Posts from — March 2009

Because I am dumber than a napkin, I didn’t figure out until recently how to change the profile questions on the forum site. I’ve now set them to ask the name of the person’s blog or the blogs they read so I can differentiate (hopefully) between those who are commonly awake at 3 a.m. because they are googling the fuck out of a new diagnosis or idea that could make a difference this cycle and those who want to sell us on a pyramid scheme that will keep him hard! all! night! long! and increase our pleasure with a few links to virus-laden videos for our viewing pleasure. The point?

I’m still learning.

About Ning, I mean. Not about pyramid schemes that will get me richer than rich. Or pills that will keep him hard all night long. The reality is that we’ve sort of had this capability to do this for a while now. I mean, a Ning page is essentially a Facebook page, except more intuitive. So that Common Thread Facebook page we never use? Um…well, you live and you learn. I’m also embarrassed to admit that a quick search in my email reveals that Ning was mentioned to me no fewer than fifteen times prior to last week, starting over a year ago with my BlogHer listserv and NaBloPoMo as well as Larisa. For whatever reason, the name and how I could use it for LFCA didn’t click with me until Michelle mentioned it.

I’ve changed the name because, as Liv, points out, it will be difficult to know what I mean if I write, “it’s on Stirrup Queens” if the two sites have the same name. She suggested The Stirrup Queen Ballroom and I went with the Stirrup Queens Ballroom because I immediately came up with two tag lines for it (so thank you, Liv!).

If only it would let me have both. I went with the more genteel one. Should I have gone with the second one? It’s up to you.

I also created an icon that replaces the creepy silhouette that Ning uses if you don’t upload a profile photo. You have been replaced with a mosaic-y pomegranate made with Microsoft Paint. I made the same icon into a badge if you’d like it for your own blog:

You can get the code to cut-and-paste into your blog right here.

So, what is the point of the forums now that you’ve been on them and played around a bit? Well, I envisioned it as the weekend LFCA or the evening LFCA…in other words, a way to spread news after the LFCA has been posted for the day (if something, G-d forbid or Yay, happened in the afternoon) or on the weekend when the LFCA doesn’t traditionally post.

It is also, quite simply, for myself. As my friend was talking, I was thinking, “I could use this on a day that I know that I can’t post the LFCA. We could start an open thread and it would run in place of the LFCA and everyone would know to pop over there instead of the LFCA because there would be a message in place.” In other words, this relieves any guilt I feel on the days that I can’t get to a computer. Such as the upcoming holiday of Pesach.

This isn’t replacing the LFCA; I’m still going to post there Monday through Friday. But, on the weekend or on days that you know that I’m not posting the LFCA, I’ll start an open thread that people can add to during the day. The first post in the open thread gives the LFCA guidelines for what sort of news to post (in other words, anything that would normally make it into the LFCA). Under that, people could post their own news or questions and others could post someone else’s news or questions. Just like the LFCA. Except that it’s more like a potluck.

Which is why, if you like the LFCA and use it, you may want to join the forums. You don’t have to be super active, but you may want to check it once a day or set the bulletin board messages to be emailed to you or read in an RSS feed. It is a supplement to the LFCA and a way to disseminate information, get support to a person in need, and assuage my guilt on the days that I can’t post.

It also has a feature which I promise I will not overuse which sends out an instant email to every member. I can think of a handful of times that time-sensitive news spread slowly through the community by people posting it individually on their blogs. This would enable us to send out an email that would go to all–again, only with time-sensitive information (the only way to get your email on this list is to set up a forum account). And…I think people can also opt out of receiving emails if you want to be part of the forum, but not part of that emergency broadcasting-like service. There is also a way to post single blog posts if you don’t own a blog (so you can participate in some of the group activities that require a blog) or if you want to post something in a space other than your blog.

So, as interactive as the LFCA is already with the submission form and the comment section, this is even moreso. Think of the traditional LFCA like a dinner party with hostess and the Ballroom as the potluck with everyone bringing or taking support.

I’d like to do a trial run this weekend of an open thread on the Ballroom. I’ll start it Friday night and it will run through Sunday night. As news pops up in the blogosphere, as support is needed, as celebrations take place, post it in the thread. Literally bring your news (or news you read) to the potluck and add it. And give support when you can. That way I can make sure that it works before I need to use it in a few weeks when I’m sitting in seders.

This is the 36th installment of Barren Advice. You can ask questions that are fertility or non-fertility related.

Barren Advice is posted each Tuesday-ish. If you have your own question for Barren Advice, click here to learn how to submit. Please weigh in with your own thoughts in the comment section and indicate which question you’re addressing if there are multiple questions in the post.

