help with this, as of course I’m blind and I cannot feel my way to where I’d need to put the liquid or I’d put it all over my fingers.

Then another round in the oven for 30 minutes (which I’m not sure is enough, but my pieces look fine). Then my staff attached the jumprings and attached those to the earring hooks.

I intend on giving these to my sister when I visit her on Sunday. She’s more of a silvery girl than a goldy one, but I didn’t have silver-colored earring hooks.

Other than the earrings having become slightly curved in the oven, I am relatively content with how they turned out. What do you think?

Linking up with Inspire Me Monday, Busy Monday, Love Your Creativity and the Craftastic Link Party.

Joy in May

Posted on by Astrid

Hi all! It’s nearly the end of the month again, so I’m here with an update on my word of the year, which is: JOY. I am linking up with Lisa’s One Word Linky as well as the Word of the Year linky.

Overall, this month was pretty mixed with respect to how well I did. As mixed as the weather, really. Sometimes, we had sunny, warm weather and I’d enjoy myself and be full of energy. At other times, like today, it would be cloudy and chilly and I wouldn’t really feel up to very much. Of course, my joy or lack thereof wasn’t always tied to the weather, but partly at least it was.

Admittedly, today isn’t a great day. I’m having a bit of a brain fog and, for this reason, had to look over the past month’s blog posts to remember the things I’d enjoyed in May. There seem to have been quite a few, such as the time I went to look at the baby goats at one of my staff’s. Also, the time I went swimming because the plumbing crew had to come out to clear our waterworks of legionella. And, of course, the visit from my mother-in-law.

I also did enjoy the more ordinary pleasures of life. I finally read some more than I did earlier in the year. With respect to crafting, I mostly enjoyed getting inspired rather than actually making things. The reason is probably the fact that I worry I may not be capable of actually achieving the results I want. I really aim to do more actual crafting in June.

I once again was delighted with home-cooked meals a few times, but was also able to actually enjoy the regular food. I must say, I am not doing that well when it comes to appreciating foods that I don’t really like. Just this evening, I had a bit of a tantrum (I can safely call it that) because there were no larger cookies, which we can have on weekends, that I like.

One of the challenges Lisa had for us in her E-mail reminding us about this month’s link-up, was to spend the next 30 days collecting a little bullet point on your word for 2022 each day. This could be a quote, a Bible verse, a thought, or whatever. I haven’t yet started it, but I am fully intending on doing that from now on. It might help me be more aware of my word throughout the month. Let’s see how this goes.

Heal

Posted on by Astrid

Today’s prompt for Five Minute Friday is “Heal”. I read several of the responses before writing mine. Some left me feeling all sorts of things, which I will try to articulate in the below freewrite.

Is it possible to heal from a hurt you can’t explain in words? Can something that you can’t describe in words, a memory that is just visceral, even be traumatic? I am referring to preverbal trauma, of course and, in theory, I know the answer: yes, it exists and yes, healing is possible.

However, in reality, how can I prevent my cognitive processes from constantly interfering with my experiences? Or should this be prevented at all? I mean, if I can rationalize that I’m now in 2022, living in the care facility and not in whatever danger my body thinks (feels?) it’s in anymore, does it even matter that I endured preverbal trauma?

After all, it’s a fact that I did: I was born prematurely, spent the first three months of my life in hospital and had several complicated surgeries before the age of five. The question is whether said possibly-traumatic events affected me and, if so, how to heal from them.

Poem: Are You Now Here?

Posted on by Astrid

Are You now here?
Or nowhere?
That’s the question

The answer, the ultimate determiner
Of life’s purpose
Your value in this world

So
Are you now here?

This poem was written for this week’s W3 Prompt. The idea is to write a poem inspired by the previous week’s winning poem, with a few added rules. This week’s rules were that your poem must contain 16 lines or less and the first and last line must be the same. In addition to being inspired by last week’s winning poem, I was inspired by a phrase from Lisa Genova’s book Inside the O’Briens, in which Katie, who is a yoga teacher, has this mantra that you are either now here or nowhere.