Lydia Schoch

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

Why Zombies Will Rule via yadadarcyyada. This isn’t what you think it is. Go check it out.

Would I Pray to Make a Religious Person Happy? Fuck No. I’ll sit quietly and respectfully while other people pray, but I totally agree with the author of this post. No one should ever be pressured to pray to someone else’s deity or deities for any reason. The very idea of it is absurd.

A House, Some Lives, Some Things…and Trying to Make Sense via maryjrowen. I’ve had many of these same thoughts after deaths in my family.

Hearing Loss and  Teens: The New Epidemic? via drheathernd. Despite the title this is good advice for everyone.

From A Stonewall Survivior Spills All:

Stonewall is practically causing riots all over again. Online protests recently erupted when a trailer surfaced for Stonewall — the upcoming Roland Emmerich-directed film about the legendary West Village uprising of 1969 that defined the modern gay movement — and it wasn’t exactly heavy on people of color, to name just one complaint about what was deemed a serious lack of inclusion.

From The Lost Summer:

“Our current school schedule has a negative impact on all kids, but it’s most devastating to the economically disadvantaged,” said Dr. David Hornak, Executive Director for the National Association of Year-Round Education, an organization advocating for shorter summer breaks.

From The New American Slavery:

Each year, more than 100,000 people from countries such as Mexico, Guatemala, the Philippines, and South Africa come to America on what is known as an H-2 visa to perform all kinds of menial labor across a wide spectrum of industries….

What have you been reading?

Photo credit: Luc Viatour.

There are two kinds of people in the world: those of you who are scared of spiders, and the rest of us who just don’t get it.

(If you are truly creeped out by them, don’t scroll to the bottom of this post).

Cars are scary. I’ve known several people who were killed or severely injured in them.

Dementia is scary. It’s heartbreaking to watch someone slowly lose so many pieces of themselves to diseases like Alzheimer’s.

Cancer is scary. I don’t even have to explain this one.

Even deer can be scary sometimes. One of the many reasons why I’m thrilled to not own a car has to do with driving down a quiet, country road at dusk or in the dark. It’s really difficult to spot a deer and swerve in time if one gets spooked by your headlights or decides to cross the road at the very last second.

Arachnids, though? Not scary. Not even a little bit. Humans are far more dangerous to them than they are to us.

It’s extremely rare for a spider bite to kill someone. Most spiders aren’t aggressive or toxic, and most of the venomous ones will cause a minor illness at most if they do end up biting you.

I actually like seeing spiders. They kill all kinds of bugs that can infest a house. They have fascinating little black eyes.

Photo credit: Viki from Wikimedia Commons.

And sometimes they’re even fuzzy!

Look at this little guy.

I want to put a tiny leash on him and take him for a walk around the block.

I want to make little hats for him every Halloween. He could be Santa one year and a leprechaun the next.

I want to read Charlotte’s Web to him and rewrite the ending so that all of the spiders live as long as Wilbur does.

He isn’t frightening.

He’s adorable.

This short film reminded me of what life was like when I was a kid who woke up a few hours before anyone else in the family did.

I spent many quiet mornings reading in my bedroom while I waited for everyone else to wake up. Often I’d reread the same books over and over again for the fun of it.

Fairy tales were more magical at that time of day and when I already knew how they’d end!

Photo credit: Camdiluv ♥.

This post is a response to So, Are You Happy? from zenandpi. 

