Lydia Schoch

Photo by Ched Davis.

Last night I had an idea-with-a-capital-I right before I went to sleep. It had to do with what I was planning to blog about today, and it was so interesting that I didn’t think there was any possible way for me to forget it overnight.

Regular ideas are easily forgotten, but Ideas usually lodge themselves firmly into my brain.

Usually.

Can you guess what I woke up missing this morning?

I’d tell you about the colourful monologue that ricocheted through my thoughts as soon as I realized what happened, but sometimes my nephew reads this blog. He’s not old enough for those words yet. 😉

While I was attempting to clear my mind and woo that idea back, I thought about lost socks. Growing up I was puzzled by all of the jokes about where socks go when they disappear from the washer or dryer.

I couldn’t remember ever losing one of them. If I had, I would have blamed static cling or assumed that they had been sucked into a part of the washer or dryer that doesn’t normally hold these kinds of things. Maybe the inside of the machine was damaged in a way that allowed small articles of clothing to get caught in it.

Photo by mamsy.

Ideas are much easier to misplace. They can’t be found again by texting my brother to ask him if the doohickey is supposed to be wedged so tightly against the whatchamacallit.  There isn’t a wrench or screwdriver in the world that can pry a forgotten thought from the shadowy recesses of your mind.

I’d like to think that they’re still in there somewhere though. When I imagine combing through my memories, it always happens in a large, bright, and slightly dusty room. It’s filled from floor to ceiling with those old-fashioned card catalogues that libraries used to display. The wood is freshly-oiled and almost seems to glow.

Every remembered idea is typed neatly onto one of those little cards, but none of the drawers that hold them are labelled. All you can do is open one of them and see what memories are stirred up when you read it.

Finding the lost ideas, though, requires pulling out a wide section of those drawers and peering into the darkness to see if there’s anything scuttling back there.

Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.

Where do your lost ideas go?

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

My Father Repented of “Christian Spanking” Too Late. The title of this article isn’t accurate, so I’m putting a trigger warning on it. The author graphically describes physical abuse in the first few paragraphs What makes me recommend it so strongly, though, is what happens when the author grows up and sees his abuser again.

Tomyris: The Promise-Keeper. Does anyone know anything more about this time in history?

Why the Meyers-Briggs Test Is Totally Meaningless via AbiWilks. Interesting stuff.

I Had a Stroke at 33. A harrowing first-person account of a woman who had a stroke but didn’t realize anything was wrong. If you like it, I highly recommend checking out the author’s blog as well. She talks about writing, single parenthood, and her recovery. Fascinating stuff.

Am I Hurting God by Having a Relationship with My Atheist Son? Be sure to click on the links in this post as well. They were well worth my time.

The Few Perks of a Dead Parent via LadyJWanderlust. I especially liked her final point.

From Eskimo via joshuamneff:

you created the moon

i watch your reflection

in the back of a spoon

Laughing All the Way to the Mosque is the funniest book I’ve read in a long time.

It’s the autobiography of Zarqa Nawaz, a Canadian Muslima who is as perplexed with some of the things her mother says to her as she is by certain rules in white culture (e.g. how they use the bathroom or why they eat so many peanut butter and jelly sandwiches).

There’s nothing cruel about Zarqa’s sense of humour, though. She pokes fun of all sorts of stuff: oblivious white people, teenagers who rebel by becoming more religious than their parents, film students who take their work way too seriously, and  immigrants who completely misunderstand certain things about Canadian culture even after living in it for many years. She’s the kind of writer I’d love to take out to dinner someday. In the meantime, I heartily recommend this book.

What have you been reading?

Author credit:
Mexico – Fry1989
Russian Alaska – Дмитрий-5-Аверин
Dominion of Canada – Дмитрий-5-Аверин
USA – Lokal_Profil

I became a dual U.S./Canadian citizen four years ago. Opa wanted to know more about what it’s been like.

