(Photo Description: A black and white photo of a wooden model ship.)
Sunday April 24th
The day started off with two chores that I somehow managed to finish by 11am. After which I watched YouTube and TikTok. That kept me busy until lunch.
In the afternoon I started making changes to this website. Some of which, you’ve probably already noticed. Isn’t this dark mode much easier on your eyes?
Jessica came home early from her walk. So we decided to go to the town’s shopping center. Or is that a village? The size of this place utterly confuses me! But I digress… we looked in some shops, bought a few things and made our way home again. The fresh air was nice. No hairy dog hugs today though. He wasn’t outside when we passed his house.
Monday April 25th
Anti chores day! I love it when my list is empty. I also got a longer than usual skype session with Dad. What a great way to start my day!
My plans to play videogames in the afternoon, were shattered when I decided to quickly change one tiny thing in the menu on the website. Hahaha! Quickly? Nope! It messed up the entire order of the menu and I spent about 2 hours fixing it. I really hate working with menus!
Luckily I got it fixed in the end and I closed out the day by FaceTiming Emily. Sometimes you just need a friend to put you in a better mood.
Tuesday April 26th
I had a restless night with back ache and felt really sluggish when waking up. I get to do medical fitness today. It’s not the right time to be sluggish.
Luckily for me – not so much for the nurses – their hectic morning caused them to need to send someone else to give me meds. Meaning I would need to put on pyjamas and go eat while I wait for my regular nurse to help me do the washing and dressing thing. So I had plenty of time to wake up and get my body into some kind of normal rhythm.
Medical fitness was… uhm… interesting? I’m not sure how I feel about it yet. I liked working with the gym equipment. That’s totally my thing. However, I was anxious because the last time I did fitness, was at rehab, where I didn’t have a good experience. It caused a lot of emotions, including stress and heaps of unneccesary physical pain.
New environments take a lot of processing before I feel comfortable. I had difficulty orientating myself due to the background noise and am not used to the way the physical therapist works in this new environment. I am used to one-on-one guidance. Here you get an explanation of what you need to do, and you are left to do it while the physio checks on other patients who are also working on their fitness goals.
In the intake, I yet again, failed to mention that my brain works more like that of someone on the autistic spectrum than that of a neurotypical person. So although I had fun with the gym equipment, I also had brain overload and came home feeling mentally exhausted. I consiquently fell asleep.
Next week I plan to explain my brain before starting another session and hope that this will make my experience better.
SideNote: In 2015 I went through a Neuropsychological assessment and an assessment for autism. These assessments show evidence that some of the things I struggle with, are equal to struggles of women my age who are on the autistic spectrum. I wasn’t however, given an autism diagnosis. This is because CRS plus hearing and vision loss can contribute and therefore be the reason why I struggle with certain things. I’ll write a separate blog about this if you’re interested!
Wednesday April 27th
Today is our King’s birthday and in traditional Dutch style, we celebrate. It’s an excuse to eat cake – or rather – Orange tompouce. This is a rectangular pastry with a layer of vanilla custard like filling in the middle. Usually topped with pink icing but today, the icing is orange. There’s also the Kleedjesmarkt or the Vrijmarkt. Literally translated as blanket market or free market, it’s a sort of flea market. Children are encouraged to gather their toys, games and other things they don’t use and together with their parents, they lay them out on a blanket somewhere in the city or town center and sell them. Parents often gather old household items too and create one big yard sale. There are usually other activities in the city or town center also. Lots of fun for kids and adults too.
I woke up still feeling tired after fitness yesterday and my muscles were definitely complaining. Jessica and I discussed my chores list. Together we decided she would take over some of my chores to give my muscles a break. We also really wanted to go to the Kleedjesmarkt. After Jessica was done with some chores, we grabbed my wheelchair and left the house.
