Gratitude List (September 8, 2023) #TToT

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. It was a rather eventful week. Time for me to focus on the positives in a gratitude post. I’m joining Ten Things of Thankful, which is back after a hiatus over the summer. Here are my thankfuls.

1. I am grateful I have a moving date! This obviously tops my list. Like I mentioned on Wednesday, I’ll be moving to the new care home on the 18th.

2. I am grateful my mother-in-law is taking time off from her volunteer job to come to the visit to look at my room and have a coffee at the new care home on the 15th. Hers may be a volunteer job, but it’s responsible work, as she works for an animal rescue shelter and they’re required to maintain 24/7 availability.

3. I am grateful for quality time spent chatting and playing dice games with a fellow resident. Today, she won, which was good, as I had spilled the beans about my leaving this home a little earlier than I’d originally planned and she was quite upset. For the record, I didn’t let her win.

4. I am grateful for the nice card this resident gave me, even though I told her I wouldn’t be leaving today.

5. I am grateful for sunny and warm (well, hot) weather. It’s a little too hot for my liking, but I love the fact that I can wear my summer clothes a little longer than usual.

6. I am grateful my Braille display and computer both behave. Both gave me a scare this week. I bought new headphones on Sunday. Not because I needed them but because they’re fluffy and pink. Then when I plugged them into my computer, somehow my PC decided to install TikTok. This was a coincidence, as a 3.5mm audio cable can’t transfer data like that. However, I had no clue so started messing with my computer like crazy, uninstalling everything I didn’t recognize. This thankfully didn’t cause any long-term problems, but for a while I thought my Braille display wasn’t working so I must’ve somehow uninstalled its driver (even though I recognize that manufacturer). In the end, rebooting my Braille display solved the problem.

7. I am grateful for a delicious blueberry smoothie I made on Monday with a temp worker. I used frozen blueberries, yoghurt, vanilla extract, cinnamon and sweetener. It was absolutely amazing!

8. I am grateful for some long walks when it still wasn’t too hot outside.

9. I am grateful for a great essential oil blend in my diffuser. Yesterday, a fellow resident was out of control a lot and it was causing me anxiety. I eventually decided to ask the staff to help me create a blend so that I could calm down. I put patchouli, white fir and lavender essential oils in the diffuser.

10. I am grateful for the will to write. I may not always know what to write about, but at least I want to write. I currently have a seven-day writing streak going (although I still need to write today, which will make it eight days) in Day One, which is rather cool. Sometimes, all I write is a quick gratitude list (which I drew inspiration from for this post) or a “My Day” template post, but that’s okay too.

What are you grateful for?

Lovin’ Lately (July 28, 2023)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. It’s time for me to share some of the things I discovered or bought recently that I’ve loved once again. I’m joining Friday Favorites.

1. iOS 16.6. Well, honestly, nothing’s new, but at least a long-standing accessibility bug that had been annoying me for months finally got resolved. Since iOS 16.5, which came out in early May I believe, for whatever reason, the panning buttons on my Braille display, which allow me to scroll, froze in all book-related apps after the first page, allowing me to read only one page and then have to turn VoiceOver off and back on. This made reading on my iPhone basically impossible. So, no shiny new features but yay, I can read again!

2. Books. This brings me to my second favorite thing. Since I can finally read on my iPhone again, I have been doing so a lot. I am currently reading Silenced, Rosie Lewis’ latest foster care memoir.

3. My new blender. I finally took the plunge and ordered a blender off Bol.com last week. I have only made two smoothies with it so far, but it’s good nonetheless. It is a power blender, but not by a high-end brand, because I just don’t have the money for that. Being able to read on my iPhone again, also meant being able to use the collections of smoothie recipes I have on there again.

4. The Water Reminder app for my iPhone. I have had it on my phone several times, but it’s probably Chinese and I at one point deleted all the Chinese-owned apps off my phone for fear of being spied on. Then again, my old headphones that I used with my computer, were a Chinese brand too, so what’s the point? Today, when I looked at the Water Reminder app, I discovered that there are far more drink types you can add than I previously thought. I was looking for “smoothie”, and yay, it’s in there.

5. The Celtic Relaxation Music playlist by SWake on Spotify. I discovered it while searching for Celtic instrumental music playlists. Though Spotify’s own Celtic Instrumental playlist is good too, this one is better.

What have you been lovin’ lately?

