The Could-Be COVID Chronicles, September 2025 Edition

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. It’s been over a week since I last wrote a post for my blog. I’ve had some ideas on my mind, but I’ve been battling what I believe could be COVID since Wednesday. Here in the Netherlands, all official precautions and regulations were ended in early 2023 and replaced with a recommendation to “use common sense”. Now my institution has always been rather careless when it comes to quarantining people suspected of having COVID and I myself am not the most sensible either when there are no rules.

On Wednesday, in fact, I was cooking burgers for the entire home when this whole thing started. I blame myself for several other clients and half the staff being sick now, but the staff say they would probably have caught it somewhere anyway, just like I probably caught it from a staff coming to work sick on Monday last week.

On Thursday, I was in bed all day, but I felt better on Friday, so I decided to go for several walks and a dance. Not a good idea if I indeed do have COVID, as not resting well enough can contribute to having long-term symptoms.

Saturday, I was in bed again for most of the day but dancing at 11PM in my room again in order to meet my movement goal on my Apple Watch. I then decided I really had to rest, so lowered my movement goal for that day and paused my rings altogether on Sunday until tomorrow.

I’m now feeling okay, but not nearly back to normal. Tomorrow, the Center for Consultation and Expertise consultant is coming. There are no longer any rules prohibiting them to visit me and several other staff are working while having symptoms now too. Besides, I didn’t have a say in inviting them, so I don’t feel in a position to cancel.

I do feel guilty for basically doing what everyone else is here, ie. living my life as if COVID is no longer a threat. I know, I don’t know whether I actually have COVID since testing is no longer a thing here either, but I definitely feel this is more than just a very nasty cold.

Hope for My Home #SoCS

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Today’s prompt for #SoCS is “starts with ‘ho’”. The first word that came to mind for me was “home”. In less than two weeks, I’ll be at my current care home two years. I remember celebrating the two-year mark in Raalte, almost fully confident that I’d stay there for many more years. In fact, at my care plan review at the end of September (I moved into the care home in Raalte in September too), I said I was 95% sure that I wanted to stay there. “Make it 98%, please,” said my home’s manager. A year later, I had moved to the intensive support home and, as it turned out, the higher-ups in Raalte didn’t want me back.

Another word that came to mind is “hope”. We all could use a little hope, I think. I want to start by saying that, if I celebrate my two-year stay at this home, it doesn’t mean I’ve jinxed (a word I only recently learned of) it and I’ll be voluntarily kicked out of here in less than a year, like in Raalte. I still hope there’s room for improvement in my care and, rather than being shoved around, I’ll finally be able to feel home.

I do admit I have good days. Today, I baked a Biscoff blondie with my staff. That was fun! I just so wish that my life were actually relatively good rather than my having to hope everyday that this day will not suck. Not that a day when I don’t bake sucks, of course. Life is more than Biscoff blondies. But when all I can tell my spouse on the phone that I’ve done today is walk and play dice games, it’s boring. And that’s while my life could be so much less boring if I were able to contribute. And I don’t just mean cooking, baking and crafting. I mean the less interesting tasks of daily life too. I feel accomplished when I’ve helped with some chores around the home. I hope that when, at some point, my new day schedule is created, life’ll be a bit more fulfilling.

Laughing Over Lemons

Posted on by Astrid

Laughing over lemons. That phrase has been on my mind for a few days. It’s a twist on the phrase “When life hands you lemons, make lemonade.” I think sometimes it’s best to laugh at our worst days.

Like, when I had only been in the psychiatric hospital for a day back in 2007, I was telling psych ward jokes. You know, what’s the difference between the patients and the staff on psychiatric units? First, the patients get better and leave. Second, the staff have the keys. And there was another one. Something about not all patients believing they’re God. I think those last two apply to institutions for people with developmental disabilities too. I mean, particularly at the intensive support home (ie. the home for those with severe challenging behavior), my spouse said the only noticeable difference between the residents and staff was the staff carrying a pager to beep for assistance when a resident becomes violent. Other than that, both staff and residents were usually staring blankly at the TV.

