#WeekendCoffeeShare (January 3, 2026)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. It’s nearly 9:30PM as I start typing my #WeekendCoffeeShare post, so no more coffee for me. I just had a cup of orange-flavored green tea. Feel free to grab a cup of your favorite beverage and let’s chat.

If we were having coffee, first I’d talk about the weather. It’s cold, windy and snowy thanks to weather phenomenon Anna in Scandinavia. I can deal with the cold, but the wind and snow are rather annoying.

If we were having coffee, then I’d share that I haven’t really been moving much lately. I signed up for the free trial of Apple Fitness+ a few weeks ago, but canceled it on Thursday because it kept getting in my way when I tried to change my workout type on my Apple Watch. Not that I’ve done much other than walking, but I did try to dance once and somehow my watch kept messing up.

If we were having coffee, next I’d say that I’ve been struggling quite badly over the past few days. My day schedule is still a never-ending battle, I still haven’t heard from the Center for Consultation and Expertise consultant and on top of that the behavior specialist responsible for my home will be going on maternity leave soon. Yesterday, I also found out that I won’t be getting a new assigned staff now that my assigned staff is going to be my support coordinator. It wouldn’t have been a problem, had she had enough time in her work week to be both support coordinator for ten clients and my assigned staff, but she doesn’t. Staff keep saying I can go to any staff with my concerns, but this is actually not going to work for me with everyone having different opinions and no-one ever taking responsibility for so-called team decisions.

I had a meltdown over this whole thing yesterday. Staff kept arguing with me that I am too needy of my assigned staff and I have the capacity to understand the staffing situation so I don’t need an assigned staff. That last comment was made when I said the other clients often cling to their assigned staff people too. I’m honestly fed up with all the claims that I’m fundamentally different from every other client.

If we were having coffee, I would share that I quit Morning Pages already. I started on January 1, but last night hardly slept at all, so I decided I was lying down after breakfast again. Besides, the app I used won’t let me browse entries with VoiceOver, so I can never read what I wrote. Not that you’re supposed to for a while when you’re truly doing The Artist’s Way, but eventually I wish I could check back.

If we were having coffee, I’d finally share something positive: I’ve been crafting again this past week. On Tuesday, I made yet another polymer clay cheer up frog and, on Thursday, I made a unicorn with seed beads for its eyes. The frog, I once again made in record time: just over twenty minutes. And it’s awesome.

Yesterday, I was talking to my assigned staff / support coordinator about possibly making the unicorns and cheer up frogs to be sold at the care agency gift shop in the next town. The reason I went into it wasn’t altogether positive, namely the fact that another resident now has to pay for support to accompany him to his football and I’m scared that, eventually, the higher-ups will decide polymer clay isn’t “work” so I’ll have to pay for one-on-one support with that too. However, I do like the idea.

December 2025 In My Kitchen

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. As I type this, I’m going half-crazy from all the fireworks sounds. I love New Year’s, but mostly for the ability to reflect back on the past year (which, of course, I could do anytime). Today, I’m joining Sherry’s In My Kitchen linky. I only cooked dinner for myself and my fellow residents once, but did enjoy several other kitchen-based activities.

First, like I think I shared last month, I had planned on cooking another chicken curry but two consecutive staff who would be doing the cooking with me, called in sick. When, in late November, I found out that a staff who used to work here until the summer, would be working a shift again on December 16, I asked her whether we could cook the curry then. She was fine with this as long as I made sure the ingredients were ordered on time. And so I did. We used a recipe from one of my favorite Dutch cooking websites. It called for a teaspoon of curry powder per serving, which I thought was over the top, but it turned out to be good. We even added some chili flakes for some extra spice.

Over the rest of the month, like I said, I didn’t cook dinner. However, I did do several baking activities. This started on December 5 with a spontaneous attempt at baking St. Nicholas cookies. St. Nicholas is celebrated here on December 5, although we’d celebrated it at my home a few weeks earlier. I had gotten a package of cookie mixture with St. Nick and Pete (his servant) cookie cutters. Unfortunately, my staff and I had forgotten to get the butter for the dough at room temperature. We decided to add some melted butter to make the dough stickier, but that made it too sticky for the detailed cutters to work. We decided to go for Christmas-themed cutters, which were less detailed, then.

Unfortunately, my staff did comment that the cookies weren’t all that good-looking. I don’t care.

