Five Favorite Summer Drinks #5Things

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m joining the #5Things challenge once again. This week’s topic is favorite summer drinks. Now I must say I’m not a person who loves a variety of drinks even generally, so this was a hard topic. I mean, I don’t care for lemonade, slush or juice, let alone soda or other fizzy drinks. Here is my attempt at coming up with five summer drinks I will have anyway.

1. Milkshakes. I particularly love banana and vanilla flavored milkshakes.

2. Water with fruit infusions. I love it with strawberries, cucumber, cherries, and lots of other fruits. When I tried to put some orange into my fruit infusion bottle recently, somehow some of the orange got into the actual water, which I didn’t like.

3. Iced coffee. I don’t have this often, as it is usually high in calories, but I do love iced coffee at times.

4. Smoothies. I love creating all kinds of fruit and vegetable smoothies particularly in summer, when there’s a greater variety of fruit available. Of course, I’ll still use frozen berries, as they are less expensive than the fresh kind.

5. Plain, cold water. I usually have two bottles of water in the fridge that I drink from when I want water. Especially in summer, water straight from the tap doesn’t get nearly cold enough for my liking. Out of all the things I drink, water is probably my most frequently consumed.

#WeekendCoffeeShare (March 12, 2021)

Posted on by Astrid

And this time I’m extremely early with my #WeekendCoffeeShare. This week was rather eventful, especially the last couple of days. I just had my afternoon coffee today. You can probably get a cup of coffee, tea or a soft drink from the staff, but I’m so glad this meeting is actually virtual.

After all, if we were having coffee, first I’d share that I’m in room-based isolation. I started having a sore throat yesterday, but wasn’t sure it was the fact that I’d just had a screaming fit or it was actually a symptom of illness. The staff on shift yesterday tried to reassure me. Today though, I woke up very sniffy. I warned the staff, but at first she wasn’t concerned this time either. After she talked to a colleague though, I had to be in room-based isolation. The staff are now wearing protective clothing when entering my room. I’m usually in my room anyway when not walking. For this reason, if I do have COVID, it’s unlikely the other clients will have caught it too, at least from me. The staff though, well, they’ve definitely been at risk.

Thankfully, one of my home’s staff is one of my facility’s appointed testers. She swabbed me right this morning and the test should be at the lab right now. Please all pray that it’ll come back negative.

As for how I’m feeling, well, I’m okay. I’m a little sick to my stomach in addition to the cold symptoms, but overall it’s manageable. I don’t have a fever and my oxygen saturation was normal too.

If we were having coffee, then I’d tell you that I didn’t have as good a walking week this week as I had last week. The reason is that, besides not being allowed out today, I wasn’t allowed outside of the home on Tuesday either. Another client had to be tested for COVID. Thankfully, his test came back negative. I heard this the next morning, but today the staff told me they’d been informed already Tuesday evening at 10PM. I asked the staff to wake me up if this happens with my test too (only if it’s negative).

If we were having coffee, I would share that I had a really productive appointment with my psychiatric nurse practitioner yesterday. The staff who’d seen the PTSD video with me last week, accompanied me. Together, we were able to explain my continuing issues with hypervigilance, flashbacks and emotional dysregulation. I was able to explain about some of my traumas, including traumatic experiences within the psychiatric system. My nurse practitioner was able to validate me from his own perspective as a former psych hospital nurse.

If we were having coffee, lastly I would share that I made a coconut-mango smoothie this morning. It didn’t taste as good as it could have and I’m not sure whether to blame my cold symptoms or the chunks of coconut that weren’t properly blended.

What’s been going on in your life?

Making Smoothies

Posted on by Astrid

Like I said a few weeks ago, a staff member at my care facility gifted me a smoothie maker. It’s a totally awesome thing! I already had a blender, but that one was rather huge and is now in the kitchen for the staff to make fruit mixtures with for the clients who can’t chew.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve regularly been making smoothies with the new smoothie maker. Despite its relatively small size, it’s pretty powerful. It blends smoothies within like ten to fifteen seconds. It also deals nicely with frozen fruit without me having to use the pulse function.