Dear Mel:

Show and Tell is wasted on elementary schoolers. Join several dozen bloggers weekly to show off an item, tell a story, and get the attention of the class. In other words, this is Show and Tell 2.0. Everyone is welcome to join, even if you have never posted before and just found out about Show and Tell for the first time today. So yank out a photo of the worst bridesmaid’s dress you ever wore and tell us the story; show off the homemade soup you cooked last night; or tell us all about the scarf you made for your first knitting project. Details on how to participate are located at the bottom of this post.

Let’s begin.

Last weekend, everyone in the family got to choose an activity that everyone else had to do too. I chose returning to Shepherdstown to get tea since we never actually got my Assam black the last trip. Was it worth an hour-long drive for scones and clotted cream? I think so.

This is the teahouse below. It’s this wonderful, Middle Eastern themed teahouse complete with red gauze curtains and a fabric ceiling. You feel as if you are inside a tent rather than a West Virginian town.

You may notice that I have stickers on my ears. These are my “earrings.” I allowed the ChickieNob to make me fancy before we left.

And because I had to pee in Urbana again, here is the sign that sparked our new favourite term. Apologies, it was taken out of our dirty windshield.

What are you showing today?

Click here or scroll down to the bottom of this post if this is your first time joining along (hint: link to the permalink for the post, not the main url for your blog and use your blog’s name, not your name). The list is open from now until late Tuesday night and a new one is posted every week.

Some people have already noticed it, so I thought I should explain…

Okay, I’ll give you a second to look around the blog and try to find the change.

No?

It’s the new forums and more button under the header.

I was speaking with a new friend this week and she asked me if I knew about Ning, which I didn’t, but now I do because I created a space over there for anyone in the ALI (adoption/loss/infertility) community to use. It is a website of bulletin boards, support groups, videos, photos, events–pretty much a spillover space (and more interactive space) for everything we do on our blogs and especially LFCA.

How does it work? Well, you click here to access it (you can also use the button under the header).

We have been circling the question since October. For months, she has been stepping right up to the edge and then stepping back the moment the conversation turns towards truth. She recently started trying out the word:

Dead

Die

Death

She wanted to play a game with me last week. “Eat my foot,” she told me. I pretended to eat it and she smiled triumphantly at me. “It was poisoned!” she announced. “You ate my poisoned foot!”

I pretended to choke and sputter my way across the kitchen, dying a Sarah Bernhardt-like death on the titled floor. I lay still with my eyes closed for a moment. The Wolvog jumped out of his chair and kissed my forehead with an intensity that would have broken your heart. “I brought you back with love’s true kiss.”

Because that is what happens in the fairy tales. With the exception of Bambi and a few parents, princesses die all the time and come back to life with enough love.

Last night, they were taking a bath and the ChickieNob was testing out the word. She was making an animal sponge float in the water. “It looks dead.”

“What does dead mean to you?” I asked because we really couldn’t avoid the topic any longer.

“It means you’re asleep,” she answered, almost as if she were also asking if that could be the correct answer.

“Does that mean you die every night?” I questioned.

She laughed and said, “no! You tell me what it means.”

“It means your body stops working,” I tell her, remembering the numerous times I have practiced Tash’s words for this moment. “It means you can’t see anymore or hear anymore and your body can’t move anymore.”

“Like if I ran in the street and a car hit me,” she said. Because that is what I always tell her; that there are times a doctor can’t fix you. Like if a car hit you and that is why it scares me when she runs towards the street. “Is that the way you die?”

“Or you could be very old. When you get very very old, you die.”

She asked if her great-grandmother was dead and I told her that she was alive; we could still see her and talk to her and she still moved about which means that she’s alive. And then she broke my heart and looked at me with this full innocence. “But one day, will she die?”

And I had to answer yes because I don’t make promises that I can’t keep.

She asked if I knew anyone who had died and I told her I knew many people–that is what happens when you grow up, you meet more and more people and sometimes you learn that one of them has died. In fact, I tell her in what I hope is the most matter-of-fact voice in the world, you were named after someone who died. That’s what we do in Judaism, we name people after someone who has died.

And then, as quickly as it began, the conversation ended and she went back to pretending to be a mermaid and asked if Marina Del Ray in the new Little Mermaid movie has her ears pierced.

She didn’t seem different afterward. I guess I expected that this black chasm would open and suck into it this modicum of her innocence. I thought she would cry or worry that she’d lose me (she already is extremely concerned that pirates will one day take me and I have to explain to her 1000 times a day that pirates would never want me. I’m a nobody, uninteresting. They want mermaids–not frumpy women in sweatshirts with frayed wrists).

But she just flitted around the bathtub after checking in with me that the main ways to die are to get hit by a car, get really old, or eat a poisoned apple. And I agreed; those seem to be the main ways I can think of off the top of my head as ways people die.

Because the truth of it frightens me even if it doesn’t frighten her. And I’m so thankful for that. I am just so thankful for that small good thing right now and my heart breaks for the thirty-four-year old ChickieNob who will know too much.