#WeekendCoffeeShare (January 3, 2021)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. It’s the middle of the night and I’m thinking of actually making myself a coffee. I’m too scared though that the night staff will hear me. I do have a Senseo coffee maker in my room, but still it might make a noise. Instead of making a coffee, I’m joining in with #WeekendCoffeeShare. This will be the last week of Alli’s hosting it. From next week on, Natalie will be taking over. I hope it will continue to be a success. Anyway, let’s have a virtual coffee and let’s catch up.

If we were having coffee, I’d share that the holidays were pretty good, but I’m also so grateful they are over. I spent new year’s in Lobith with my husband. My oldest sister-in-law also came by for a few hours. It was good.

If we were having coffee, I’d share that, as you can tell, I’m really hyper right now. I tried to go to sleep at around 9:45PM, but soon decided I didn’t want to sleep yet. I texted my husband about the wax melts I’d bought for him and then went back to bed. Still no luck. Let me just say it’s now nearly half past three at night and I’m still wide awake.

I have mostly been reading other blogs. I have a lot of inspiration for new blog posts now. Hope my energy doesn’t dry up soon, so that I can actually write those blog posts.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you too about all the wax melts I bought. I used to have a Yankee Candle Scenterpiece wax melt burner, but I left it in Lobith because it’d be a bit of a hazard here. Not that it gets really hot or produces flames, but I still don’t want liquid wax all over my phone (it almost happened once when I still lived in our old home).

Anyway, now my husband apparently likes to burn wax melts, but he says I’m the scent expert. I am, a little, with respect to essential oils. I wouldn’t say I am a better judge of what are good wax melt scents or what my husband would like than he is though. Still, of course I’m honored.

I bought two Scenterpiece meltcups. These are €5.99 each, but the good thing is their cups can be reused for smaller wax melts. I got the sun-drenched apricot rose and the frosty gingerbread meltcups. The other ones I got are tarts, which are sold at €1.99 each. In total, shipping included, I spent about €27.

It feels good to be able to spend money again. Over the past few months, I’d hardly been spending money on fun things, because I’d worried about my long-term care copay. Like I said yesterday, it will likely increase by at least €70 a month, but my husband reassured me I can handle that.

That being said, it also feels very good to be able to find free stuff, like some books I got thanks to Bookbub. It doesn’t feel like I’ve been living a scroogey life at all.

What’s been going on with you?

Editing to add: I had just published this post when I realized it’s my 600th, woot woot! *Does a little happy dance.* Here’s to many more posts.

2020: The Year in Review

Posted on by Astrid

So 2020 is almost over with, thank goodness! Not that it was a totally bad year for me personally, but I really hope 2021 is better for the world at large.

I started the year hoping to settle in at the care facility. I did, but it did take some more accommodating from the staff than I’d expected they would be willing to. In July, for this reason, I was granted the highest care profile for blind people (I had the second-highest until then). I felt very mixed emotions about it. I mean, even though I had originally asked my support coordinator to look at that care profile when applying for my long-term care funding, I do remember her saying I would definitely not qualify. It turned out that I did.

Then in November, after I’d been in some major crises, the staff suggested I sign an official request for extra care hours. I just heard this morning that it got approved. Next week, the staff and manager are going to discuss how to use the extra care and whether new staff will need to be hired.

I hoped to settle in at the day center. That didn’t work out, as the center closed down due to COVID in mid-March. It has since reopened to some of the homes, where clients can utilize a specific room for their home. However, many clients in my home fare better now that we get day activities from the home.

COVID also had its consequences for my marriage. I had just been trying to learn to use public transportation, like I’d hoped I could, when COVID hit the Netherlands and care facilities were closed to visitors. Even though we’re in a second lockdown now, my facility does allow visitors this time around. However, my husband and I agreed it wouldn’t be sensible for me to use public transportation as of now.

As a result of the first lockdown, I didn’t see my husband at all for March, April and most of May. Thankfully, our marriage survived.

Looking back at my hopes for 2020, I see I did pretty well considering the circumstances. I mean, I didn’t settle in at the day center or learn to use public transportation, but like I said above, that’s to blame on COVID.

Health-wise, I didn’t lose weight, but I am much more active now than I was in 2019 and I do eat okay too. I could certainly do better, like I tried for some weeks in late October and early November. I’ll need to activate my water reminder app again too.

With respect to my mental health, I certainly took good care of that. I had had it as a secret wish to lower my Abilify dose, but I never did. However, that’s okay considering I wasn’t doing as great mentally as I expected to be. I hope I did finally find a PRN medication that helps me though.

I also blogged much more regularly in 2020 than in 2019. I didn’t do any other writing projects, mostly because I feel too inadequate.

Lastly, that self-care excuse of a goal I definitely did attain. I love love love essential oils.

How was your 2020?