#WeekendCoffeeShare (April 2, 2022)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone on this cold Saturday evening. I am joining #WeekendCoffeeShare today. I’m afraid I just have water or maybe the staff has put some soft drinks in the fridge by now. My favorite soft drink, Dubbelfrisss, wasn’t cold when I had my evening drink about an hour ago. Anyway, let’s have a chat.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you that I finally have been crafting again today after a week of just watching crafty videos and doing nothing creative at all. That is, I’ve been blogging, which counts too, of course, but I haven’t touched my polymer clay or jewelry-making supplies or macrame cords or anything.

Today, I finally did a couple of pieces for the mobile for the baby my sister is expecting. I also finished the polymer clay hedgehog I’d started on about a month ago. At first, I was disappointed, because I’d used up all of a particular color for its body and now it was nowhere to be found, so I couldn’t do the ears in the same color. Turns out real hedgehogs also have slightly differently colored ears than their bodies. Besides, I never really meant to be doing a fully realistic sculpture anyway (I can’t).

If we were having coffee, I’d share that the rest of the week was quite meh. I’ve been having tons of plans in my head, but no ability to actually put them into action. Today, I also experienced a ton of flashbacks and internal chaos. Seriously, the discrepancy between my intellectual ability and my emotional immaturity is really getting at me. I find that I can intellectually think of a lot of things that emotionally I cannot handle at all. I’m not sure if this makes sense.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you that I may want to research an autism support method by Colette de Bruin. My assigned home support staff pointed it out to me and said she’s pretty much using the method on me already, but I may benefit from learning about it myself.

If we were having coffee, I’d share that I am very happy with the latest iOS update. I finally was able to do some reading again on my iPhone yesterday, since the update fixed a bug that caused my Braille display to become pretty unresponsive. I usually read with just my Braille display, as I don’t like VoiceOver’s synthetic speech for that.

If we were having coffee, lastly I’d tell you that I have a quiet weekend, because my husband isn’t coming over and I have no other plans. Next week though is going to be busy, especially the weekend. I am going to the nationwide cerebral palsy day with my mother-in-law. I will be attending a workshop on aging with CP in the morning, which I am really looking forward to. In the afternoon, I’ll be attending a yoga class. I may not be able to write a coffee share post then, especially since I’m also supposed to stay up-to-date with the #AtoZChallenge. I’ll be certain to write about it though.

How have you been?

Gratitude List (February 12, 2022) #TToT

Posted on by Astrid

Hi again all. I want to post a gratitude list again. Actually, I sort of did one yesterday too by sharing the material things I’d loved. Then though, Ten Things of Thankful was not yet online (or rather, the wrong linky was). Since I like to link my posts up there, I waited till today to write my actual gratitude list. Oh wait, that makes me look spammy, I guess, but oh well. Let me share some things other than chalk pastels and tuna I’ve been grateful for.

1. Seeing my husband. I am in Lobith right now and am so grateful to be with my husband again. I couldn’t see him last week due to the storm and haven’t been in Lobith since Christmas, so it’s especially good.

2. Pizza. Oh, that’s a material thing, but who cares? We ordered Domino’s this evening and, despite the fact that their menu has shifted to include more vegan and gluten-free options and fewer regular pizzas, my pizza (spicy chicken meat lover’s with extra chicken) was delicious! I initially typed a long rant about how Domino’s has gone too far with their “healthy” trendiness by doing the vegan and GF (which I doubt is genuinely 100% GF) thing at the expense of meat lovers, but I deleted it. I’m just grateful they still had at least something spiced with chicken.

3. My husban’ds Valentine’s Day present for me. I got 2 sets of polymer clay: one with 12 25g blocks of Fimo soft and the other with 6 42g blocks Fimo kids. I haven’t used Fimo kids before, so have to determine whether it’s not too soft for my liking.

4. Decent sleep most nights. Either the pregabalin is starting to work (although I haven’t noticed an improvement in my anxiety level yet) or I am for another reason better able to sleep. I had only one bad night this past week.

5. Eggs. Until a few months ago, a former staff from my care home and her husband would give us a tray of eggs from their own chickens each week. Sadly, the husband died and the chickens had to leave their house, which meant no more eggs for us. However, usually, we now order eggs from the supermarket. I recently found out we now even have an electric, talking egg boiler. Well, I had a boiled egg on my bread this morning.

6. Sunshine. It’s cold outside. Okay, I say that all the time, but the temperatures dropped to below freezing point last night. However, it’s also been quite sunny out. I love looking out of my window to see the sunshine.

