Hello Monday (April 3, 2023)

Posted on by Astrid

Hello everyone. I’m joining Hello Monday again this evening. Let me share about my weekend.

On Saturday, my assigned staff supported me for part of the morning. We made a melt and pour soap in the shape of a heart. Sadly, I don’t have a picture and I gave it to my husband. I added gold-colored mica powder to the soap and lavender and ylang ylang essential oils.

I also created an essential oil blend for in my diffuser. I used pink grapefruit, bergamot and ylang ylang essential oils in this blend.

I did ask my assigned staff to inquire about my orthopedic shoes. This has been an issue for at least two years: I started out with supportive insoles, then an ankle foot orthosis either with or without semi-orthopedic shoes and finally now orthopedic shoes, but they still don’t fit. The shoemaker is frustrated, wondering when they’ll finally be good enough. Well, when they fit. Honestly, I am skeptical about the method they used to create an image of my feet: not using putty for a “mold” but using an iPad to create digital images, a method they’d used on a client of my care agency for the first time. My guess is this method requires some level of understanding I don’t possess but am assumed to possess based on my expressive language. Anyway, I don’t care how much of a bother I am, but I’m not accepting the reality as it is now, ie. my needing to buy new regular shoes every two months due to them being damaged from the way I walk. If they can’t fit me for orthopedic shoes, they’ve got to find a way to fix my shoe issue some other way.

Saturday was a good day overall. I was supported by two staff – my assigned staff and another – I get along with very well during the morning shift and my day schedule wasn’t disrupted. For the evening shift, three out of four staff were staff I don’t really get along with and I ended up being supported by two of them. I didn’t mind though, as my day schedule wasn’t disrupted and I did get to do some activities I enjoy.

On Sunday, my husband came by for a visit and we drove to Apeldoorn to have lunch at Backwerk once again. I had a tuna baguette. Then we went into several shops, because I wanted to buy some new spring/summer clothes. Sorry, no pictures once again. I bought a blue, flowery skirt and three simple tops in black, white and blue.

Sunday evening was a bit hard. It started out well with the staff explaining to me who would be supporting me throughout the shift. This was repeated several times. Then, at 6PM, unexpectedly a staff who wasn’t supposed to come and whom I don’t get along with, showed up. I had a meltdown and eventually, after a bit of an explanation from the other staff and trying an activity for a few minutes, I chose alone time over time with him.

I also spent my weekend working on the #AtoZChallenge, of course. I don’t generally prepare my posts in advance, so I have lots of work to do on the day itself. I also discovered Reddit last week. That is, I had an account back in like 2008, but they changed things up a lot so that’s no longer valid. I love browsing Reddit now and commenting where I can. I haven’t created a post yet.

Overall, my weekend was mostly good with some negativity due to the unexpected staff change. For those not aware, I am autistic, so it isn’t just that I don’t get along with some staff, but if they’d told me in advance, I could have been prepared.

March 2023 Reflections #WBOYC

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. It’s the last day of the month and this means I’m reflecting back on this month’s happenings. I’m joining What’s Been On Your Calendar? (#WBOYC). Here goes.

This month would have started with my having the meeting on my care on March 2, but it got postponed yet again for the third time. I did get a visit from my mother-in-law instead and we took a walk through a nice park. Here are a couple of pictures my mother-in-law took with her phone of a remembrance stone we saw there.



The next Sunday, my husband and I drove to Ikea in Zwolle, where I bought a stuffed orang-utan. I so far didn’t show it on the blog yet, so what better day to do this than today?

On the other Sundays, my husband and I drove to Apeldoorn to have lunch at Backwerk. We did try visiting another lunch cafe once at the recommendation of one of my staff, but literally all tables were dirty.

On March 17, I finally had the meeting on my care. The positive aspect was that the powers-that-be will be looking for another, hopefully more suitable care home for me. The negative aspect is the fact that, in the meantime, nothing will change. This had me spiral out of control quite a bit, which my staff feel frustrated with.

Last week, it led to a bit of a disagreement between me and my assigned staff, because she got frustrated with my negativity. The way she worded it, even if my day schedule doesn’t get disrupted and I’m supported by regular staff for the entire shift, I still find a reason to complain. I countered that this hadn’t happened in months. Even this morning, with three out of four staff being regular employees, the fourth staff supported me for most of the shift.

