I was recently interviewed at Ginger Nuts of Horror about what it’s like to be a female fan and reviewer of the horror genre. Reviewing Horror From a Female Perspective With Lydia Schoch is the title of the interview.
May you all enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed participating in it!
Filed under Personal Life
Each month I share photos from one of the parks in Toronto to show my readers what our landscape looks like throughout the year. This is the twelfth instalment of this series.
Due to reader demand, it will not be the final one! Keep an eye out for another update on our two damaged tree friends a few months from now once we know how they fared throughout the winter.
Click on February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, and December to read the earlier posts.
It was 3 Celsius (37 Fahrenheit) but felt like 0 Celsius (32 Fahrenheit) on this month’s visit. Once again, this temperature was warmer than we’d usually expect for this time of the year thanks to climate change. Typical January temperatures here generally remain below freezing all month long even before windchill is factored in. The somewhat sunny sky on this visit was also a bit out of the ordinary.
If you do decide to visit Toronto in January, pack warm clothing that you can easily wear as multiple layers and bring a pair of slip-resistant boots along with the usual hat, gloves, scarf, and a warm winter coat. Frostbite is a real risk here on much chillier days than this one, and it can happen quickly on the coldest days.
The weather was decent at the park this time. We really got lucky this year.
There is beauty to be found at the park now when everything is dead or dormant if you have a poetic mind. For example, such blue skies are a rare, precious gift in January!
The running and walking trail is once again unusable. This was one of the driest sections, and even it was muddy and filled with patches of slowly-melting ice.
This is a more accurate representation of the state of the trail in general. It’s icy, slippery, and muddy in the few places where the ice has begun to melt. Even people who don’t have any mobility issues must take care when walking on it. Running on it is nearly impossible now. The few joggers I noticed had switched to running on the sidewalks instead.
Some days are much snowier and slipperier than this one was! It’s common to see layers of snow and ice on all surfaces now. We were lucky to have mostly dry sidewalks on this particular day.
The snow is gorgeous when it sparkles in the winter sunlight in those moments, but anyone could easily slip and fall on the ice that is often hidden beneath all of that enticing snow.
There are other dangers in January park visits as well. We saw dozens of other visitors this time due to the nice weather, but this area can be isolated on colder, wetter days. Speaking as a woman here, I wouldn’t feel comfortable visiting the park alone then. This is a very safe area of the city in general, but it’s far enough away from busier streets that finding help could be a little tricky if I slipped on the ice and got injured or if a stranger tried to harm me.
Do keep these things in mind and be cautious if you’re ever in southern Ontario in the dead of winter and decide to visit any of our lovely parks. The chances of anyone getting hurt are low, but it’s always best to be prepared.
In happier news, the squirrels were running around doing cheerful rodent things on this warm winter day.
And I wonder if this hunk of melting snow was once a snow person?
There certainly would have been enough snow for that before it started melting.
This scene is virtually identical to the one from last month.
This one also seems to be the same as it was last month. It’s interesting to see leaves, brown and dead as they may be, in the middle of winter.
Yours truly all bundled up for winter. Tree for scale.
Another big change from our last visit had to do with how many layers I needed to be comfortable outside. I wore everything recommended at the beginning of this post other than the boots. I run a little cold in general, but boots would have been a bit much for the dry sidewalks I knew I’d be sticking to for the most part. People whose bodies run hot and who love winter might have been able to do without the scarf and gloves on this particular day if they don’t linger too long.
Face masks aren’t mandatory outdoors in Toronto, but they do help keep you a little warmer when that icy cold wind blows. I also find it easier to keep my mask on than to fiddle with it before going indoors again. The Covid-19 numbers have skyrocketed here this winter, so that’s yet another reason to be cautious and leave the mask on until I’m safe at home again.
Here is our tree friend who lost half of its branches in a storm from last winter.
Here is our tree friend who lost a third of its branches in a storm from last winter. This part of the park has many massive trees in it and therefore seems to hold onto snow a little better than other sections.
