Posts from — September 2011

We left our shul for a year to join a different one.  Before we went away, I liked our shul.  It had a great service and a great rabbi.  At the same time, it was far distance-wise and we didn’t have a ton of friends there, so it didn’t feel like a terrible idea to try a new place.  Except the new place was an awful fit; awful to the point where I stopped keeping Shabbat for a year.  I didn’t make a challah.  I didn’t light the candles.  I didn’t attend shul.  I didn’t feel Jewish.

Josh promised me last Yom Kippur that by this Rosh Hashanah, we’d be back at our usual place.  I can’t even tell you how much it felt like I was walking into a hug to re-enter the building.  To be in that service again.  To see the rabbi and his family.  I didn’t realize how much it went beyond “like” until I had to be away from it for a year.  And suddenly, I saw its worth.

This Rosh Hashanah, we took our seats near the Cullens (so named by us because this vampire family never seems to age.  We have sat next to them for six years and while our hair greys and our midsections get fuller, they remain forever locked in youth — from the grandmother down to the teenaged grandchildren — who have seemingly been high school students for all six years).  And I could feel my entire body relax.  It didn’t seem that long a distance to drive once you saw what was closer.  And it turns out that we do have a lot of friends there, ones I had sort of glossed over mentally when I was convincing myself that I’d be happy with the move.

It felt so good to be home.

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You may have noticed little social media buttons at the bottom of my posts.  I added it on Wednesday since I felt like it was time to join the 21st century (or 5772 — woohoo! a shout out to all my Jewish friends!)  Also, a friend wanted to share a post and mentioned how difficult it is to share posts sometimes when you don’t have those buttons.  So now I have those buttons if you’d like to use them.  And frankly, I’d love you to click if something I wrote moves you to tell others about it.

Go on, I know you’ve been itching to tell the world about how my hamster pees in a handstand.

Apparently, you can only see the buttons if you’re in the actual post vs. being on the main url for the blog and scrolling downward.  Fancy!

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I want to see both Moneyball and 50/50.  I am debating whether or not I have the attention span to see them back-to-back on the same day.

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And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week as well as the week before.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “A Fond Farewell” (Waiting for Our Miracle)
• “I’m Scared” (Where Do We Go From Here?)
• “Fuck It (Pun Intended)” (Les Terres Fertiles)
• “Tweeting a Funeral” (BlogHer)
• “What I Sounded Like 17 Years Ago” (Hannah Wept, Sarah Laughed)
• “One Year Blogoversary” (Yolk)
• “One Day, Maybe My Mother Will Understand” (Trying Not to Scream)
• “Slowly Backing Away” (Whitney&Erick)
• “Feeling Restless” (Bodega Bliss)
• “Left Behind” (Mojo Working)
• “Let’s Do the Time Warp Again” (Four of a Kind)
• “This is My 66_th Post” (The Smartness)
• “My Toddler Bites” (Creating Motherhood)
• “What NOT to Say” (In Due Time)
• “I Couldn’t Bite My Tongue Completely” (Holy Crap! You Can’t Talk About Miscarriage)

Still Kicking Your Collective Ass: I am so proud of you again!  15 posts!  Keep up the good work: there is a whole world of blog posts out there worthy of a little extra attention.  This week, the dates are things written between September 23rd and the 30th.

Okay, now my choices this week.

Eggs in a Row has a post about how large numbers can loom in the mind.  While she rationally knows that 32 years old is not quite ancient, it also doesn’t mesh with what her heart knows about her desired timeline.  She admits: “Because honestly, in the scheme of things, I know that I need to just breathe.  Freaking out about my age (which I know isn’t that old whatsoever) is kind of like counting the hours of sleep I could get now, if I just fell asleep.”  This post resonated with me as a fellow clock-watcher/worrier.

Perfect Moment Mondays are back at Write Mind Open Heart, and I love Lori’s take on an adoption conference she attended.  She starts: “Now I know how Trekkies feel. Not during their “real” lives, but while at StarCon.”  It’s about spending time with your tribe, about meeting the people you’ve been conversing with online for years, as well as spending time with people who get it.

