Gratitude List (October 26, 2018) #TToT

Posted on by Astrid

Man, I really am falling into a writing rut. I don’t even know why. I’m still not feeling too well, but I wouldn’t say I’m seriously depressed either. For a bit in early October, I did feel extremely low, bu I picked up the pieces again reasonalby soon.

Today, to get myself motivated for writing again, I’m participating once again in #TToT. It’s not a weekly gratitude list anymore and I may be sharing some things I’ve been grateful for over the past few weeks.

1. A skirt-wearing day in October! This was already a few weeks ago, but I’m still so thankful for it. About two weeks ago, the temperature rose to 26 degrees Celsius and I loved it!

Generally speaking, the weather has been extremely mild here with hardly any rain. We got some rain only over the last few days and that wasn’t a lot. Today is one of the first days it’s really rather cold.

2. Sleep. Like I said above, fall weather came late this year but it well and truly came. I am very sensitive to cold, so I’ve been complaining for a few days that it’s cold already. This means that nothng’s cozier than crawling under the covers against my husband or with my sensory cat. The sensory cat is a soft toy that can be put in the microwave and then gives off heat and a lavender scent.

3. Swimming. At day activities, we go swimming every other Tuesday. Two weeks ago, I was a bit sick, so didn’t go. This week I did though. It was lovely. My Fitbit activity tracker says I swam 1200m total, which I can’t believe but oh well.

4. A full day at day activities. Three weeks ago, I got permission to come to day activities one full day a week in addition to the three other mornings. I now go on Tuesdays for a full day and Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays in the morning. I am still settling in a bit but so far I love it.

5. Making smoothies. I really, really need to get into a healthier eating habit again. I haven’t been on the scale in months and I’ve probably gained lots of weight. To get myself motivated, I bought a lot of frozen fruit and a can of soy milk last Monday. Bananas were sold out, so my husband bought those on Tuesday. Yesterday, we made a banana-strawberry-soy milk smoothe and it was delicious!

6. Horseback riding again. Some of my fellow clients at day activities go horseback riding at my riding school on Friday afternoons. I go on Friday afternoons too, but usally the class after theirs. Today, one of these other clients was on vacation, so my staff offered to ask whether I could come in her place and I could. My assigned support worker from day activities walked beside my horse. It was a lot of fun!

7. My very accommodating staff. My support coordinator and home support worker are going out of their way to help me. So are my day activities staff. Particularly, they offered me to come to day activities two full days on December 27 and 28, since the other days of that week, the center is closed for Christmas. They’ll have room for me even on that Thursday, which is normally my day off. I’m so grateful for this!

8. Accessible games on the iPhone. I never took much of an interest in accessible computer games, because I believed most would be very boring. Now this week I decided to take a look at the AppleVis directory of iOS apps in the Games category. Of course, most games that are really popular with sighted people, are totally inaccessible. However, some accessible games are pretty cool after all. I so far downloaded Dice World, which is a collection of six dice games, and Alter Ego.

Alter Ego was originally created as a fully text-based game in 1986 but was adapted for use on the smartphone. It is a game in which the scenario is that you’re born and will eventually die. The life you lead in between will depend on your answers to a lot of multiple-choice questions. On my first round playing, I chose to be a very angry, rebellious baby and ended up with burns from an iron in infancy and killed by a kidnapper in childhood.

9. Twister fries! I have no idea whether twister fries exist in other parts of the world and, if so, whether they’re really called twister fries. They are my favorite type of fries, but they had apparently been taken off the menu at my local cafeteria. Last week at his once-a-week round to the cafeteria, my husband informed me that he had a nice surprise for me and it turned out they were back. I enjoyed them both last week and this week. I also love love love the African-style burger they have on the menu.

10. My mood being slightly better. Like I said, I had a really low few days earlier this month. Over the past two weeks or so, my mood seems to have been slowly but steadily improving. I cannot say I feel good, but I don’t feel that bad either.