It’s still too soon to say how either of them are faring this winter. Let’s keep our fingers crossed!
Finally, here is what the walkway looks like on a warm January day when most of the ice has had a chance to melt. The evergreen trees that provides such nice shade in the summer can keep this area slippery for quite a while after big winter storms, but it was pretty walkable when I visited this time.
Thank you all for taking these virtual walks with me over the last eleven months! You’ve now seen the park during every month of the year.
We will visit it one final time this spring when I check in on how those two damaged trees survived this winter after being so terribly damaged last winter.
Be well, friends.
Filed under Personal Life
Have you ever taken a moment to think about how weird the writing process can be?
When it’s done well, the end result can be characters and settings that were so well-developed it’s hard to remember they don’t actually exist in our world.
That in an of itself is just a little strange (in a delightful sort of way) if I spend too much time pondering it, but it’s only the tip of the iceberg once one digs their way into the process of writing itself.
I know some of my readers are fellow writers, so you’re probably going to be familiar with at least some of what I’m about to say.
That is to say, topics that aren’t actually connected to my daily life whatsoever.
I’m not pregnant or planning to adopt, but I still spend an inordinate amount of time on baby naming websites.
I have no interest in being one of the first humans to live on Mars or any other non-Earth destination, but I read every scrap of information I can find about space travel and what humans can realistically expect to happen when humans start sending people to Mars or the Moon to establish permanent or temporary homes there. This includes everything from how they’ll dispose of human waste to possible burial practices when someone dies during one of these missions to what the dust on other planets might smell like.
These are two of the tamer things I’ve searched for online. Here’s hoping no one looks through my other searches and assumes that all or any of them are based on what my actual plans are for the near future.
Some people might eavesdrop for juicy gossip or to learn things that they know others wouldn’t want them to hear.
I’m not one of them.
When I overhear other people’s conversations, my brain immediately jumps into dialogue mode.
How are their sentences structured? Which dialect(s) are they using? How often do the speakers interrupt each other, if ever? Do they stick to one topic or jump around?
Only then do I think about what they’re actually saying. Some people reveal a great deal about their lives from the conversations they have in public, while others remain closed books at least in the short amount of time I spend listening to their portions of the conversation.
The upside of all of this research is that I’ve studied all sorts of topics that most people with similar backgrounds probably wouldn’t know.
For example, I can tell you what the odds are of surviving the various types of smallpox even though that disease was eradicated years before I was born.
I also know what cyanide tastes like, how to cauterize a wound, and a few different methods to cure the hides of large animals after a big hunt.
(Here’s hoping this blog post won’t get me put on any watchlists. Ha!)
There’s something about talking to your characters that makes it easier to iron out plans for plot twists or future character development in my experience.
Yes, sometimes I even talk to my characters out loud and wait for a response. No, I don’t expect them to literally respond.
It’s simply a way to sort out my thoughts and figure out which ideas, if any, actually fit that particular character at that particular moment in their life.
A moment of silence helps me figure out where to go next. Does idea X or Y makes more sense? Or maybe I should try idea Z first even though it’s newer and needs more development?
Sometimes I get so wrapped up in what I’m writing that I forget what time it is.
This includes the typical times of day when I have my next meal.
There’s something about getting that next scene sketched out or blog post written that makes it easy to lose track of time like that.
Who wants to stop writing in that moment? Certainly not me!
Although my growling stomach eventually reminds me that writers aren’t machines and it’s time to stop and grab a plate of something.
Last month I took a two week break from any sort of writing at all.
It was weird to spend those days doing things that were in no way to related to any step of the writing process, but ultimately I know how important it is to step away from a project and let one’s mind rest for a while.
This technique also works for much shorter breaks. Sometimes I’ll go take a walk when I’m struggling with how to phrase a particular blog post or passage in one of my stories. There’s something about stepping away from the issue that makes it much easier to resolve when walk or vacation time ends.
