Gratitude List (November 23, 2018) #TToT

Posted on by Astrid

It’s been forever since I last shared a gratitude list. Since yesterday was Thanksgiving in the United States, I felt it’d be about time again that I post one. Here goes. As usual, I’m linking up with #TToT.

1. An extra afternoon at day activities. In fact, I started writingg this post while there. As of last week, I go to day activities each Tuesday and Friday for the whole day (and Monday and Wednesday mornings). I am loving it.

2. Horseback riding. I had to shift my riding lessons to another day to be able to go to day activities for the whole day on Friday. The only day off I now still have is Thursday. The riding instructor didn’t have a volunteer then to help me, but my support worker offered to help me. Yesterday was the first time I went riding on a Thursday. It was great!

3. A long walk with my support coordinator. Normally, we walk to the ferry at the end of my road and back. This is about 2.5km total. On Wednesday, I asked her to walk in the other direction. We walked all the way to the next village and back. This totals over 3km.

4. Chinese takeaway. On Sunday, my father-in-law came to our house to watch soccer and other men’s programs (that I secretly do like) with my husband. Usually, he “cooks” for us on these days and this time, it was Chinese. I loved it. I did suffer bowel cramps and bloating for several days after it, but who cares?

5. French fries for lunch. To continue on the food track, we had French fries for lunch at day activities on Wednesday. The reason was they still had some money that needed to be spent by the end of the year. The staff were initially worried that we wouldn’t have a full meal, but we definitely did! It was so tasty! I was a little scared that my husband would be angry because of my weight gain, but he wasn’t.

6. My new stuffed bear. I already got it two weeks ago, but am still so grateful for it. My mother-in-law won it at an event she went to for the animal shelter she works for. I’m calling it Little Bear, because my husband has a big bear too. That one is a little damaged and the littles not-so-secretly want another one, so that we have both little and big bear for ourselves.

7. Swimming. I went swimming with day activities again on Tuesday. This time, I swam a record 52 pool lengths.

8. Getting my hair done. On Friday, the support coordinator at my day activities group braided my hair. I didn’t even know I had long enough hair for that, but apparently I do. On Tuesday, a staff at another group made an even more beautiful braid.

9. New books to read. Last week, I moved all my eBooks and Bookshare books from my computer to my iPhone, because I could no longer read them on my computer. I have since been greatly enjoying reading. I haven’t bought any new books as of yet, but I did download several books off Bookshare.

10. My mood still being pretty good. I can’t say it’s great, but it’s not bad either.

What have you been thankful for in the past week?

Book Review: Where Has Mummy Gone? by Cathy Glass

Posted on by Astrid

I bought Where Has Mummy Gone? by Cathy Glass on Kindle right when it came out early last month, but didn’t finish it till yesterday. Not because it wasn’t a good book, but because I struggled to make time for reading. Today, I’m reviewing this foster care memoir.

Synopsis

The true story of Melody, aged 8, the last of five siblings to be taken from her drug dependent single mother and brought into care.

When Cathy is told about Melody’s terrible childhood, she is sure she’s heard it all before. But it isn’t long before she feels there is more going on than she or the social services are aware of. Although Melody is angry at having to leave her mother, as many children coming into care are, she also worries about her obsessively – far more than is usual. Amanda, Melody’s mother, is also angry and takes it out on Cathy at contact, which again is something Cathy has experienced before. Yet there is a lost and vulnerable look about Amanda, and Cathy starts to see why Melody worries about her and feels she needs looking after.

When Amanda misses contact, it is assumed she has forgotten, but nothing could have been further from the truth…

My Review

The subtitle listed on Amazon for this book is “A Young Girl and a Mother Who No Longer Knows Her”. From this subtitle, I already guessed that Amanda, Melody’s mother, might’ve suffered some form of brain damage. Perhaps she was in an accident and had gone into a persistent vegetative state? The thought of dementia also crossed my mind, but I dismissed this when I found out early in the book that Amanda was only 42.

