The Wednesday HodgePodge (March 16, 2022)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I have been discovering some great new memes/blog hops lately. One of them is The Wednesday HodgePodge. The idea of this meme is to answer five (semi-)random questions and then add your own random thought at the end. I say the questions are semi-random, because they do seem to have been inspired by a theme. I loved this week’s questions, so here goes.

1. It’s March 15th (Tuesday) and as the saying goes-“Beware the Ides of March”…have you read/studied much Shakespeare? Do you have a favorite Shakespeare play? How do you feel about a Caesar salad?
I haven’t studied Shakespeare at all. In fact, I don’t think I’ve actually read any of his plays and the only exposure I got to them was watching a school play of Romeo and Juliet in high school. As a result, I had no idea the expression about the Ides of March didn’t actually originate with Julius Caesar himself.

As for a Caesar salad, I do like it on occasion, but it isn’t my favorite at all.

2. Have you ever been to Rome? If so what do you love about the city? If not, any desire to go?
Well, I went to grammar school, so of course we had to visit Rome. The best aspect of it was visiting the Capitoline Museums, but only because a very daring teacher asked one of the museum employees whether I could touch the sculptures, because I am blind. Somehow we actually got permission for me to touch them with one hand. I mean, for those not familiar with them, these are 2000-year-old sculptures, for real! Two years later, when my sister, who is sighted, visited Rome, they had created replicas for blind people so that they could actually get the full experience of touching the sculptures.

3. What’s your favorite place to ‘roam’?
Switzerland. I’ve only been there once, but it’s by far my favorite place to wander about. My husband and I went there on our delayed honeymoon in the summer of 2012 and we’re fully intending on going back once COVID restrictions are lifted there.

Other than that, I’d just say my own neighborhood. I love going on walks and taking pictures as I go.

4. Do you like pizza? Thick or thin? Red sauce-white sauce-other? Your favorite toppings? How do you feel about pineapple on a pizza?
I love pizza! Usually I prefer a thick crust, but I love a good Italian-style pizza too. I love both red and white sauce. My favorite toppings include salami, chicken, bell peppers, red onions, red peppers, etc. I don’t care for pineapple on a pizza but it’s not that I wouldn’t eat it either.

5. ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’…tell us how this expression applies to something in your home-life-job currently (or recently)?
Well, I have a ton of larger craft projects that I’ve gotten started on and that I really wish I could’ve finished in a day, but that’s just not working.

6. Insert your own random thought here.
All this talk about pizza has me craving good food, even though I just had lunch. Thankfully, I’m going to cook pilav later this afternoon. I also had the most amazing Indonesian takeout food yesterday. A staff brought me some and it was truly the best Asian food I’d ever had.

My Bucket List

Posted on by Astrid

Carol anne over at Therapy Bits did a blog post detailing her bucket list. It reminded me that, in May of 2018, I did one as well on my old blog. It was based on a prompt from an app I have on my iPhone that asked me to list 25 goals I have for the next 25 years. In 25 years, I’ll be 59 and hopefully still alive and well. However, this list is going to detail the things I want to accomplish in life as a whole. After all, my paternal grandma, who died shortly before I wrote that post, taught me by example that a lot can still be accomplished after 60. I’m not aiming for a particular number of items this time.

1. Write my autobiography. This was #2 (after finding suitable day activities) on the original list. I still haven’t gotten down to it, but I really want to.

2. Get published some more. I have been saying for the past five years that the one piece I got published in an anthology in 2015 makes me a writer, but I really want to get published more. Note to self: get to writing that piece for the Chicken Soup book.

3. Travel to the United States. I really want to visit some people who live there, but I also definitely want to enjoy the scenery.

4. Visit Ireland. My husband traveled to Ireland with his Dad when we’d been dating only for a short while. I’d love to see the country, eat at the high-quality vegan restaurant in Dublin my husband ate at and meet carol anne, who lives in Ireland.

5. Visit Poland. Emilia from My Inner MishMash lives there, so it’d be cool to meet her. However, it’s also cool to visit because my husband knows some Polish.

