Author Archives: lydias

This is one of Pixar’s newest short films.

It’s about a lonely island who wishes he had a sweetheart.

I can’t say anything else about it without giving away spoilers.

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, essays, short stories, poems, and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

5 Reasons You Shouldn’t Feel Bad About Not Talking To Toxic Parents via Gaby_Moss. My parents have always been wonderful to their kids. The lessons in this post apply to all kinds of relationships, though, which is why I’m sharing it with you today. Some relationships only work if you sharply limit your interactions with the other person. Sometimes they can’t be made to work at all. The sooner everyone realizes this, the better off we will all be.

Hidden in a Suitcase. Advanced warning: this isn’t a cheerful essay. It’s about addiction, incarceration, grief, and loss. It’s also about discovering who you really are, though, which is a big part of the reason why I enjoyed it so much.

All Weather Friend. You’ve heard of a fair weather friend, right? This is the exact opposite of that.

Honesty Is The Best Policy But Insanity is The Best Defence via CrazyTrain17. Sometimes this kind of tongue-in-cheek approach to life is the best way to approach things.

Just Men via Johncoyote. Wow, this was powerful stuff.

From Waking Awake:

It turned the body’s eyes to examine Enri, who sat very still in his cell. Enri knew, Sadie could see at once. She had never told him—she never told any of the children, because she was their caregiver and there was nothing of care in the truth—but Enri had always been more intuitive than most.

What have you been reading?

I’ve blogged about my struggles with procrastination and my inbox before.

Sometimes I’m pretty good at keeping it clear.

As of this moment, though, it’s overflowing again.

I really need to clear it out and get back to the people who have been waiting so patiently for me to respond, so that’s what I’ll be doing today.

In the meantime, I’d love to know what you’re struggling to improve in your own lives. How is it going for you? What do you do when you encounter a set-back?

This game tries to find out!

It’s a simulation of driving down a rural highway. There’s a red stop signal with a white hand that flashes on the screen after a few moments. The faster you tap any button on your keyboard, the better your score will be.

My scores gave me a driving age as young as 21 and as old as 46 once when I got distracted by one of the animals on the side of the road. (The driving ages range from 18 to 95 from what I could tell).

I’d love to know what your scores are!

I’ve decided to occasionally begin recommending books on my blog again. This is the first post in what I hope will be a long and interesting series.

This weekend I started reading Orphan #8: A Novel by Kim van Alkemade.

It’s about a preschooler named Rachel Rabinowitz who is orphaned in 1919. She’s separated from her older brother and sent to live at an orphanage run by a doctor who uses the children under his care as test subjects in medical experiments.

No, this isn’t a horror novel.

It’s actually loosely based on real events. A hundred years ago, prisoners, orphans, and the mentally ill were used as test subjects. Some of the experiments were dangerous. Many of them were painful and/or caused longterm health problems.

Rachel grows up and becomes a nurse. She seems to have put her difficult past behind her and moved on to create a happy life for herself as an adult.

One day she recognizes one of her patients. The doctor who once experimented on her is now a sick, old man who is relying on her to look after of him.

How should we treat people who have harmed us terribly? Does it matter if they remember us or even realize what they’ve done?

The ethical questions in this book are what make me love it so much.

There are so many different ways to approach them. I can’t discuss most of them without giving away spoilers, but the storyline really made me think.

I will say that this isn’t a good choice for people who are squeamish. Rachel was purposefully infected with several different diseases while she was under the doctor’s care, and they were described in detail early on in the plot.

Knowing exactly what happened to her early on her life is critical to understanding the woman she became, though. Her character development wouldn’t make sense otherwise.

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, comic strips, and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

Why I Stopped Hating Coyote Brush via barbsbooks. The most interesting thing about this post to me was the idea of hating a plant. There are plants I avoid (thistles; poison ivy; poison oak). There are plants I only enjoy from afar due to allergies (all sorts of flowers).  I can’t say I’ve ever hated a plant for growing, although this probably has a lot to do with the fact that I don’t have a garden. It would definitely be frustrating to watch something you were tending struggle because another plant was stealing water, sunlight, or nutrients from it.