Last Saturday, the grocery store delivered some peaches to the facility at my request. We also still had blueberries in the freezer and soy milk in the fridge. I loved making a smoothie with these ingredients. I used:


  • 1 peach

  • A handful of frozen blueberries

  • 1 cup soy milk

  • A handful of oatmeal


Yes, you can actually use oatmeal in smoothies! I knew, but some foodies say you need to use instant oatmeal. Well, at least I didn’t.

Yesterday, a staff bought some food they’d forgotten to order from the grocery store. Among it was fresh spinach. That’s really tasty in a smoothie, so today I chose to make another smoothie. This time I used:


  • 1 banana

  • Fresh spinach (I took a large handful)

  • A handful of frozen blueberries

  • 1 cup soy milk


I didn’t use oatmeal this time, because I didn’t intend the smoothie to be too filling. I loved it though! You hardly taste the spinach. In the pic, it looks a bit weird, but believe me, it was delicious.

Do you like smoothies?

#WeekendCoffeeShare (June 14, 2020)

Posted on by Astrid

Happy Sunday afternoon everyone! I’m joining in with #WeekendCoffeeShare. I think I just ate all of the cheesecake that one of my staff brought for her birthday yesterday and I think the other residents ate all the cream cake she’d brought too. I guess we still have lots of cookies though. Have a cup of coffee and a cookie and let’s catch up.

If we were having coffee, I would rave once more about the smoothie maker a staff brought me on Monday! I have been making smoothies almost everyday since. Yesterday, I made one with frozen blueberries in it for my husband. Its color was a bit grey or so my husband said, but it tasted good. Unfortunately, the staff left the blueberries in the fridge rather than the freezer, so we had to use them all up today.

If we were having coffee, I would tell you how much fun I’ve had with this staff member. She’s returning from long-time sick leave, so is slowly building up her hours again. This means sometimes she just comes as an extra staff to do fun things with us. Like, on Friday, she helped another resident and me make cards for a staff who just earned her carer diploma. We also played a game using a mallet and nails, in which you have to slam wooden blocks into a piece of cork. Normally the wooden figures are really relatively thin, so I don’t have the coordination to do it properly, but these were actually thick blocks.

If we were having coffee, I would tell you that I had a nice phone conversation with my former support coordinator. She was really nice. Like I said on Friday, I’d half assumed she no longer knew who I was, but she definitely still remembered.

Like I said on Friday, she told me my staff have been thinking of applying for more care for me. This did make me feel a little scared, as last year the application for long-term care was really hard.

Yesterday, I reread the application and indeed, some things are more severe now than my staff thought they were back then. This has me feeling all sorts of things. Isn’t care supposed to help me be more independent? Well, the goal for me is stabilization, not development, but yeah. My inner critic is shouting at me, but I try to shut her up.

If we were having coffee, I would tell you that I’ve been experimenting with my new phone’s camera. I’ve been taking random pictures of my room. I haven’t had a staff check them yet, so not sure they’ll ever go on my blog, but oh well.

If we were having coffee, lastly I’d tell you that I got a Netflix subscription again yesterday. I’ll just try it for a bit and then may unsubscribe again, but I wanted to see the Netflix original Diagnosis. This, like the book by that title I’m currently reading, is based on Lisa Sanders’s New York Times Magazine column on hard-to-diagnose medical conditions. It’s very interesting.

What have you been up to lately?

Gratitude List (June 12, 2020) #TToT

Posted on by Astrid

It’s Friday again. I’m still feeling pretty off. I have a lot on my mind, but rather than dwelling on it, I’m going to write a gratitude list. I’m joining in with Ten Things of Thankful (#TToT) again.

