It’s a lazy long weekend otterday!
Lazy Otter via PicPetz.com
Please feel free to use this thread to natter about anything your heart desires. Is there anything great happening in your life? Anything you want to get off your chest? Reading a good book (or a bad one)? Anything in the news that you’d like to discuss? What have you created lately? Commiserations, felicitations, temptations, contemplations, speculations?
Categories: Life
Soggy here, innit? 
In memoriam: Diana Rigg 
Getting out the ‘yes’ 
100 books by women in 2016 
Hoyden About Town 
Good morning Hoydens!
I just read this piece on the Drum and thought it was very excellent.
Other than that, I’m visiting family over Easter, and pondering how Easter is one of those holidays that really can’t be argued to have much of a secular significance, like Christmas. And yet Good Friday is the one of two days of the year (it and Christmas day) where you actually can’t expect Coles and Woolies to be open. I mean, there are pagan roots to Easter and stuff, but overall it strikes me as one of the most overtly religious holidays.
Hope everyone is having a good weekend!
It’s nice and cold here in Melbourne, and the heater will be back on soon. I’m getting Looks from the kitties.
Meanwhile, can’t let an Easter go by without Scary Easter Bunnies.
http://www.essentialbaby.com.au/photogallery/life-style/nutrition-and-wellbeing/when-bunnies-go-bad-20120405-1wf81.html
Wonders never cease: I put up the first Vignettes post in mumblemumbletoolong. Well, semi-wonders, since it’s more pics than writing, but whatevs.
The 2014 Hugo nominations are now known! Scalzi has an announcement post and a thoughts post.
Natalie Luhrs also haz Hugo thoughts. I suspect there’ll be a LOT of thoughts about a few of those nominations (eta: Stefan Raets at Far Beyond Reality is collecting the links as folks publish their thoughts).
The Hugo nominations thing is a doozy. The people who dislike John Scalzi must be feeling cross right about now, because he’s coming out of this looking like an admirable human being. I’m glad someone is.
My s-i-l is fond of giving me gifts she knows I won’t like. My ‘Happy Easter’ present is an object meant to be displayed in my garden which she knows I really do not want in my garden. My house is full of ugly shit from her I am guilted into putting on prominent display. If I complain, I have no sense of humour. If I do not display it, I am being rude. If I don’t like it, that means I am a snob.
I think she does this in the hope her brother will finally realise I am The Wrong Person for him.
Why are people so dreary? Why don’t I just throw it in the rubbish bin?
Sigh.
Hopefully, the kitten will scratch the shit out of it. At present, he views it with extreme caution and hasn’t gone within 3 feet of it. I admire his taste, at least.
Oh eilish, I’m so sorry you have to put up with that. Reminds me of a family I knew where his daughter from his first marriage played those sort of passive aggressive games against the second wife. Unrelatedly but nonetheless illustrative of this daughter’s ‘charms’, when we first met her on a visit to England she was living in Ireland and was extremely proud of the fact that their rural property shared a boundary with Chris De Burgh’s estate, and tended to find ways to mention it rather too frequently. A few years later we heard that De Burgh sold up that property, and we uncharitably concluded that the poor man must have finally been introduced to her and simply panicked.
tigtog, that Legends of the Mouse Guard book I bought on a whim when we were at the bookshop the other week turned out to be completely beautiful. Must try to find the first one (that was the second).
TT that put me in mind of Mr Collins and Lady Catherine de Burgh.
Mindy, Jane Austen would have enjoyed dissecting her mercilessly in one of her books, no doubt.
Rant. TW for discussion of passive agressive behaviour and disordered eating.
I picked up my son yesterday from a couple of days with his grandparents (my inlaws). His g’father told my son that his diet was going well and that he would get used to being hungry and in a little while wouldn’t notice it anymore. My son is 11 and overweight. We as a family are overweight. We have chosen to focus on eating together as a family, eating vegetables together so the kids can see they are edible, and talking about what it feels like when you have eaten enough. We aren’t quite at intuitive eating but we are trending in that general ditection. We also emphasise moving your body rather than restricting food.
His g’father is a ‘born again’ dieter but in my opinion doesn’t make good food choices. He will eat two slices of white toast rather than 2 weetbix because the bread has lower carbs. Which it does but it doesn’t provide either the nutrition or level of satiety the weetbix does. He is thin and has noticed a decrease in his strength but doesn’t seem to see the relationship between the two.
His g’mother took him into the city and they snacked on icecreams, pastries and gelato. I think this is a reaction to the actions of g’father at home but I don’t know. Son would not eat all those things in one day at home.
When we picked him up he complained of being hungry. We didn’t buy food then because we met outside a Maccas and we try to make that a special treat. He was only allowed two slices of pizza for lunch. He is a tall kid for his age and has a good appetite. He would have been happy if he had been offered an apple to finish off his meal or as an afternoon snack. He didn’t get that option.
We stopped at subway on the way home. I am so pissed of right now because we have been spending so long trying to teach the kids that bodies come in all shapes and sizes, being hungry means your body needs food but listen when it says it is full, and that eating a variety of food is good for you. We (his parents) weren’t hungry so we didn’t eat and we told the kids that when they asked.
If his g’father wants to starve himself into a nursing home that is one thing but bullying my son into an eating disorder is not okay. I just don’t know how to deal with this bullshit right now.
Mindy, I don’t have anything useful to say, just wanting to acknowledge the suckiness of it all.
Ugh, so sorry Mindy. 😦
Thank you Aphie and TT. Support is much appreciated.
Oooh. So much bad in just a few days.
The switch from “eat as much as you like” to “no, you can’t have any more” is especially nasty.
I’m pretty sure not listening when the child says he’s hungry means immediate expulsion from the grandparents’ Club. I’ll send the SWAT team of nonnas around immediately.
I would pay to see that eilish!