1. Take inventory. What parts of your life are you dissatisfied with? What parts of it make you happy? What parts do you feel neutral about? Sometimes my list is short when I do this. Other times it’s long.
2. Pick the smallest thing that annoys you. Maybe you hate how messy your car is getting or you’re really not looking forward to volunteering at that annual charity event again this year. The possibilities are endless.
3. Clean it. Resign from it. Sell it. Donate it. Unsubscribe from it. Send your regrets with the RSVP.
4. Do not take no for an answer. This is not a time to feel guilty. Everyone needs to purge certain things from their lives occasionally.
5. You have a little wiggle room in your life now. What do you want to replace this old pattern with? Do you want to do nothing while you relish your extra time, money, and/or emotional energy for a while? Is there something new you’d like to try? You might have the answer for this right away, or you might not. I often don’t have a clue what I’d rather do until I’ve had some time to breathe.
6. Repeat these steps with a few other minor things that are easy to change. The reason why I recommend doing it this way is because I need a lot of instant gratification when I’m unhappy in order to stay motivated. Big payoffs can come later, but there’s something to be said for seeing small, positive changes right away.

Many big problems can also be broken down into little steps like these. You could send out X resumes a week or start taking a class to train for a different profession if you hate your current job.

If it’s an interpersonal problem, you could start making small changes in how you interact with the other person. Maybe you’ll decide to see them less often or for shorter amounts of time. Maybe you’ll frame your interactions in a way that gives you a more peaceful approach to those conversations.

With longterm issues like these, there are no quick fixes. There are many ways to make things just a little better than they were last week or last month, though, and that’s all you really need to do.

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

The Path Through the Trees via PenguinNina. One of the things I like the most about taking long walks out in nature is that you don’t have to make very many decisions. This post nicely explains how it works.

Open Letter to Whoever Asked If I Was Faking It via Shayweasel. Part of me is amazed me that anyone would have this response to a friend or family member who was sick. The other part of me isn’t. Not everyone has empathy.

Why Assuming “Everyone Is A Jerk” Makes Your Life Better. This dovetails really nicely with the last link in this post.

The Self-Healer. Too funny.

From Wildflower Walk via NooceMiller:

Now it’s a little known fact about me that every time I’m anywhere near a creek someone falls into the water. This alarming trend started way back when I was six years old or so and playing at my friend Leslie B’s house, which had a creek running through the backyard.

From Coming to America:

My white friends made a lot of assumptions about the nature of our relationships. There was the assumption that I was friends with them because they weren’t racist. Racists were evil, and my being their friend was a testament that I didn’t see them as evil, but as good.

What have you been reading?

A lot of the people I know online have been talking about some form of  self care lately. Some seem to desperately need it. Others are struggling to find better ways to fit it into their lives.

Me? I’m craving the chocolate chip cookies my mother and grandmother made when I was growing up. We almost never drank soda and only rarely had store-bought sweets, but cookies were okay on occasion.

The smell of them baking makes me feel like a kid again. I don’t usually connect food to emotions, but this is one food that makes me feel really happy.

This was the treat I brought to share on my birthday in my first year of public school. All of my classmates were thrilled! There had been so many cupcakes that year that a change of pace was nice.

One of my siblings – I’ll leave it up to him to identify himself – once asked for these cookies instead of a traditional birthday cake. He wanted them baked into one giant cookie bar thing, though, so that’s how we ate them.

This is the recipe that none of us realized had been found by my grandmother on a package of chocolate chips until many years later. We’d all assumed that she’d come up with it herself until she told us how she really found it. We still call it her recipe.  She’s the one that originally made it in our family, after all.

Since it isn’t a family secret, here’s the recipe. I hope my readers love it as much as I do:

1 1/3 cups margarine*
2 cups sugar
1 cup brown sugar
4 eggs
2 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons salt
4 teaspoons vanilla
4 1/2 cups flour
1 package chocolate chips

Instructions:

mix the margarine*, sugar, brown sugar, and eggs until fluffy
Add in the baking soda, salt, and vanilla. Mix well.
Add the flour one cup at a time, while mixing.
Stir in the choc chips.

bake at 350 F for 6-7 minutes on a greased cookie sheet.

*Sometimes I’ll use crisco instead if I’m feeling decadent. 🙂

I’m going to make them today and think about my family. Later on I’ll update this post with a picture of the cookies. Keep your eyes peeled for that. The picture has been added!

In the meantime, what kinds of self care do you do?

Who else would love to see this?