We, the residents, were often blamed. Or at least, the other residents (other than me, that is) were. They have no motivation for life and they are too old to teach. Besides, no-one can force them away from the TV because that would be involuntary care. That’s what I was told. Never mind that I’ve witnessed on many occasions staff telling residents that they had gotten enough “attention” for the day because staff had been sitting with them for fifteen minutes with a cup of coffee.

I am often quite cynical in my humor. If only my cynical jokes weren’t actually 99% truthful. And now all I can hope for is that my joke about everything being okay in 2034 (because the world is going to be blasst to hell) isn’t going to turn out 99% truthful too.

I am linking this post up with Friday Writings. It isn’t necessarily a hopeful or positive post. However, I do feel that laughing over the many lemons life hands me and many other people in this world and age, can certainly be helpful.

August 2025 In My Kitchen

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone on this last day of August. We had rain in the weather forecast for the last few days, but it wasn’t more than a drizzle. Hopefully tomorrow there’ll be more.

I’m joining In My Kitchen again even though August wasn’t all that exciting with respect to kitchen-based or other food-related activities. I have a few plans for the first week of September. Here’s hoping I can be more involved in the kitchen over the rest of the month too.

I didn’t cook dinner at all in August, but I did create a few little treats for myself and sometimes my fellow residents. Like, on August 4, I made a mascarpone-based dessert with raspberries and blueberries on top.

I also prepared overnight oats again. The next morning, I added the toppings and enjoyed my healthy’ish breakfast. Now I doubt that it’s actually healthier than my regular breakfast, but who cares?

I made a few smoothies too. In one of them, I put pineapple, spinach and almond milk. My idea was to prove to one of the staff, who didn’t like spinach, that you won’t taste spinach in smoothies. Guess what? We didn’t taste the spinach, but we didn’t taste much of anything else either. I eventually added a banana and some honey, but it still was one of the blandest smoothies I’ve had.

Like I said on Friday, I also have been making coffees with foaming milk on top. The truth is I don’t really like them, but my milk frother was €70 and now it feels less like a waste of money. Besides, my fellow residents like the coffees.

Lastly, yesterday I spent the day with my spouse in our house. We had originally planned to cook dinner together, but ultimately my spouse ended up doing everything. We had an easy broccoli and chicken stir-fry with hot sauce and noodles. My spouse asked me whether it was as good as the meal delivery service meals. 😉 It was a lot better!

Speaking of which, the meal delivery service now has “2.0” written on many of its foods. I get Siam sauce 2.0, for example. Once, I even got “cauliflower 2.0”. Well, what can be improved or changed about just cauliflower? The brown rice doesn’t have 2.0 written on it, but it’s been horribly undercooked lately. I am of the opinion that the higher-ups deciding which meal delivery service to contract, or that the institution even has to contract one rather than operating its own kitchen, should be forced to consume a meal delivery service dinner once a week.

Simple Pleasures #SoCS

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Today’s prompt for #SoCS is “simple”. When I saw the prompt yesterday, I immediately thought I had to write about simple pleasures. You know, the little things that make life worth living when all else seems rather grim.

I could of course nag on about the cup of green tea. The one I got at 9PM one day over six weeks ago and that, while enjoyable, also triggered a flood of negative emotions because, really, is life all about a cup of tea? That being said, I’ve tried to make it a more regular habit to ask for a cup of tea at around 9PM.

Most of the simple pleasures I can think of right now, involve food, but not all do. Birdsong is also a simple pleasure I enjoy. So was a shower I took on Thursday when I was feeling particularly miserable.

As a multiply-disabled person living in an institution, I sometimes find joy in things that are out of the ordinary for me even though these things are normal for most people in my country and the rest of the developed world. They are, however, luxurious to people in less fortunate parts of the world. I also realize I am privileged to be able to go online when I want, as even in some other developed countries, people in the care system can’t. That doesn’t mean my life is easy. It’s not. I may have it better than people in many parts of the world, but that doesn’t mean my struggle isn’t real.

However, I do try to find positives each day. It sometimes feels like an obligation, because I used to be told all the time that I’m being negative on purpose. However, it does genuinely help me to acknowledge the simple joys each day provides.

