The Wednesday Hodgepodge (December 3, 2025)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I badly want to write but feel horribly uninspired. For whatever reason, I feel drawn to blog hops in which I haven’t participated in forever, like the Wednesday Hodgepodge. I haven’t participated in forever because I’m not a Christian and don’t want to elicit judgmental comments from fellow participants. I like the questions though and used to love the community spirit. This is a double-edged sword, unfortunately, in that I feel like I cannot fully be myself in Christian-centric communities. However, I can be myself on here and nobody is required to read or comment on my posts. With no further ado, here are this week’s questions.

1. What does it mean to have the “holiday spirit”? On a scale of 1-10 how is yours this year? (10=off the charts, 1=still looking for it)
I was immediately reminded of Tom Lehrer’s Christmas song when I saw this question.


That being said, I’m also reminded of the holiday spirit as referring to the spirit of community and connection to family and friends. In this respect, my holiday spirit is at a 2 at best. I, after all, hardly have any contact with my family and as of this year we’re not celebrating Christmas at my in-laws’ either. Thankfully, I will be going to our house to celebrate the holidays with my wife. However, since neither of us are religious, I don’t think it matters much that we’re being together specifically for Christmas. At least it’s a way to avoid having to spend time with our parents.

2. What’s your favorite character from a (December) holiday-themed movie, book, or TV special? Tell us why. 
I don’t think I’ve ever watched holiday-themed movies. When I was a kid, my parents used to watch musicals on TV on Boxing Day, like My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, etc.

The only Christmassy book I remember reading is Murder on Christmas Eve by Ann Sutton. I read it last year, when I was more into the holidays than I am now. It’s a mystery set in 1920s England. Dodo Dorchester, the main character, is quite interesting.

3. Do you like gingerbread? Are gingerbread houses part of your holiday tradition?
I don’t care for gingerbread, but I don’t hate it either. No gingerbread houses here. However, yesterday, I did craft a gingerbread man out of polymer clay.

4. Much of our vocabulary is determined by where we live or where we grew up. What say you- sprinkles or jimmies? lightning bugs or fireflies? soda or pop? sneakers, trainers, or tennis shoes? sub, hoagie, grinder, or hero? freeway, highway, or motorway? frosting or icing? sauce or gravy?
I am a non-native English speaker, so I use the words that I know best: sprinkles; fireflies; soda (or coke); all three for the shoes but mostly sneakers; no idea what the next couple words have to do with each other; highway most of the time; both frosting and icing; sauce for pasta and gravy for meat/potatoes.

5. Share a favorite holiday memory from your childhood.
This is not Christmas-related, but since St. Nicholas is still not over yet (it’s December 5), I’ll share a memory of that. I’ve probably shared it a few times before: the last year that I still believed in St. Nick, my father recorded himself playing St. Nick’s servant Pete claiming to be stuck in the chimney. Not that we even had a chimney at that house, but what did I know? The next year, my father played the recording for me outside of the holiday season to make me stop believing for sure.

6. Insert your own random thought here.
Despite not being in the holiday spirit, I did create a few Christmas decorations out of polymer clay over the past few days. Tomorrow or on Friday, I’m also going to bake St. Nicholas-themed cookies.

November 2025 In My Kitchen

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m joining In My Kitchen once again. I wasn’t too active in the kitchen this past month, but would love to share the things I did regardless. I keep hoping the next month will be better. I may’ve finally convinced the behavior specialist that I need a more activity-based day schedule, so that I can do a cooking or baking activity more regularly.

First, let me share the one dinner I cooked for myself and my fellow residents this month, cooked on November 17. It was a curry with chicken, broccoli, onions, rice and topped with cashews. I loved it.

I had planned to cook another rice and chicken dish with the same staff last Monday, but she’s on sick leave. I found out a few days in advance, so planned to cook the dish with another staff, but she ended up calling in sick too and I didn’t find out until half an hour before her shift was supposed to start. She was supposed to bring the groceries, so it wasn’t like I could cook the meal with the staff who ended up doing my activity. This is one more reason for set activities: that way I can order or buy the needed groceries on time.

I did, thankfully, do a few baking activities. First, on November 1, I made Bastogne brulée. This is like crème brulée but with crumbled Bastogne biscuits mixed in. The recipe didn’t call for a brulée burner, instead instructing me to put the dessert under the grill of the oven for a few minutes. I think the dessert wasn’t a total fail and it looked similar to the photos in the recipe, but I wouldn’t make it again. At least not like this.