Geebaby has a post about processing the SA results and how it differed from her husband’s reaction.  The bad news brought for her relief and answers, parameters and boundaries.  For her husband, the results were life-changing, devastating.  Isn’t this a gorgeous description: “This week, we gave and received pain, rocking back and forth as our emotions allowed.  Two sides of the same coin.”

Lastly, Somewhere in the Middle has a post about sugar; about a churro that never appeared and cinnamon sugar chips that didn’t quite make her feel as good as she hoped.  In fact, they had the opposite effect.  The more she ate, the sicker she felt: physically and emotionally.  “I still felt so empty, so lost. and so angry.  And the more time that passed by, I started to feel worse about what I had done.  I can’t do that again. I can’t eat food to make myself feel better, that kind of thinking creates more problems than I’m willing to deal with. I have enough to be going on with, thank you very much.”

The roundup to the Roundup: I love being back at my old shul.  I have joined the 21st century and added social media buttons.  I want to see both Moneyball and 50/50.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between September 23rd and September 30th) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.

Welcome back to IComLeavWe. It stands for International Comment Leaving Week, but if you say it aloud, doesn’t it sounds like “I come; [but] leave [as a] we”? And that’s sort of the point. Blogging is a conversation and comments should be honoured and encouraged. I like to say that comments are the new hug–a way of saying hello, giving comfort, leaving congratulations.