That isn’t unusual at all here. My brother-in-law, dental hygienist, and many friends and acquaintances are immigrants as well. About half of the people currently living in Toronto were born in other countries.

The differences between the U.S. and Canada are subtle in many ways. Both countries speak English and were once British colonies. The climate in Toronto is quite similar to what I grew up with in Ohio (and Wyoming, too, during our occasionally harsh winters).

That’s not to say that there haven’t been times when I’ve experienced a little culture shock.

American soft drinks and snack foods taste strange. I’m guessing it’s related to the corn syrup that they use. Canadians use it, too, but we don’t seem to put into quite as many products. Once I’ve adjusted to them again I do end up liking them. It just takes a while to retrain my tastebuds.

My side of the family says hello to the people they pass on the street. Granted, their cities are smaller and much less crowded than Toronto. I still find an odd thing to adjust to when I visit them though.  Once or twice I’ve come back home and accidentally greeted a stranger because I’d sort of grown accustomed to that tradition. The strange looks they give me are worth feeling feeling embarrassed about it for a minute or two. It’s not easy to surprise a Torontonian after all!

It’s cool to see signs written in Spanish down there. Ontario usually only posts notices in French and English, although I have seen other languages used in certain government buildings. I’m a little surprised every time by how much I’ve missed trying (usually without much success) to translate the Spanish signs.

A few years ago my husband and I both caught colds while visiting my side of the family. It amazed me to see what a hassle it was to buy medicine that contained pseudo ephedrine. We had to talk to the pharmacist and give him all kinds of personal information first.  It weirded me out because we were both obviously sick and only needed a single box of the stuff. In Canada we have no problem with this kind of purchase.

Speaking of being sick, I still haven’t fully adjusted to the idea that you don’t have to pay when you need to see a doctor or go to the hospital. Last summer I made an appointment with my family doctor to take a look at something that I was 95% sure wasn’t going to be a problem. (It wasn’t.) That 5% chance that it might be something worrisome stuck in the back of my mind, though, and it was reassuring to have it checked out for free long before it would have posed a serious risk. There’s really something to be said for having the freedom to do that. I wonder how many lives have been saved by untangling how much money you have with whether or not you think you should see a doctor about something small.

There were other things that stood out to me when I first moved up here that I now think are more of a function of city life than moving to another country. I strongly suspect that almost any metropolitan area in North America is going to be accepting of LGBT people, not bat an eyelash at interracial families, and feel uncomfortable with friendship evangelism.

It will be interesting to see how things shift in the next 5-10 years. I could see the U.S. shifting around a lot in that time period.

Growing up I was one of those kids who read the encyclopedia for fun. The set my grandparents owned was 30 years out of date, so not everything in it was still true. It didn’t matter. I still loved learning about the world one bite-sized essay at a time.

The nice thing about the Internet is that the information on it is (usually) much more current.

The less nice thing about the Internet is that everyone has something weird in their search history.

Writers, though, might be a little stranger than most. There are a lot of things we don’t know about the world that our characters have already figured out. The easiest way to bridge that gap is by googling whatever it is they know and you don’t. The following search phrases are real. I can only hope that someone will be kind enough to delete my search history if I’m ever unable to erase it myself.

Gif from Bunnyfood.

Cat wearing a baby bonnet. The gif has a link to the site where I originally found it. I wanted to know if the person who dressed up this cat still has all of their original fingers. 😉

When did the first Harry Potter book come out? I thought it was 1995 or 1996. It was actually ’97.

Is Beyonce really part French? Several years ago there was a controversy over her  acknowledging her white ancestors in an ad. I just found out about it now because I’m apparently way behind on my pop culture shenanigans.

What makes meat so delicious? and Why is red meat bad for your heart? I’ll bet you can’t guess what I was craving this weekend.

How many couples only have sex once a month? I read an article that claimed most couples are only doing it a few times a month…if that. It made me wonder.

Asian country where people go to KFC on Christmas? It’s a tradition in Japan that I read about a while ago but couldn’t recall which country it was or why the people there love it so much.