I ran the photos I post here through my screen reader’s image description component to make sure I have them posted correctly and guess what? It claims the dessert looks moldy. Yuck!

On November 16, my staff spontaneously offered to help me bake a sponge cake. We did use a store-bought mixture. When my wife saw it, she wondered what made it look green. She looked it up and it was simply blue and yellow food colorant. Not green food colorant, which made me wonder whether green colorants are even food-safe. At least, when I still made my own lip balms, I knew that all colors of mica that I could buy at the soaping supplies site were safe except for the green ones.



Unfortunately, the staff baking the sponge cake with me, did break my hand mixer by inserting the wrong tools into it. She said she’s going to buy me a new one.

Those were the main cooking and baking activities I did in November. I also created overnight oats a few times. Last Thursday, I also decided to whip up a vegetable smoothie. This was the first time for me creating a smoothie that mainly includes vegetables rather than fruits. I used broccoli, spinach, carrots and lime. The recipe called for a green pepper, but I misread it and got a green bell pepper. Since those are rather bitter and the recipe was supposed to be blazing, I decided to add some chili flakes. And blazing it was! I’m not sure what I think of the smoothie. I did give some to my fellow residents too. I did feel obligated to explain to one of them, who is quite a picky eater but loves smoothies, that this one is a little different. Thankfully, he liked it though.

We had our annual St. Nicholas celebration at the home last week. I hadn’t asked for a gift from the staff (since you actually pay for it yourself), but my sister sent me some gifts. She sent me cookie cutters and several cookie mixes too.

Today, my wife and I were at Hema in Apeldoorn and I got myself a potato peeler (since somehow the last one I had got lost) and a wooden rolling pin for the cookies. The rolling pin has a Nijntje pattern engraved into it. I hope that doesn’t make the rolling pin hard to clean. I took this picture myself just yet, so apologies if it’s misaligned or unclear.

Looking back over this post, I see that, even though I cooked dinner only once, I did engage in various foodie activities over the past month.

Flash Fiction: Of Fish and Tape (Or Horses and Receipts)

Posted on by Astrid

A fish swam in the ocean with a roll of sticky tape in its mouth. It was a copycat really, because it learned to carry something in its mouth from the stick horse a little girl once created for her teacher’s St. Nicholas surprise. The attached poem read
A wooden horse
Without a tail
Flew quickly towards the sun
With in its mouth a receipt
Of an already-eaten cake.

That poem was better in Dutch, as the girl was me, but it was still silly. At least it rhymed in its original Dutch version.

The fish didn’t know this, of course. Its picture had been drawn or otherwise created some 30 years after the girl’s original poem. And even if the fish knew, it didn’t care.

I do wonder though, isn’t a roll of sticky tape far too large for a goldfish? It will know very soon. Or not.

This piece of silliness was written for Simply 6 Minutes. It’s 148 words. My original poem was:
Een houten paard
Zonder staart
Vloog pijlsnel naar de zon
Met in zijn mond een kassabon
Van een opgegeten taart

“St. Nick, I’m Stuck!”

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Sorry for not having touched the blog for nearly a week. I’ve been struggling once again. However, today I feel in an okay place mentally at least, so I thought I’d join in with John Holton’s Writer’s Workshop. One of the prompts is to share when you learned that Santa/the Easter bunny/the tooth fairy was your parents.

I’ll have to talk about St. Nicholas rather than any of the others here, because that’s what we celebrate most here in the Netherlands. St. Nicholas is like Santa, except he has helpers called Peters. They used to be black, but now they come in every color or with black streaks across their faces (from creeping through chimneys to deliver presents) because the concept of Black Peter is racist.

I was eight the last year when I still believed in St. Nick. This was 1994. As the legend goes, St. Nick and his Peters would ride over the rooftops on a white horse and maybe they’d descend through the chimney to deliver presents.

That year, on the evening of December 5, my parents, sister and I were having dinner when we heard noise coming from the roof. We didn’t have a chimney, but I was still too clueless to think about that. “St. Nick, help, I’m stuck!” We went looking for where the sound came from and saw that there were presents in the loft under the staircase.

Eight is a fairly old age to still believe in St. Nick. In fact, I’d been packaging St. Nicholas presents for my teachers for several years by then. By the year after this, when literally everyone my age had stopped believing, my father spoiled the beans for me: he came to me with a cassette tape, put it in the player and there it was: “St. Nick, help, I’m stuck!” It was his own voice, slightly distorted. By that time, I knew for sure that St. Nicholas was my parents.