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1. Stirrup Queens (twins, books, writing)
2. The 2 Week Wait (infertility, TTC, pregnancy)
3. Eggs in a Row (PCOS, marriage, humor)
4. InDueTime (life, infertility, miscarriage)
5. Hiding Scars in my Yarn (loss bereavement hope)
6. Geebaby (mfi, planning, early)
7. Waiting for the Nugget (infertility, endometriosis, general life)
8. Created Family (TTC #1, unexplained infertility, social worker)
9. Becoming Parents (raging undiagnosed infertile)
10. Endoandbeyond (repeat miscarriage, trying to get pregnant, food)
11. My Lady of the Lantern (neonatal loss, grief, pregnant again)
12. Colours of Cattiz (ivf#2, male factor, uk)
13. One Day: Ill get my baby bump (miscarriage, now on Clomid, TTC #1)
14. Through the eyes of a stranger (infertility, adoption, random)
15. Feeling Beachie (life, humor, family)
16. Here We Go Again (parenting, random, babyloss)
17. Dragondreamer’s Lair (parenting, secondary infertility, crafts)
18. His & Her Infertility (Just Like The Matching Towels) (PCOS, azoo, international adoption)
19. Cablearms (art, life, miscarriages)
20. kate; uncensored (life after IF, relationships)
21. Donor Diva: Mother via Egg Donation (egg donation, parenting,TTC again)
22. Somewhere in the Middle (dia, waiting, grief/loss)
23. Not Just An Army Wife (infertility, military, iui)
24. Trying (pregnancy after IVF)
25. Mommy Odyssey (miscarriage, suspected ectopics, generally crazy)
26. Four of a Kind (parenting, secondary infertility, loss)
27. Bring on the Babies… (IVF, recurrent pregnancy loss, miscarriage)
28. Survive and Thrive (infertility, IVF, hope)
29. Write Mind Open Heart (open adoption, mindfulness, perfect moments)
30. BabyandtheGeeks (mif, ivf, rants)
31. It’s Him, Me, and Our One Day Baby (infertility, donor egg, love)
32. Living Our Miracle (infertility, embryo adoption, motherhood)
33. Where Do We Go From Here? (infertility, pcos, family)
34. An Engineer Becomes a Mom (adoption, infertility, stupid things people say)
35. Wistfulgirl’s World (adoption, ttc, parent death)
36. Creating A Rainbow (TTC, PCOS, miscarriage)
37. Tippy & Tidy’s Tumultuous Trip To Toddlers (TTC#1,unexplained, donor eggs)
38. CD1 Again (infertility, taking a break, life)
39. Taking the Long Way (rpl, third trimester, preterm labor problems)
40. Bohemian Transplant (infertility, pregnancy, life in general)
41. This Space for Rent (infertility, army, family)
42. Our New Normal (pregnancy loss, adoption, life)
43. Fearlessly Infertile (domestic adoption, adoptive breastfeeding, military)
44. Marriage 2.0 (infertility, adoption wait, life)
45. The Rocky Road to Motherhood (life after ivf)
46. Production, Not Reproduction (open transracial adoption)
47. Witty Infertility (anovulatory, age 30, 1 year ttc)
48. A Second Line (baby, infertility, stillbirth)
49. Creating a Family (infertility, adoption, adoptive parenting)
50. HimPlusMe (infertility miscarriage ttc)
51. Searching for Serendipity (ivf, faith, randomness)
52. The Days of Our Lives (adoption, homestudy, marriage)
53. Stress Free Infertility (stress-free tips, advocacy, success stories)
54. BattleFish (life, fet/ivf, randomness)
55. Greetings from Nowhere, NM (hypothyroidism, varicocele, knitting)
56. Hapa Hopes (infertility, diagnosis, intercultural)
57. Lil Family Blog (motherhood, lesbians, adoption)
58. A Miracle in the Works (autoimmune issues, preparing for IVF#1)
59. Ambition: Motherhood (pregnant, MFI, dIUI)
60. Polycystic Inside (2nd cycle with RE, introspective, sometimes artsy)
61. Sybil and Alex (ivf#2, fet#1, 2ww)
62. Of Seeds and Thorns (college graduate, crafts, moving)
63. Notes From the Ninth Circle (insurance, frustration, stalled)
64. Flogging the Muse (art, painting, creativity)
65. Holly’s Narrative Dream (life, secondary infertility, writing)
66. Invisible Mother (reproductive immunology, food, miscarriage)
67. The Long Way Around (ttc, miscarriage, pcos)
68. Just Let Go (rpl, domestic adoption, life)
69. Legos & Jets (first-time mom, former IF, photography)
70. Going For It (beautiful adopted daughter)
71. The Stork Drop Zone (infertility, humor, life)
72. Hopefulicious (No Blog) (IVF, TTC, IF)
73. Every Day Is A Country Song (rpl, faith, possible use of sperm donor)
74. A Blog of Joy & (Dis)quiet (life, spirituality, inquiry)
75. Our Regularly Scheduled Program (parenting, food, life)
76. Not a Fertile Myrtle (azoo, PCOS, dIUI)
77. The One in Eight Couple (IF, IUI #1, hope)
78. Cradles and Graves (success post-IF & loss, contest, signing off)
79. As Good As It Gets? (infertility, parent, adoption)
80. Infertile Is the New Black (infertility, failed frozen cycle, what next?)
81. IFSerenityNow (pregnancy, if, life)
82. Getting There (adoption, parenting, life)
83. Where the Wright Day Takes You (infertility, jealousy, living child free)
84. Removing Roadblocks (adoption, faith, infertility)
85. Pink Lipgloss & Prenatal (ivf, miscarriage, amh)
86. Miss Conception (ivf, twins, infant loss)
87. Lessons From and Infertile Social Worker (adoption, infertility, family)
88. One Wheeler’s World (life, parenting, home)
89. A Writer in a Wheelchair (writing, disability, life)
90. Weathering the Storm (parenting after adoption, transracial adoption)
91. IUI to Roux-en-Y (weight loss, surgery, my journey)
92. Dreaming of babies (donor egg, ivf, pregnancy)
93. Our Life Journey (infertility, embryo adoption, faith)
94. believing in june (parenting, infertility, ttc #2)
95. Team Baby (IVF, hope, forty-three)
96. A Greater Yes (embryo adoption, parenting, infertility)
97. Life and Love in the Petri Dish (RPL, end-stage infertility, donor egg)
98. This Hampton Life of Mine (secondary infertility, PCOS, only child?)
99. We’re Making a Baby (raising twins, twin pregnancy, job loss)
100. Bio Girl (parenting, infertility, endometriosis)
101. Between the Paper Sheets (infertility, weight loss, marriage)
102. my dusty uterus (humor, anovulation, pregnancy)
103. Embracing the Rain (rpl, infertility, life)
104. The October list is closed.  The November list will open on 10/30.

