#WeekendCoffeeShare (August 28, 2026)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone! I’m joining in with #WeekendCoffeeShare once again. It’s nearly 11PM, so I’m hoping I can finish this post before midnight. I don’t think I even want water anymore before going to bed, but if you’d like a cup of something to drink, feel free to and let’s chat.

If we were having coffee, first I’d talk about the weather. It’s been all over the place. Early in the week, we had cool nights during which the temperature dropped to 7°C. Yesterday was hot again with a daytime temp of 29°C. We got thunderstorms last night and it’s been raining all day today.

If we were having coffee, I’d share that I met my movement goal on my Apple Watch each day except for today so far. Now I’m in doubt as to which option is the lesser of two evils: not meeting my movement goal or not finishing this post before midnight. Neither is truly disastrous, of course, but both cause me some autistic error.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you that, yesterday, I rode the side-by-side bike to Deventer with a staff. We visited the market, where I bought olives mostly because the vendor was trying to be friendly. I know it’s a selling tactic but I don’t care. Heck, he even suggested he’d see me tomorrow (today) at the other market I frequent. I told him not to get his hopes up.

We also ate lunch and then rode the bike to the town center for Ekoplaza, a health food store. I was looking for silken tofu, but it was in the fridge and I had to cycle nearly half an hour back to the institution, so I decided that wouldn’t be a good idea. Then I bought several other things that I later realized I should’ve bought at the regular supermarket because they were horribly expensive at Ekoplaza. Oh well.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you I finally bought myself a food processor. I’m not entirely sure I like the particular model I got, mostly because it has a lot of gadgets I thought I could use but may not be able to after all and it lacks attachments I wish it had. For example, I full on thought it had a grinder attachment but it didn’t. That either means chopping my onions myself or investing in another part (thankfully, the grinder is available as an attachment for this model).

Tomorrow, I’ll find out whether the thing actually does the job it was originally intended for, because I’m going to make a vegan and gluten-free cake that the mixture for needs to be processed. I’m a little saddened that my best friend doesn’t feel well so isn’t going to come by on Sunday. If it turns out good though, I will make it another time for her.

If we were having coffee, then I’d tell you I did enjoy a dinner prep activity again on Wednesday. I cooked something that was called a curry on the Good Food website but it was more like a bean stew. It had kidney beans, tomato, onions, garlic and ginger in it, in addition to coriander stalks. The coriander leaves were supposed to be used on top of the curry, but the staff forgot those. The weather outside was really nice that evening, so I ate my meal at my outside table.

If we were having coffee, finally I’d share that it’s probably supposed to be this way but I just found out that another person I recently became friends with is a vegan. We met through a peer support group and for a while used to talk mostly about our issues, but today I shared about my Ekoplaza adventure and this got us chatting plant-based food. If there’s a higher power, it’s probably telling me I should go vegan too. Then again, my best friend already told me jokingly that I’m a changeling (referring to a former online nickname) for not fancying pizza tonight.

I Don’t Do Diets

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Recently I’ve been thinking about the dietary choices I’ve been making over the years. The reason was the recent argument with my best friend over the tuna salad and the fact that I’d said I’d try to cook just vegan when preparing meals for myself. The thing is, I should’ve known it wasn’t going to work out. In that sense, she was right that I’d lied.

This signifies a common theme with my life choices: I full-on intend to follow a particular lifestyle, try it for a short while than abandon the entire thing and do whatever the heck I like. I try to avoid this pitfall this time. I’m already happy that I’m still making an effort to be aware of what I shove into my mouth and its impact on my health, animals and the environment. In that sense, it’s progress, not perfection and that’s totally okay with me. I will probably never be a vegan, after all.