I had also found a recipe for flatbread made from scratch and really wanted to give it a try. I mentioned this to one of the staff on December 8 and she offered to help me make it the next day. It was delicious! I realize I shouldn’t have taken a picture with my phone of the pan while the flatbread was still baking, as it could’ve damaged my phone, but so far so good.

I decided to top the flatbreads with cheese, bell pepper slices and chili flakes.

Another baking activity took place on December 17, so the day after I made the chicken curry. I made a custard cake. I liked the flavor, but the look wasn’t what I’d expected.



In addition to these longer activities, I did make overnight oats and smoothies a few times. One of those times, I’d been frustrated at a staff refusing to do some tasks with/for me because of how time-consuming she thought they’d be. This time factor is a never-ending source of frurstration for me. However, another staff offered to help me make overnight oats after a walk, when we had only ten minutes left in my activity time slot. Guess what? It was a success!

Of course, like I shared earlier, I helped my wife make our Bastogne cookie dessert on Christmas. No picture of that one. I’m determined to make it for my fellow residents sometime soon.

Overall, the month of December was a pretty good month kitchen-wise. Here’s hoping for even more cooking and baking and other kitchen-based activities in the new year.

#WeekendCoffeeShare (December 27, 2025)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi all! Can you believe 2025 will be over with in less than a week? I honestly can’t. I’m joining #WeekendCoffeeShare again. It’s past 8:30PM, so no more coffee for me. My favorite soft drink wasn’t cold, so I had water with my evening medication today. Let’s have a drink and let’s catch up.

If we were having coffee, first I’d talk about the weather. We had a frigid Christmas with a daytime high of -1°C. Today, the daytime high is 4°C. That’s still below-average for this time of year though and it’s still freezing at night.

If we were having coffee, next I’d tell you I finally let go of my movement streak on my Apple Watch. That is, like I said before, I was cheating all the while because I’d paused my rings when sick last September. On Christmas day, it was freezing cold, so I didn’t care for a walk. I could’ve cheated again, but didn’t.

If we were having coffee, next I’d share about my Christmas. I was at my and my wife’s house for the night. Christmas is often stressful with family issues and forced cheerfulness, but this year it was genuinely okay. Then again it was just the two of us (plus my wife’s cat, who was in hiding from me almost all the time).

The best part was my Bastogne cookie dessert. It was my idea to make this and I helped crumble the cookies and lended my wife my hand mixer. The recipe though was for eight servings. We made half of that, but of course it’s still a lot for just two people. The rest of the meal was good too.

If we were having coffee, then I’d tell you that I decided to give the staff who’s retiring next week her polymer clay “cheer up frog” on Sunday rather than wait for her last shift. She was very pleased with it.

If we were having coffee, finally I’d share that, yesterday, I decided to download yet another self-care app on my iPhone. I already used to have a ton of them, like I’ve had a ton of different apps for all kinds of things over the years. This one, I downloaded because I read on another blog about affirmations and wanted to do these again. The app this blogger uses, Labyrinthos, isn’t all that accessible with VoiceOver and its paid plan is a little outside of my budget. Besides, much as I love to dabble in tarot (which this app is mainly about), the cards are still mainly visual. This got me looking for other apps for affirmations and gratitude etc. The app I downloaded is simply called Gratitude. So far, I really like it. I’m really hoping to make positivity a bigger part of my life in 2026.

#WeekendCoffeeShare (December 20, 2025)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m joining #WeekendCoffeeShare once again. It’s 7:30PM, so no more coffee for me today. If you’d like to grab a cup of your favorite beverage though, feel free to. Let’s have a drink and let’s catch up.

If we were having coffee, first I’d talk about the weather. It’s still been warm for this time of year. Today, the daytime high was 7°C and that’s the lowest daytime temp we’ve had all week but it’s still considered above normal. We had some rain, but not too much and none is in the forecast for the next ten days.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you I’m still meeting my movement goal each day, but I’m not nearly as physically active as I was over the summer. Not that I care. My cardio fitness level according to my Apple Watch is back in the below-average rather than low range. I doubt that’s correct. My sleep scores are also amazing most days. That makes me wonder why I wake up tired almost everyday.

If we were having coffee, then I’d share that I’ve had quite a productive week this past week. On Tuesday, I decided to put up a little Christmas decoration in my room after all. These are all my own polymer clay creations, though only the gingerbread figure is new.

