#WeekendCoffeeShare (November 15, 2025)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m joining #WeekendCoffeeShare again today. I’ve just had my last cup of coffee for the day. We didn’t have large biscuits that we are usually allowed to have on weekends, so I had a mini Mars candy bar. Let’s have a drink and let’s catch up.

If we were having coffee, first I’d talk about the weather. During most of the week, we’ve had unusually mild temperatures for November. We had some rain too, but not a huge amount. Today, the daytime temperature didn’t get above 9°C, which I consider cold but is actually normal for this time of year. According to my wife, the weather forecast predicted 27mm of rain today. We did get rain indeed, but not nearly that amount.

If we were having coffee, then I’d share that I did meet my movement goal on my Apple Watch each day this week. However, I’m pretty sure my 90-day average will soon be lower than my 365-day average, as I just barely met my goal most of these days and it’s been this way for a month or so already. My movement streak is somehow still stuck on 33 days.

If we were having coffee, then I’d update you all on my struggle re orienting new staff. The new staff, last week when being properly introduced to me finally, said this would be the actual (re)start of her orienting. Not so. She did get one more chance to be oriented to my morning routine, but not another to the activity time slot. I feel this was unfair, as during her original orientation to the activity, we only went for a walk because I, not having properly been introduced to her, didn’t feel like being vulnerable with her with a more difficult activity, such as polymer clay.

On Tuesday, this staff was assigned to me for my morning routine, but this one was different than the one she’d been oriented to. She asked me a ton of questions even though I’d told her during our introductions not to do this. Then, on Thursday, she got assigned to me for my activity. I was pretty angry about this, but several staff including the new one herself claimed she’d had her chance to be oriented and I just had to deal with it. I feel this is the world turned upside down, giving me responsibility for the success or lack thereof of her orientation. One staff went so far as to tell me that because I have one-on-one, staff need less orienting to me. In all honesty, I think the opposite is true, because when you’re supporting the group, you can always fall back onto a coworker. This same staff also said, when I said that they don’t expect my fellow residents to explain their routines to new staff, that I’m very different from the other clients and have a totally different diagnosis so not to compare myself. That triggered me to no end, because not only do I get told this nonsense in intellectual disability services, but also in psychiatric settings. And what I mean by nonsense is the assumption that I, because of my diagnosis, can deal with whatever the staff throw at me and just choose not to, while other people can’t help their behavior. I mean, of course I have an at least average IQ, but I am not in the care system for the fun of it.

Thankfully, it looks like my support coordinator is not in full agreement with the one chance rule at least when it applies to regular staff. Too bad the damage has already been done with this particular staff.

If we were having coffee, then I’d share that, on Wednesday, it was my wife’s birthday. I took a ParaTransit taxi to our house and we had lunch together, then chilled out and got pizza takeout. I gave my wife a handmade necklace with a skull pendant.

If we were having coffee, lastly I’d tell you that we had a dance party at the home yesterday. This time, I was too stressed to play DJ myself, but I did suggest a few songs to the staff.

Today’s Small Joys (March 16, 2025)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m struggling a bit but don’t want to share why. Instead, I’m sharing some small joys from the day again today. I’m participating in Sunny Sunday. Here goes.

1. Sunshine. It’s chilly (about 9°C in the afternoon) but sunny. With this being the case, my partner and I were even able to sit outside for our lunch.

2. Good coffee. The lunch we had was a bit disappointing to me especially considering how much it cost, but the coffee was good.

3. Being able to wear a nice, handmade necklace and being complimented on it by my spouse. I bought glass beads and wire a few days ago and I created my first necklace with them yesterday. I wore it today, which made me feel good.

4. Finding a couple more necklaces, most handmade by me many years ago, in the bag my spouse brought me after clearing out the house.

5. Unicorn soft toys. I was clearing out my box of stuffies this evening, because my spouse had also brought me some stuffed animals and my box was already quite full. I didn’t seriously know how many unicorn soft toys I have. Those, I all kept.

6. Looking forward to the sensory room the staff are creating on the other side of the home. I actually plan to donate some of my unwanted soft toys to that project.

7. Finding one of my first polymer clay creations in the bag too. It’s a baby. It’s extremely ugly, so I threw it away. However, remembering my making it, as well as realizing how far I’ve come along on my creative journey, made me smile.

Honestly, many of these things are more nostalgia-inducing than purely joyful. Remembering the good times is a positive thing though, so I’ll still focus on that.

#WeekendCoffeeShare (August 13, 2022)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. How are you doing? Want to join me for #WeekendCoffeeShare? I’ve had all my coffee for the day, but I’m soon grabbing a Dubbelfrisss (my favorite soft drink). Let’s have a drink and let’s catch up.

If we were having coffee, I would start out by asking how your weather is. Ours has been hot most of the week. Today, the weather institute officially recorded a heatwave, meaning five days in a row of daytime highs of at least 25°C, including three days of at least 30°C. Today, the temperature reached 32°C here. Tomorrow, it may even get a little hotter. The last officially-recorded heatwave was in 2020.