In the health department, I did pretty well. I finally saw the dietitian last week and we concluded I no longer need to lose weight. Not that weight loss ever was a priority for me, more like a welcome side effect of my healthier-for-me lifestyle. The fact that I’d lost weight rather rapidly over the past five months, meant I had to up my calorie intake to prevent further weight loss. I did gain a bit of weight in the first week on my new food plan, but then again I did eat fries once in that week and a large burger another day. I’m not stressing about the weight gain at all.

In other health news, my cardio fitness level according to my Apple Watch has declined slightly and is in the “low” range again, though just barely. My heart rate recovery, on the other hand, is steadily improving.

All this being said, I’m trying to embrace my body as it is and appreciate my health for what it is.

In the blogging department, I did quite poorly, having written only eleven posts including this one. I am not sure how I’m going to do with the April A to Z Challenge given this reality, but I trust I can do it.

#WeekendCoffeeShare (March 11, 2023)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m joining #WeekendCoffeeShare today. I’m very early by my standards, having just had my afternoon coffee. I probably won’t finish this post till early evening though, since it’s nearly 3PM and I’m allowed another activity hour at 3:30. The coffee maker broke down last week. Then we got a new one yesterday – a really fancy one that can work with beans -, but it broke down today. Thankfully, the Senseo coffee maker still works. Let’s have a drink and let’s catch up.

If we were having coffee, I’d first ask about your weather. We got snow this week. Like actual snow that remained on the ground. Yesterday was cold and snowy and icy. The rest of the week was mostly cloudy with some rain. Today is okay. We even got a little sunshine and the temperature climbed to 7°C.

If we were having coffee, I would tell you that I finally decided to contact an independent client supporter re my care situation on Tuesday. These are not affiliated with the care agency, but can help clients with their care plan or finding the right care. The person I spoke to on the phone, asked me a few questions and then would forward my info to a client supporter for my area. This person called me on Friday and we’ll have a phone appt on Wednesday. Unfortunately, somehow, her E-mail confirming the appt and giving me her details didn’t reach me, so I’m going to call her on Monday to let her know.

If we were having coffee, I’d let you all know I’ve decided a whole lot needs to happen if I want to actually stay at my current care home. After all, like I didn’t yet say in my previous coffee share post as I didn’t know back then but have written about since on the blog, the meeting between the behavior specialist, my assigned staff, mother-in-law and possibly me got canceled again on March 2 and has now been set for this coming Tuesday. Apparently, my support coordinator won’t be attending. However, since my last mentioning that I saw some potential for it to work out here and now, I’ve had a few really hard conversations with my assigned staff. These conversations made me feel as though there’s little or no room for improvement. In one of our last ones on my care situation, in which I’d pointed this out, she suggested I go back to living with my husband. This would have been an understandable question from someone who has no clue about my care needs. I’m in fact half expecting this question from the client supporter too. However, my assigned staff should know better. The fact that she – one of the staff who’s most accommodating to my needs – asked this question, to me underlines the fact that this care home’s staff are either clueless or careless about my needs, possibly both. I mean, she meant well and didn’t mean to push me. She said that, while living with my husband would no doubt be hard, so is living here for me. Her reasoning also was that, if she were to marry someone, she’d do so with the intention of living with them. Well, our intention for marriage was to prove to each other that we want to remain a couple for life, nothing more, nothing less.

If we were having coffee, I’d share that once again my exercising has declined over the past week. I in part blame the weather. However, yesterday I took up the courage and went up to another client’s room to ask her and her staff whether I could go on her stationary bike. Turns out it’s not her stationary bike at all, but the home’s. I went on the bike for only eight minutes (and four seconds, to be exact 😉). Today, I did go for two longer walks, totaling 73 exercise minutes on my Apple Watch.

If we were having coffee, lastly I’d tell you I’ve picked up soap making again. My soaps aren’t great so far. I made a simple butterfly soap on Thursday fragranced with lemon and pink grapefruit essential oils. Yesterday, I made another butterfly with lavender and ylang ylang essential oils, but decided to add some mica powder too as a colorant. However, I had no idea yet how to add micas to melt and pour soap, so messed it up quite a bit by adding way too much mica and also adding it to a white rather than clear soap base, among other things. I guess one never stops learning.

How have you been?

Hello Monday (March 6, 2023)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. A few weeks ago, I discovered another great weekly linky called Hello Monday, in which bloggers share about their weekend. Since I didn’t join #WeekendCoffeeShare this past Saturday, I still have a lot to share about the weekend. Besides, Sunday afternoon was fun, so even if I had posted on Saturday, I could post again today. Let’s get started.