7. Longer daylight. This may be related to the last one, but not necessarily so. I love the fact that the days are getting longer. As my husband said, we’re heading towards summer! 🤣

8. Weight loss. I already mentioned this afternoon that I crossed the line from obese to just overweight this week. My dietitian says the Dutch Food Center doesn’t even say you really need to lose weight if you’re in this category.

9. My shoes having returned from the orthopedic shoemaker. Not the orthopedic footwear, mind you. That’s the never-ending story if you ask me. However, for now, I have useable shoes again.

10. My PC. I am so grateful my PC still works. My iPhone, after all, more or less stopped cooperating with my Braille display altogether with the latest iOS upgrade, which should actually have fixed the very problem it now seems to have made worse. Thankfully though, I have a functioning PC with the latest JAWS (my screen reader), on which I can do most things I want to do. I just tried accessing the WordPress.com app to check my notifications, but for some reason, that won’t work still. I’m just grateful I can write E-mails and blog posts on my PC.

What are you grateful for?

Early Days Online

Posted on by Astrid

Yesterday, Rory asked whether we remember our first times online or with a computer in general. I certainly do. I may have shared some of these memories before, but just in case I haven’t, I’m going to dedicate a post to them.

I got my first computer at the age of eleven in January of 1998. That one didn’t have an Internet connection though. Its operating system, Windows 95 SP2 (which my father explained was like Windows 96), did support Internet Explorer, but my screen reader didn’t. That screen reader, Slimware Windows Bridge, was quite primitive. So was the Braille display, which I remember to be attached to my computer via the printer port. Though it did work with just Braille, without speech, if the speech unit in the Braille display malfunctioned, so did the entire thing.

In 2002, I got my second computer and my first JAWS version. For those who don’t know, JAWS is the most commonly-used screen reader today. This computer had Windows 98 installed on it and it did have Internet access.

My father at first was adamant that I use the Internet as much as I want, even though we had a dial-up connection back then (not the kind where you can’t phone and go online at the same time). He said that, if the bill got too expensive, we’d get broadband. Then when the bill did get to over €300 over the summer, it turned out broadband wasn’t available at our house. After a few months of my parents trying to restrict my Internet access and my trying to evade said restrictions, we eventually got cable.

I got my first online diary that fall of 2002. It was on DiaryLand if I remember correctly, though I often switched between DiaryLand, Diary-X, Teen Open Diary and whatever else was available. The only service I never actively used, was Xanga. I also had a Dutch online diary.

The worst mistake I made, looking back, was not taking care of other people’s privacy. I not only wrote out every argument I’d had with my parents in detail, but also referred to other people, such as my teachers, by their real names. One teacher in particular had a rather unusual last name and at one point was googling her name for genealogy purposes. Not surprisingly, she stumbled upon my Dutch diary. Though I (interestingly) had used a nickname there, she quickly found out it was me. She personally didn’t mind, but did caution me that others might.

What mistakes did you make in your early days online?

Today Is Tuesday, June 8

Posted on by Astrid

I really want to write, but I’m feeling pretty uninspired. I already looked through my collections of journaling prompts, of which I have many. However, even though a few prompts spoke to me, I just couldn’t get myself to put fingers to keyboard and actually write. Until now, that is. Instead of writing an actually meaningful post, I’m just going to freewrite.

Today I got my original Braille display, the one with the water damage, back. The technician also explained why this model can’t handle even a little water on it even though the old model, the one that got the cup of tea over it seven years ago, could. This model’s Braille cells are somehow covered, so if water enters them, there’s no way it’ll get out. He didn’t explain the point of creating cells like this, I mean, what would make them better than cells that haven’t been covered like the ones in the old model. I think it might even be an effort to make the Braille displays not last as long, but of course the technician wouldn’t say so.

In the afternoon, my mother-in-law visited me. We drove to a relatively nearby forest and went for a short walk. Then we had coffee and apple pie. We also drove by a supermarket, where I got blueberries and fruit gums. The fruit gums, I already consumed.

Both my mother-in-law and my husband have been asking me what I want for my birthday, which is on the 27th. I have asked my parents to order from a specific jewelry-making store which is local to them. For my husband and mother-in-law, I really don’t know what to ask for. I mean, I’ve been tempted to ask for the interactive cat my mother-in-law originally wanted to buy me last year. Then again, that thing is over a hundred euros.