Today, I finally created another cheer up frog. In case you don’t know, when several staff were on sick leave last spring, I created polymer clay frogs to cheer them up, the frog being a pun on the Dutch word for “cheer up” (“opkikker”), which has the word for frog (“kikker”) in it. One of the staff who’d gotten one last spring, asked for another one last September, but then we had an argument causing her to withdraw from my care. This staff is retiring in a few weeks, so when we had talked things over, I told her she’d get her “opkikker” after all.

However, by that time I was out of the right color of green polymer clay. I finally ordered new clay three weeks ago, but it took the store two weeks to get it delivered to me. By this time, I’d just ordered from another store. Now I have three packages of tropical green Fimo. This is alright, since I’ve since promised several more staff an “opkikker”.

If we were having coffee, I’d share that I also did quite a bit of cooking and baking over the past week. I cooked another chicken curry last Tuesday and baked a custard cake on Wednesday.

Yesterday, the same staff who went to the market with me last week, worked my afternoon activity. He had said last week that he didn’t particularly like the market, so I hadn’t asked him to go with me again, but he came up with it himself yesterday. This time, I bought olives again, but also peppersweets. I had no idea what these are and they tasted quite different than I’d expected, but they were delicious. I also bought fried chicken and mixed salad greens. Later in the afternoon, I prepared a salad using the olives, peppersweets, salad greens and also some onion and bell pepper I’d grabbed out of the care home fridge. It was absolutely delish.

If we were having coffee, I’d share that, yesterday, I attended the town’s annual Christmas lights walk. Two years ago, the staff were being difficult about me attending because it doesn’t end until 7:45PM and my activity time slot ends at 7:15. I made it very clear that I’m willing to think of ways I can cope without one-on-one, but my day schedule shouldn’t be an excuse not to include me. On Thursday, when the staff asked me whether I wanted to attend, i once again made sure they understood this. It was quite an enjoyable walk, though it’d been more enjoyable in previous years.

If we were having coffee, lastly I’d ask for positive thoughts regarding the changes to staffing that will take effect next month. My assigned staff (who is also in training to become a support coordinator), today did reassure me that my day schedule isn’t at risk. I hope she’s right.

#WeekendCoffeeShare (December 13, 2025)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m joining #WeekendCoffeeShare again. I’m starting this post at 5:35PM as my iPhone is upgrading to iOS 26. I’ll probably finish this post after my evening coffee at 7PM. By the look of it, the iPhone update might not even have been completed by then, as my Internet is incredibly slow. Anyway, let’s have a drink and let’s catch up.

If we were having coffee, first I’d talk about the weather. Early in the week, the daytime highs were like 14°C and we had a little rain. No more rain today or yesterday and the temps have dropped to 10°C. That’s still warm for this time of year.

If we were having coffee, then I’d share that I’m still going strong meeting my movement goals on my Apple Watch and it’s now finally decided to actually add days to my streak. I broke my streak record a few days ago. The previous record was 309 days and it was set in June of 2023. However, of course I cheated with this one, as I paused my rings while sick last September.

If we were having coffee, then I’d tell you this week is a mixed bag. Early in the week, I found out that, as of next month, all self-employed temp workers will be let go. That’s understandable, as a self-employed person actually doing the same things as regular employees, is considered tax evasion on the part of the employer (in this case the care agency). The Tax Service had originally planned on handing out fines for this starting this year, but due to the problems in care and other sectors, it postponed this a year. I had known that this was going to happen for years, but due to the care agency’s careless attitude, hadn’t been sure that the care agency was actually going to follow through this time.

On Monday, one of the regular staff here, who is responsible for planning, said it’s indeed true and that this will likely lead to more staffing issues and possible cuts to our care. Other staff have been reassuring that my one-on-one hours have already been approved until late 2026 and I need not worry about cuts to my one-on-one. All this makes me quite worried regardless, as I’m just now learning to actually fill my one-on-one with enjoyable or meaningful activities.

If we were having coffee, then I’d talk about these meaningful activities. On Monday, I finished the Christmas decorations I crafted last week. No photo of the individual pieces, sorry, as my staff hung them on the branch that we use to decorate for the seasons before I remembered to snap a picture. I do, however, have a few pictures of the entire scene.


As a side note, my staff also borrowed some of my clay cutters for creating more decorations. These, I believe she is now finishing and will be putting up soon.