Don’t let this section make you assume that I write thousands of words every single day. My output does vary from one day to the next, but not having any of it at all is something I need to adjust to every time another break come up again.
Fellow writers, what would you add to this list?
Filed under Personal Life, Writing
In January of 2013, I began blogging once a year about everything I’d read that previous year. This tradition began when my dad asked me how many books I’ve read in my entire lifetime.
I couldn’t begin to give him an answer to that question, but it did make me decide to start keeping track from that moment forward. The previous posts in this series are as follows: 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, and 2013.
Over half of the books I read in the average year are for a review site that I volunteer for under a pseudonym. I always omit those titles from this post for obvious privacy reasons.
2020 was a below average reading year for me, even more so than 2019. This was particularly noticeable when it came to the sci-fi and fantasy genres. I started so many books that I never ended up finishing due to *gestures tiredly at the countless emotionally draining moments of this year that all of us are already keenly aware of.*
For some reason, nonfiction was an easier read for me this year in general. I’ve included links below to the few SFF novels I not only finished but blogged about.
Biographies, Autobiographies, and Memoirs
“Mrs. Beaton’s Question: My Nine Years at the Halifax School for the Blind” by Robert Mercer
“Republic of Shame: How Ireland Punished ‘Fallen Women’ and Their Children” by Caelainn Hogan
“Gay Like Me: A Father Writes to His Son” by Richie Jackson
“Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter” by Kate Clifford Larson
Fiction
“The Pull of the Stars” by Emma Donoghue
History
“A Good Time to Be Born: How Science and Public Health Gave Children a Future” by Perri Klass
“How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York” by Jacob Riis
“Epidemics and Society: From the Black Death to the Present” by Frank M. Snowden
“Nobody’s Child: A Tragedy, A Trial, and a History of the Insanity Defence” by Susan Vinocour
Science Fiction and Fantasy
“Greenwood” by Michael Christie
“The Ghost Child” by Sonya Hartnett
“Everfair” by Nisi Shawl
“The Deep by Rivers Solomon
“The Emissary” by Yoko Tawada
“Silver in the Wood” by Emily Tesh
Science, Health, and Medicine
“Zombies Run!: Keeping Fit and Living Well in the Current Zombie Emergency” by Naomi Alderman
“The Great Indoors: The Surprising Science of How Buildings Shape Our Behaviour, Health, and Happiness” by Emily Anthes
“The Turnaway Study: Ten Years, a Thousand Women, and the Consequences of Having – Or Being Denied – an Abortion” by Diana Green Foster, Ph.D.
“High Risk: Stories of Pregnancy, Birth, and the Unexpected” by Chavi Eve Karkowsky
“Natural: How Faith in Nature’s Goodness Leads to Harmful Fads, Unjust Laws, and Flawed Science” by Alan Levinovitz
“Big Chicken: The Incredible Story of How Antibiotics Created Modern Agriculture and Changed the Way the World Eats” by Maryn McKenna
“Overkill: When Modern Medicine Goes too Far” by Paul A. Offit
“Monarchs of the Sea: The Extraordinary 500-Million-Year History of Cephalopods” by Danna Staaf
“Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death, and Art” by Rebecca Wragg Sykes
Sociology and Psychology
“The Kids Are All Left: How Young Voters Will Unite America” by David Faris
“The Narcissist in Your Life: Recognizing the Patterns and Learning to Break Free” by Julie L. Hall
“Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times” by Katherine May
“The Polyamory Breakup Book: Causes, Prevention, and Survival” by Kathy Labriola
“Librarian Tales: Funny, Strange, and Inspiring Dispatches from the Stacks” by William Ottens
“Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender, and Identity” by Helen Pluckrose
“Strange Situation: A Mother’s Journey into the Science of Attachment” by Bethany Saltman
“Learned Hopefulness: The Power of Positivity to Overcome Depression“ by Dan Tomasulo
How were your reading habits affected in and by 2020? Have we read any of the same books this year?
Filed under Personal Life
Every year I take the last two weeks of December off from serious blogging to recharge. One of the lighthearted topics I save for the end of this month has to do with answering search engine questions.