1. Bookshare. This is a service that provides accessible eBooks to people with print disabilities. It costs $50 per year and my husband just renewed my subscription. I love it! Not all books are available internationally, but enough are that I enjoy the service.

2. Smoothies. A staff gave me a smoothie maker on Monday. I already had a blender, but this one is a bit smaller and comes with its own screw-on drinking bottles. I have been loving making my own smoothies! Particularly, I loved one with apple, cinnamon, almond milk and oatmeal.

3. Tacos. Or Tortillas or whatever these particular ones are called. We made those at day activities yesterday. We filled them with lettuce, chicken and pesto. My husband commented that pesto isn’t supposed to go on a wrap, but whatever.

4. Crafting a bit. The same staff who brought the smoothie maker, came again today and did some crafting with me and another client. We made some type of cards for a staff who earned her carer diploma recently.

5. Lots of steps again. I reached 10K steps each day this week except for today.

6. My former support coordinator. I texted her yesterday, half assuming she had deleted my contact info and wasn’t sure who I was anymore. Not so though. She offered to call me and we spoke for a bit.

7. My current staff. They are absolutely taking my care needs seriously. One thing I found out through my former support coordinator is that they’re considering applying for a higher care profile for me. This has me feel all sorts of things that I can’t describe on my blog in case someone from the funding authorities reads it. Particularly, I was scared this would mean a whole new long-term care assessmment, which would mean a risk of losing my care. My support staff did reassure me though.

8. My community psychiatric nurse. I tried to call her through the mental health agency’s secretary this afternoon, but the secretary had their automated lunch-break message on long past 1PM. I E-mailed my CPN and thankfully she got from my message that I wanted a call despite my not actually having asked her for one. She helped me process some of my feelings.

This is it for now. What are you grateful for?

Peanut Butter-Chocolate Smoothie Bowl!

Posted on by Astrid

Hi all, how are you? I had a better day yesterday than Monday. Didn’t sleep much at all Monday night, because I was so excitedly browsing sites for soap making recipes. However, I wasn’t really tired or grumpy at all.

Today was even better. On Wednesdays, the staff interns at day activities usually do a cooking activity with me, as most other clients are off to a weekly music performance in the assembly hall. I hate the music performance but love cooking, so that’s a win-win. One of the interns changed her schedule, so isn’t on on Wednesday anymore, but the other still is. Today, we made a smoothie bowl. It didn’t turn out as well as I wanted. Particularly, we used a little too much milk.

What We Used

  • 1/2 cup milk. The original recipe had us use 75ml of oat milk, but I thought that would be too little. Apparently not. Half a cup, so roughly 125ml, made the smoothie a little too thin. As a side note, we used regular cow’s milk.
  • 1 1/2 bananas. We used one for the smoothie bit and the other half on top.
  • 1 tablespoon peanut butter. The recipe I used had us use two tablespoons, but I think that would’ve been way over the top.
  • 1 tablespoon cocoa powder. I can’t remember how much the recipe said we needed to use.
  • A handful granola. This is spread on top of the smoothie.

This made for one large bowl.

How We Made It

First,, I peeled the banana and cut it into slices. I had the intern do the half banana that would be used on top, as I doubted my slices would be thin enough. Then, I scooped the banana, peanut butter, cocoa powder and milk into a measuring cup. I then mixed it using an immersion blender. I have a regular blender at the care home, but had forgotten to take it to the day center. The intern poured the mixture into a bowl and we added the granola and sliced half banana on top. You can also add coconut chips.

How Did It Taste?

It was delicious! Like I said, it was a little too thin. I had expected the thickness to be like custard, but it was more like a milkshake. The chocolate and peanut butter tastes were really well mixed. The smoothie almost tasted like chocolate-coated peanuts. There were hazelnuts in the granola, which tasted extra good when combined with the smoothie. Overall, I loved the activity and the result.

Linking up with the Wednesday link party.

PoCoLo