#WeekendCoffeeShare (August 9, 2025)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m joining #WeekendCoffeeShare again. It’s 7:30PM, so I just had my last cup (two cups, in fact) of coffee for the day. I’ll probably take a break from writing this blog post for my soft drink at 8PM. Please join me as we chat.

If we were having coffee, first as usual I’d talk about the weather. It’s truly beautiful! Today, the temperature rose to 25°C and it was quite sunny. Rain isn’t in the forecast until next Thursday I believe. I know, climate change and all, but I’m enjoying the summer while I can.

If we were having coffee, I’d share that I am still going strong with my physical activity goals. Yesterday, a staff mentioned the trampoline that’s on the campsite near the institution and we decided to check it out. Today, I went on the side-by-side bike with another staff. Because of this as well as having walked a lot today, I might break my active calories record according to my Apple Watch.

If we were having coffee, next I’d tell you that I unfortunately haven’t been crafting much lately. On Sunday, I created polymer clay earrings that are still waiting to go into the oven. Other than that, no crafty endeavors.

I did, however, create a dessert for myself and my fellow residents on Monday. It was good.

If we were having coffee, then I’d tell you that the rest of the week was quite hard. There’s this temp worker who is absolutely clueless about how to support me and yet he’s assigned to me almost everyday. Staff keep saying I should be giving him feedback more when he’s acting in an unsupportive way. First of all, well, no, that’s not my responsibility. They don’t ask the other clients to give feedback either, but when I point this out, they say it’s different for them because they can’t. I can, sometimes, a little bit and I tried this week in fact, but the temp worker didn’t learn a thing from it. Then I get told that the staff assign to me who they choose and it’s my responsibility to deal with it.

I also was told that, when the staff feel someone is trained well enough to support me, they will be assigned to me and I don’t have a say in it. All this comes across as if it’s me being deliberately difficult with certain staff based on arbitrary things, while in reality it’s the way that they act that makes certain staff more difficult for me to deal with than others. Besides, I’ve had staff assigned to me who themselves don’t even feel they’re capable enough just because these staff want to please and their colleagues pressure them. It may be easiest for staff to assign the most inexperienced temp worker to me because I try to be helpful and, when I am not, it is easy to blame me for allegedly playing favorites.

If we were having coffee, lastly I’d share that the Center for Consultation and Expertise found a suitable consultant for my case, but due to the summer holidays, the first contact won’t be until the end of August. This will unfortunately be a phone call with the behavior specialist. I’m not very trusting of the whole process at the moment, to be honest.

#WeekendCoffeeShare (August 2, 2025)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m once again joining #WeekendCoffeeShare. It’s almost 10:30PM, so no more drinks other than water for me. That green tea I got a month ago has gotten a meaning of its own lately, symbolizing my lack of independence and self-determination. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Grab yourself a favorite drink and let’s catch up.

If we were having coffee, first I’d talk about the weather. It’s been rainy most of the week and honestly less warm than I’d like it to be. I refuse to wear long-sleeved shirts in the middle of summer, but today, I almost regretted going out in just a T-shirt.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you that in part due to the weather, I haven’t been as physically active as I’d have liked lately. Today, my spouse and I wanted to go for a walk but it was raining pretty hard so we turned around within five minutes. That was when I was out in just a shirt. I’m hoping I can still meet my movement goal on my Apple Watch today.

If we were having coffee, then I’d share that I was at our house today. My spouse got a new cat about six weeks ago and I hadn’t met him yet. His name is Caleb. Unfortunately, he hid under our bed as soon as I walked in the door and had to be dragged down by my spouse for me to be able to pet him.

We originally intended to cook dinner together or get pizza delivered, but since the weather didn’t permit us taking a walk and my spouse didn’t want to stay inside the house all day, we decided to drive to Apeldoorn. I needed a new jacket, after all. My old one, I’d bought seven years ago and it’d finally gotten damaged beyond repair in addition to being quite dirty. When my spouse asked me my size, I made a guess. It turned out the old jacket was several sizes bigger. Then again, back in 2018 I was at least 10kg heavier than I am now. I finally got a jacket with a size inbetween my original guess and the old one’s and it fits perfectly.