The phrases and sentences in bold below are the most amusing, thought-provoking queries that have sent new readers to this site over the past twelve months that didn’t warrant their own blog posts.
My responses are below them. This is a 1500-word post because new visitors, and therefore I, had a lot to say this year.
how to fly in air by meditation.
Some people do believe it is possible to levitate or even fly while meditating.
I’m quite skeptical about claims like these, especially if they’re made by anyone who is making money by selling anything that will teach you how to do this. When in doubt, do not pay anyone to give you magical powers unless you are a self-aware character in a story you know will end well.
Lydia’s barber shop
I do not own a barber shop, although my spouse and I did start trimming each other’s hair during the first wave of Covid-19 and have continued that practice to this day.
Lydia’s apple orchard
I also do not own an orchard. When I was a child, I lived in a few different farmhouses that were originally built in the 1800s. At least one of them had a single apple tree on the property, but that was the extent of their orchard-like properties.
how to fix a Mary Sue
Step 1: Start working to unlearn sexism (and all other forms of prejudice). If you are human, this is an ongoing process. If you are not human, please comment and tell us what your species is like.
Step 2: Hold male characters to the same standards you hold female characters to.
Step 3: Write characters who have realistic and meaningful flaws no matter what their gender identities might be.
Star Trek fluffy creatures
The word you’re looking for is Tribbles, and I will talk your ears off about them if you allow me to. They’re delightful.
why do I prefer to be alone?
You might be an introvert. Alone time is what recharges us from socialization.
reasons to go to the mall
In pandemic times, you should only go if you truly need something there and can’t find it anywhere else.
In non-pandemic times, you should only go if you truly need something there and can’t find it anywhere else.
(Can you tell I’m not a fan of malls?)
what being an adult feels like.
Uncertain. I thought I’d have it all figured out by now.
You can learn a lot from Lydia.
Thank you. You use proper punctuation and grammar which easily puts you in the top 1% of search engine queries. We might be life partners and/or chosen family now. If you wish, I’ll even start trimming your hair. 😉
why are gym teachers so mean?
my English teacher hates me.
Teaching is a skill that is not possessed by everyone who is employed at a school by any means. I also wonder if some teachers aren’t terribly burned out and should be retrained for different careers.
I had an awful teacher in school one year. When I was much older I learned some things about her personal life that helped me develop a little compassion for her, but I still think she should have sought employment that didn’t involve children in any way.
However, understanding why someone may have behaved the way they did is never an excuse for the harm they cause.
what make a good gym teacher
Someone who genuinely enjoys teaching and spending time with children.
Someone who is cognizent of the fact that their students come from a wide variety of backgrounds and ability levels and who takes all of these things into consideration when lesson planning.
Someone who is responsive to their students and adjusts their teaching methods to appeal to everyone, especially kids who have not had positive experiences with gym class or exercise in general. Athletic kids will continue to enjoy working out regardless, so I think it’s important to help non-athletic kids discover the many other types of exercise out there.
mindfulness gif.
I could talk about this topic all day. I love mindfulness gifs.
cool things to collect
Memories. Photos. Delicious meals and snacks. Smiles. Random acts of kindness. Amusing stories. Hugs (in non-Covid times and with consent, of course).
how to have a friendly face
Smile gently and make eye contact. Use these powers carefully if you’re a woman or non-binary person who wants to avoid the occasional odd encounter with a stranger.
the bear who wasn’t there
This sounds like something my dad would google. He likes to sing lighthearted folk songs, so I choose to imagine that one of them is about an invisible or missing bear.
seven rabbits
rabbit gif
There are more than seven rabbits in this gif. Is that close enough?
how to make playground equipment
I haven’t the foggiest notion how to do that. May I refer you to my brother who builds all sorts of things out of scrap wood for fun? If you ask him for a poem or story about it, he will refer you back to me for an artistic interpretation of his work. We’re a good team like that.
children’s prehistoric fiction books
I don’t remember reading anything on that topic until I was a preteen, but I think that Grandmother Fish: A Child’s First Book of Evolution by Jonathan Tweet sounds intriguing.
strongest caveman novel
I love this query and hope one of my readers will have a suggestion for it. This is also a great segway to the second portion of this post.