The same happened when I was dieting to lose weight. I hated the strict food plan the dietitian gave me, tried it for a short time (even shorter than my vegan experiment) only to give up on it. Thankfully, I was able to negotiate a middle path with the dietitian and I’m doing the same with myself about eating plant-based. )For clarity’s sake: it wasn’t like my best friend was trying to convert me to veganism, so in this sense it’s only myself I have to be accountable to.) In other words, I’m not eating whatever the heck I fancy at any given moment, but I’m not pushing myself to stick to any diet or eating preference. That’s just going to backfire, after all.

Tomorrow, by the way, I’m cooking a vegan curry yet again. Not with chickpeas this time. I love trying out many different foods and learning about their impact. For this reason, I also actually like my best friend’s yapping about veganism.

This post was written for #FOWC with the prompt of “Dieting” and for #RDP with the prompt word of “Whatever”.

#WeekendCoffeeShare (August 14, 2026)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone on this blazing hot Friday. I’m joining #WeekendCoffeeShare again. It’s 7:30PM as I start typing this post, so I’ve had my last cup of coffee for the day and will likely be off for a bit before publishing this post to have my evening 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. Oh, I already disclosed that it’s blazing hot again. We’re on our fifth local heatwave this summer if I’m correct. Today, the daytime high was 36°C. Tomorrow we’re going to have a daytime high of “only” 27°C but it’s going to get humid. I always said summer is my favorite season, but now I’m pretty sure it’s not.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you that I’m still meeting my movement goal on my Apple Watch each day this month so far despite the heat. One reason though is the fact that, yesterday, I rode the side-by-side bike to the next town despite it being at least 30°C. That, honestly, was a stupid decision.

If we were having coffee, then I’d share that I did quite a lot of culinary activities this past week. I finally made iced tea on Monday after having bought loose-leaf green tea on Sunday. I also made a smoothie yesterday and made a tuna salad on Wednesday. No picture, because when it was on my plate, I’d just had an argument with my best friend over my choice to eat dead animals again and this caused me to feel so bad that I didn’t feel like taking a picture. The reason she was upset, by the way, wasn’t necessarily the fact that I eat meat (though that’s a valid reason for her, being a vegan, too), but the fact that I’d told her a few months ago that I would be trying to go vegan when creating my own meals and she felt that I’d lied about my intentions. I hadn’t, but my method of “trying” felt insincere to her. Thankfully, we resolved the argument eventually.

Today, I did create a vegan dessert. I used mango, silken tofu and agave syrup. The staff who helped me make it, didn’t like the strong soy tang,, but I surprisingly didn’t mind. I didn’t particularly like the texture though, which is one more reason I really need to get a food processor.

Mango mousse

If we were having coffee, I’d share that there isn’t any news on the moving front and my Care and Force Act plans probably won’t be fully ready for a couple of weeks at least. After all, both my assigned staff and support coordinator are off until late August and the behavior specialist will be off right after them.

Speaking of which, somehow the orienting of a new staff got messed up yet again this week. My support coordinator had initially said that this staff would be oriented to the activities and ADLs and then we’d evaluate to see if she needed more orienting. A few weeks ago, she told me that the orienting to the activities would be postponed but there wouldn’t be an evaluation after her orientation to my ADLs. This reeks of the one chance policy and I’m horribly upset about it. On top of that, at the last moment the person doing the orienting got switched. Yes, again! I wouldn’t even have found out if I hadn’t inquired about it myself this afternoon. It went kind of okay, but this whole thing still frustrates me to no end.

Now the new staff is an experienced worker, but I have had similar problems with student staff. In late August, a new student staff will start working here and, though my support coordinator thinks she shouldn’t be oriented to me at first, some staff disagree. Besides, if she doesn’t get oriented to me during her introductory time here and the powers-that-be decide later on that she needs to work with me anyway, will we have the same issue we had with the last student as well as with the currently orienting staff, ie. that she isn’t working as an extra anymore? I have absolutely no trust in this entire process.

I’ll sign off now, because I sense that if I continue this will end up being a negative rant again. I’m going to have a cup of green tea now.

#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.