#WeekendCoffeeShare (July 24, 2026)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m joining #WeekendCoffeeShare again. I’ve had my last cup of coffee for the day, as usual. I’m soon stepping back to put on my pajamas. Usually I shower on Friday evenings, but today there’s no staff who’s able to assist me. I’ll also take a break for my 8PM meds and evening soft drink. If you’d like to grab a cup of your favorite hot or cold beverage, feel free to and let’s chat.

If we were having coffee, first as always I’d talk about the weather. It’s been pretty good: partly cloudy with occasional rain and daytime temps around 22°C. We’re supposed to get some warmer weather again next week with daytime temps getting as high as 33°C on Thursday I believe.

If we were having coffee, then I’d tell you that some days, I’m able to get in quite a bit of walking again. My toe still hurts a little, but I was able to go off the naproxen and use just paracetamol now. Due to some stupid miscommunication, I’m now officially prescribed both naproxen and paracetamol, but I just refuse the naproxen.

If we were having coffee, I’d share that I’m still struggling majorly with feelings of self-doubt, worthlessness and anxiety. I am quite scared that my extra support hours will be cut. It doesn’t help that there’s major talk in the media about autonomy-based policy, which is an approach populated for people (particularly young women) with chronic, serious suicide or self-harm risk. The idea is that these people need to call for help in preventing self-harm or suicide rather than use these behaviors as a cry for attention. I can see the idea behind it, but it only works if these people actually do get the help they need in preventing harmful behaviors. Since one of the prerequisites is that help needs to be gradually reduced, I can’t honestly see it working for everyone. I mean, I’d love to gradually have my support decreased, but the pressure of it only causes me further problems. Now I’m too old to be a candidate for the official thing and I’m not even in mental health treatment, but the whole idea majorly triggers me. One of the psychiatrists behind this approach does say it’s not the same as leaving patients to fend for themselves, but that’s exactly how it can be used if the pressure from the higher-ups (up to the government) increases. The term didn’t exist in 2017, but if it had, it’d been exactly the code bluff my treatment team would’ve used for doing what they did, ie. kick me out of the psych hospital after nearly a decade with next to no support.

If we were having coffee, I’d end on a positive note by sharing that I cooked pasta for myself again on Wednesday. I used eggplant, capers and olives and it was a completely vegan dish, so I reckoned my fellow residents wouldn’t like it. I however did. That being said, my staff said the eggplant had turned a little greyish. It tasted fine though.

I’m generally more interested in learning about vegan cooking anyway. Not that I will be a vegan or even vegetarian, but I’d like to be a little more conscious of what I eat and also experiment with different ingredients. For this reason, I’ve been adding some more cookbooks to my collection, downloaded off Bookshare. One of them had vegan banana bread in it. I however struggle a little with using the recipes in my Voice Dream Reader app. Then I came across a vegan website that also included a banana bread recipe. I’m going to try to bake that one tomorrow. If it’s good, I told my best friend I’ll leave her a slice.

April 2026 In Review

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m once again joining Natalie’s monthly recap. April was a month of high hopes. I started my new day schedule, which I figured out pretty quickly wasn’t working, in part because my assigned staff had randomly added several unrelated activities to each time slot. What I had hoped for, was a schedule organized around activities that logically follow one another, rather than it being about rigid time slots. I’m still trying to persuade my assigned staff (who is unfortunately still on part-time sick leave), my support coordinator (who will be off for a long while starting next week) and the behavior specialist (who I have only spoken to once) to change this. However, even though I explained why I believe it’d work in several E-mails, I doubt it’ll be implemented, simply because it requires my staff to be more flexible with my one-on-one.

I’ve realized more and more over the past month that no-one really knows my needs. And that includes me. Some people say I’m autistic and need lots of structure and “clarity” (which they confuse with bluntness). Others believe I have attachment issues and need to build trust in my staff, only to be told that I do chatter to some random temp workers so it’s just me being unwilling. Some say that my emotional development is comparable to that of a toddler while others counter that I’m verbally more capable than some of them. Some say I need to process my trauma, but all the while they add extra layers onto it. And that’s not even speaking about my brain injury, my blindness or the fact that I’m “getting older”, which my physician blames for everything.

This month included a few cooking and baking activities, but not as many as my day schedule allows for. I only did crafty activities twice even though it’s now in my day schedule twice a week. Staff often blame me for not “wanting” even though the few times staff actually asked me, I did get something done. Thankfully, I still do enjoy each time I get to do a cooking or baking activity, work with polymer clay or ride the side-by-side bike.

I’m trying to consume fewer animal products. I was inspired both by my wife, who is a vegan, as well as by the new Dutch food pyramid. I cooked a vegan curry for this side of the home at the end of March. In early April, I cooked a chicken pasta for myself, but the other two meals I cooked this past month have been vegan. One was another curry. The image description app I used correctly identified one of the ingredients as sweet potato, which I think is rather cool.

The other was baked potatoes, onion, bell peppers and a veggie schnitzel (which the EU has decided soon can’t be called schnitzel anymore due to it not containing animal, despite no-one knowing where a cow’s schnitzel is located on its body).

Last month, I said the month was hard only to conclude at the end of writing my post that it was better than I had initially thought. I unfortunately can’t say so of April. The last few days have been slightly less horrible than the weeks prior, but I’m not getting my hopes up about this continuing in the right direction. I feel a little guilty about this, because I did do more cooking activities than I used to do. I’m wondering whether I might be depressed or something. Since I’m also experiencing significantly more sensory overload than I used to, something neurological might also be going on. I’m getting bloodwork soon to rule out a vitamin deficiency (possibly B12), because I’ve been on pantoprazole in a high dose for years and have a history of several deficiencies. I’m not sure what I hope the test will show.