On that note, let’s end this with some of the many questions about Jean M. Auel and Earth’s Children I’ve received here since the Internet has decided I’m an expert on this topic.
Beware of a few spoilers from a nearly 40-year-old series if you want to read Earth’s Children without knowing anything in advance.
Where does Clan of the Cave Bear take place?
Answer #1: It takes place between 29,500 and 26,500 years ago in what is now known to be southern Europe.
Answer #2: A regrettable film from 1986 that seemed to have only briefly skimmed the blurb for this book instead of, you know, actually reading and comprehending the entire story.
Answer #3: Your imagination.
Young Ayla from the aforementioned film.
When was Clan of the Cave Bear written?
It was published in 1980, so I’d guess it was written in the late 1970s. If you meant the geographic location, I’d assume it was either in Jean M. Auel’s home or at the libraries where she studied all sorts of stuff related to hunter-gatherers and prehistory while writing this tale and its sequels.
Is Jean Auel still writing?
Is Jean Auel writing a seventh book?
What happened to Jean Auel?
Jean Auel is in her mid-80s now and retired from writing new stories so far as I know.
Does Ayla see Durc again
Canonically, she does not see him again, but there are many fan fiction stories out there that give this mother and son a much more satisfying resolution to their forced separation.
What happened to the clan after Ayla left?
Based on the foreshadowing in Clan of the Cave Bear, the current leader probably wasn’t in power for very long due to his narcissism, impulsivity, and bad temper. Based on promises their mothers made when these characters were babies, Durc was assigned a mate who was half homo sapien and half Neanderthal like he was. As an adult, he may have left his tribe with anyone who wanted a more stable living situation and moved elsewhere.
Earth’s Children’s series book 7
There is a fan fiction book written to wrap up all of the loose ends that were left unresolved in Jean M. Auel’s official sixth and final book in this series.
Clan of the Cave Bear movie remake
The Valley of Horses movie
Is Clan of the Cave Bear on Netflix?
Will some streaming network please buy the rights to this series and turn them into films or a TV show! There’s clearly demand for it from people other than me.
Is Ayla a common name?
It depends on which culture you live it and what your definition of “common” might be.
Ayla is a traditional name in Turkish,Hindi, Spanish and Scottish cultures and sometimes pop up in Hebrew ones as well.
In 2017 it was within the 100 most popular names in Scotland, New Zealand, Australia and Canada.
If I had a dog, Ayla would be a top contender for her name.
What is Ayla’s real name?
No one knows the answer to this for sure. I suspect that Ayla was part of her original name. For example, she might have been called Shayla or something by her birth parents before her adoptive (Neanderthal) parents shortened it because they couldn’t pronounce those extra syllables.
Filed under Personal Life
Each month I share photos from one of the parks in Toronto to show my readers what our landscape looks like throughout the year. This is the eleventh instalment of this series.
Click on February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, and November to read the earlier posts.
Other than the amount of snow on the ground, the scenery in December remains almost exactly the same from the beginning to the end of the month. You will probably notice a few differences between the photos in this post and the ones to come in January, but it won’t be as dramatic as it is in the autumn and spring.
It was a balmy 8 Celsius (46 Fahrenheit) and somewhat cloudy when I visited. Typical days during this month generally don’t rise above 2 Celsius (35 Fahrenheit). Snow is common now, but most of it generally melts before the next batch arrives. This is not the case in January, so my final instalment of this series might need to get a little creative depending on how slippery the sidewalks are then!
Let’s begin our virtual visit.
The first thing I noticed was how washed out everything looked there. It was the sort of day that was dark and cloudy one moment and weakly sunny at the next. I thought this photo captured that in an interesting manner.