If we were having coffee, I would tell you the woman from the care home down the road from mine was very happy with the polymer clay necklace I gifted her for her birthday. I stayed for a while to have coffee and apple pie.

If we were having coffee, I would tell you that my orthopedic shoes still aren’t as they should be. I developed two small blisters on my feet after a short walk yesterday evening. Granted, I’d also taken a longer walk in the morning without much trouble, but blisters really shouldn’t happen anyway.

If we were having coffee, I’d complain about the care facility’s WiFi once again. Oh wait, yesterday, I showed gratitude for it, but today I’m complaining, because three days in a row it’s now gone out in the evening. I am currently redirecting my iPhone’s mobile data to my laptop because I was in the middle of typing this blog post when the stupid thing went down.

If we were having coffee, lastly I’d share that I did start on the green polymer clay unicorn I mentioned this afternoon after all. I’ve decided it’s going to make a great present for the student staff who’s leaving at the end of this month. I so far only made the surface it’s going to stand on, which is currently in the oven. It took me 45 minutes to create a slab for it that was relatively free of air bubbles. Not completely, but enough that there hopefully won’t be huge holes in the bottom of the thing. Not that they will be seen, if they are there, when the unicorn stands on its surface, but well.

How have you been?

Gratitude List (August 12, 2022) #TToT

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I want to write a gratitude post this evening. As usual, I’m joining Ten Things of Thankful (#TToT). Here are my gratefuls.

1. I am grateful for my husband’s new car. Last week Sunday, he came by for a visit and drove me to Subway for lunch in it. It’s a Fiat Panda. I remember those as really small and uncomfortable cars, as my parents had one from the mid-1980s back when my sister and I were children. This one’s a 2010 model though and much better.

2. I am grateful I was able to finish the necklace for the woman in the nearby care home who has her birthday tomorrow. The Fimo beads did get a little discolored, even the white ones that I’d cured at 110°C. Oh well, according to my husband, the colors do fit nicely together.

3. I am grateful I actually got the money back from the pasta machine I’d ordered and then returned. I wanted to spend it on polymer clay supplies I do want at that same store this evening, but then somehow our Internet broke down.

4. I am grateful for Internet access on my iPhone, so that I wasn’t completely cut off when the care facility’s WiFi broke down.

5. I am grateful the WiFi is back up for now. After all, blogging on my iPhone is still a pain.

6. I am so grateful my one-on-one shift today got sorted eventually. The care home is so short-staffed that no-one could initially be found to work my shift. They finally found a solution that was far from ideal, for the person doing my shift and me, but we got through it.

7. I am grateful for ice cream cones. Like I said on Wednesday, a staff bought them for me when we were at the supermarket. We still had some left today, so I got one again.

8. I am grateful for a tiny bit of weight loss regardless. I didn’t really mind my diet over the past week and it was too hot for exercise, but still I lost 0.2kg.

9. I am grateful getting blood drawn wasn’t painful yesterday. I went to the doctor last week because my IBS-related symptoms seem to be increasing and changing. The doctor ordered bloodwork just to be sure it’s nothing else and I had to have it drawn yesterday. I have really thin veins, so usually it’s real trouble, but not this time.

10. I am grateful for books, music, YouTube videos and podcasts to entertain and inspire me.

What are you grateful for?

An Engaging Wednesday

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I originally wanted to title this post a “creative”, then “inspired” Wednesday. Both fit, in a way, but neither fully captures the essence of today. Not that “engaging” does, but I ran out of adjectives to think of. I spent the day crafting and watching personal growth YouTube videos and that’s what I want to talk about. Oh, I could just have written “A day spent crafting and watching YouTube videos” as my post title. Then again, that’s too long.

In the morning, I finished a YouTube video in which an enneagram geek talked about annoying things type Fours say and do, then watched another of her videos about things to know before dating an Eight. No, I’m not looking to find another lover. My husband is an Eight and I just thought it funny to learn about all the stupid mistakes I’d made all along. Of course, I could just listen to my husband (that’s the first tip!).

Re the other video, I may write a separate blog post listing all the ways in which I relate to all these annoying things Fours do and say. And yes, I related completely to all but one of them.

Then, when my day activities started, I had my morning coffee, then went for a short walk while it was still cool enough outside. My orthopedic shoes arrived yesterday and I can now actually walk on them without any pain. I won’t get my hopes up, because I have been saying all along that they won’t be ready until 2034 and that’s exactly when World War III is going to start according to a book by that title. I am too superstitious to admit publicly that my shoe problem is over yet.

After my walk, my staff and I drove to the supermarket for quark, which I eat for breakfast. We also both got ourselves a sausage roll for lunch and she treated me to ice cream cones. Of course, I just ate one today and she had one too, so the rest are in the freezer.

In the afternoon, I first used my alcohol inks that I’d bought at Action several weeks ago. I had finally managed to create earring pieces that didn’t have air bubbles in them and was going to add a little alcohol ink to them for some extra color. The pieces haven’t been turned into actual earrings yet.

Then in the evening, I crafted the last of the polymer clay beads I’ll need for the necklace I’m making for the person from the other care home. I’m probably going to put together the necklace tomorrow. Overall, it was a good day.