Saturday morning was kind of hard. A new staff was being introduced to me, so for the morning shift there were two staff people doing my one-on-one. I do appreciate the fact that they actually had him properly introduced to me rather than having me do all the explaining, like they did with the student staff, but it did lead to me overhearing them converse about stuff that they said wasn’t my business. Well, if it’s none of my business then why discuss it in my room with me sitting right there in the middle?

Saturday evening was slightly better, but Sunday morning was hard again. The staff assigned to be my one-on-one that day always complains of a sore arm when holding my arm to guide me when walking, but I can’t safely walk without a sighted guide and I struggle to hold onto someone’s arm too (which is the proper way of walking sighted guide). In this sense, I empathize with this staff. Being that he isn’t the crafty type either, we were quite limited in the activities we could do, so I eventually decided we’d go for a walk anyway.

After he left at just past eleven for my “time to rest” (his cringe-worthy term for time without one-on-one support), which normally doesn’t start until 11:30, I indeed had a little lie down, but had had it by 11:30 and decided to go into the living room to see the other clients and staff. I sat there while they had lunch (and I had a little bit too). I was going to have a visit from my husband at 1PM and we usually go out for lunch then. One of the staff directed us to clear up the table, while she herself remained seated. Granted, she was another client’s one-on-one and either that client can’t or won’t clear up. I can’t without someone assisting me either and my one-on-one was nowhere to be found, but thankfully another staff helped me.

When my husband came to pick me up, he drove randomly. At one point, he asked me where we were going. “Where are we?” I asked. He replied we were at highway A50, headed northward, in the middle of nowhere. Zwolle was the closest bigger city, so we decided to head there. We went to Ikea, where we looked around a little, tthen had fries with chicken (for me) and meatballs (for him). Then we saw these really cute soft toys. My husband pointed out an orangutan, which I immediately decided to buy. My husband wants me to name him after the monkey king in The Jungle Book and he wanted me to look up the song on our way back to the institution. Not that I remember that movie. I mean, I’ve probably seen parts of it, but we only had public television at home when I was a child. I think the monkey is called Louis.

The Wednesday HodgePodge (March 1, 2023)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. It’s Wednesday again, so I’m joining the Wednesday HodgePodge yet again. Here goes.

1. Hello March! Is it coming in like a lion where you live? How do you feel when it rains?
I have no idea what the saying that March comes in like a lion means. Probably something about rain, given the next part of the question. If I’m correct, no, it doesn’t rain here. It’s cold though: 7°C at midday and -4°C at night.

I generally don’t like rainy weather, though I can handle it better than I used to like a year or two ago.

2. What’s something you’d like to do differently this week than the last? Explain.
Last week was better than this week has been so far, so honestly, I wouldn’t really change a thing.

3. March 1st is National Sunkist Citrus Day…do you drink orange juice? Orange, lemon, lime, tangerine, grapefruit…what’s your favorite citrus fruit? A dish you love with a citrus fruit as one of its key ingredients?
I don’t usually drink orange juice. It’s not that I don’t like it, but it’s not among my favorite drinks either. My favorite citrus fruit, if I have to choose one, is the tangerine. I honestly don’t care for anything citrussy except for its scent in essential oil blends.

4. What do you consider to be your culture. Elaborate.
This is a tough question. I don’t particularly associate with my native language (Dutch) or country for that matter. I initially wrote that I sort of consider myself European, but that’s not even true, since I do write in American-style English on my blog, for instance. The only thing that makes me more “European”, besides the obvious fact that the Netherlands is in Europe, is the fact that I’m quite progressive.

Then there are other identities. I am part of many communities online that consider themselves as having a specific culture, such as the autistic/neurodivergent community. I however don’t really associate with that as a culture either. These are more things that define my identity than my culture. These include my gender, race (although that’s a bit problematic for me to admit as a white person, but it’s true), etc.

5. Sum up your February in fifteen words or less.
Not good, but better than January.

6. Insert your own random thought here.
Wanted to share that my husband did bring the unicorn cookie/clay cutters that were supposed to be my Valentine’s Day present last Sunday. One is a rainbow, the next a unicorn head and one a unicorn. I haven’t yet had the chance to try them out.