Gratitude List (December 26, 2020) #TToT

Posted on by Astrid

Hello everyone and a belated merry Christmas to you all! As usual on Saturdays nowadays, I’m writing a gratitude list. I’m joining in with Ten Things of Thankful (#TToT). Enjoy!

1. I am grateful for Jesus! I’m so grateful I became a Christian this year and this time hopefully for real. I say this because I’ve been a progressive believer for many years but hardly took my faith seriously at all. I still could take it more seriously and I’m praying God will open my heart and mind to him even more.

2. I am grateful for my family. My parents sent me a Braille-typed Christmas card and my sister sent me a card too. This reminds me that, even though we don’t have the closest relationship, I still matter to them.

3. I am grateful for my husband and in-laws.

4. I am grateful for great Christmas meals. Yesterday, my husband and I made use of the fact that people can legally have two (actually three on Christmas and boxing day) visitors and celebrated Christmas with my in-laws. We had a delicious dinner.

Also, the bakery in a nearby village sent the entire care facility a Christmas lunch of freshly-baked buns. Normally they give it to the day center in that village, where the clients help package their goods. However, that day center is closed due to COVID. Most clients from my care facility don’t work at the day center there, but some do and the bakery was so generous as to give us all the lunch.

5. I am grateful for my psychiatrist. As we wrote on Tuesday, she completely validated us. I haven’t yet needed my new PRN medication.

6. I am grateful the days are getting longer again. Ugh, how I hate the dark days!

7. I am grateful for the motivation and focus to be able to read again. I’m reading a middle grade novel, but that’s okay.

8. I am grateful for uplifting, Christian music. My husband has some on in the car and I discovered some on Spotify.

9. I am grateful for sausage rolls this morning. My husband joked that he was going to eat them all if I didn’t make it downstairs soon enough. I guess I did though.

10. I am grateful for a lie-in this morning. My husband didn’t get up at 7:30AM like usual on Sundays (maybe because it’s Saturday today), so I slept in longer than usual too.

I hope you all had a very happy Christmas. What have you been grateful for lately?

#WeekendCoffeeShare (December 20, 2020)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi #WeekendCoffeeShare people, and everyone else too of course! Today is a cloudy, relatively mild day. I, as usual, just had my last drink for the day – just water today. If you’d like a cup of coffee, that’s fine by me though. Regardless, let’s catch up.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you my sister and her little family visited me on Monday. They were originally supposed to visit yesterday, but the prime minister was expected to announce a strict lockdown Monday evening. Spoiler alert: he didn’t. While all non-essential stores are closed, people are still allowed to leave their house and visit others. The care agency pandemic team also didn’t close my care facility.

The family consists of my sister, her husband and their 15-month-old daughter Janneke. Janneke was really cute. She isn’t walking or standing yet, but she does crawl around a lot. She can also say some words and is almost completely potty trained. My sister is really proud of her for that last thing.

We got takeout pizza for us adults and a bit of French fries for Janneke. I loved my salami pizza.

If we were having coffee, I would share that I had the first “therapy” appt with my nurse practitioner on Thursday. It didn’t really go well. Not that I’d expected it to, but I had hoped for a little less trivializing and rationalizing of my symptoms from both our sides. I know, we will maintain the status quo on the nature of my insiders until or unless I ever decide to get an assessment. It is pretty likely my nurse practitioner doesn’t even think I need one. After all, he said that considering my insiders to be an extreme form of doubt is a little off, but there’s no need to compare my symptoms to anything anyone else experiences. Well, honestly, yes, there is or we won’t be knowing where we’re headed at all. I think though that most of us prefer not having a clue what we’re doing to being told we’re all products of an attention-seeking, manipulative imagination.

If we were having coffee, lastly I would share that I went to Lobith yesterday. I had some conflicting feelings about it, but I was happy to see my husband. It was good. My husband and I talked faith extensively and he encouraged me to grow in my belief. My husband knows far more about the Bible than I do and he explained some about how to interpret various passages.

What have you been up to lately?

Gratitude List (December 19, 2020) #TToT

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone! This isn’t going to be a very long post I think, as I’m in Lobith and don’t have my computer with me. For this reason, typing is a little hard. I am going to try to write a gratitude list anyway. I think Ten Things of Thankful (#TToT) is back, so I’m participating in that.

1. I am grateful for my external keyboard. Without it, I wouldn’t be able to type this post at all. It may not be as convenient as my laptop, but it’ll do.

2. I am grateful I can still go to my husband’s and my house in LObith despite the lockdown. The “strict” lockdown was announced Monday evening but it hardly has any consequences for me. After all, i didn’t go to stores or the like at all.

3. I am grateful my sister and her family visited me on Monday. They were afraid the lockdown would apply to care facilities too, so they visited me before it was announced.