Jewelry-Making #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Welcome to my letter J post in the #AtoZChallenge. Today, I want to share about one of my crafty hobbies once again, because I thought it’d be an interesting distraction from the more philosophical musings. Besides, I just didn’t have another topic for this letter, ha.

I made my first pieces of jewelry back in the psych hospital in like 2014 or 2015. Back then, I bought quite expensive beads, such as gemstone beads, even though I could only make basic necklaces and bracelets. That is, I did make one necklace with three different wires, but I needed a lot of help with it.

Then, after a while, I stopped making jewelry, because I just needed too much help with it and couldn’t really produce the quality I liked. I restarted about a year ago. This time, the first beads I bought, were simple acrylic beads that weren’t too expensive or precious. I did try to go for shapes I liked, such as butterflies. I also at one point bought a collection of 90 silver-colored, plastic charms for €5,95.

For my birthday last year, I got a surprise package of jewelry-making supplies from a store local to my parents. In this package were a lot of glass beads, which I loved. Thus came back my love of creating glass and actual metal jewelry.

Because most of my glass beads are irregularly shaped, I at first struggled to get each side of the necklace, with the charm or pendant in the middle, equally long. To solve this, I got myself a beading board to be able to count out the length of each side of the necklace. My best glass beaded necklace is one I created about two months ago using this board as a guide.

I also like to make my own beads and jewelry out of polymer clay. I created one pair of earrings back in the early days of my polymer clay journey, but glued the earring posts to the polymer clay using generic jewelry glue. Now some people do use E6000, but even that’s generally recommended against for polymer clay. The best way to attach polymer clay earrings to their posts is to cover the posts in an additional layer of polymer clay. If you want or need to use glue anyway, choose a brand of superglue gel, such as Gorilla or Loctite. I had my staff glue the below brooch to its pin using Gorilla superglue.

Yet Another Goodbye

Posted on by Astrid

One of Mama Kat’s Writer’s Workshop prompts this week is to show your readers your most recent photo and to let it inspire your blog post. This might not be an easy prompt for other people to be doing without cheating, but I rarely take random pictures. As such, I do have a clear story behind my most recent picture.

This picture shows a necklace I made this morning for a staff who’s leaving. Yes, yet another staff is leaving my care home. It’s the fifth or so within the past four or five months. At least as many people have looked around at my home to see if they might want to work here, but none do. Thankfully though, my care home has managed to attract a few new staff from internships and the other care homes that are part of my care facility. Overall, it all still makes me intensely sad.

This staff who’s leaving now had only been working here for six months, but I did kind of trust her already. Some staff say this means I can build trust in new staff too, seeing that I could develop a kind of attachment to this staff within six months. The reality is though, I don’t think I want to build trust in another staff, knowing that the reality of the current employment climate is they can leave when they feel like it and no-one can guarantee me they won’t leave within a certain timeframe. After all, originally this staff planned on working here for at least several years too.

I did feel kind of like I had to make something for this staff, so I made this necklace. The round-looking beads are actually hearts. The story behind the beads is also interesting: another staff found them while clearing out a fellow client’s cupboard and had no idea whose they are. They most likely aren’t hers or at least she isn’t able to use them because the holes in the beads are far too narrow. Ultimately, the staff decided to give them to me. I at one point thought I might be able to use them for macrame, but the holes are far too narrow for that too.

The staff who is leaving is the staff who got me Indonesian takeaway food, the best Asian food I’d ever had, last week. She said that, on Monday, when it’s her last shift here, she’s bringing me another meal. I think that’s really kind of her.

Mama’s Losin’ It

Jewelry-Making #WotW

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Today I’m once again joining Word of the Week. I already shared some of my experiences from the week with you all on Friday. Today, I want to focus on an important positive aspect of the week: jewelry-making. Like I said last week, I got a lot of supplies from my parents for my birthday. I also bought some new supplies later this week.

The actual jewelry-making process is still sometimes hard for me due to my being blind and having mild cerebral palsy. I am making progress though in figuring out what works for me.

First, on Wednesday, I made a bracelet for my day activities staff. She had her birthday that day so was off, but my assigned support staff from the home came to sub. I did all the threading by myself and tried to tie the knot too.

On Thursday and Friday, I was even busier making jewelry. I made my first necklace in a long time. It didn’t turn out as good as I’d hoped and I don’t have a photo, but it is nice enough.

I also made a football bracelet for a fellow client. I originally wanted to make something in the colors of his favorite club, but I didn’t have red and white beads. Instead, I chose green for the grass and added a football charm. This client has his birthday next month I think, so I already decided to make him something in the club colors then.

Lastly, I enthusiastically decided to make a necklace for my niece. She is 21-months-old and I had no idea what the appropriate age for wearing jewelry is. I also added acrylic charms that I later realized she might pull off and put into her mouth.

I texted my sister and she said two to three years is the recommended age for necklaces. I thought of keeping the necklace for my niece’s birthday, but eventually decided to give it anyway when my sister and her family visited me yesterday. I’m confident my sister will be able to keep it safe until my niece is ready for it.

How would you sum up your week?

Word of the Week linky