If we were having coffee, then I’d tell you that, as of yesterday, I’m once again a tiny step down with my medication. Specifically, I’m now on the absolute lowest dose of pregabalin. I was never on a high dose anyway, in fact having been on my start dose for years, but as it is in medicine, apparently going up is easier than going down. Six weeks from now, I’ll most likely be completely off of pregabalin.

If we were having coffee, then I’d share I’m still struggling. Part of it is the realization that my life is far from “normal” and the fact that I feel guilty about not accepting this reality. I constantly have my last home’s staff’s words in my head about never having a perfect day. I am also constantly thinking of ways in which my life could be even a tiny bit more meaningful.

If we were having coffee, finally I’d share that I did have some good moments over the past week. Like I said on Thursday, I have been quite active in the kitchen. I also on Thursday crafted another clay parrot.

The staff who’s leaving, took this one and the one we made last week home with her yesterday.

Tomorrow, one of my assigned staff is going to do my morning activity with me and we agreed to work with clay again. I have yet to think of some ideas for what to make. She wanted an elephant, but I’m not yet sure how to go about doing that.

July 2025 In My Kitchen

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. It’s been a few months since I last participated in the In My Kitchen linky, because I didn’t do much of note in the kitchen. This month I finally got active in the kitchen again, so I’m participating in the linky again.

First, I got some cake mixes for my birthday last month, so on July 3, I set out to bake one of the cakes. I got strawberry, raspberry and lemon-flavored cake mixes and selected the one with strawberry. To be honest, I had expected there to be more strawberries in it. It in fact looks like a plain yellow cake and that’s what it tasted like too.


Over the next few weeks, I was greatly struggling and didn’t do anything in the kitchen. That is, maybe I created a smoothie once, but I’m not even sure about that.

Speaking of smoothies though, I did create several that I loved over the past month. One, I made yesterday. I used frozen cherries, vanilla-flavored soy milk, cacao powder, instant coffee, a little honey and a dash of sea salt to make the flavors pop.

About two weeks ago, I finally got the idea again to whip something up and I decided to make overnight oats.

I made overnight oats once again this week, topping them with a tropical dried fruit mix that has an E Nutriscore, meaning it is about the least healthy food choice in its category. No photo this time.

A staff who is on sick leave and occasionally pops round as an extra, offered to help me cook a meal for my side of the home the next Tuesday. I cooked curried rice with chicken, bell peppers and bok choy. I hadn’t had bok choy since childhood and incorrectly assumed its green leaves can’t be eaten. The meal doesn’t look as thin as I believe a curry should be, but it was delicious.

The same staff came over here this Tuesday again and I was again allowed to choose a meal and cook it with her help. I chose a vegetarian pasta bake with peppers, onions, garlic, canned tomato chunks and topped with mozzarella. One of my fellow clients said she didn’t like the mozzarella, but I think it was because she didn’t recognize it and I believe she did eat it after all. Everyone else loved my meal. Next time, however, I’m going to leave some of the seeds of the peppers in, because I’d have loved it even more than I did now with a little more spice.



Since I have been cooking more lately, I decided to look for an app to organize my recipes. After trying many apps, I settled on Recipe Keeper. Like I mentioned in my coffee share last week, one of its drawbacks is the fact that I can’t have my password manager save the password. This makes me a little suspicious, but I try not to care.

#WeekendCoffeeShare (July 26, 2025)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m once again joining #WeekendCoffeeShare. It’s 9:45PM, so all I’ll have to drink before going to bed is water. I don’t mind though and hope you don’t either. Let’s have a drink and let’s catch up.

If we were having coffee, first I’d talk about the weather. It’s been raining all week, but temperature-wise, it’s been nice. We had daytime highs in the low 20s Celsius most days. Today, the temperature rose to 25°C. I hadn’t expected it to rain, so didn’t take a jacket with me when driving to Apeldoorn with my spouse. Thankfully, it only rained when we were in the car or somewhere else inside.

If we were having coffee, next I’d share that my spouse and I may not be divorcing after all. It’s a long story that is too personal to share on a public blog. The short version is that I sent an impulsive text last week asking my spouse to finally make arrangements, because I wanted to live independently. The reason for the text had nothing to do with my spouse, but it did get things set in motion. As it turns out though, it’s probably not practically in our best interest to divorce.

