Everything Will Be Okay… #SoCS

Posted on by Astrid

This week’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “wish”. What a timely prompt, as we look back at 2024 and look forward to 2025. I don’t usually have any new year’s resolutions, like I say. Rather, I call them “hopes”. They’re just the same, like I say every year, but calling them hopes rather than resolutions gives me an excuse not to think about them again until the end of the year. Then, if I didn’t make any happen, I could say they were just hopes. Like wishes, they feel a bit devoid of reality sometimes.

I mean, for 2025, most people could wish for world peace. Not gonna happen, baby! In fact, as I read the news recently, I’m more and more scared that even in a country that hasn’t been at war in almost 80 years, we won’t see a full year of peace.

And now I’m scared that by voicing that fear, I’m single-handedly making it happen. That’s my twisted mind playing tricks on me though.

I do wish for there to be many more years in which this country can live in peace. I know that, in a similar way to what I said in my previous paragraph, my constantly saying that “everything will be okay in 2034”, when the “2034” aspect of it was based in a twisted way on the idea that World War III will start then, might be tempting fate. Thankfully, I don’t believe in manifesting in this sense. Besides, don’t many faiths believe in reversal of good and bad? Like, in the Christian tradition, there’s this thing about the first who will be last. Either way, I hope and wish that my twisted words about 2034 will indeed be true and everything will be okay.

The Wednesday HodgePodge (November 29, 2023)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. It’s been four weeks since I last participated in the Wednesday HodgePodge, so I thought I’d join in again. For those who don’t know what it is, the Wednesday HodgePodge is an opportunity for bloggers to answer a diverse selection of questions. Here goes.

1. Does anybody really know what day it is? Last week we skipped the Hodgepodge and I just assumed this week would find us in December, but nope. Still November. Do you wear a watch? Use a paper calendar or strictly electronic? What’s your favorite hour of the day? Why?
Well, usually I know what day it is without looking it up, but I was confused yesterday too. I told my staff, when she was looking up who would be working today, to look at the 28th. Nope though, it’s the 29th already.

I do wear a watch, ie. my Apple Watch. I bought it primarily for its activity tracking purposes, but honestly now I find myself using it as a timekeeping device too. In fact, my assigned staff at my former home said I’d keep track of staff’s whereabouts by the second. That wasn’t true, but oh well.

My favorite hour of the day is probably 8PM, as that’s when I’m most energetic. I am currently writing this blog post around that time.

2. Tell us something about how you celebrated the Thanksgiving holiday.
I didn’t. It’s not a thing here in the Netherlands. I did want to benefit from Black Friday, which is a thing (of course, since companies benefit from it ultimately), but when ordering something online that day, had forgotten to check the store’s newsletter whether they had any coupon codes.

3. What’s a sound you hate to hear?
Where to even get started? The vacuum cleaner and lawn mower come to mind now as most common sounds I hate, but I am generally very sound sensitive. Oh wait, a particularly annoying sound is people whistling.

4. Where do you not mind waiting?
Uhm, nowhere. I’m not very patient and can’t handle long periods of nothingness.

5. I really wish____________________________________.
That my one-on-one gets approved real soon.

6. Insert your own random thought here.
I’m having a nasty cold. Or maybe it’s COVID, since I didn’t get tested. I doubt it though, since I’m still at roughly the same fitness level I was last week. That is, my cardio fitness level according to my Apple Watch has decreased, but it isn’t like I can no longer go for 45-minute walks.

Color Mixing Recipes!

Posted on by Astrid

One of Mama Kat’s writing prompts this week asks us to write about something we collect or used to collect. Another asks us to write about something we’ve been working on this week. Yet another asks us to make one superficial wish. I am going to combine all of these and talk about color mixing recipes for polymer clay.

As regular readers of my blog will know, I am totally blind, but I did have a bit of useable vision growing up. As a result, I do still have a concept of color due to my memory of sight and also due to my synesthesia (in my case, ability to see Braille letters in color when I touch them).