Resisting an Impulse #Write31Days

Posted on by Astrid

Welcoe to day 16 in #Write31Days. Today, I picekd yet another prompt from The Self Exploation Journal, but I twisted it around. Thhe prompt was to write about the last time you did something impulsive. Instead, I am going to write about the last tire I resisted a destructive impulse

I have been struggling a lot over the past few weeks. My husband has been working extremely long horus this past week and has been very stressed about it. Thankfully, he contacted his manager on it today and will be working slightly more normal hours from tomorrow on. However, today he wasn’t home till 9:30PM.

I hadn’t slept very well last night, because my husband was stressed out yesterday and I took over his stress. In my mind, it became worse and worse, until I was imagining my husband dying in a crash with his truck today. Needless to say, I was quite tired when I got to day activities in the morning.

On top of that, one of the regular staff was off sick, so there was a substitute. Because this regular staff would remain on sick leave tomorrow, the staff worked out who to find as a sub. Wednesdays are the busiest days at day activities, so I was quite scared that one staff would need to handle the full group on her own.

By 2:30PM, I was very irritable. I didn’t understand the jokes people were cracking. I was constantly worrying too about how to make it through the evening. I got an impulse to elope. Instead, I decided to try to walk around the building on my own while the staff checked on me tha tI was headed in the right direction. I did fine.

My staff did notice that I wasn’t coping thoguh. She asked whom I could call if I wasn’t coping while home. I decided to call my mother-in-law right then and she informed me my husband had already asked that I could eat with my in-laws.

Had I actually given in to the impulse and run off, people would’ve been a lot more worried than they already were. Besides, since this was my second time going to day activities for a full day, I might have been suspended. I don’t think I’d have gotten in any physical danger had I actually run off, as the day activities place is in a very quiet neighborhood. However, I’m still glad I didn’t give in to the urge.

The Most Important People in My Life #Write31Days

Posted on by Astrid

Welcome to day 13 in #Write31Days. It’s getting harder and harder to keep up with the challenge, but I was reminded by my husband not to give up now that I have nearly two weeks’ worth of effort put into it.

Today, I’m making a list of the most important people in my life. I’ll also explain why these people are so important to me. I tend not to come across very appreciative of wht people mean to me. I mean, the people in my life right now are mostly very supportive, and yet I don’t tell them so that often.

1. My husband. Do I really need to explain? I first met him in 2007, when I was struggling to hold on living independently. He supported me throughout my 9 1/2 years in the mental hospital and through the nearly eighteen months we’ve been living together now. He also fully supports my choice of trying to get into supported housing, even if it means we can only see each other on week-ends. He’s also just the most loving person around. Hubby, I love you!

2. My in-laws. As regular readers know, I am in low contact with my own parents. For this reason, I’m all the more thankful to have my in-laws. My mother-in-law particularly helps me with important meetings and with other decisions I need to make.

3. My home support staff. I first met my support coordinator in August of last year, when I finally got approved for home support. At first, she mostly just monitored my care with my old support worker, but eventually, she had to step up more. She now sees me usually once a week. My new support worker – the old one was moved to a team in another area – sees me twice a week. They’re both very supportive and skilled and especially my support coordinator goes out of her way to help me.

4. My day activities staff. My assigned support worker is one of the nicest staff working at that group. Not that the other staff aren’t nice, but she is the one who most truly gets me. The other staff truly try too. I am so glad to be here. Now I must say my old day activities staff were nice too, but they weren’t equipped with the information to properly support me. Besides, the manager was probably more stacked against my “psychiatric” needs.

Who are the most important people in your life?

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 14, 2018) #TToT

Posted on by Astrid

I’m still not doing very well. Depression seems to be sinking in deeper. Because it’s only been a few weeks, I’m still hoping I’m just having a bad mood for a bit.

Kristi shared in a comment on my #TToT last week that her friend who started the link-up, did so to cope with her depression. For this reason, I’m trying to list the things I’m grateful for again too.