If we were having coffee, I’d go into the reason for said text: one of my “favorites” among the staff is leaving and this is at a time when I’m struggling significantly with most other staff seeming at once not to agree on any way to support me but somehow agreeing that I’m a pain in the neck. At least on a weekly basis, I hear stuff like “You can’t go anywhere anyway” or “Your spouse doesn’t want you in this state” when I’m being restrained or otherwise having my autonomy taken away.

Furthermore, it looks like my staff have decided that neither I myself nor my spouse have my best interest in mind, while in that order, we’re the ones most adamantly advocating for me. However, I saw impulsive comments my spouse made after we found out divorce may not be an option cited in my report. This wouldn’t have been such a big deal, had staff also objectively reported their own comments, like all the “You can’t go anywhere anyway” stuff. The way it sounds now, my spouse sounds like the bad one.

One of my assigned staff even got me to agree on getting more information about guardianship because she somehow feels that a person who doesn’t know me but knows the law is better able to make decisions for me. I have yet to tell my staff no on this one.

If we were having coffee, I’d share that I did finally work with polymer clay again. I made a parrot for the staff who’s leaving, because this staff has two parrots. We have plans for making her other one out of polymer clay sometime this coming week.

If we were having coffee, lastly I’d share that I’ve been obsessing over recipes and cooking again. Like I said yesterday, I made a curry for myself and my fellow residents on Tuesday. The staff who helped me with it, proposed we do cooking again this coming Tuesday. This time, I chose a pasta bake. I’ve also been making smoothies and overnight oats recently.

I have an app on both my PC and iPhone to organize my recipes. It’s called Recipe Keeper and I’m half convinced it’s spyware like TikTok. Other than that, its only drawback is the fact that somehow I can’t have my password manager remember the password. This has me paranoid too. However, it’s the only app that’s available on both iOS and Windows that is remotely useable for me.

Quality of Life #SoCS

Posted on by Astrid

Hi all. I haven’t written a blog post in nearly two weeks, since I’ve been struggling quite badly. However, I saw the prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday, which is “starts with Q”. Immediately, the word “quality” and, derived from that, “quality of life” came to mind.

I regularly write about this concept when discussing myself as a former preemie living with multiple disabilities. That’s not what I mean this time though. This time, I mean real, day-to-day quality of life. I’ve seriously been on a quest for a more meaningful life.

You might remember me talking about the cup of green tea I was allowed to have one evening. I said back then that it’s normal to choose when you want tea, so most people will not be appreciative of it. I was. However, as I spiraled further into depression, this cup of tea became the metaphor for how bleak my life is, actually.

It could be a lot worse. It was, back in the mental hospital, where, though I could grab food whenever I wanted (or at least I did), I spent most of my days lying in bed or surfing the Internet. Most of my fellow residents also have even less autonomy than I do. And yes, I know they’re severely intellectually disabled, but quite frankly that’s not an excuse. Just because you’re used to well-intentioned others making every single decision for you (and they are used to it as well!), doesn’t mean that’s how it’s always supposed to be. Or how it should be. Like I was at the time very grateful for the cup of tea at 9PM, that’s not how it always should be. That is, of course it’d be good if I remained grateful for a cup of tea, but in real life, I should be able to make the decision whether I want a cup of tea myself.

Unfortunately, I have a ton of ideas to improve my quality of life and gain more autonomy, but these don’t get to fruition. The reason is in part the fact that an idea has to be put into practice and executive functioning isn’t my best quality. Another reason is resistance from staff, either overt or covert.

I could write a book on all the ways staff have verbally, physically and in other ways hurt me under the guise of being human and having emotions too. Or conversely under the guise of safety for the group or that being the reality of staff-client relationships. But I won’t.

I’ll end by saying that, at least, on Tuesday I had a good day cooking curry for my side of the home. That’s what I mean by day-to-day quality of life: having the ability to prepare my own food, for example, or choosing what I’ll have for dinner. Of course, the other residents didn’t have a say in my choice to make curry, but they did appreciate it. We’re a long way from people in long-term care actually having meaningful lives, but this felt like a tiny contribution.