Lydia Schoch

This is the kind of stuff I love thinking about.

Photo credit: Babbel1996.

I’ve been thinking about exceptions to rules lately.

Despite many attempts to become a fan of Doctor Who, I have never learned to enjoy that show.

The exception to this rule: “Blink,” an episode in which the doctor encounters an extremely dangerous alien race that can only move if no one is looking at them. There’s an element of horror in this episode that makes me shiver. It’s truly frightening without being gory, and I love every single second of it.

As many of my readers already know, I can’t stand 99% of the violent shows out there. There’s nothing entertaining to me about seeing people hurt each other in new and creative ways. The Walking Dead is my big exception to this rule. I’m so attached to these characters that I’m willing to look away during the disturbing scenes in order to find out what happens to them next. (Ideally it will involve Rick and Michonne falling in love and having a few adorable children once the zombiepocalypse winds down a bit. But I digress. 😉 )

It’s extremely hard for me to get into online games because of how much focus they tend to put on fighting and destroying stuff. Exception: Minecraft. I love building houses, fences, and bridges in this game. If you want to, you can avoid fighting monsters and build stuff or tend to your farm instead.

Shopping is the worst kind of errand. Exception: grocery shopping. I love standing in the produce section and thinking. Occasionally I’ve rewritten large sections of my shopping list based on what is on sale or what looks amazing this week. There’s something deeply gratifying about this.

I think you get the point.

Everyone has rules for themselves. We all have exceptions, too.

Today I want to hear about yours.

What do you normally love but sometimes dislike?

What do you normally hate but sometimes enjoy?

What are you indifferent about unless it involves (or doesn’t involve) X?

Have you ever changed your mind about any of these things?

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

Born-Again Meat-Eater via lisa_brunette.  If it were more socially acceptable to do so, I’d ask everyone what made them decide to be vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian, or omnivorous. It’s never about trying to convert anyone to any particular eating style for me. I’m simply fascinated by how and why people choose the diets they do.

Sometimes You Eat the Bear. Sometimes He Eats You via LarryNWeiner. This was such a raw, honest post.

Window. Wouldn’t you love to know what’s behind this window? I sure would. I’m imagining a cozy house with smooth wooden floors, leather couches, and a roaring fireplace. There is a big pot of vegetable soup bubbling on the stovetop and a fresh loaf of sourdough bread cooling on the counter. In a few moments, the chill in our bones from walking around outside for so long will melt away when we step inside. What do you imagine is waiting for you behind this window?

Sex: A Guide. Haha! This was great.

The Evil Aunt Who Wasn’t via bobmueller. I’ve wondered the same thing about other high-profile news stories in the past.

From Super Duper Fly:

“You always know the right thing to say,” Topher said. “How come you’re always there when I need you even though I barely know you?”

“I’m the wise janitor. I come to impart wisdom and assuage fears.” Bags emptied the trashcan. “It looked like you needed some friendly, black, optimistic advice.”

What have you been reading?

Photo credit: Nevit Dilmen.

A few years ago my oldest nephew went through that developmental stage in early childhood where young humans ask a million questions.

No matter what your answer was, he’d always want to know more.

Why do things work that way?

Why do we know that’s the correct answer?

Why can’t things work a different way instead?

He’s an incredibly smart kid, so he’d often reach the edge of your knowledge on a particular topic and still have many questions left to go. Googling it was a option, of course, but he preferred hearing the answers from adults if at all possible.

I was amused the first time this happened. It had been a long time since I’d spent much time with a child that age, so I’d forgotten how curious they are about everything in the entire world works and why it is the way it is.  Then I was intrigued.

He doesn’t know this, but I quietly borrowed the Why Game from him. When I’m bored or in a situation where I need to sit quietly but don’t need to pay close attention to what is going on, I pick a topic and start asking myself questions about it.

Why can humans thrive on so many different kinds of diets?

Why do vaccines work?

Why are there so many planets in the universe?

Why haven’t we cured tuberculosis yet?

Why did humans invent art?

I usually have a basic understanding of how the question should be answered. The trick to this game is to discover the parts of the answer that need to be explored in greater depth. Once I’m able to borrow a library book on the topic or do some serious Googling, I try to fill in the gaps in my knowledge.

It doesn’t happen quickly.

A lot of the answers I find are at least a little subjective.

But knowing that much more about our world is deeply satisfying.

If I reach my goal of living past my one hundredth birthday, I still will only know a small fraction of all of the things I wonder about.

What kinds of things do you do to amuse yourself when you’re left alone with your thoughts?

This video is a little longer than the ones I normally share here, but it was excellent.

My favourite part? When John talked about what life would be like if all of our sex education came from the lyrics in Lil Wayne’s music. It was a hilarious analogy for what the mental health system is like in the U.S. (And Canada, too, from what I’ve seen).