In the evening, I did a little more walking and had coffee. I more than reached my water intake goal for the day. I use the Water Reminder app on my iPhone again. It’s a pretty good way of keeping track of my fluid intake, as it also allows me to track other beverages. And just so you know, yes, it actually takes away water when you drink alcohol. That makes me believe its calculation of amount of water in beverages is pretty accurate.

I also read my Bible again. I decided to pick it up in Genesis where I left off when starting to read Daniel on Sunday. I don’t expect to be reading all the boring Old Testament stuff, but for now I’m at least sticking to a Bible reading habit.

And a writing habit. See? I can really make myself create a blog post if I just want it badly enough. And I do, since WordPress is now keeping track of my blogging streaks. Yay me!

Gratitude List (May 28, 2021) #TToT

Posted on by Astrid

It’s really been forever since I last did a gratitude post. I’m not too happy at the moment, but maybe doing one will cheer me up. As usual, I’m joining in with Ten Things of Thankful (#TToT.

1. I am grateful for a sunny and warm day today. After weeks and weeks of cold and rainy weather, the sun is finally shining and the temperature rose to 18°C this afternoon. The weekend and next week are supposed to be even better.

2. I am grateful my Braille display will be fixed and hopeful the company won’t claim it’s my fault that it’s broken yet again. Like I said before, they originally claimed I had caused my original Braille display water damage, but they couldn’t prove it, since it’d been lying in their storage for a year. Now this one has similar issues to the other one, but again I have no recollection of ever getting water on it. For now, they are saying there is no reason to think it’s water damage this time around. The problem if it were wouldn’t even have been the one-time expense of getting it fixed (€1500), but the precise fact that I have no recollection of ever getting water on my Braille display and so I can’t prevent the same problem happening again. For now though, I am thankful it will be fixed.

3. I am grateful for my staff, who help me through the hard times I’m going through lately. I experience a lot of triggers and resulting flashbacks. Thankfully, my staff keep reassuring me and all my inner parts, that we’re safe now.

4. I am grateful for my nurse practitioner and community psychiatric nurse. They both help me too.

5. I am grateful for wraps for lunch today.

6. I am grateful for a shopping trip to get some candy and fruit this afternoon.

7. I am grateful for a private WordPress site that I can use as my diary. I still like the iPhone app Day One too, but prefer to type my entries on my computer.

8. I am grateful for horses. Yesterday, some other care facility clients apparently went riding in some type of carriage. While the woman guiding the horses was preparing the wagon, my day activities staff asked whether I could pet the horses and I could! The littles had so much fun!

9. I am grateful for beautiful and nice-smelling flowers.

10. I am grateful for the myNoise and Spotify apps on my iPhone and the ability to listen to beautiful soundscapes and all kinds of music using my AirPods.

Okay, this was easier than I thought it would be. Thank you for reading.

What are you grateful for?

Powerful

Posted on by Astrid

My Braille display, which I use to access my computer and smartphone as I am blind, is giving me problems again. In fact, it’s been acting up ever since only a few days after it got fixed three weeks ago, but I hadn’t wanted to disclose this on my blog. After all, the Braille display costs several thousands of euros and the company had originally claimed that home contents insurance (which I don’t have at this point) should pay for the repair, so I had been wanting to keep this private while investigating my options. Now though, the thing has been acting up so badly that it caused me to spiral into a parasuicidal crisis. This may seem odd, technology being so powerful as to get me to lose my sanity. Thankfully, my husband calmed me down!

This post was written for Six Sentence Story Thursday, for which the prompt today was “Powerful”. It was also inspired by Abbie’s contribution to the blog hop.

#WeekendCoffeeShare (May 8, 2021)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi and welcome to my #WeekendCoffeeShare post for this week. Grab a cup of coffee, be it Senseo or traditionally-made, a glass of your favorite soft drink or a glass of water and let’s catch up.

If we were having coffee, I’d share that the weather here is still all over the place and mostly not in a good way. It’s mostly rather chilly for the time of year and has been raining everyday for the past week. Tomorrow, the temperature’s supposed to rise to a whopping 25°C, but we’re still supposed to get rain and of course thunderstorms. Not fun!

If we were having coffee, I would tell you that, despite the weather, I still managed to get in an average of about 8000 steps each day. I’m still experiencing foot pain when wearing my AFO for longer than say fifteen minutes at a time, but it’s okay if I don’t go for long walks.

If we were having coffee, I would share that I am so happy that my Braille display got fixed. Like I said yesterday, it was quite the ordeal.