A closer and clearer look at this entrance to the park. The evergreen bushes in front of the monument have gone dormant now.
Mud has returned to the running trail. I did see two brave souls continuing to jog there and sometimes running onto the sidewalk or to dryer bits of grass when they encountered the biggest puddles. (There would generally be dozens of joggers and walkers politely using the same space in the autumn and spring. I expect to see none at all next month).
The sidewalks are now covered in salt alongside all of the leaves that have decorated them these past few months. They are almost always wet now, so the salt helps to keep them walkable for most pedestrians before the big storms of January make this a much slipperier place for a stroll.
However, anyone who has mobility issues should be cautious here in real life. Even relatively warm and dry days now include patches of snow and half-melted ice scattered here and there. The salt can only do so much, and it will only grow slicker over the next couple of months.
The canopy of rustling leaves is 90% gone now and the park is quiet. Last summer we couldn’t see the sky from this perspective. The clouds moved so fast that these photos also might look like they were taken on separate days instead of only a few moments apart.
This sapling was one of a handful of trees that still held onto most of its leaves. A few of them generally retain at least some of their leaves until the end of winter.
With that being said, this is what the majority of trees look like now. Yes, that includes the bird’s nest. Not all of them have old nests, but many of them do.
Some of the largest ones even have two or more nests visible now. No wonder I heard birds chirping everywhere last spring and summer! I think it’s marvellous to see where the birds decided to make their homes eight or nine months ago.
Earlier this year I talked about how wet, spongy, and muddy the ground was as it thawed. You saw a photo of this on the running trail, but it’s something found throughout the park. I couldn’t walk on most of it without caking my shoes in mud.
Luckily, our tree friend that lost half of its branches was in a drier section of the park. It seems to have survived our first few snowstorms just fine.
The zoom lens on my camera helped me get this shot of our tree friend that lost a third of its branches. It still has a wet trunk and drooping branches. I’ve avoided walking underneath them for months now for safety reasons. Soon we will see how they will fare under the heavy ice and snow that coats everything in January.
Do you want to know two of the best things about visiting the park in December? I’ll give you a few hints.
This one might be a little tricky to see. Look at the sapling in the centre of the photo if you need help. Yes, that’s a squirrel! It was climbing so vigorously the whole tree was shaking a bit.
There’s something about this time of year that makes squirrels slightly easier to photograph. This little black squirrel is sitting on top of a knot on the right hand side of this tree. I’d just seen it climb out of a hole in the knot. That must be where he or she lives.
My other favourite part of visiting the park now is something I tend to overlook the rest of the year.
Evergreen trees are one of the few splashes of colour between now and April. I sure appreciate their green addition to the landscape when everything else is drab and various shades of brown, black, and grey for months on end.
Here’s another shot of the more typical deciduous areas of the park for reference.
Finally, this is what the famous walkway looks like after nearly all of the leaves have fallen.
The plan is to blog about this park again in the icy, snowy depths of January so that every month will have been accounted for. Then I hope to do one final post in the spring to see how our two damaged tree friends fared over the winter.
Take care until next month, readers!
Filed under Personal Life
The spookiest Christmas stock photo I could find.
Someone, or possibly more than one person, keeps finding this blog by searching for creepy Christmas poems.
If they ever read this post, I hope they know it was written in direct response to the multiple queries that have popped up in my analytics.
I more or less stopped celebrating Christmas years ago when I moved far away from home, deconverted from my childhood religion, accepted a job in an industry that was always busy and stressful in December, and found myself overwhelmed by the sentimentality and consumerism of secular Christmas.
Now I sound like a grumpy character at the beginning of a Christmas movie who is about to learn a valuable life lesson, but that’s honestly not how I think about this holiday at all.
I enjoy the lights, food, and music that is traditionally shared now, and I cheer for everyone who finds meaning in the other aspects of Christmas (and/or any other winter holiday) as well.
I simply know what my limits are. Luckily, those limits include creepy Christmas poems when new readers show up here looking for them. Here are some poems that celebrate Christmas without a single ounce of sentimentality.
