We all have that friend, don’t we? That one friend who is a daredevil, a thrill-seeker. She’s the one who eagerly signs up to skydive, who ice-climbs in the winter, and goes bouldering in the summer. She cajoles you into taking belly dance lessons and pressures you to come hang-gliding with her. She’s the only person you know who actually ate fish tacos from a street vendor in the middle of nowhere, whose “grill” was an old oil barrel cut in half, and somehow didn’t die of ptomaine poisoning. …
5 Steps to Practise Mindfulness When You’re Losing Your Mind
We've all been there: drowning in work, juggling doctor's appointments and parent-teacher meetings, chauffeuring kids to activities, keeping up with the laundry and groceries so that the family is reasonably clothed and fed, multitasking every minute of every day, when suddenly, we hit a bump in the road. Maybe it's a sick kid who needs 100% of our attention, or a computer virus that erases all our work and not-yet-printed family photos. Maybe it's a huge traffic snarl that has us …
How to Combat Summer’s Deadly Sins
I remember that day like it was yesterday: the summer heat was over, and I traded my seasonal stretchy skirts for jeans. It soon became apparent that summery, stretchy skirts hide a multitude of pounds, because I had to jump around like Kriss Kross to get my jeans over my hips, and the button, once fastened, was threatening to burst off and become a lethal weapon. Maybe it’s the sudden burst of heat in a Canadian summer, maybe it’s the lazy unscheduled days. In my case, likely it’s …
How to Find Zen In The Laundry Basket
©Remon Rijper If there is a more Sisyphean task than laundry, I don’t know what it is. There is no such thing as being caught up on laundry; someone always needs clean underwear and socks, and then the towels need washing and the bedding needs to be changed. Until we all transform into a nudist society, we will always have dirty clothes to wash, until the end of time. It reminds me of Newman’s breakdown on Seinfeld, about the unrelenting nature of the mail. To paraphrase: The laundry …
Book Review: Stranger, Father, Beloved
I have a tendency to read the same three types of books: sweeping epics, “slice of life” stories, and a very particular type that can really only be classified as “Oprah’s Book Club.” These are the genres I most enjoy, and I don’t tend to step out of my reading comfort zone much. I am trying to be less insular outlook when it comes to literature, however, and so I jumped at the chance to read and review Stranger, Father, Beloved by Taylor Larson, courtesy of Simon and Schuster Canada. Call it …