1. A good consultation meeting on Monday. Like I said on Monday, I discussed my options for getting appropriate care. An ideal situation would be that my husband and I could live together but close by a care facility. Since this is most likely not possible, I may have to choose between managing as I do now or going into supported housing. As it turns out, my husband is supportive of me regardless of the outcome. He says he’ll stick by me even if we can only see each other during the week-end.

2. My mother-in-law. On Tuesday, I was feeling so depressed that I didn’t really feel safe staying at home alone. I didn’t have my PRN medication at hand, so couldn’t just sleep it off either. I texted my mother-in-law and she offered to take me to my in-laws’ house. I feel so relieved that she did.

3. My in-laws’ dog, Bloke. While at their house, my mother-in-law took me to walk him. We joke that he’ll be a trained guide dog by the time he’s eight. He is a labrador retriever, so the right breed, but he’s five already and pretty disobedient.

4. My physical health. I had a nasty cold early in the week, but am feeling somewhat better now. Not great, but good enough to go on walks and to exercise again.

5. Nice staff at day activities. I was able to talk some with them and this morning, one took me on an early walk. One of the staff can be a bit blunt and I’ve had a few issues with her, but overall everyone’s nice.

6. Drinking a nice latte with my support worker. Because my support coordinator is on vacation – she’ll be back next week -, my support worker offered to take me on a special activity yesterday. We drove to a cooffee house in her town. I’d never had a real latte, just instant cappuccino. It was really nice.

7. French fries. Both on Sunday and today, my husband and I ate fries with a snack for dinner. Don’t tell the dietician – not that I have one -, but it was delicious. Overall, I’ve not been watching my diet and have been overeating way too much this past week. Let’s hope this depression thing lifts and I will be arsed to eat healthfully again.

Linking up with #TToT again.

Next Year

Posted on by Astrid

Last week, I wrote a post based on a journaling prompt from the book The Self-Exploration Journal about where I’d want to be years from now. The next prompt asks us to write about where, given our current daily activities and routines, we can realistically expect to be in a year.

If my daily routines and activities of the past sixteen months, living with my husband, have taught me anything, it’s that nothing is certain. I thought, after my last overdose in October of 2017 that I would be stabilizing now at my old day activities and with my home support. That didn’t work out, because within months I was told I’d have to leave the day center eventually.

Now I’ve only just settled in at my new day activities placement. I am pretty content with how things are there now, but am not sure I feel excited about evnetually going four full days rather than just mornings. I mean, I still struggle a lot with overload.

At home, spending my afternoons alone, I feel awful. This could be depression sinking in again, but I’m not sure.

Realistically, based on my current routines and activities, can I expect to move within a year? I mean, I badly want to, but am even undecided as to how I want to live. Maybe next year I’ll be living in another house with my husband. Maybe I’ll be in supported housing after all. Maybe – most likely – I’ll still be holding on by a thread as I live here.

Mental health-wise, I don’t expect I’ll be doing much better in a year. That’s partly because my mental health issues are rather complex and partly because we don’t have a clear treatment plan that everyone agrees on.

I don’t expect much improvement in my physical health either, though I do hope to be a bit more in shape. Based on my current habits, I cannot expect to be at or near a healthy weight yet, but will hopefully have lost some weight.

I would really like to do some more learning. I tried to learn German for a bit a few weeks ago, but my head spun with all the information. Maybe I’ll be able to do some learning as I go by engaging with the books and blogs I read. I’ll also hopefully keep up the daily writing practise.

Consultation Meeting at Day Activities

Posted on by Astrid

So I had a meeting with the Center for Consultation and Expertise consultant at day activities this morning. First, I talked some with her alone. We discussed my care needs in some more depth than we’d done when she’d visited me and my husband at our home. I still feel the ideal situation is that my husband and I could still live togehter but close by a care facility. I also mentioned that, though my husband supports me wherever I go, he has some reservations about us living in a lean-on apartment together. A lean-on apartment is where you still live independently, but close by a care facility. Since my husband and I together make too much money for renting a home too, and we don’t have a huge financial reserve, choices are limited. This means most likely I’ll either have to manage with the same amount of care I get now, but we could move to a larger town, or I’ll need to go the long-term care route and essentially live away from my husband during the week. I can manage okay’ish now and I don’t want to risk my marriage for better care, so I’ve already reluctantly set my mind on the former.