A Christmas Ghost Story by Thomas Hardy
Yule Horror by H.P. Lovecraft
Scary Christmas by Donald R. Wolff JR
Christmas Ghost by Andrew Green
Christmas Poems (That Won’t Make You Throw Up) by various authors
Holiday Horror: A True Story by Lucy Giardino Cortese
Merry Christmas from the Void (an analysis of three H.P. Lovecraft poems)
Merry Christmas by Langston Hughes (scroll down to read it).
Which creepy Christmas poems would you add to this list?
Filed under Personal Life, Science Fiction and Fantasy
Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.
Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.
My answer to this prompt certainly isn’t what I was expecting it to be when I first saw it about eleven months ago, but I’m sure you all can say the same thing.
Most of my time is spent at home or outdoors.
I’m lucky to live in a walkable, safe neighbourhood. Practically all of errands I need to run can be accomplished without using public transit, a cab, or a private vehicle. My biggest hurdle there is only buying what I can comfortably carry.
I add things to my shopping list before they run out, and I consolidate trips as much as possible. If paper towels are on sale and I know I’ll need them next week, I’ll pick up a package of them during a normal grocery store run. For heavy items, I buy what I can and try to remember I’m not superwoman.
This has been a good way to develop my muscles! My arms do a lot of lugging stuff around for my household, and I’m grateful for my ability to act like a human pack mule when necessary.
Much of my time at home is spent typing up blog posts and stories. The gentle clicks of a keyboard is one of the most common sounds you’ll hear here. it’s so common that sometimes I dream about it.
Someday I’ll be this flexible!
Home workouts are another way I pass the time. Lately, I’ve been doing lots of yoga while a knee injury heals and trying not laugh too much when my spouse tries to distract me during the most pretzel-like moves. He likes to poke gentle fun at the instructor.
This is the beginning of the coldest months in Ontario. When the weather allows for it, I love going for long walks at the park and seeing the first signs of winter and the last signs of autumn in the land.
On freezing days, I stay home and watch television instead. I enjoy sitcoms like Kim’s Convenience, science fiction like Star Trek: Discovery, and nonfiction science/history shows like Cosmos.
Filed under Blog Hops, Personal Life
Each month I share photos from one of the parks in Toronto to show my readers what our landscape looks like throughout the year. This is the tenth instalment of this series and will be a bit longer than usual.
Click on February, March, April, May, June July, August, September, and October to read the earlier posts.
Welcome to November in Toronto! It was between 16 Celsius (60 Fahrenheit) and 20 Celsius (68 Fahrenheit) on my visits this month. Temperatures are traditionally supposed to reach highs of 7 Celsius (45 Fahrenheit) at most now, so these numbers are quite out of the ordinary for us. Climate change is quickly altering our seasonal weather patterns.
This month is generally one of our rainiest ones. Nearly half of the days in the average November are rainy ones here. Sometimes it snows, too, although such early snow melts within a day or two.
The sunshine you’ll see in most of these photos is unusual, too. Our more typically overcast days were also pretty stormy this month, or I would have included examples of them as well.
It was raining heavily when the leaves were at their peak, but the rain luckily stopped in time for me to get some nice shots of the autumn foliage.
The evergreen bushes are still looking good. They must not go dormant until December or January. I’ll check back again with them then.
The running trail always shows signs of recent rainfall now, but it’s still firm enough to jog or walk on. This particular tree has such a nice rustle of leaves when you pass it. I wish I could stand there all day and listen to it’s melodic little song.
We saw the canopy of leaves thin last month, and that pattern continues this month. There are still green leaves to see if you look closely.
Who will nestle up here this winter, I wonder? It looks cozy.
These are the three faces of November. Some trees are mostly to partially still green. Most trees are at or just past their peak of colour. Some trees have lost most to all of their leaves and are prepared for winter.
And these are the two legs of November.