The Wednesday HodgePodge (December 7, 2022)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. How are you all doing on this first Wednesday of the last month of 2022? I’m still struggling quite a bit. I might share a bit about this at the end of my post. After all, I’m participating in the Wednesday HodgePodge and the last question allows for us to insert a random thought. Let me get to the first five questions first though.

1. The Hodgepodge lands on National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day. Have you visited the memorial? Any desire to do so? Have you visited other WW2 sites and memorials? Do you think we do a good job of teaching current and younger generations about the events of WW2? Do you think it matters?
I have never visited the Pearl Hahrbor memorial, as I’m not in the United States. I’m not sure about any other WW2 sites or memorials either. I mean, yeah, I was born in Rotterdam, which was heavily bombed during the German invasion of the Netherlands, and I did see the memorial statue many times. Not sure about any museums if that’s what’s meant.

I do think teaching the younger generations about WW2 matters. I’m not sure how well of a job we do, as I’m not even sure how well-educated I myself am and I’m not considered “younger” anymore by most standards.

2. Many books, both fiction and non-fiction have been written with WW2 as the setting. Is this a ‘genre’ you gravitate towards? Share with us a book (or two) you’ve enjoyed that is set in some way around WW2. If you’re not a reader, how about a movie?
I don’t really gravitate towards this genre, honestly. The only book I can think of off the top of my head is Anne Frank’s diary. I loved it when I was a teen, but didn’t fully comprehend the horrors Anne and her family lived through at the time.

3. According to Better Homes and Gardens Magazine there are seven popular color trends for the holidays this year. They are- red and white, Victorian blue, pops of pink, rich shades of green, rainbow hues, black and white, and nostalgic retro colors. Are you ‘trendy’ when it comes to holiday decorating in 2022? How so? Does your tree have a ‘theme’?
No, I’m not trendy at all. In fact, my staff put up my Christmas decorations that I had left over from last year yesterday because I’d completely forgotten. I don’t even have a tree, as the cheap one I bought last year consumed huge amounts of batteries.

4. What’s a current trend you buck?
I have absolutely no idea what’s even currently trending, so no clue.

5. What’s your favorite chocolate something?
I don’t honestly care for actual chocolate. Give me white chocolate, which isn’t real chocolate, instead. If I have to go with something that has a trace of actual chocolate in it, I’m going with a Knoppers cookie bar. These are chocolate-covered waffles with nut cream inside of them.

6. Insert your own random thought here.
We celebrated St. Nicholas at the care home on Monday. I chose not to join my fellow residents in the living room, but I had my treat and presents in my room. For presents, I had a pair of socks and a chocolate letter. I initially thought I found the socks ugly and, while they are a bit on the large side for me and I wouldn’t personally have bought socks with prints on them, my husband convinced me the colors do look good together. They’re blue socks with tulips in various colors (mostly pink and orange) on them. I also got a little rhyme with my presents, as is customary with St. Nicholas. I liked that best.

Sunday Ramble: Childhood Memories

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m participating in E.M.’s Sunday Ramble again. Today’s topic is childhood memories. Here are the questions.

1. What is your first good memory from your childhood? (If this is a trigger question for you, tell me how your day is and what the best thing is about today.)
My third birthday. My grandma visited and gifted me a doll she’d bought in Berlin, Germany. Either she or my father explained that, in German, the word for doll is “Puppe”, which is pronounced the same as the Dutch word for “poo”. Of course, me being three and my sister being one, we laughed our butts off.

2. Name 3 things that you loved when you were just a youngster?
Playing with PlayMobil®. Swinging on the swings. Making mud pies.

3. What did you dislike, or even hate, when you were growing up?
A lot of things, as my childhood wasn’t the best. However, I’ll keep this non-triggering. I hated it when my sister was singing or humming.

4. If you could go give your younger self one piece of advice, what would you tell them?
You have absolutely zero obligation to prove your worth to your parents or anyone else.

5. What kind of celebrations did you enjoy when you were little, and do you still like those celebrations now that you are grown?
I had a love/hate relationship with all kinds of celebrations. I loved getting presents and special treats, but hated the social obligations involved. When I was a child and teen, we celebrated St. Nicholas. This involves pretending that St. Nick gave us presents. Once I no longer believed in St. Nicholas, I greatly struggled to play along and this led to some frustration among my sister and parents. Needless to say, now that I’m an adult, we no longer celebrate St. Nicholas. My sister and her family do celebrate it with my parents though.