Is there really a dog in Amsterdam who delivers lost items to people? This video lead me to believe there is one in their airport. Sadly it lied.

What’s your chance of developing schizophrenia if both parents have it? This was part of a story idea that never panned out. The answer was about 40% if I recall correctly.

Babies born without corpus callosum. I was suddenly curious about what happens to them. Hint: it’s tragic. Don’t google it.

Why does Doctor Who hate guns? This is what happens when your spouse is a huge fan of a show that decides to give their main character a quirk without explaining why.

Can two Geminis date? My mind came up with this one all on its own.

Your turn now. What have you googled recently that’s a little out of the ordinary for you?

(I got the idea for today’s post here).

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

Jars of Stars via CoyoteSings. It’s rare that I recommend an entire blog on Suggestion Saturday, but every rule needs to be broken sometimes.

Sultana’s Dream. This is one of those links that I think my readers will enjoy more if I don’t tell them anything about it ahead of time.

Why No One Should Talk About “Emotional Adultery” Ever Again via virtusetveritas. Samantha Field is on a small list of religious bloggers I still read. This is a great example of why I grok her stuff so much.

Initialing for an Apology via MsForrestRaven. I like this.

From Ghosts in the Land of Plenty:

The radical lesson is not to shame people into giving money.

It is to teach people that the invisible meek and huddled masses are us.

Remember that jejune hippie phrase from the 60s?

I am also a you.

From Endless Love:

Love is a trade-off, the prevailing wisdom goes: we can either soar briefly to the highest heights or we can have contentment for many years. It is fruitless to despair like Emma and Hannah, because no one can have both.

Or can they? New research suggests that common wisdom might be wrong, and that a significant percentage of long-term couples remain deeply in love.

I don’t normally discuss books here that I’m still in the process of reading, but The Dragon Who Chooses Twice has earned an exemption from that rule.

One of the things I like the most about the young adult genre is the way it catapults you back to what it feels like to be a teenager (or a middle schooler, or a preschooler). Certain stories bring back all of the emotions that I felt at those ages, even the ones that have long since been rationalized away by time and age.

This is one of those tales. If you give it a try, I hope you enjoy it as much as I am so far.

What have you been reading?

Photo by Dorothea Flodin.

Longterm readers might remember how much I enjoy A Hundred Years Ago. It’s a great blog that posts excerpts from the diary of a farm girl named Helen who lived 100 years ago in McEwensville, Pennsylvania. (As an aside, I highly recommend checking out the whole site if you have any interest at all in the histories of ordinary people).

Yesterday the owner of the blog, Sheryl, asked her readers if we want to know in advance about the gaps in her grandmother’s diary. Sheryl shares all kinds of statistics and photographs from the 1910s on the days when Helen didn’t have anything to write about. What’s most surprising about it all is that Helen often doesn’t go into any details about the stuff in her life that readers in 2014 find most fascinating.

It’s understandable why she wouldn’t spend a lot of time talking about the deaths in her family during these years. They were unexpected and no doubt quite painful for everyone.

There are still so many things I wish she would have explained more clearly though. Some entries hint that she may have had a crush on someone she knew. Who was he? What did she do on the days that were left blank? Were there any entries that she wrote out but later erased? Why did she start writing? Why did she stop?

Which leads me to today’s blog topic.

Is there anything you’ve been secretly wishing I’d talk about on this blog? I like to check in with my followers once or twice a year to see what they’re thinking. I’m open to talking about anything. If anyone reads my writing a hundred years from now I’d like them to be able to put all of the pieces of the puzzle together.

If you have a blog and want ideas, I’m happy to give you some ideas as well.

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

The Pumpkin Spice. This is so true.

Death and Grieving as an Atheist via tmamone. There’s a lot of good stuff here.

The Suicide Forest and Overtoun Bridge: What Makes Them So Deadly? via ForteanWriter. This article was written by a friend of mine earlier this month. It’s one of the most interesting things I’ve read so far this autumn.