I have to admit to preferring Ron and Hermione to Harry for most of the books. Harry could be downright morose at times. While he definitely had reasons to act that way, his friends were more interesting to me. It would have also been fascinating to see certain scenes from their perspectives as I occasionally got the impression that Harry’s interpretation of certain events was very different from how his friends saw it.

Photo credit: Roger McLassus and DemonDeLuxe.

I’ve been trying to write this post all morning, but not every day has an overabundance of words.

There’s simply nothing to say. I’m neutral right now in a good way. I’m not anxious, sad, or irritated. Neither am I excited, mischievous, or happy.

I just am.

When I was a kid, my parents learned quickly to sit and listen if I had a lot of things to tell them. Soon I’d be back to my quiet self again. Words eventually fizzle away if they’re not put to good use.

Drew has grown accustomed to my waves of speaking as well. He knows that I sometimes have many of them. At other times I don’t have any.

I’m keeping this post short on purpose.

Soak up the friendly quietness.

I’ll be chatty again soon.

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

Spurious Correlations. This was too funny. My favourite chart was the one that connected the divorce rate in Maine to the per capita consumption of margarine.

From My Granddad, the Mass Murderer via Johnny_Spacey:

My Granddad smoked a pipe, a habit which I now share and, some nights, when I’m sat in a pungent cloud of Condor original I close my eyes and remember him. I was nine years old when he died, too young to have enough nice memories, but then however long he’d lived, for his Grandson, it wouldn’t have been long enough.

Why Being Polite Isn’t Always the Best Path via ShelbyBerzley. At first I was prepared to completely disagree with this blogger. It drives me up the wall when people are rude and nasty to strangers…but this wasn’t what she was arguing for at all. Go check out her post to see what she was really saying. I ended up loving it!

You Don’t Like Me and That’s Okay via KW_Writes. I absolutely loved this post. I also suspect that I’d like the author of it quite a bit if we ever met. Ha!

This is Your Brain on Nature. What a fascinating article. I love city life, but I have to admit that there’s something nice about being surrounded by nature sometimes.

From Born In Between:

While many of the other kids on the site had visible health problems, Pam was unclear what this baby’s special needs could be. “Here was just this perfect little girl,” Pam said recently.

When she called the South Carolina Department of Social Services to find out more, she learned that M.C. was born with a rare condition that produced a patchwork of male and female anatomy.

What have you been reading?

We only have three days left until it airs. I’ve purposefully avoided spoilers for this show, so this post is safe to read if you’re also looking forward to being surprised by it. Everything I’m about to say is pure speculation.

Part of me is really excited for this spinoff. One of the things that is missing on The Walking Dead is an understanding of how the zombiepocalypse started as well as how things became chaotic so quickly.

You’d think that more people would have figured out how the disease is spread and how to contain the walkers early on, though. Yes, a herd of them is incredibly dangerous, but you can easily outrun or restrain a handful of them. They’re not intelligent like vampires or unusually strong like werewolves.

It’s one thing for a malnourished, exhausted character on The Walking Dead to be surprised by yet another herd. It’s quite another for someone who isn’t traumatized, still has a safe place to sleep at night and has food in their cupboards to deal with just one of these creatures.

I’m very curious to see how it all plays out. I know so little about the new cast of characters that it’s hard to imagine what the writers will do to put a world that is still (mostly?) ruled by humans in genuine jeopardy.

Will the characters be written as people who don’t have any street smarts whatsoever? This happens so often in the horror genre that I’m both expecting it and dreading it. Just once I’d love to meet a cast that has realistic reactions to unexpected events.

I certainly don’t rush to investigate spooky sounds at night or jump into the middle of a situation that I haven’t figured out yet. There’s a difference between helping someone else and putting yourself in danger before you even know what’s going on.

So I’m also hesitant. Will this be a great show? A good one? Will the characters make rash decisions that make me wonder how in the world they ever managed to survive childhood?

We will find out soon!