It’s the first time in two years that the Kleedjesmarkt was allowed to take place and it was extremely busy. I enjoyed the happy atmosphere as Jessica tried to tell me about some of the things on sale. Nothing really of interest to us. However, we did come across a food car selling hot stroopwafels. We certainly couldn’t just go past it wthout buying a big stroopwafel. We split it in half and shared it. Half a stroopwafel equals half the sugar. My oh my, it was yummy!
At home we watched the live broadcast of the King’s celebrations. Every year he visits a different place in the Netherlands and the residents organise a party for him. This year he went to Maastricht. There were many activities for the King and his family to experience while walking through the city. Including some singing and dancing and a mini concert from André Rieu.
In the afternoon I did one chore and spent the rest of it sleeping.
Thursday April 28th
I have no chores today and that’s good because i still don’t feel like I have my normal energy level. Though the muscle pain feels somewhat better.
Most of the morning I watched TikTok and YouTube. After getting bored with that, I decided to clean up my desk. It may be big, but I sure know how to clutter it. So I did a brutal declutter and put some stuff in drawers or cupboards.
When Jessica got home from work and installed herself on the couch to watch TikTok, she came across a video with the Sea Shanty Wellerman as the sound track and some images of a model boat. ‘Oh’ she said. ‘Thaf’s an idea for your own TikTok channel. You can show off pics of your boats’.
‘Ooh no. I have a better idea, I’ll make a Stop Motion movie of one boat. It will eventually look like the boat is sailing across the floor’.
Together we decided which model I would use. I sat on the floor, put my phone in a tripod mount, attached it to a tripod, opened the Stop Motion effect in TikTok and started. Move the boat a little bit… tap the screen to make a pic… move the boat a little bit more… tap the screen for the pic… move the boat again… you get the idea. Some 20 minutes later I pushed a button to make TikTok string the pics together into a Stop Motion movie. Played it back to check it and…. THERE! Just as the boat was half way across the living room floor, I saw it! My arm… in the middle of the shot! I had to start the whole process all over again. Some 20 minutes later I had TikTok string a new set of pics together and as if by magic, my wooden model boat sailed happily around my living room.
The internet is always a great audience when I post something new. My TikTok, Twitter and Facebook were filled with hearts, likes and some great comments. I’m pleased with myself, even if the whole process took more energy than anticipated. With a happy heart, I sat in my lazy chair and took a nap.
Friday April 29th
The day started off with an irregular nurse asking ‘do you know who I am’? Uh.. yes… but if that’s how this morning routine is going to begin, I’m curious whether or not the rest of it will go smoothly.
It didn’t. It took longer than usual and I had to repeat myself multiple times but we got through it. Persistance is often the key to succeeding.
I also succeeded in doing one chore before crashing in the lazy chair. The time I spent on the ground yesterday while making a Stop Motion TikTok has caught up with my leg muscles.
So I watched Tiktok, YouTube and Netflix. Chatted to Emily in messenger and made sure to move regularly for toilet stops, hot tea stops, lunch and eventually dinner.
I finished the evening off by taking Jessica’s Nintendo Switch out of its case and played some Match 3 games. Very addictive.
Saturday April 30th
I had 2 chores, which I did at snail pace. In between I spent some time on social media.
After lunch I turned on the dishwasher, then Jessica and I decided we’d do something I’ve been excited about since thursday.
I had ordered a DVD. Yes… an old fashioned flat disc that you put in a player to watch. Simply because the movie on it, was cheaper on DVD than it was to buy online. When I tell you the name of the movie, you’re probably going to call me slow too – or both of us, as it was released in 2017 and we have never watched it. Oops!
The Greatest Showman. Do I need to tell you what it’s about? Or do you already know? We’ve heard so much music from the movie, that we finally decided it was time to watch it and boy was it a treat!
After it was finished, I emptied the dishwasher and really didn’t do anything else worth writing sbout.
Now it’s time to clean up my spelling and typing mistakes so that this blog can be posted.
Thanks for joining me on my weekly adventures.
CRS Life 