It’s a marvellous feeling to walk through so many leaves that you can no longer see your feet. Every step makes delightful crunching noises. I always have to fight the urge to dive into the leaves and do whatever the equivalent to swimming in them might be.
Our tree friend who lost half of its branches in that storm last winter is quickly shedding leaves.
As is our tree friend who lost about a third of its branches and has been droopy and strangely damp in its trunk this autumn.
The trunk of this one looks a little less damp now, but I see no other obvious changes in it for better or for worse. May both of these trees do well this winter.
It’s hard to know when to stop sharing photos with you. The landscape is filled with beauty now in every direction you look. This tree looked like it was glowing when I snapped a photo of it.
Don’t you want to go run into the centre of the park and twirl around with joy? I sure do.
There’s something remarkable about being surrounded by so many picturesque scenes.
As hinted above, November is one of those months that changes rapidly. Some trees are bare while the ones next to them still have some to most of their leaves attached.
I don’t know about all of you, but I still find beauty in trees that are past their peak autumn colours.
There’s something marvellous about watching autumn leaves dance on the ground when a stiff breeze hits them, too. I tried to film them to share on social media, but they stopped every time I hit the record button on my phone.
We’re also just begun to reach the time of year when the trees reveal their secrets.
I hope to share more photos like this next month. It’s fascinating to see where the bird nests were last summer when you couldn’t directly see the nests for yourself.
If we were walking through this park together, I’d stop and show you many nests like these. I think we should admire the birds’ hard work over the summer. The park, and the ecosystem in general, wouldn’t be the same without them. My ears sure appreciate their songs as well.
As always, I’ll end this post with the famous bench-lined walkway in the park. Isn’t it beautiful in autumn?
Stay safe, friends. Winter is right around the corner.
Filed under Personal Life
A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving is a 1973 animated Thanksgiving film about Charlie Brown, the famous animated character from the Peanuts comic strip by Charles M. Schulz, throwing an impromptu Thanksgiving dinner for all of his friends.
The other films in this holiday trilogy in it include A Charlie Brown Christmas from 1965 and It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown from 1966.
They all work as standalone stories. There is no need to watch them in a specific order.
I decided to review A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving because it’s the least well known part of this trilogy. It wasn’t something I was aware of growing up even though I knew about and liked the other films.
This review won’t contain a list of characters for spoiler reasons. The run time was only 25 minutes for this film, so I don’t have a lot of wiggle room when it comes to discussing the plot without giving away what happens in it.
The premise was one of the other reasons why I wanted to review this film. I can’t imagine throwing together a Thanksgiving dinner on the same day I discovered such a thing was expected of me. Ugh!
Charlie Brown (who is pictured in the film poster above) didn’t even have the advantage of knowing how to roast a turkey or make all of the traditional side dishes for this holiday. He was a child who was just beginning to learn to make simple dishes like toast and popcorn, so his predicament was even worse than I originally assumed it would be.
I was intrigued by what a Thanksgiving dinner cooked by a kid his age would be like and if he’d figure out how to get everything warm and on the table at the same time. Seeing what that process was like for him was a great deal of fun.
One of the other unexpected twists in this film had to do with what happens when Thanksgiving doesn’t turn out the way you thought it would. That message is just as relevant now as it was nearly fifty years ago. Honestly, it’s even more relevant now in some ways than it was when it first came out!
I loved the way the filmmakers approached the concept of feeling disappointment about the holiday festivities you’d planned and how to handle that emotion.
There are so many more things I want to say about the expectation of having a “perfect” Thanksgiving…but they’ll quickly wander into spoiler territory if I’m not careful.
It was also interesting to note how the culture of Thanksgiving has evolved since 1973. The ways the characters talked about the first Thanksgiving and this holiday in general weren’t exactly the same as they’re often discussed these days, although they did remind me of how these topics were handled when I was a kid.
I wonder what kids today would think of this tale?
Do note that the preview I included below for this short film is an original one from 1973 and does include some spoilers.
A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving is available on Apple TV.
Filed under Personal Life