#WeekendCoffeeShare (February 18, 2023)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m joining #WeekendCoffeeShare today. It’s 5:35PM as I start writing this post. I probably won’t finish it until past seven, when I’ll have my last cup of coffee for the day. Care to join me? We also have pure green tea (so the kind without flavoring). We also probably have lemon-flavored green tea, but I don’t care for that. I did discover a new kind of green tea, Indian chai green, which I do love. It is loose-leaf tea, which I rarely have, but I think this one is quite good. I can brew you a cup of this too. Let’s have a drink and let’s catch up.

If we were having coffee, first I’d ask about your weather, as I usually do. Ours has been mixed. Early in the week, we got some sunshine, but later, it’s been rainy. The daytime temperature usually rose to about 12°C.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you that my mother-in-law, my assigned staff and my support coordinator were supposed to have a talk on Tuesday. I wasn’t invited and the goal of the meeting remained unclear to my mother-in-law until the last moment. Then, it was canceled because my support coordinator was off sick. My mother-in-law took the opportunity to make it clear that, if it’s up to me and her, the possibility of me moving out of this care home should be a serious topic of discussion at a rescheduled meeting. She also pointed out that she’d like the behavior specialist present. This meeting, all going well, has now been set for March 2. I’m not sure whether I’ll be allowed to attend too. I think I should, honestly.

If we were having coffee, I’d share that, instead of coming to the meeting, my mother-in-law paid me an extended visit. We drove to Apeldoorn, like we seem to do regularly, and had lunch. Then we went into several shops to buy some little presents for one of my mother-in-law’s coworkers at her volunteer job, who will be going into hospital soon. It was there that I discovered the Indian chai green tea. We also went into a supermarket so that I could buy rolled oats, raw nuts and some other things. I fully intended to make overnight oats with those rolled oats. I did try, but either used too much milk or did something else wrong, because there was a lot of milk that hadn’t been absorbed by the rolled oats.

If we were having coffee, I would share that I did end up crafting a Valentine’s Day present for my husband after all. It’s a polymer clay heart with an arrow in Premo cadmium red with a Fimo Effect metallic gold edge and the arrow is done in Premo white. I textured the back using a ball of tinfoil, which turned out rather ugly – uglier than it would’ve been with visible air bubbles, which texturing aims to prevent. Oh well, that means I learned something.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you that I weighed myself on Thursday, as I do each week, and I lost another 0.6kg. I have only 2kg to lose to be at a healthy BMI. I am still slightly worried that some physical health condition is causing me to lose weight, because to be honest I’m not minding my diet much at all and I’m not exercising excessively either. However, I did notice that my Apple Watch estimates my cardio fitness level has increased. It’s still “low”, as it’s always been, but is slowly creeping towards “below-average”.

If we were having coffee, lastly I’d share that I didn’t walk as much as I’d have liked over the past week. I signed up for a challenge with other Apple Watch users in an app called Challenges. The challenge ran from Monday through Friday. I started out doing quite well on Monday, starting with a walk to visit the institution’s petting zoo, which is about a 45-minute walk total. My feet hurt terribly after it. During the rest of the week, I didn’t do so well. I ended up 48th out of 88, which I’m okay with all things considered. I’d have liked to be in the top half.

By the way, while at the petting zoo, I took a picture of the goats. I didn’t get to actually pet them.

How have you been?

The Wednesday HodgePodge (February 15, 2023)

Posted on by Astrid

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

1. Pantone’s color of the year for 2023 is Viva Magenta. Etsy’s color(s) of the year are indigo and honeycomb. Your thoughts? Would we find any of these three shades in your home or wardrobe? Is there a room in your house that needs painting this year? Will you do it yourself or hire out?
I don’t care for magenta and have no idea what color honeycomb is. I do love indigo. I do have magenta as a polymer clay color, but use it for mixing my own colors. For instance, I’m pretty sure magenta was in the color recipe for creating indigo I once read (although I’ve never tried it yet).

I have no idea whether any room in my and my husband’s house in Lobith needs painting. If it does, I guess my husband will do it.

2. Something you had to do recently that could be described “as exciting as watching paint dry”?
Try to condition my blue agate polymer clay. Though it was Fimo Soft, it was quite hard and crumbly. Doing the conditioning is a very repetitive process, which can be exciting if it yields results, but this time, it hardly did. I eventually gave up and chose another color.

3. Who would you most like to sit beside on a 10-hour flight? Tell us why? Have you ever taken a 10-hour flight?
My husband, of course. If I get bored of him talking about his latest special interest, I can just tell him I’m minding my own business and he won’t be disappointed. Oh wait, you can’t use mobile devices on flights. However, I can sleep on flights. Also, my husband would be the one I’d least easily get bored of sitting next to for ten hours anyway. I’ve never been on that long a flight. My longest (and first) one was 3 1/2 hours from Amsterdam to Moscow in 2000.