If we were having coffee, next I’d tell you that, yesterday, I visited the next town’s market again. I love going to this market, which is quiet enough that I don’t get overloaded yet there are enough stalls to buy all of the things I’d like to buy. I had fried shrimp at the fish stand. Well, one of two fish stands, actually. It turned out I usually go to the other one and like that one better, but I was with a staff who’d never been to this market. I also bought olives, mixed nuts and candy.

If we were having coffee, lastly I’d share that I finally got my mother-in-law’s access to my records at the care agency revoked. I had originally asked that she’d be given access because, for some stupid reason, the powers-that-be wouldn’t give me access. Their reasoning was that it’d lead to too much distress, something I now realize isn’t grounds enough for denying a patient access to their own records. However, due to this decision, for many years, nobody had access to my records, so the staff could basically write down whatever they liked. That’s why eventually I asked my mother-in-law be given access. Not that she ever reads my records or that I trust her to respond appropriately if she does. Now nobody has access again, but I’m soon going to persuade the behavior specialist and manager to give me access after all.

#WeekendCoffeeShare (December 6, 2025)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Yesterday, I had tons of ideas on my mind on what to blog about but no motivation to actually write. Today, it’s the opposite. I’m joining in with #WeekendCoffeeShare even though I think I don’t have a lot to share today. I, as usual, had my last cup of coffee for the day about half an hour ago and am going to take a break from writing this post to have my soft drink and chips. Let’s have a drink and let’s catch up.

If we were having coffee, first I’d talk about the weather. For most of the week, it was chilly but not rainy with daytime temps around 7°C. Today, the daytime high was 10°C but it’s been raining all day.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you that I was pretty active for most of the week, both by walking and one time by cycling to the next town just to have a purpose for cycling. I didn’t need any groceries and we only ended up having a snack, but at least we weren’t aimlessly cycling around.

Today though, I spent the entire day indoors and still need to dance or whatever to reach my movement goal on my Apple Watch. My streak for whatever reason is still stuck on 33 days even though I’m moving each day and it’s been stuck on 33 days for a month or so.

If we were having coffee, then I’d tell you that I had many plans over the past week but haven’t accomplished a lot. On Monday and Tuesday, I did create some Christmas decorations out of polymer clay. Yesterday, I attempted to bake cookies. They turned out okay but not great and the process was frustrating. Nonetheless, it was better than lying in bed or staring into space, which is what I’ve been doing a lot lately.

If we were having coffee, I’d cheat a little with the coffee share being about the past week, since there was none last week. I’d share about the meeting I had with the behavior specialist early last week. It went well. First of all, like I said, the “one chance” rule about orienting new staff got ditched. My assigned staff, who is in training to become my side of the home’s support coordinator now too, E-mailed me the new orienting plan yesterday and it looks pretty good.

We also discussed my day schedule. In the future, I’ll hopefully get more set activities. In preparation for this, my assigned staff created instruction cards for some of my activities, so that I can hopefully do more activities regardless of which staff is assigned to me. She E-mailed these to me too and I gave some feedback.

If we were having coffee, lastly I’d share that I’ve been having lots of memories lately. And by “memories” I don’t mean good ones. Yesterday, for example, I remembered the team meeting for my current home I attended in the summer of 2023. One of the staff, when I told them that I can’t prepare my own lunch, replied: “But you lived independently, right?”. I immediately got defensive, because yes, I technically lived independently, but I shouldn’t have. Yesterday when I was talking about this with my wife, whom I’d first met when living on my own in 2007, she told me more about how bad it actually was. Until a few years ago, I believed that, while I couldn’t cope, this was mostly a mental thing. In other words, I was falling apart mentally but could really care for myself if I hadn’t been so scared. Well, no.

It is sad to realize that part of the reason why I need so much care is lack of training in childhood, adolescence and to a lesser degree early adulthood. I’m still struggling with my parents’ reasoning that they couldn’t have taught me because I was too strong-willed and just didn’t want to learn. It may’ve been true that I didn’t understand why I had to learn something that caused me frustration, but then isn’t it the parents’ job to guide the child through their frustration? I’m honestly still struggling with this.

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.

I Don’t Owe Anyone a Grateful Heart

Posted on by Astrid

Hi all. Today’s prompt for Reena’s Xploration Challenge is quite fitting. Reena asks us to ponder the paradox of gratitude and resistance.

