The Wednesday HodgePodge (March 22, 2023)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m joining in with the Wednesday HodgePodge once again. Here goes.

1. Did you celebrate St. Patrick’s Day in some way? If so tell us how. Are you a fan of corned beef? Cabbage? The color green?
No, I didn’t celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. I am not a big fan of cabbage or corned beef, but it’s not like I hate them either. I do love the color green.

2. March 22nd is National Goof Off Day…will you celebrate? Your favorite way to goof off? Last time you had a whole day to spend “goofing off”?
I don’t work and can officially choose my own activities within my day schedule, although a lot of staff will suggest them for me. In this sense, I can “goof off” as much as I like, although it doesn’t often feel like it. My favorite ways to “goof off” would be reading, watching YouTube videos and chilling out with an essential oil diffuser on. By the way, crafting is also a favorite way to spend my time, but since I need support with that, I often don’t feel as playful about it as the expression “goofing off” reminds me of.

3. Something on your to-do list that has been there more than a month? Will this be the month you finally cross it off?
I don’t have a to-do list, honestly.

4. In your opinion, what emotion is the most beneficial? Which one is the least useful?
The most beneficial emotion, to me, is joy. Okay, yes, I copied that from Joyce but I completely agree. I had it as my word of the year last year. The least useful emotion, to me, is bitterness.

5. What was your favorite thing to do as a kid? Elaborate.
Many different things. I enjoyed playing with PlayMobil® until I was at least thirteen. I also loved sitting on the swings in my garden. However, I was also quite nerdy, enjoying geography and drawing maps by hand (obviously not detailed at all due to my severe visual impairment and my poor spatial awareness). My favorite map to draw was that of Italy.

6. Insert your own random thought here.
Just a thought: for those of you who don’t need care, can you imagine what it’d feel like if, each day, five or so different support people, often random strangers, showed up in your home claiming to want to do an activity with you? How about if they felt entitled to ask you personal questions to “get to know you” without disclosing much about themselves (after all, they’re “professionals”). What if, after six months, you’d seen literally over a hundred of them, if not several hundreds? How would it make you feel? I just asked a staff, who is a temp worker here but has supported me about ten times now so I’m supposed to “know” him, this question, after I got very irritated with another temp worker (who’s supported me about five times). The more familiar temp worker seriously replied that he wouldn’t mind who got into his home as long as they’d do the activity with him. I guess this means needing care is too far out of his realm of experience to understand the question.

Early Memories of Physical Activity

Posted on by Astrid

A few months ago, I read on another blog about Carrie Underwood’s book Find Your Path: Honor Your Body, Fuel Your Soul, and Get Strong with the Fit52 Life. One of the aspects that immediately appealed to me in the book, are the journal prompts. Yes, duh, you know, I’m a sucker for journal prompts. However, Carrie Underwood’s journaling prompts are not just random one-liners, they’re deep questions. One of them is about early memories of physical activity. Today, I want to share my thoughts on this.

As a young child, I loved playing outside. I used to build sandcastles in the wooden sandpit my father had built, not even caring that the wood hadn’t been treated so it got moldy every once in a while. I remember telling you all the story of how my father used to call my Kindergarten friend, whose last name translates to Peat in English, “Kim Mud”.

When I got older, I loved learning to rollerskate. I remember joining an informal neighborhood rollerskating “club” led by the oldest of two girls who lived next door. She was my age and could rollerskate real good or so we all thought. I wasn’t nearly as good or even as good as my own younger sister, but who cared? I didn’t.

I got a large tricycle when I was about seven or eight because I couldn’t ride a bike due to my cerebral palsy. Not that I could safely ride a bike, given my visual impairment, but apparently the rehabilitation physician had no idea. I occasionally rode my tricycle, but preferred to walk around the neighborhood.

However, by age seven or eight, when I started to lose my vision, my physical activity level also started to decrease. I am pretty sure it’s more than just my vision though, but there’s no way to prove this as my parents stopped taking me to specialists around that age. I am considering asking my GP or the intellectual disability physician at the care facility for a referral back to rehabilitation medicine, because I want to learn to make the most use of the mobility I do have.

I did till my mid-teens love to sit on the swings. I’m not sure that counts, as it is a sedentary activity, but you do move your legs pushing yourself. I would go on the swings for hours on end. Now though, I get dizzy even going on the swings for five minutes at a time.

A thing I also did from toddlerhood until I moved out of my parental home at age nineteen, was this crawling-in-place movement while in bed. By the time I hit adolescence, my parents complained that I ruined the bed and made too much noise, but I continued to move in this way exactly until I moved to the independence training home. I could do this for hours on end too and I now realize it’s probably a form of autistic stimming.

Overall, I wasn’t physically active in most of the traditional ways. I wasn’t in sports as a child and P.E. was one of my least favorite classes. However, I can’t say I sat on my butt all the time. I didn’t even as an adolescent, though I probably was more sedentary then than I should have been.

How about you? Were you physically active as a child?

Activities I Enjoyed As a Child

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone! How are you doing? For today, I have a rather joyful post. I’m going to share stuff I enjoyed doing as a child. I mean, I didn’t have the best of childhoods, but there were definitely things I enjoyed. Here is a list of activities I liked as a child, and some I still do.

1. Listening to cassette tapes. At around age five, my parents got me a subscription to the Dutch audio magazine for blind children. It was on cassette tape at the time. It lasted only an hour and was sent out every three weeks, but I still loved listening to it. I also loved listening to old editions. Back then, you had to return the cassette tapes after listening, but you could also send a guilder with the empty case and a note saying you kept the magazine. I did this almost with every edition and listened to a lot of them repeatedly.

My parents got me a subscription for the magazine for blind preteens for my tenth birthday and I started subscribing to the one for teens at age twelve. I had that one for about ten years I believe.

I also loved listening to audiobooks. I hated reading Braille books, but really loved the cassette taped books.

2. Playing with dolls. I had a favorite doll, Roza (it was really spelled with a Z). I got her for my third birthday from my grandma, who had bought it on a trip to Berlin. Roza had blond hair and light skin color. My sister’s favorite doll was called Marijke and she was dark-skinned with black hair. We often played that the dolls came from Suriname and went back there on vacation.

3. PlayMobil®. I started playing with PlayMobil® at around age three. Back then, I had three favorite figures, whom I called Pekel, Laren and Foet, none of which are actual Dutch names. These figures did normal everyday stuff like eating, going to the toilet, etc.

When I got older, I played more complicated games. At one point, when I was around eleven, I had two Native American figures whom I called Ingassa and Maranna. My sister played with these figures, while I played with a red-haired figure called Pippi. We said that Ingassa and Maranna were originally from Costa Rica and we again played that we were going back there. Okay, I sound real racist right now with all my stereotyped games.

4. Playing outside. When I still lived in Rotterdam, we had a sandpit that my father had built. It was made of wood which hadn’t been varnished I think, as it was often moldy. I loved playing in it.

We also had a set of swings. I loved those! In Apeldoorn, we got a large set of playing equipment from our grandma. It included a rope, a horizontal bar to bend over and also swings. Until I was at least thirteen, I spent a lot of time on the swings. At the day center, we have a set of indoor swings and I love them, even though I get dizzy quickly going on them.

What activities did you enjoy as a child?