6. Stay at an all-inclusive resort. I don’t care for tropical destinations. All I want is to swim and eat as much as I want, even if it’s in my own country.

7. Get a guide dog. Okay, this is unlikely if I’m going to stay in the care facility, but one can dream, right?

8. Take some more distance learning college classes. I would still like to enroll at the Open University again. I’d also like to do some education courses, which would be through a commercial college as the OU doesn’t offer that program.

9. Take some in-person college classes. This is going to take some years, as those under 50 certainly can’t attend individual college classes without a prior college degree. I’m not sure the higher education for older people program still exists even.

10. Take a writing course. I have been looking at Writer’s Digest and other writing schools, but so far they’re way too expensive for me.

11. Do some volunteering. I’d love to someday do some volunteer work in social services or social care. For example, maybe I can be a language buddy to someone learning Dutch as a second language, or work as a volunteer helping people fill out forms for social services etc.

12. Sit on the client council for my care facility.

13. Join a gym, yoga studio or other out-of-the-house exercise place. I intended on doing this before COVID-19 hit and until there’s a vaccine, it’s likely not an option due to the assistance I need.

14. Keep up with technological advancements. I am pretty proud of myself for having learned to use the iPhone at age 31, but still I’d like to keep up-to-date with new technology for as long as I possibly can.

That’s it really. Other items I had on my list back in 2018 included getting more active, which I already manage, buying a house, which I’ve done too, and staying as healthy as possible. These are not necessarily items for on a bucket list though.

What’s on your bucket list?

A Trip to Berlin

Posted on by Astrid

Fandango has started a new challenge for the month of August and the prompt word for today is Trip. I’m going to write about a train trip my parents, sister and I took to Berlin in 2002.

At the time, you had this bargain called “schönes Wochenende” in Germany, which meant that for just €28, four people could travel all over Germany by train on a Saturday or Sunday. The only catch was that you had to take local railroads.

My parents, sister and I at the time lived in Apeldoorn, Netherlands, which isn’t too far from the German border. So we drove to Bad Bentheim to go on the train. The first train we took, drove us to Osnabrück. Then we took three more trains until we finally arrived at Berlin Hauptbahnhof. The last train we took, I remember, had Frankfurt an der Oder as its final destination. I found that fascinating.

I at the time had train routes as one of my autistic special interests. It was totally awesome learning all about the German local railroads.

The holiday in Berlin itself wasn’t a good experience. I had a lot of meltdowns and was pretty confused. I did like visiting a street called Straße des 17. Juni, because that year on 17 June I had first opened up about my distress that I’d suffered with for years. The street was named after a protest in east Berlin in 1953.

This was, actually, the last trip I took with my parents. The next year, I went to computer camp in Switzerland and the year after that, to blindness skills camp at the country’s training center for blind people. The year after that, I graduated from high school.

I feel pretty sad that I don’t have many memories about the trip to Berlin and the ones I do have, aren’t good. I guess trips rarely were enjoyable for me. That’s probably why I haven’t been on vacation with my husband in six years.

Summer Memories: Camping at Vlieland

Posted on by Astrid

A lot of thoughts have been floating through my mind that I’ve wanted to blog about, but I couldn’t motivate myself to actually write. I’m not even sure what about these thoughts I wanted to write, so instead, I looked up a writing prompt again. Over at Mama’s Losin’ It, one of the prompts for this week is to share your favorite summer memory. Here goes.

In the early 1990s, my parents would take my sister and me camping at a campsite called Stortemelk at Vlieland, one of the Dutch Wadden Islands. We would send our baggage there via a now no longer existent transportation company called Van Gend & Loos and ourselves travel there by train and ferry. Our parents didn’t have a car at the time. This made the journey all the more interesting, because we met lovely people on the train.

We would often meet the same people at the campsite, but also we’d make new friends each year. In 1993, when I was seven, I remember we collected shells and bird feathers and such and put them on exhibit near our tent.

In 1994, we went again and this year was the year we built a number of treehouses. I was eight at the time and my sister was six. I still had a little vision, so I was able to join in with the rough-and-tumble play of the other kids. I loved this vacation most.