Despite the fact that I had some inkling of where this book might be headed, the twists and turns did surprise me. It was heartbreaking to read about Amanda’s decline. The book ended on a really bittersweet note.

I loved Cathy Glass’ narrative style. I developed a liking for each of the characters. Amanda, of course, elicited pity with her illness, but I also got to appreciate the attempts she’d made at caring for Melody before she was taken into foster care. Cathy maintains a mostly unbiased yet positive attitude throughout the book. I thoroughly enjoyed the book, despite its emotive subject matter.

Book Details

Title: Where Has Mummy Gone?: A Young Girl and a Mother Who No Longer Knows Her
Author: Cathy Glass
Publisher: Harper Element
Publication Date: September 6, 2018

Belated Weekly Gratitude List (September 29, 2018) #TToT

Posted on by Astrid

I didn’t participate in #TToT last week. Yesterday, I was going to write just when I realized it was time to go off to bed, since my husband would need to get up at 5AM this morning. I for this reason didn’t write my #TToT post then. I’m feeling slightly less depressed than I was over the past couple of weeks, but my depression is still there. I am therefore going to attempt to write a list of things I’m grateful for again.

1. Exercise. I had a pretty hard time exercsing regularly last week. This week was better. I managed around 3 1/2 hours of exercise this past week according to my Fitbit and reached my five-day goal. It does count walking as exercise, but I also managed to go on the elliptical twice.

2. Swimming. Last Tuesday, I went swimming at day activities again. I hadn’t been going the previous time two weeks ago, because I had a cold then. This time, there was no extra staff for me. The volunteer watching me however complimented me on my independence. By the way, my Fitbit is water-proof so it did record my swimming activity.

3. An afternoon at my in-laws. On Tuesday, I didn’t have support after day activities, so I asked whether I could stay at my in-laws. My mother-in-law picked me up at 3PM and I was home again by 7:30.

4. Possibly extending my day activities hours. This we discussed on Thursday, when my support coordinator and assigned day activities staff came to my home. Hopefully come October 9, I’ll stay at day activities Tuesday afternoons. I hope to eventually be able to go four full days, but that has yet to be determined.

5. A good session with my nurse practitioner. We did continue to work the DBT manual, but I felt more able to contribute my own thoughts than I was before. Before, it felt like he was just reading the manual to me and I was unable to make sense of it.

6. Buying nice things at the wholesale store today. My mother-in-law has a customer card for them and I went with her. I got a pair of warm slippers, a night gown, two bras and a chocolate bar.

7. Browsing Amazon for Kindle books. It seems as though Adobe Digital Editions eventually decided no longer to work with at least my rather outdated version of the JAWS screen reader. That’s sad, as I have a lot of DRM-proteced EPUB books in there. However, it gave me a reason to browse the Amazon Kindle store too. I haven’t bought any books, since I still haven’t finished those in my library. Still, browsing the store is already a lot of fun.

8. Being at least a little inspired to write. I didn’t write everyday this past month. Not nearly. However, since having this blog, I never fell into as much of a rut as I did with my other blog regularly. That is, there haven’t been two consecutive days that I haven’t written at all since starting this blog. I should be proud of this! This really gives me hope. I will be participating in #Write31Days in October and am positive I will finish the challenge this year. Yesterday, a ton of ideas to write about started popping up into my mind again.

I notice I’m having a little bit of a hard time finding things to be thankful for this week. I wanted to mention horseback riding or the long walk on Monday, but those are on my list almost every week. I felt this’d get boring. However, I mention them here anyway to make a point out of being grateful for my everyday experiences.

Weekly Gratitude List (September 7, 2018) #TToT

Posted on by Astrid

I’m extremely tired and don’t feel like writing. I’m also falling into the trap that killed my other blog, taking it too seriously. That is, I can’t keep from comparing myself to “influencers”, which I am not and will never be. It’s a sad truth, but to be truly influential these days you need to be able to create visual content, which I, being blind, can’t do.