I felt similarly about my birthday, loving the presents but not liking the social aspects. Same now that I’m an adult and more so with my family of origin, because, well, we don’t have the best relationship. With my husband and in-laws, I do like being together for my birthday.

6. Bonus Question: What commercial did you always wait for to come on television as a child? (If you didn’t like commercials or television, what event did you wait for to come about when you were a kid?)
I didn’t really enjoy commercials, although I liked Loeki the Lion, who came on inbetween commercials on public television. He was recently reintroduced after an absence of over twenty years I believe.

With respect to TV shows in general, as a child I loved a show called Droomshow (Dream Show), in which a pair of girls competed against a pair of boys in all kinds of candy-related games and the winning team had to shoot for prizes while the losing team got the “shitty shower”.

What was your first good childhood memory?

An Unexpectedly Productive Monday

Posted on by Astrid

Today, I’m feeling better than I was expecting when I woke up this morning. I mean, I didn’t sleep well last night. I was ruminating a lot into the wee hours of the night and then kept being woken by a fellow client’s screams. This client can’t speak or use any form of alternative augmentative communication. The staff think he was in pain, but they couldn’t figure out what was bothering him. Thankfully, he seems calmer now. I hope he actually is.

I had a pretty productive day today. In the morning, I went to my GP. I had to discuss how I’m doing with respect to my abdominal discomfort now that I’m on one magnesium tablet a day. Together, we decided to leave it at this for now. I’m not totally well, but I’m as well as possible.

I also asked him to do a breast exam, because I’ve been feeling some discomfort. I felt okay with a male examining my breasts, after all he’s a doctor. Thankfully, he found no abnormalities, but he referred me for a mammogram just in case anyway. It’s been scheduled for this coming Thursday, which I consider really early given the state of healthcare and the pandemic and all.

In the afternoon, I decided to sort through my polymer clay stash to throw out the clay I can no longer work with. I mean, I know all clay can be made workable if conditioned enough, but I just feel that it’s too much work for me given how totally crumbly some of them are and how some of them literally get shredded by my pasta machine.

In the evening, I went for a walk, made another polymer clay unicorn and decorated my room for Christmas. Yes, I’m early for someone from the Netherlands, as most people don’t start decorating until after St. Nicholas, but I won’t be celebrating that anyway.

How was your day?

How I Cope With Loneliness

Posted on by Astrid

Today in her Sunday Poser, Sadje asks us about loneliness. She describes the experience as the feeling she gets when her family or friends can’t celebrate something important (such as the seasonal holidays) with her. This is one aspect of loneliness indeed. I feel lonely, left out even, knowing that my sister will be celebrating St. Nicholas with my parents next week and I haven’t been invited. Okay, she has a child for whom this holiday is more meaningful than it should be for me as an adult. Still, I am reminded of the last year we celebrated St. Nicholas with my family, or rather, the first year we didn’t. That was because of me: I had been admitted to the mental hospital shortly before and my parents didn’t want the hassle of having to watch me while I was on leave, so at first they suggested they celebrate the occasion without me. That year, my sister refused and the celebration didn’t go forward at all. Now that my sister has a child, there’s no way she’s going to care about whether I’ll be included or not. In fact, I’m pretty sure she’d rather have me excluded.

Loneliness, however, can take other forms too. Like I mentioned last month, loneliness comes from within a lot of the time. That’s why you can feel lonely when you’re surrounded by people. I often felt this way in the high school cafeteria.

I find that what helps me cope with loneliness is to surround myself with positive influences, both in the form of people and activities. I mean, I could dwell on my family’s rejection of me, but I do have a loving husband and loving in-laws. I also have caring staff and nice fellow clients, some of whom I consider friends.

It also helps me to engage in fulfilling hobbies, such as writing, reading and crafts. Through my blog and Facebook groups, I feel a genuine sense of connection to the outside world. Reading helps me escape my problems, including my sense of isolation. Crafts distract me and help me feel that I can be productive in a way. All of these help me overcome my sense of loneliness.

How do you deal with loneliness?

Gratitude List (November 27, 2021) #TToT

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone on this rainy Saturday! I hope all my U.S.-based readers had a great Thanksgiving. Here, it isn’t a thing. However, I like to show thankfulness everyday. For this reason, I’m doing a gratitude post. As usual, I’m joining Ten Things of Thankful (#TToT). Here goes.

1. I am grateful I reached my goal of 10K steps a day once during the past seven days. Okay, it was on Sunday and I only got (barely) more than 5K steps one other day this past week (Monday). The rest of the week, I’ve been rather sedentary. However, I’m still grateful I can apparently still walk 10K steps in a day.