4. What’s something you did growing up that would get you into trouble?
Argue with my younger sister, throw temper tantrums, have meltdowns that were perceived as temper tantrums, engage in self-injurious behavior, but also general autistic weirdness. I’d get in trouble almost on a daily basis.

5. According to Google the top searches in 2022 were- Wordle, election results, Betty White, Queen Elizabeth, Bob Saget, Ukraine, Mega Millions, Powerball numbers, Anne Heche, and Jeffrey Dahmer.

Hmmm…what does this say about us? How many of these words did you search last year? What would you guess was your most “googled” word/phrase/question?
I think it just says that we search for what’s in the news currently (mostly). I mean, Ukraine and Queen Elizabeth were and I guess the election results refer to some election somewhere (no idea where). I saw the Jeffrey Dahmer thing too and think it relates to a movie about him which came out last year. Never heard of any of the other things.

I didn’t Google any of these things myself but did click through to the Jeffrey Dahmer Wikipedia article when it was trending on there.

My most searched for phrase on Google, no idea. On YouTube, probably something like “polymer clay unicorn”.

6. Insert your own random thought here.
My husband and I went to Apeldoorn on Sunday. At Hema, which my husband claims is his favorite store, we saw alien-style cookie cutters. My husband suggested they may be useful for polymer clay, if a bit large. I said that if they’d come in a unicorn shape, I’d get them.

Then yesterday when we were on the phone, he told me my Valentine’s present hadn’t yet arrived. I didn’t even really expect one, but I told him his Valentine’s present would soon go into the oven, as I had indeed finally managed to craft something. He then went on to guess (jokingly) that I’d baked him unicorn cookies, a particular brand of cookies that aren’t unicorn-shaped at all but that we keep talking about since I got them in my Christmas hamper. He then told me that, if I’d make cookies with my Valentine’s present, they’d automatically turn into unicorn cookies. So my guess is he found me some unicorn-shaped cutters. How cool!

The Wednesday HodgePodge (February 8, 2023)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m joining the Wednesday HodgePodge once again today. This week, it has a love theme, which had me a little confused about the date, since Valentine’s Day isn’t till next week. However, who cares? Here goes.

1. Something you’ve done recently that might be considered a labor of love?
I honestly can’t think of anything. I don’t really do much for others, truthfully, shameful as this is. I still haven’t even crafted anything for my husband for Valentine’s Day yet, even though I usually do something each year.

2. What’s one thing you love about being the age you are now?ab
I’m 36. This means, or so I think, still being young enough that my body isn’t completely betraying me yet (although due to my disabilities aging is starting to set in), but old enough to have at least some knowledge of who I am.

3. What do you value more: careful planning or the freedom to be spontaneous? Elaborate.
A little of both, I think. I mean, my days are fairly structured with my day schedule and I still think they aren’t structured enough. My desire for more clarity though isn’t because I don’t want to do anything sort of spontaneously, but because any transition is hard for me. And there still are many in my current day schedule.

4. A home cooked meal or a fancy restaurant? pink or red? watch the sunrise or watch the sunset? wine and cheese or champagne and chocolate?
Home-cooked meal, just because I can’t stand fancy restaurants due to the expectation of my table manners. Pink. Sunset. Chocolate (but skip the champagne please). In all honesty, none of the above particularly appeal to me.

5. What’s your definition of romance? Are you a romantic?
I have no idea about my personal definition of romance. It probably has to do with showing your significant other your love in a special, attuned-to-them way, or something. I’m not a romantic at all. I usually think up ways to show my love in a particularly special way to my husband, but in the planning, things often go horribly wrong so that I end up with nothing at all. As with my idea for a Valentine’s gift this year.

6. Insert your own random thought here.
I am struggling with too many ideas in my head for crafty projects and not enough of something I can’t quite pinpoint to actually make them happen. It could be the fact that my ideas are a chaotic mess and I have no sense of how to actually go from idea to plan to project. Of course, I blame my day schedule, but I’m pretty sure that’s not everything there is to it. Yes, the problem is in part that watching a YouTube tutorial on something takes time, something I do have in only hour-long segments with no guarantee that, when I start on something with one staff (say, watching a tutorial), I can actually follow it up with them too. I am not sure this is the entire problem though.