4. I am grateful to have seen my 15-month-old niece. I hadn’t seen her (or my sister for that matter) in over a year.

5. I am grateful we could get pizza takeout when my sister visited.

6. I am grateful for hamburgers. We cooked those at day activities on Wednesday.

7. I am grateful I was able to E-mail my nurse practitioner. I had an appt with him on Thursday, which didn’t go too well. I am grateful I was able to explain why I had negative feelings about it.

8. I am grateful for myhusband’s encouragement. He was very firm with me after my appt with my nurse practitioner, but I am so glad he helped me get my positive mojo back.

9. I am grateful for chocolate. My husband and I paid a quick visit to my in-laws on the way to Lobith and they had some. Of course, I am also grateful to have seen the in-laws themselves.

10. I am grateful for my ability to talk faith with my husband. Today, he was able to answer some of my questions that have led me to doubt my faith.

What are you grateful for?

Gratitude List (December 12, 2020)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi all on this rainy Saturday. I am feeling so grateful for a lot of things right now. Let me share! I was going to be linking up with Ten Things of Thankful, but then I saw the linky isn’t up this week. This isn’t holding me back though.

1. I am grateful for the staff who supported me through my crisis on Sunday.

2. I am grateful for my physical health. This should always be something I’m grateful for, but I’m specifically listing it today.

3. I am grateful a fellow client who had cold symptoms tested negative for COVID. I was very worried already when I found out he was in isolation yesterday. The staff weren’t notified of his negative test results until mid-afternoon today.

4. I am so grateful the above means we aren’t in isolation at our care home as of yet. This means that my appointments with mental health for the coming weeks can go forward (unless I or a fellow client develops symptoms suggestive of COVID, of course).

5. I am grateful for my husband, as always. We have been talking more than we used to over the past week and that’s truly a blessing.

6. I am grateful to be able to read the Bible on my phone. I now have a six-day streak on YouVersion and am hoping to get to my first perfect week tomorrow.

7. I am grateful to have found and consistently listened to First United Methodist Church of Austin’s sermons.

8. I am grateful there still was a meal I liked in the freezer this evening. I am a rather picky eater and I didn’t like what I had for dinner this evening. Then I microwaved another meal we had in the freezer, but the rice got all weird from microwaving it straight from the freezer or something. I feel pretty bad for having thrown out two meals to finally accept a third one, but well, I can’t change it now. All I can do is try to train myself to be a less picky eater in the future.

9. I am grateful for paracetamol. My feet cramped a little (well, a lot) this evening, but thankfully the pain is pretty mild now that I took some paracetamol.

10. I am grateful for the sounds of nature CD I listened to in the sensory room this evening.

So what are you grateful for?

Moving Beyond Shame

Posted on by Astrid

I’ve been struggling a lot lately. I feel shame over a lot of things. Then again, my husband said that shame is only useful for the one second you realize you should’ve done different. Then you need to move on.

I just read a part of Bobby Schuller’s book You Are Beloved in which he tells me that God’s love is the antidote to shame. Jesus, he says, did not act out of shame. Maybe he didn’t even feel it. He didn’t care about his reputation, inviting the lowest-status people of his time to eat with him. Schuller notes that eating with someone in Jesus’ time on Earth means seeing them as equals.

Jesus regarded people who didn’t believe they belonged, as equals. Of course, he is God, so we can never measure up to that, but we can rest assured that he loves us no matter what.

God, help me move beyond the feeling of shame towards an experience of peace. I know You love me for who I am. Please help me see this with all my heart. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

This post was written for Five Minute Friday, for which the prompt this week is “Beyond”. I didn’t set a timer, but I think I did a pretty good job of doing this piece in five minutes.

Fighting the Depression Demon

Posted on by Astrid

I was in yet another crisis yesterday. When the extra staff was about to leave, I crashed and started crying. The staff felt somehow obliged to stay and, when she finally left, another staff tried to comfort me. I cried for like three hours.

Then today it seemed to start all over again. I decided to call my husband, who told me to push the depressive thoughts away. I was going to say I feel like a selfish monster for having even unconsciously made the staff stay yesterday, but my husband said that I need to push away those thoughts too.

My husband kept repeating that I’m not a monster and I need to stop those thoughts now. He said that these thoughts are destructive. I find it hard to understand, but maybe on some level I do. I mean, I feel that I’m wicked and that’s why I’m depressed and that’s why I ask for more and more help and that’s why people leave me and that’s why I’m depressed. I can see now that this is a vicious cycle. I’m not sure it isn’t true, but I remember from the little cognitive behavior therapy I took years ago that really it doesn’t matter. It’s non-functional. Or destructive even. And that’s what matters.

My husband tried to remind me that God loves me. I kept getting stuck on technicalities such as the fact that I wasn’t baptized. At first he told me: “So then get baptized if it helps you.” I can’t see how I could be baptized in this time of social distancing.