Children: Like Brain-Eating Zombies but Cuter. It took me ages to pick just one post from this blog to share with my readers. The woman who writes it is extremely funny, so narrowing it down was almost impossible.

Compassion Across Borders: International Disparities in the Vocation of Healthcare Providers. I’d read an entire book on this subject if I could. It’s fascinating.

From I Wasn’t Her Man via Pr4bhas:

Sunday morning, at the cafè I sat
And as I slurped my coffee, she made a face
Quite some etiquette she carried, as she munched away her croissant
Without slurping the coffee, sipped it with a grace.

Earlier this year I recommend the short story excerpt from The Girl With All the Gifts. It was all that was available at the time, but now that the full-length book is out I wanted to talk about it again.

This is the tale of a little girl who lives in a highly militarized, post-apocalyptic world. She’s fed once a week, can’t remember the last time she left the bunker that holds all of the rooms and the classroom. What’s even odder is how afraid all of the soldiers are of her.

If you’re read the short story, you know what I’m leaving out. If you haven’t, this is as many spoilers as I’m willing to give you. The wait was worth it, though. I loved the book every bit as much as I loved the original excerpt.

Science fiction and horror fans, this is a great choice for you.

What have you been reading?

Photo by John Davies.

Someone asked me recently how I’ve managed to slowly tame my email inbox.

First of all, I should say that this is still a work in progress. I definitely don’t have it all figured out, but I’ve had a lot of success with the 5-minute rule.

The whole thing started earlier this year when I began exercising regularly. The hardest part about getting into that habit was convincing myself to do it. It’s really easy to put stuff off if you feel like you have to do the full 30 minutes of cardio or completely empty your inbox every day. Eventually putting it off a few days morphs into a week without any progress, or a week becomes a month.

Rather than give up or wait until I had the motivation to do everything I thought I should do in these areas, I made myself a promise:

Do it for 5 minutes. Once that time is up, you can stop for the day.

You can do anything for 5 minutes…unless you’re trying to hold your breath.

Some days I counted down every last second. When my time was up, I stopped replying or lifting weights or whatever it was I’d been working on as soon as I possibly could.  What I’ve found is that the motivation to keep going often becomes much stronger once you’re already doing whatever it was you’ve been putting off. If it doesn’t work that way on a particular day, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with throwing in the towel after 5 minutes. Over time that has been happening less and less for me, but I don’t beat myself up when I can’t do any more than that.

Exercise is the easier habit of the two now because I’ve been doing it longer. I was sick last week and actually really missed weightlifting while I recovered.

Email is getting there. As I said earlier, I’m still not 100% settled into my new approach to it yet. The amount of time it takes me to reply has gone down, though, and I have gotten a lot better about clearing stuff out of my inbox that I no longer need.

While trying to figure out what to blog about today I received word that my Internet access might be a little spotty this week.

The reptilian part of my brain that used to only squeak when I received word of a particularly violent storm or other, real emergency headed my way woke up.

“Wait, no Internet? We’re not prepared for this!”

As if a short time without Internet access necessitates the same amount of preparation you’d need for a potentially dangerous storm or something.

The funny thing is that I spent most of my childhood not having access to the Internet. It existed for a while before my parents decided to hook up to it. Hell, we didn’t have a television (much less cable) during a few different chunks of my childhood. Theoretically I should be well-equipped to survive a short time without electronic entertainment. We did it for years after all

There are books to read, puzzles to work on, and lots of streets to explore. That’s not even to mention all of the other places I can go during this short period of time when I’ll need to search for other ways to get online.

Yet I’m sitting here planning for this as if it’s something that needs to have all of the kinks worked out of it ahead of time.

It makes me wonder how my niece and nephew will adjust to this kind of thing when they’re adults. Both of them are growing up in a world where you can access wifi almost anywhere that has electricity.

The picture I found for this post is a joke, but I’m beginning to wonder if it’s becoming true to a certain extent.

What do you all think?