Things That Made Me Smile (February 6, 2023) #WeeklySmile

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I had a rather difficult first half of my day. Slept rather poorly because of some worries about my care situation and, while trying to talk through my thoughts with a staff, got even more frustrated. The evening isn’t going great either: lots of random staff switches and a fellow client who spiraled into crisis when I was in the living room. What better time then the present to focus on the positives? As one of my teachers once said, you can only be happy once in your entire life and that’s right now. For this reason, I’m joining Trent’s #WeeklySmile. Here goes.

This afternoon, the new student staff took me on a walk. First, we went to the cafeteria in the main office building to get a hot cocoa for me and latte macchiato for her.

Then, we walked some more, while chatting about random things. At one point, we got to talking about positive thinking and she told me to throw all my negative thinking onto the nearby highway to be run over by trucks. I told her an elaborate story about how my husband, who is a truck driver, would run over all my negative ideas on his way to Hoorn, which is his default route, and catch unicorns for me while there to fly all positivity my way. After all, the symbol for the city of Hoorn is the unicorn.

Then we started singing children’s songs. I sang (well, in my out-of-key way) the English version of “The Wheels on the Bus” to her, while she taught me some modern Dutch children’s songs. We also remembered an older one that I happen to have sung at a Kindergarten contest.

The rest of the day was stressful once again, but I cherish this moment.

January 2023 Reflections #WBOYC

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone on this final day of January. Last year, I loved looking back on each month as it related to my word of the year. I didn’t choose a word of the year for 2023. Not sure why, but I just couldn’t find one. I however do like these monthly reviews, so I’ll continue them. The monthly word of the year linky has also changed to #WBOYC, which is an acronym for What’s Been On Your Calendar. I’m joining in with this linky today for my monthly reflections.

This month, I started out with mixed feelings of hope and fear for the coming year. Just before New Year’s, my assigned staff had introduced the piece of paper with agreements re my care on it, which was slightly disappointing to me because of it being easy to interpret in multiple ways. As the weeks proceded, I found out that, indeed, it didn’t do much to improve my care. In fact, I still live moment-to-moment, not because I can’t get through each moment due to my mental health, but because the staff and home in general are so unpredictable.

Several weeks ago, I decided I definitely want to find another care home. This, obviously, requires a talk with the behavior specialist and support coordinator, but, so far, my support coordinator hasn’t responded to requests to share when she is available. I have it in my head she’s decided to ignore me until I shut up about wanting to leave. After all, several staff have started to talk nonsense about baby steps towards adjustment, and I’m pretty sure they don’t mean the steps towards adjustment should come from the staff. Even though I do experience good enough days here and there, I won’t shut up though until structural changes mean good enough is going to be the norm, and I’m sure this isn’t going to be here.

In other news, I had three visits from my mother-in-law during the month of January. I also saw my husband almost each week – missed only one because I had a cold.

I started working with the book The Artist’s Way at the end of the month. I’ve only just started with Morning Pages and am taking the program at a slower pace than is recommended, partly because I’m a slow reader and partly because I need to modify the Artist’s Dates to suit my needs. For example, since I don’t handwrite my Morning Pages, I have no reason to give myself a sticker on the envelope each day I completed them, and I can’t use regular stickers anyway. However, I saw 3D unicorn stickers and want to buy those and stick one on my laptop for each day I complete my Morning Pages for a week. Of course, since they are sold online, I may need to have them delivered to my in-laws because my care home’s address isn’t always recognized by delivery people. I’ll get to that tomorrow.

I wasn’t as crafty as I’d like to have been, but did slightly expand my horizons where it came to polymer clay, in that yesterday I started on a unicorn in a lying-down position and today I tried to decorate my latest standard, sitting unicorn with Hotfix rhinestones.

I didn’t write as many blog posts as I’d hoped during January. Of course, there was #JusJoJan, but even when the prompts did speak to me, I often didn’t write. I am still considering participating in #Write28Days in February, but honestly haven’t written anything for it. Not that I had any of the previous years I took part either, but then I was more motivated.

I did for the umpteenth time revive my Instagram account. This time, I’m actually finding some joy in it, because I actually find that I can interact with some people on there.

In the health department, January was a true mixed bag. I did get moving sufficiently, particularly walking, but healthy eating was a huge struggle. Over the month, I maintained my weight, so still 3kg to lose for me to be at a healthy BMI.

Lastly, I did attend the cerebral palsy online meeting for the provinces of Gelderland and Utrecht this evening. It was good. There will be a live meeting in March, so I’m hoping to go there too.