Then my husband started to tell me that I am at a crossroads and can take one step towards despair or one step towards hope each second. Maybe even if I don’t get baptized at this point, because well I can’t, I can take a number of baby steps towards hope. Towards God.

Lord, please help me take every second as it comes. Please help me choose each second to take that one step, even if it’s a snail’s step (or crawl, whatever snails do), closer to You.

Lord, thank you for bringing my husband into my life. Thank you for speaking through him and reminding me to live positively. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Now I’m totally clueless about the supposed format of prayers, so I have no idea whether this was a proper one. I trust God hears me whether my prayer was written properly though.

Gratitude List (November 28, 2020) #TToT

Posted on by Astrid

Hello everyone. Like I mentioned yesterday, I have not been more grateful than I am now in a long while. Part of the reason is my recent depression, but part is also my increased attitude of gratitude. For this reason, I am trying to make posting about gratitude a weekly habit again. As always, I am linking up with Ten Things of Thankful (#TToT).

1. Quiet dinners in my room. Last week and early in the week, I was very stressed out about needing to eat in the communal room with the other clients. This has been a stressor for me for a long while already. I was given the opportunity to eat in my room if I didn’t cope in the communal room, but was struggling to say I didn’t cope on time. For this reason, me and the staff decided I for now will always have dinner in my room. Yesterday, a staff noted that I eat much slower now.

2. Extra staff. I may’ve mentioned this before, but there is now an extra staff member to support me in the evenings. I am not yet sure how they will cover this financially, but we’ll see. Today, I thought there wouldn’t be an extra staffer, but thankfully there was.

3. Podcasts. I’ve mainly been listening to church services. I am so grateful for my podcast app that enables me to listen to church services from all over the world. Oh and of course also other podcasts, like the Parcast Network originals.

4. The YouVersion Bible app. I have only a three-day streak so far, because I missed one day of Bible reading on Wednesday. I am determined to make this streak much longer though. Right now, I’m on day six of a seven-day devotional on forgiveness.

5. Soaping supplies. My day activities staff ordered 3kg each of white and clear soap base as well as a few micas (powdered colorants). She already ordered them early last week, but they finally arrived last Thursday. In addition, my husband brought my Christmas tree soap mold. I am really looking forward to soaping again.

6. Cake decorating. In addition to the extra staff in the evenings, there’s an extra staff in the morning on week-ends. The one who had this shift today, asked me earlier in the week whether I’d like to decorate cupcakes with her today. We ended up using regular slices of cake, not cupcakes, because these are easier to decorate. I loved it.

7. Beautiful skies and sunsets. I regret not having taken a photo of the pink sky we had on Monday. I didn’t really see it, but did see some and loved the staff’s description. Also, on Sunday, I saw the sunset. This was really cool.

8. Eating lunch in the car. My husband came by this afternoon to take me out to lunch. Since all restaurants and such are closed due to COVID, we drove to a Subway drive-through. We each had a chicken teriyaki wrap. It was delicious!

9. Homemade wraps. Okay, they weren’t as good as the Subway chicken teriyaki one, but they were good too. We made wraps with chicken and lettuce on Monday and, because we had some wraps still left over, made some more with minced meat and beans on Thursday.

10. Good talks with my husband. He keeps me interested with his knowledge of theology in particular.

What have you been grateful for lately?

Grateful for Love

Posted on by Astrid

Today’s Five Minute Friday (FMF) prompt is “Grateful”. It truly speaks to me, even though I, being from the Netherlands, don’t celebrate Thanksgiving this week. In fact, all I do for it is look all over the Internet to see whether the Apple Watch I want is on sale for Black Friday (it isn’t).

That being said, I haven’t felt more grateful than I feel now in a long while. Here’s why…

I feel so immensely grateful for my husband. He loves me and cares enough about me to show me his love multiple times daily even though we don’t live together. He must miss me, but rather than turn around and find someone else to live with, he tells me he loves me too many times to count. In fact, when COVID hit here first, we weren’t allowed to see each other for three months and yet he still loved me.

Last week, I wrote about grieving the loss of my “normal”, functioning self. Today, I am so immensely grateful to be loved for who I am. Not just by my husband, but by God as well.

“You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” (Ephesians 4:22-24 NIV)

I have been meditating a lot on this Bible passage and somehow come across it almost on a daily basis when reading about Christianity. It was the start of the Bible reading for the First United Methodist Church of Baton Rouge, LA sermon I referred to on Tuesday. More than commanding me to be Godlike, it speaks to me in that my old self doesn’t matter. I am loved by God just the way I am.

Okay, this took me longer to write than five minutes, but then again it usually does. Sorry about that. In fact, I took probably about five minutes to find, read and copy/paste the Bible passage. Well, at least I tried to keep it short.