We also discussed my needs for mental health treatment. We discussed the insiders and I named a few. The consultant, herself an educational psychologist, took my experience surprisingly seriously. I had expected she wouldn’t, given how she seemed to respond when my husband said he’s married to Astrid, “pieces” or not. I mentioned having come out to my psychiatrist. I’ll have a meeting with her and my nurse practitioner on October 2. I mentioned the psychiatrist having said that my treatment may take another five years. Again surprisingly, the consultant didn’t react negatively to that, saying instead that if I felt it’d be beneficial in the end, I should go for it. We also went into childhood trauma a bit, which is the reason the insiders are here. The consultant recommended I discuss getting EMDR with my psychiatrist and nurse practitioner. I said this had been recommended by the psychologist who rediagnosed me with autism in 2017 and on whose report my treatment plan is based. However, that psychologist recommended I do dialectical behavior therapy first. The consultant disagreed, saying that nowadays, people who aren’t very stable or even people with intellectual disabilities can benefit from modified EMDR. She mentioned a therapist’s name that I couldn’t fully understand and a quick Google search came up with nothing.

Then, we drank coffee and after that, the consultant talked with my day activities staff. She asked what activities I do during the day. She also recommended my staff respond proactively to my becoming overloaded. I’m not so sure I like that, but I think it’s for my own good anyway. I mean, we again went on a long walk this morning and I couldn’t fully keep up. As a result, at the end the staff decided not to take me on the full, hour-long walk again for now. I so badly want to meet my goal of 10,000 steps a day, so I feel pretty awful having to cut back.

On October 4, the consultant will make her recommendations at a meeting with my home support coordinator, assigned day activities staff and me. I’m hoping for the best.

Tuesday Ramble

Posted on by Astrid

I don’t really know what to feel. Today was, well, chaotic. It started out with me getting up at 7:10AM as usual, still tired as usual. My energy level usually rises during the day, but being on high doses of psychotropics still means I’m at least somewhat tired all the time.

At day activities, everyhing went okay. I did some table-based activities and went for a walk with one of the staff trying to learn the route around the building. Meanwhle, a lot was on my mind. Yesterday, the staff had been telling the new intern how one of the clients acquired his cognitive disability. This was such a sad tale. I mean, yes, it may not be ideal to be born with a severe intellectual disability, but at least then you don’t know better. This man, the staff said, probably doesn’t realize much of what his life was like before his brain injury.

Still, it made me sad. I, after all, do know about my life before my extreme autistic burn-out in 2007. I could reason that, since high school was hard for me too, I should be happy I no longer experience that level of pressure. And I am. But that part of me, the would-be-university-professor, is still there.

After lunch, I went home. I wasn’t even home for ten minutes when we had a massive power outage. I didn’t discover it at first, only noticing my Internet connection had gone. Then, I discovered that my computer was running on battery power, so I went to check the rest of the house to see if we still had power anywhere. That’s hard, being blind with light perception, as I’m not sure I trust my vision enough to check the lights but I tried to anyway., I eventually went to check some other electronic devices throughout the house. Then, I called my mother-in-law and texted my husband. My mother-in-law texted back that she couldn’t find any news about a power outage, but my husband called back to let me know the whole village was out of power. Later, we joked that I had somehow caused the power outage.

My mother-in-law came to pick me up, so that while at my in-laws’ home I could at least do something on the computer. Which reminds me of how dependent on electronics I am, especially when alone. Like, I hardly ever touch my phone while at day activities, but at home, practically the only thing I do involves my computer or phone.

In the evening, my father called me by accident. He never calls me and even when my paternal grandma was dying, all I got was a text message from my mother. As such, I immediately panicked, because why in the world would he suddenly want to call me? As it turned out, it was nothing.

Now I’m supposed to feel good, or at least okay, but I don’t. Oh well. No time for processing, as I’m off to bed in about fifteen minutes.