2. Speaking of which, I am also grateful I managed 15 minutes on the elliptical today. It didn’t earn me much in the way of steps, but at least my muscles haven’t totally atrophied so far.

3. I am grateful I had a good talk with the current behavior specialist for my care home on Tuesday. It was my second time meeting her. She helped me clarify some of the things I wanted to talk about with my nurse practitioner too.

4. I am also grateful my appt with my nurse practitioner went pretty well as a result too. I had originally considered quitting treatment with him, but decided against this after the talk with the behavior specialist. Overall, my appt with my nurse practitioner was relatively constructive. We decided on some things to make our sessions more productive. For instance, next time I E-mail him about not being well, he’ll try to call me back so we can assess the seriousness of the situation and what can/needs to be done rather than him telling me to wait for our next appt.

5. I am grateful I am sleeping slightly better lately than I used to. I am still not usually getting the nine hours of sleep a night I need to function optimally, but I’m getting close.

6. I am grateful I have been able to pick up the polymer clay craft again after a bit of a break when I’d finished the owl. I created a unicorn yesterday and it looks pretty cool.

7. I am grateful for French fries yesterday in celebration of St. Nicholas. The holiday isn’t till December 5th, but we celebrated it early at my care home.

8. I am grateful I got nice presents. Well, my husband will actually get the bill, as like I explained before, the care facility doesn’t pay for St. Nicholas presents. I had E-mailed my staff a wishlist too. As it turned out, I didn’t get the specific things I’d had on my wishlist, but I got similar things. I got a number of cookie cutters to use with my polymer clay and a little box of fruit candies.

9. I am grateful my assigned home staff, who was my one-on-one this evening, helped me through some tough flashbacks. I did ultimately decide to take a PRN quetiapine, but I think I really benefited from my staff’s help too.

10. I am grateful my loved ones so far aren’t directly affected by COVID, in the sense that I don’t have any direct family members or friends who’ve contracted the virus.

What are you grateful for?

#WeekendCoffeeShare (November 21, 2021)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Today is a rather mixed Sunday weather-wise. We had sunshine almost all morning and early afternoon, but now we’re having clouds and rain. I’m joining #WeekendCoffeeShare today. I just had a late afternoon coffee (I normally have them at around 2:15PM and it’s almost 3:30 now). I am likely to skip my soft drink, which I normally have at around 3:30, and have some water again when my one-on-one comes on at four o’clock. If you’d like a drink, you’re welcome to grab a soft drink or water or get a Senseo in the kitchen. Let’s catch up.

I already shared on Friday that this week was a rather meh one. So, if we were having coffee, I’d try to focus on other things. I’d share that I’ve been trying to pick up the polymer clay craft again. Yesterday, I finished three labels with “Bedankt” (Dutch for “Thanks”) on them for the three staff who are leaving soon. I still need to cure them in the oven and add glitter glue for decoration. I’m probably going to do that this evening.

I will still need to make real presents for each of the three staff, because I don’t think just a simple label, even if it’s hand-made, is enough. One of the staff is leaving at the end of this month. The other two aren’t leaving till the end of December, so I still have time for those.

If we were having coffee, I would share that I’ve been oohing and aahing at some polymer clay supplies I want to get for Christmas or St. Nicholas (December 5). You need to actually pay for your own St. Nicholas presents, but I agreed with my assigned staff that she could spend around €15 on them and I’d send her a wishlist which she could pick something from, so that I’d still feel a sense of surprise. We do get a small Christmas hamper from the day center, so I told my day activities staff she might talk to my assigned home staff about ordering from the same company as to save on shipping. Some things on my wishlist include cutters, pushmolds and texture sheets.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you I bought a new essential oil diffuser. I couldn’t seem to clean the other one properly anymore, so all scents were starting to smell the same. I made a note in my Reminders app to clean this one each month, but with how often I’m currently using it, I’ll probably make that every other week. The new one has a remote and two mist settings for normal and strong mist.

If we were having coffee, lastly I’d share that my husband came by to take me out to lunch this afternoon. We’d talked about going to a particular snack and dine place we’d been to two years ago and I’d looked forward to it all week. It was really good back then. Now, not really. The burger we ordered was okay’ish. Not very bad, but not good either. In addition, we had to wait forever to place our order and the staffer really was quite curt. This time, we were asked for our CoronaCheck code, but not our ID, as is required. Oh well.

How have you been?