Every year I take a break from blogging for the last two weeks of December. I will be sharing some of my old favourites in the meantime and will be back in January with new material.  This post was originally published on October 19, 2015.

The other night my husband and I went out to dinner with a group of other people. The food was good. Our servers were friendly. The conversations that swirled around our table touched on everything from the latest episode of The Walking Dead to the current score in a baseball game that some of the people we were eating with were absolutely obsessed with. In short, it was a very nice get-together.

About halfway through the meal, though, I caught wind of an overpowering cloud of perfume and started sneezing and coughing uncontrollably. I was so itchy that I had to grab my coat and stand out in the foyer for five minutes to catch my breath.

Luckily, this was a minor reaction. It was annoying and uncomfortable for a little while, but once I stopped coughing and figured out how to avoid the person who had decided to bathe in perfume that day I was okay.

I have a relative who has had asthma attacks in this scenario. I know other people who have had migraines.

For many people, perfume and cologne are a harmless scent that everyone loves. For some of us, they’re a trigger for allergies, asthma, or other medical conditions.

In a perfect world, these two groups would never meet.

Yes, I’m joking about that. Mostly. 😉

What I would like to happen, though, is for perfume and cologne to become something you don’t notice unless your face is pressed into the body where it was sprayed.

If other people can smell which way you walked down the hall…

If I can smell you from across the room….

If the entire elevator smells like dead flowers several minutes after you got off of it….

If anyone can ever taste your fragrance in the air…

It’s too strong.

There’s a difference between catching a slight whiff of a scent when hugging someone and nearly being able to see a cloud of it drifting through the air because it’s so strong.

Please be considerate.

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

The Cat: An Ancient Folk Tale via MYSADCAT. Delightful. Simply delightful.

Trapped in the Light. There are so many different ways to interpret this composite photograph. My first theory was that the woman is somehow powering the lightbulb. If she breaks free, the light dies forever. My second theory was that she’d been trapped there purposefully as a punishment. She can’t get out until she’s served her time. What do you think is happening?

Losing My Religion, Best Decision Ever via nanogeekette. This was a great read.

Birthrights and Wrongs via juliaparktracey. Do you know what your ancestors were doing a few hundred years ago?

From Before Then Now:

When I get really hungry—not the all-the-time uncomfortable grumbling, but that clawing, scraping emptiness that makes me frightened of what I might do for food and angry that even if I did it there still wouldn’t be any—I focus on one particular thing for as long as I can.

From Hemingway in Love:

Ernest and his wife, Mary, and I stayed in touch for the next eight months. That was the beginning of our friendship.

Over the following years, while we traveled, he relived the agony of that period in Paris when, married to his first wife, Hadley Richardson, he was writing The Sun Also Rises and at the same time enduring the harrowing experience of being in love with two women simultaneously, an experience that would haunt him to his grave.

What have you been reading?

What’s going well for you?

What are you most proud of?

What has surprised you in a good way?

What has made you smile?

What has given you hope?

What have you tried lately only to be surprised by how much you enjoyed it?

What have you given up only to be surprised by how nice it was to take a break from that thing?

In other words, what’s sweet in your life?

I asked my Twitter friends about this recently. Now I’d love to hear what my followers here have to say!

I’m normally not a big fan of surreal films, but this one was great. My favourite part was when the man was attempting to pump air into his soccer ball. That section was incredibly well done.

Photo credit: Biso.

Happy Thanksgiving to my Canadian readers!

I’ll be celebrating it in a non-traditional manner today.

There won’t be any turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, or cranberry sauce.

Nothing I eat today will have a complicated recipe or take hours to cook. They won’t produce an obscene number of dishes to wash either.

I won’t be travelling long distances, or making small talk, or sitting at a crowded dining room table.

There will be delicious food in my near future. There is always room for delicious food in life. Some of it might even be pie, although it probably won’t be of the pumpkin variety.

There will be peace and quiet.

There will be freedom to do whatever it is I want to do on this holiday. Nothing will be forbidden or expected of me today.

There may be moments of reflection that aren’t at all pre-planned. I have a lot of things to be thankful in my life.

This isn’t to say that I dislike all traditional Thanksgiving festivities. They can be nice sometimes, but I really like trying other things on holidays. It’s fun to mix things up. A holiday can be like any other day if you want it to, just like an ordinary day can include some or all of the foods that you’d typically expect to find at a Thanksgiving dinner.

Non-traditional Thanksgiving celebrations are best because of how much freedom they give to you. This kind of flexibility is incredibly valuable. If you can learn how to enjoy more than one kind of Thanksgiving, you won’t feel bad when you’re living hundreds or thousands of miles away from family during the holidays, or when you need to work, or when you have another reason to celebrate them in a different way than you did last year.

So enjoy it if you’re celebrating Thanksgiving non-traditionally this year. I know I sure will!