After that year, we stopped going to Vlieland for several years. The reason was our move from Rotterdam to Apeldoorn, so our parents wanted to use the summers to get to know their new city. When we returned to Vlieland in 1998, it was a lot less fun. I was twelve by this time and too old for treehouses. I was also too blind. I could no longer find my way to the campsite store or anywhere on my own.

The last time we went to Vlieland was in 1999. I have very few memories of that trip. I liked going again but probably just because I was used to the routine. It was no longer fun.

Mama’s Losin’ It

Travel: My Most Enjoyable Vacation #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Welcome to day 20 in the #AtoZChallenge. I am feeling a bit frustrated with myself at the moment and as a result not as inspired to write. I hope this mood will lift while I’m in the process of writing this post. Today’s topic is travel. I was inspired to write about this by a nightmare I had last night, which was about a summer camp I attended in Russia in 2000. I don’t want to revisit that right now, so will instead be writing about my most enjoyable vacation.

This was, incidentally, also a summer camp. I attended the International Computer Camp for blind and visually impaired students in England in 2002. Because of my negative experiences with the summer camp in Russia, I had my reservations about going to this camp. Of course, this time I wouldn’t be the only blind person, but I still worried that I wouldn’t fit in.

The computer camp was held at a college for the blind in Loughborough, a town in the East Midlands. For this reason, we also took a trip to the West Midlands to see the Black Country museum or that’s what I remember it being called. This was something about the industrialization of England, but I wasn’t able to follow it much.

For most days, we had two workshops we could attend on computers and technology. I at the time had just discovered the Internet and was excited to learn what cool tech there was out there. I attended some workshops on word processing, but also on music and audio. I was also lucky enough to be on the editorial staff for the camp newspaper. I loved this and this was probably one reason I later began an online diary.

The staff worked at various disability agencies in their respective countries. One person I remember well worked at the University of Karlsruhe, Germany. He helped visually impaired students find their way through college. He taught a workshop on studying abroad, though it was more of a general survival skills for blind students workshop. This was perhaps the best experience I had there. It helped me realize that I wasn’t the only blind person out there trying to follow her dreams.

This was also the general message I took home from the camp: I am not alone. I met lots of blind and visually impaired young people from across Europe who were facing the same issues I was.

I returned to the international computer camp in 2003, this time in Switzerland. I liked that a little less, possibly because the Dutch staff who attended this time were a bit more pushy about my independence. I still enjoyed it though.

Goals: Major Things I Hope to Achieve in Life #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Welcome to day seven in the A to Z Challenge. I’m finding that, even though ideas spin through my mind to blog about, I’m already less motivated to write and especially so for the #AtoZChallenge. Today’s post is a list, so I’m not sure it fits in with the theme of miscellaneous musings. I am feeling a bit uninspired though and lists are the easiest to write posts. I am sharing my major goals in life.

1. Find myself a satisfactory living situation. When I wrote a list of goals I had for myself on my old blog, buying a house was on it. Not that I’d ever be able to buy a house on my own, but divorcing my husband wasn’t on the list. This (buying a house) was however more my husband’s goal than mine. When I finally decided to try to get into long-term care, I felt much calmer than I did before. Even though the process is now going on for six months and counting, I’m still sure of myself on this part. This is the reason finding a satisfactory living situation tops my list.

2. Write my autobiography. I’ve wanted to be a writer ever since I was a young child. Of course, I am a writer with my blog and I also got a piece published in an anthology in 2015. I would love to publish more pieces, but I’d also love to write a memoir.

3. Find a hobby (other than blogging) that I can do independently. Or almost independently. I’m in a course now at day activities to explore this. We’ve been trying soap making for the last two weeks, because I used to enjoy that, and it’s going okay.

4. Visit the United States. I have a few long-time online friends from there whom I’d love to visit. I’d also love to visit carol anne of Therapy Bits in Ireland.

5. Heal from my childhood trauma. I hope to be able to someday access a qualified therapist able to treat me for my trauma-based symptoms. Even if I can’t do that, I hope to heal.

What are your major goals in life?