If we were having coffee, I’d also share that the construction crew finally came by my and my husband’s house in Lobith to get us a new front door and backdoor. They still need to fix one window, which has a crack in it. Thankfully, they weren’t as stubborn as the Braille display company, so my husband won’t have to pay for the broken window.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you about the talk I had with my facility’s behavior specialist on Thursday. I was able to express my continuing feelings of not belonging in my current care home. This, for clarity’s sake, has nothing to do with the care home itself or the way the staff treat me, which is great. I am pretty sure it’s my search for some ideal that really doesn’t exist. After all, wherever I go, I always take my insecure self with me.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you about the online cerebral palsy (CP) meeting I had this morning. It was a regional meeting, because in the future CP Netherlands hopes to organize them in real life. It was quite an interesting meeting. Having recently become more and more aware of my CP, I was able to feel validated by people’s experiences of the long-term effects of this disability.

I also signed up for an online workshop on aging with CP that’s being held next month. I am still considering whether to sign up for the workshop on development of people with CP from birth to age 35, as it sounds interesting despite the fact that I’m nearly 35 myself.

If we were having coffee, lastly I’d share that my husband and I are planning on having lunch tomorrow. As usual, we’re going to get a takeout lunch at Subway.

How have you been?

Braille Display #WotW

Posted on by Astrid

Hi all! What a week it’s been! From frustration to complete panic and back to relief, all because of my Braille display. That’s my word of the week for this week. Let me share why.

Like I’ve shared a couple of times before, I’ve had problems with my current Braille display ever since I first got it two years ago. Dots kept getting stuck, leading to errors in my reading. After all, Braille characters are comprised of at most eight (for computer Braille) dots in a rectangular cell. When, say, dot four is stuck, an A reads like a C or vice versa. It’s workable as long as it’s just one or two dots that are stuck out of the forty times eight dots on my forty-cell Braille display. However, at one point several dots in one cell were stuck, meaning that one was essentially useless.

After a technician had come out to repair my Braille display several times, he sent it back to the manufacturer for checking out in June of last year. I got a replacement on loan until it’d been fixed, which never happened.

Fast forward to last Sunday. When not one, but two or three dots were stuck on my Braille display, I decided I’d had enough and wanted it fixed. Either that or I wanted the original one back. I E-mailed the company, also asking what I could do to prevent dots getting stuck again. On Monday, I got a relatively generic response: other than not touching my Braille display with wet or dirty hands, there was nothing I could do. Well, I always make sure my hands are clean and dry before touching my Braille display. On Tuesday, the company’s repair planning called me to schedule an appt to get the thing repaired today.

Then on Wednesday, the company’s business developer called me to inform me that they’d found that my original Braille display – remember, the one that was with them or the manufacturer for a year -, had suffered water damage. All 40 cells needed replacing at a cost of €1500. Health insurance wouldn’t pay for this. Maybe home insurance would or I’d have to pay out-of-pocket.

I decided that, if I had to spend €1500 anyway, I’d be looking at getting another brand of Braille display, since I don’t trust my current one. I mean, I always handle my Braille display with care and not just the original one, but the replacement one too had problems. I actually got a little excited looking at what’s available, but at the same time quite panicked at the prospect of having to spend at least €1500 in one go. I’ve literally never made purchases over €1000.

Yesterday evening, I got an E-mail confirming the appt for repair of the replacement Braille display. I panicked again, since what if they decided I’d somehow ruined this one too or I got a huge bill after it got repaired?

Today, my husband called the business developer. He had seen the photos of the so-called water-damaged original Braille display, which the guy argued proved that I had somehow ruined it. Well, my husband argued that, since they’d had it for at least as long as I had originally had it, there was no way to prove it didn’t get water-damaged or anything while with them. Since I have no recollection of it getting wet at all, there is no way home insurance is going to cover a repair. In fact, they’d too argue that there’s no way the company can prove it isn’t their fault. The bottom line is I can keep the replacement Braille display, it would get repaired and I won’t have to pay. The technician who came out to replace the cells that had damaged dots, confirmed that it hadn’t been anything I had done causing this one to malfunction. Now, at least until/unless more dots get stuck on this one, I’m so relieved and happy! To be honest though, I’m so used to dots being stuck that I keep checking I’m reading my Braille display correctly. That’s okay though. Now let’s think of what I can spend those €1500 on. No, not really.

Word of the Week linky