As a result of all this, I’m feeling a bit sad today. This makes me even more unmotivated to look at the bright side and create a gratitude list, but I’m going to try anyway. Here, hence, is my weekly gratitude list.

1. A nice walk with my husband on Sunday. I’ve had trouble sticking to an exercise routine over the past week. In other words, I’ve not been on the elliptical at all. For this reason, I’m extra glad my husband offered to go on a walk with me.

2. The new intern at day activities. She’s nice and seems very competent.

3. A good visit with my in-laws on Tuesday. We had a power outage, so I texted my mother-in-law whether I could stay with them to do some computer work. My husband’s 16-year-old cousin was staying at my in-laws and she was delighted to see me.

4. Nice food. We didn’t have the most high-class meals this past week, but I don’t like those anyway. My husband makes delicious pasta – very simple but so good. I also have been eating a ton of fruit lately.

5. Still another day that the weather was good enough to wear a skirt. I wrote a few weeks ago that we’d probably passed the last day for the year that I could wear a skirt, but Wednesday was a surprisingly warm day. I loved it. Thursday was chilly and rainy, but today has been okay too.

6. My home support and mental health staff. I wasn’t feeling very well yesterday – very tired, confusd and dissociated. My support worker noticed and was trying to help me as much as she could. I rang my mental health team eventually. The on-call nurse didn’t know how to help me, but offered to leave a message with my nurse rpactitioner to call me back. He did and he helped me find ways to snap out of the downward spiral.

7. Eating a delicous macaroon today. Because the weather was still nice and we didn’t know whether it’d stay that way (it didn’t), one of the day activities staff took us to the marketplace early this morning. We bought a delicious cookie for everyone and I chose a macaroon. It was sweet, but oh so delicious!

8. Horseback riding again. The weather was okay again in the afternoon, so we actually went outside. It was so lovely. Angie, my horse, did a very good job and the trotting was so much fun.

9. Books. I bought the new Cathy Glass book yesterday and have been greatly enjoying it. For those not familiar with her, Glass is a UK foster carer and writer of memoirs about the children she’s fostered. This new book is really sad so far, but it’s good.

10. Getting so many things I’m thankful for listed even though I originally wasn’t motivated for it. I just had to write that as a separate item to get to ten things. Not that we’re required to do ten things, but it just looked so cool.

Linking up with Ten Things of Thankful as usual.

The Last Book

Posted on by Astrid

Today’s question of the day over at My Inner MishMash is: What was the last book you purchased or borrowed at the library. I loved this question so am going to answer it here.

I rarely borrow books through the Dutch library system. I am a member of the library for the blind, but use it mostly for the access to magazines, as I prefer English-language over Dutch books. As such, I’ve not downloaded a book out of the online library in months. I also have a subscription to Bookshare, an American-based book service for print disabled people. However, since the software I use to read Bookshare’s books won’t boot anymore, I don’t read books from Bookshare really anymore and won’t until I’ve either figured out a mobile app or bought a new computer.

I also used to buy books in EPUB format from Kobo. The software I use for reading those files, Adobe Digital Editions, however has destroyed several of my eBooks already. I was so happy when I recently discovered Kindle. I love it.

I haven’t downloaded that many books on Kindle yet. The last one I bought was Journaling: This Is My Life by Emilee Day. This is a book of journaling tips and writing prompts. I bought it because I looked for inspirational writing prompts and this one looked to be the best for its cost.

Besides this one, I have a ton of books and files containing journaling prompts in my Adobe Digital Editions, in my Bookshare books library and scattered on my computer. I just love them. It’s not even that I use them for direct inspiration often, but having these books does motivate me to write. Or so I like to think. Some of these prompts are really thought-provoking. I must say the Emilee Day book is a little disappointing as far as I can tell now.