Things That Made Me Smile (June 7, 2021) #WeeklySmile

Posted on by Astrid

Hi all! Today is a mixed day. I am in a bit of pain and feeling a little triggered as I write this. I originally planned on writing a post for the Weekly Smile today. Then I wasn’t sure I could really write a positive post. That’s me, almost being unable to connect my emotions if they’ve shifted. As an exercise in positivity though, I’m deciding to give it a try anyway.

The main thing that made me smile over the past week, was going to the monkey zoo on Friday. I mean, I of course can’t see the monkeys and due to COVID-19, we weren’t allowed to get too close. Before the pandemic, monkeys would actually be allowed to climb onto people’s shoulders. Not so anymore, which was a bit sad. The positive about this though was the fact that at least the monkeys couldn’t steal my stuff.

At lunchtime, my one-on-one and I decided to have fries and chicken nuggets. We had to wait on our chicken nuggets for like half an hour. By that time, some of the fries were cold, but they were still good.

The best part of the day though was going to the souvenir shop and buying myself a stuffed monkey. I originally planned on getting both a gorilla and this one, but this one already cost €35. This one is a ring-tailed lemur.

I have loved sleeping with the monkey soft toy each night since Friday. I usually lie on my back with the monkey on my left side and its tail covering my stomach left to right. My husband joked that its tail is half my height. One-third is probably closer.

Another thing that made me smile this week, was going to the city of Zwolle with my husband yesterday. Zwolle is about half an hour’s drive from the care facility. Since restaurants are reopening now, we were able to eat a grilled sandwich at a place called Tosti World. I remember going there once before in Nijmegen.

On our walk back to the car, my husband took a picture of me beside a canon. That, too, made me smile.

Writing this post has me be a little more positive indeed. Thank you for reading. What made you smile lately?

#WeekendCoffeeShare (April 5, 2020)

Posted on by Astrid

I more or less abandoned the What Day Is It Anyway? posts when A-to-Z started, but I wanted to write a check-in anyway. I am joining in with #WeekendCoffeeShare, although it’s a bit late for coffee. I did have a cup of decaf about an hour ago. I also just had a nice orange-pineapple-guava drink. I am not a big fan of fizzy drinks, but thankfully usually we have some non-fizzy soft drinks or juice in the fridge for week-ends.

If we were having coffee, I would ask you all how you’ve been doing on your third week of lockdown. I had a pretty good week. It was better than last week. Last week, after all, I landed in some crises due to missing my husband and all the change that is brought on by this COVID-19 thing.

If we were having coffee, I would share that on Monday, my home’s manager came to talk to me. I was scared at first. Thankfully, she came to reassure me that I won’t be kicked out of the facility for having challenging behavior. That was quite a relief to me.

If we were having coffee, I would share that I made delicious crispy chicken with the staff intern at day activities on Tuesday. I made them with dorito chips for the crisp. I think I’d prefer them with slightly more spicy doritos, but I had intentionally picked the cheese-flavored ones, as I normally don’t like the paprika or chili-flavored ones.

If we were having coffee, I would share that I didn’t do as well on my step goal as I did last week, but I still managed to get to 10K steps once and reached over 8K steps on three other days.

If we were having coffee, I would share that I struggled a bit with health anxiety at the end of the week. Like I mentioned in passing in one of my A-to-Z posts, I’ve been convinced for years that, once I’d find a suitable living place, I would get a serious illness and die. This caused me to feel some intense anxiety when I had some health symptoms. Thankfully, I was able to talk it through with my staff.

If we were having coffee, I would tell you that I would originally have had a phone appt with my community psychiatric nurse from mental health last Friday. I waited for twenty minutes for her to call and then decided to call the secretary. Turns out my CPN was off sick and the secretary had forgotten to tell me. Thankfully, I didn’t have a face-to-face appointment.

Because I was struggling a bit, my staff arranged for me to have a phone check-in with the facility’s behavior specialist. She was pretty good at calming my nerves. She reminded me to look at today only. I won’t die today and I won’t be leaving the facility today. That was helpful.

If we were having coffee, I would share that I’d been trying to record a video and then take a picture of myself for my husband. I reasoned he may like to see me now that he can’t come here. We don’t normally video call or anything, so he hadn’t seen my face in a month or so. Unfortunately, the picture I took showed my eyes and nose only. I wonder how other totally blind people learn to take pictures. Anyway, I finally had my staff take a picture of me. In this picture, I’m holding my stuffed panda. I often cuddle it when I miss my husband, because the panda is the largest soft toy I own. No, my husband isn’t fat like the panda, LOL.

How have you been?