Sometimes, by being grateful, we can bring about change. I am reminded of a story in one of the Chicken Soup for the Soul books in which nurses on one floor were irritated with another floor’s nurses for their constant negativity. Instead of fueling the conflict by becoming negative themselves, the nurses wrote a lengthy gratitude letter to their colleagues. I am not sure whether this was exactly what the story was about, but this was at least the message I took from it. The fact that the one group of nurses focused on the positive rather than giving in to the other group’s toxicity, turned the situation around for the better.

At other times though, particularly when there’s a power difference between two people or groups of people, gratitude becomes passive resignation. In this case, while it can be helpful in the short term to the oppressed person to keep a positive outlook, if the oppressor takes gratitude as acceptance, in the long run nothing will change.

I will give an example from my own life. Regular readers of my blog know that I’ve been accused of having a negative attitude by many people in positions of power, such as my care staff and treatment providers in various care settings. An example is being told I ought to be happy that anybody wants to work here at all. Well, no. While it’d be easier for me in the short term if I could just accept the umpteenth random stranger for my one-on-one care, in the long run it’d mean I’d always get assigned the random temp worker because regular staff would rather support the others and chill out with other regular staff while they can. Besides, even if it’d cost me less effort to resign than it costs me to rebel, I don’t owe my staff a positive attitude. If there’s anyone for whose sake I should have a grateful attitude, it’s myself.

It doesn’t mean I don’t struggle with this whole idea. I feel intense guilt whenever a staff throws some variation of “be happy anyone wants to work here” at me. I am also constantly reminded in my head of my assigned staff at the intensive support home, who was disappointed in me for never having a perfect day even when they’d followed my day schedule completely and had always assigned me regular staff. Which, for the record, never happened.

I, for clarity’s sake, don’t think violent resistance is the answer. When I have a meltdown over some rule I disagree with, being aggressive will always end in me being restrained. However, there’s a whole world between aggression and passivity. And sometimes, unfortunately, the people in positions of power are so caught up in their reality of being the ones to decide, that they (either willfully or not) ignore my less obvious attempts at resistance.

For example, last week I was trying to resist the “one chance” rule about orienting new staff. I tried going along with what the staff wanted, but this only led to further abuses of the rule. I tried talking sense into the staff, but this didn’t work either. Finally, on Saturday, I had the most massive meltdown. I am not proud of my behavior at all. In fact, I really wish I could’ve solved the issue without being aggressive, if for no other reason, then because the staff are far stronger than me and I ended up being restrained. In the end, I thankfully finally got a meeting with the behavior specialist on Monday and the rule got ditched. Now all I can hope for is that my main message, that I have to consent to every individual rule or agreement affecting me unless the behavior specialist uses the Care and Force Act, got through to everyone.

#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.

The Good and the Bad: How I’d Rate My Days

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Today’s Sunday Poser is rather relevant for me. In it, Sadje asks us how we’d rate our day. I’m not going to pick a specific day, but use this as an opportunity to write about the quality of my days and as such my quality of life.

When the Center for Consultation and Expertise consultant met with me last September, at one point she asked me how I’d rate my quality of life on a scale from 1 to 10. I find this difficult to say, as some days just about completely suck while others are okay or even somewhat joy-filled. I said that, on my absolutely awesomest days, I’d still rate them 7 out of 10 due to the fact that I experience pain and other forms of discomfort daily. Honestly though, I’m being optimistic when I do this. Even on my greatest days, after all, I hardly experience any noteworthy things. Like, I consider cooking or crafting to be enjoyable, but is my day really more than just about okay when I have done one of these?

This also signifies that my life could still very much be improved with just a few in my opinion relatively minor changes to my care. However, my staff see it differently, because they believe I can’t do a cooking or crafting activity when I’m in distress and, I believe, they also think I should be happy with just a walk and a dice game each day. Which, honestly, I’m not.

This makes me feel bad. In the words of my assigned staff at the intensive support home, when the staff follow my day schedule perfectly and I get all familiar staff, my day should be perfect. I replied, in my opinion truthfully, that no-one ever has a perfect day.

Now, to answer Sadje’s question about how I’d rate today: I’d probably rate it a 4 out of 10. I was rather distressed due to another incident yesterday. I also didn’t get to do anything other than go for two walks and play a game of Yatzy. I did, however, manage to do some reading and, as you can see, am writing this blog post. This signifies that, despite my distress, I’m still relatively able to function. My days could still be a lot worse. Besides, I had a cup of green tea in the evening. Oh wait, there I was being cynical, because green tea has become my symbol for how I actually feel about my life: when a cup of green tea is the highlight of my day or even week, that’s rather odd.