As regular readers also know, my main creative hobby recently, besides blogging, is polymer clay. I love the fact that polymer clay comes in so many varieties of colors and that you can also color it with alcohol inks (which I’ve never used so far), soft pastels, acrylic paint, etc.

However, a few months ago, I discovered color mixing recipes. The vendor I impulsively bought a small collection of five recipes from, builds its recipes on four basic colors of Fimo soft: white, sunflower yellow, Indian red and brilliant blue. I immediately bought all four colors, but didn’t yet have a precision kitchen scale to be able to weigh out 0.25g, for example.

This past Sunday, I bought such a scale and also bought another collection, this time of 60 color recipes. Even though I can’t yet say I actually collect polymer clay color recipes, I would really like to.

That brings me to my superficial wish: an endless supply of free Fimo color recipes. There is an app that provides color recipes based on the colors in photos, but it’s available only on Android. Besides, one of my staff tried it yesterday and it constantly crashed. It also uses Fimo professional. Now I don’t mind that, since the advantage of Fimo professional is it actually comes in the true primary colors, such as true yellow, true magenta, etc. I would really love to be able to try to mix those colors too, as I’ve heard mixing actual true primaries creates more vivid colors than mixing fake primaries such as sunflower yellow and Indian red.

By the way, here is a blob of polymer clay in the first color I created using my new collection of color mixing recipes and my precision scale: moss green.

Of coursse, since I didn’t create anything with this color yet, it looks a bit weird, but I’ll be using it in a fall-inspired craft project I have in mind.

Since then, I’ve created two more colors, both for the fall-inspired project too: camel and burnt sienna. I have also been oohing and aahing at a ton of color recipes I would like to buy someday still. But they’re better if they don’t cost me money. So, if Mama Kat’s friendly genie would please pop by me and grant me that endless supply of free Fimo color mixing recipes, I could create all the colors I want.

Mama’s Losin’ It

Three Wishes

Posted on by Astrid

I’m trying to participate in 7 Days 7 Posts organized by Jessica from Daysixtyfive. That is, I won’t promise I’ll complete the challenge, as I’m having a nasty cold. Yes, again. I hope I don’t end up with a fever this time. That being said, if it doesn’t get worse than it is now, I’ll probably be able to do fine.

Today’s topic is about wishes. You have just been granted three wishes. What are they?

I initially thought that we’re supposed to have big, world-changing wishes like peace everywhere. Then I saw Jessica’s post and her first two wishes are just for herself and her family. Maybe we all are self-centered like this, so I don’t need to feel shameful about wishing stuff for just myself. Here goes.

1. Physical and mental wellbeing. I purposefully wish for wellbeing, not health, as the genie might interpret health to mean I want to get cured of my disabilities. I don’t. I want to remain blind and autistic and having mild cerebral palsy. I even don’t want to be cured of my dissociative disorder, in that I want to remain multiple. What I do want is to be is stable mentally, less anxious. I also want my chronic physical ailments to go away. And while we’re here, I wish this nasty cold away and not to return.

2. To be close to my husband. I would wish for a suited care facility in my husband’s area, so that I could visit him more often. A suited care facility would be much like the one I’m in now, with a day center on grounds, lots of sensory equipment, the staffing level for me to be able to enjoy regular leisure activities, etc.

3. Unlimited ParaTransit access. This was the first that came to mind after a care facility close by my husband. Bigger things like wellbeing hadn’t even come to mind yet. I could wish for an endless stream of money, so that I can hire my own taxi drivers, but I don’t think I’d feel any better then. However, the ability to travel wherever I want without having to worry about public transportation, is very high on my list of desires. Interestingly, for the cost it took to make all trains and buses wheelchair-accessible, the government could have made this a reality for all majorly disabled people.

What would you wish for if you were granted three wishes?