Weekly Gratitude List (August 24, 2018) #TToT

Posted on by Astrid

Wow, it’s Friday again! Time flies! This means it’s time for me to write my weekly gratitude list. Here goes.

1. The fact that I did in fact exercise everyday last week. Thhat means I broke a record! I could go this far this week again, as so far I’ve been doing some exercise-worthy moving each day of the week.

2. An even longer walk last Monday. The staff who’s gettinb back into work was at our day activities group again last Monday. This time, we walked for over an hour. I loved it.

3. Finding a cool Turkish shop in the nearby city. This city is called “the capital of Turkey” by people from the surrounding area. I went grocery shopping in the city on Monday with my support worker, because the next town’s supermarket, which is closer by my house than the city’s, had sold me rotten blackberries on Friday. The supermarket visit wasn’t too much of a success, but I hope to be able to get more delicious fruit at the Turkish shop next time.

4. A very good psychiatrist’s appointment last Tuesday. It still has me in awe, as I felt so thoroughly validated.

5. Having made delicious toast with cheese, salami, tomato and pesto at day activities on Wednesday. It was a little chaotic, but still it was a lot of fun.

6. A lie-in yesterday. My support coordinator wouldn’t be here till 3PM and I had no other obligations, so I slept in till past 11AM.

7. Being able to discuss my wishes with the day activities staff. Today, the day activities coordinator had heard about my enjoying the long walks. Because this extra staff who took me this week will eventually go back to her own group and no longer be extra, the coordinator offered to try to find me a volunteer. That’d be so cool.

We also discussed my creative endeavors. The day center have a stand at the town’s Christmas fair each year and they make crafty things for that. I got talking about all my creative endeavors, like jewelry-making and soap making. I may try to get some of these things going at day activities.

Linking up with Ten Things of Thankful again.

Weekly Gratitude List (August 17, 2018) #TToT

Posted on by Astrid

It’s Friday again. I don’t usually look forward to the week-end, but I love Fridays. They’re a wonderful day to reflect back on my week and remember what I’m grateful for. So here is my weekly gratitude list.

1. A stay at my in-laws last Saturday. My husband was visiting his grandma but, due to her cognitive decline, she would most likely not have recognized me, so I didn’t go. My mother-in-law took me on a walk with their dog and my father-in-law served us homemade pizza for dinner.

2. A long walk on Monday. At day activities, my group usually goes for a short walk on Monday mornings, but there’s another group who walk for like 50 minutes. An extra staff member was available last MOnday, who usually works at the group who go for the long walk but was at my group that day. She asked whether I’d like to walk with the other group while she was my sighted guide. I loved it in spite of a little rain. I really hope that I can regularly go walk with this other group. It depends on whether they think I need a one-on-one guide, which I don’t think I need.

3. Probably the last day for the year I could wear a skirt. Yesterday, the weather was good. It was warm, but not hot and there was a cool breeze too. As a result, I was able to go for another long walk with my support coordinator.

4. Managing half an hour on the elliptical on Tuesday. If I go on the elliptical tonight, tomorrow or on Sunday, I’ll also have crushed my five-day exercise goal. Not that I’ve been on the elliptical that often, but walking counts towards my goal too.

5. A good meeting with the Center for Consultation adn Expertise consultant on Tuesday. We don’t know yet what route she’s going to recommend us going re my care, as the next meeting won’t be till late September. However, I’m glad I was at least somewhat able to communicate my needs.

6. Walking around the day activities center almost with no help. On Wednesday, I asked the staff to accompany me on a walk around the building, so that I could see whether I can learn to do this independently. On my second try, I walked independently using my white cane but the staff was still close by. I’m confident that I can learn to walk this route independently. It’s only about a five-minute walk, but baby steps cunt too.

As you can see, most of the things I’m grateful for this week involve physical activity. I truly love this. I didn’t get to ten things of thankful this week, because I’ve been feeling a little off, but reflecting on the things I can still be grateful for sure does help lift my mood.

Linkign up with Ten Things of Thankful and Thankful Thursday.