The Whole Reason We Have Holidays. American readers, are you feeling family togetherness today?

Hugging 101. I agree with this 100%.

Is Thanksgiving a Celebration of Binge Eating? via AuthorHelenJ. None of these things have ever crossed my mind at holiday dinners. This is yet another reason why it’s never a good idea to police what other people do or don’t eat, though.

The 1820s in Fashionable Gowns via MimiMatthewsEsq. What I found fascinating about this link was how much we know about dress fashions from nearly 200 years ago. This isn’t something I would have thought about or preserved for future generations. It’s wonderful that there are people in this world who pay attention to this stuff, though!

From Tiny Little Messes:

I generally know better than to go down these paths, but the tricky thing about chronic pain is that it blurs your mind, weakening not just your body but also your psyche, leaving it with just enough strength to follow the path of least resistance, to retreat to the most dimly-lit hiding place.

From It’s Not Rude to Say No:

The nice girl wasn’t created in a vacuum. The nice girl is a walking coping mechanism. From childhood most women are inundated by the media and their community with the notion that they exist to nurture everyone but themselves, that they must serve as stagnant characters propelling the narrative of the lives of others.

What have you been reading? Which plants do you hate? 😀

Last year I shared a few Thanksgiving stories from my American childhood. It was so much fun that thought I’d continue that tradition this year.

I had two pet hamsters growing up named Cherry and Pretty.

The vast majority of the time they lived ordinary hamster lives in their cages and ate ordinary hamster diets: water, seeds, pellets, and the occasional nibble of a fresh vegetable.

Thanksgiving was one of the few exceptions to this rule, though.

You see, we spent years of my childhood living thousands of miles away from our relatives. Birthdays and holidays were almost always spent as a nuclear family. I was mostly accustomed to it, although sometimes I missed having everyone around.

As a child I wondered if my hamsters felt the same way. Could they smell the delicious food my parents were making in the kitchen? Did they miss their hamster siblings? Did they want to join us as the dinner table?

There was only one way to find out.

After the human members of the family had eaten our fill, Cherry and Pretty were invited to the table to nibble on the scraps of meat, cooked vegetables, and mashed potatoes left behind on our plates.

They ate so much that their little cheeks couldn’t hold another bite. This was nothing like their typical dinners!

I’m smiling at the thought of this memory as I think of my family today.

Happy Thanksgiving to my U.S. readers.

If you have a pet, I hope you’ll give him or her a treat.

If you don’t have a pet, pick out a treat for yourself instead.

Ha!

This short film reminds me of the scene in The Magician’s Nephew where Aslan sings Narnia into existence.

A few years ago I wrote a post about what people can do instead of exchanging gifts over the holiday season. It’s proven to be an extremely popular topic for my blog this time of year, so I thought I’d update that list with 5 more suggestions.

6. Bake Cookies. The nice thing about this idea is that there are many ways to include people of all ages and abilities. If someone isn’t physically able to stand and roll out the dough or isn’t old enough yet to use a hot stove, he or she could still decorate the cookies. This is also something that could easily be scaled up or down depending on the group’s attention span. I have recipes that will make a dozen cookies and other recipes that easily make 5 or 6 times that amount.

7.  Take a Hike. Taking a long walk is one of my favourite things to do on holidays if the weather is at all cooperative. This is also something that can be scaled up or down depending on how fit everyone is. I have family members who “hike” on flat, paved roads and others who thrive on terrain as steep and challenging as the Grand Canyon. (I’m somewhere in-between those extremes! 🙂 )

8. Have a Sing-a-Long. My grandparents used to have everyone do this at Christmas when I was a child. We mostly sang traditional Christmas carols like Away in a Manger back then, but any kind of song would work well as long as people know the tune.

9. Reminisce. Bring out old home movies or photographs and tell stories about the people who are in them. My extended family does something like this every once in a great while, and I’m surprised every time by the new stories that are uncovered by the right comment or picture.

10. Watch Youtube Videos. My nephew loved showing the adults in the family his favourite Youtube videos when he was younger. I wouldn’t have thought of it myself, but it’s a fun way to get a conversation rolling or take a break from other activities. The cute animal videos alone could keep my family interested for quite a while.