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Last night at dinner, we were talking about a friend of mine who opened up an online store for same sex weddings.  The ChickieNob wanted to know why anyone would need a separate store when there were perfectly good bridal shops.  The ChickieNob is a connoisseur of pretty things and likes to visit bridal shops as well as jewelry stores in the same way that other people like to visit art museums or the zoo.  We explained to her the term “discrimination.”

“Actually,” I told her, “something happened just this week on Southwest Airlines.”

The ChickieNob sucked in her breath because Southwest Airlines both disseminates her favourite mini pretzels AND is guilty of kicking the object of her affection, Billie Joe Armstrong, off an airplane a few weeks ago.  When they went for Billie Joe, it shook her, but the mini pretzels had such a grip on her heart that she was willing to accept someone being kicked off for saggy pants.  But when we told her about the Leisha Hailey and Camila Grey, you could see the little wheels turning in her head.  Suddenly she had a hard choice to make — was she going to enjoy the mini pretzels others bring her from their Southwest Airlines trips or was she going to take a stand against discrimination and forgo munching on salty snacks?

Because, when it comes down to the line, in the ChickieNob’s world not only should everyone be allowed to kiss; in fact, everyone should kiss.  More is better in her world: more brides, more grooms, more kissing, more snuzzling, more loving.  I hope she never loses that thought; I hope she never becomes cynical and stops thinking that love is the greatest thing in the world.

“I don’t understand how Southwest Airlines makes such good mini pretzels but then kicks people off their planes,” she told us, hoping for an answer that would allow her to still eat the pretzels while supporting other human beings.

“I know,” Josh said dryly, “you would think that people so skilled at choosing airplane snacks would also be open-minded about all human beings.”

The ChickieNob has decided that she’s going to hold off on consuming Southwest Airline pretzels and see what happens in the future.  How they handle things.  She’s willing to give second chances if it means getting to eat the pretzels again, but for now, she thinks we should take a different airline.  But damn, is that little girl missing her salty snacks.  Please, Southwest Airlines, pull your shit together and prove that part of being a “family airline” is being respectful of ALL families.

The idea for this recipe came to me at the Wilco concert this past weekend.  I’m not a fan of honey cake… or really… honey anything.  I’m also not a fan of apple cake.  So that knocked out two traditional desserts served on Rosh Hashanah (apples because they are round like the year, and honey to wish people a sweet new year).  On the other hand, while I don’t like to eat apple pie (I have this thing about mushy apples), I love to make apple pie, and my brother’s girlfriend gave me this fantastic pie idea recently that I wanted to try out. As Jeff Tweedy sang, I thought about apple pie with vanilla ice cream — my staple side dessert to the main dessert — when suddenly it hit me: honey ice cream.  Apples and honey.

Get it?

So I’m posting these recipes in case other people want to make them for their Rosh Hashanah dinner tomorrow night.

Double Bottom Apple Pie

Ingredients for the Crust

3 3/4 cups of unbleached, all-purpose flour (I like King Arthur)
1 tsp salt
2 tsp sugar
3 sticks of butter cut into small bits
1/2 cup of ice water (you may need more, but start with this)

Everyone loves my pies. One man told me that he would choose my pumpkin pie as his last meal if he was about to be executed. So what I’m about to write will horrify all pie makers, but this is what I do…

Put the dry ingredients (flour, salt, and sugar) in the food processor with the metal blade and pulse. Add the dots of butter into the food processor (while it’s off) and toss around a bit with a fork to coat with flour mixture. Turn on the food processor and pulse until the mixture looks like coarse sand. Then sprinkle on the water (yes! While it is in the food processor! Don’t gasp!) and pulse again until the dough pulls together. Make sure you add only enough water to bring the dough together. Too much and the dough will be difficult to work with.

Divide your dough into two circles, wrap in plastic wrap, flatten with your hand, and throw them in the refrigerator. Go write a blog post because you have an hour.

Ingredients for the Pie (modified from Baking Illustrated)

One helping of the pie crust above
7 apples, peeled and sliced thinly (Go for a mixture of types. The only ones I don’t use are golden delicious. I don’t know why I’m biased against them in pies.)
Lemon juice (just enough so the apples don’t discolour)
Scant 1 cup of sugar
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
dash of allspice
2 tbsp all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 500 degrees, with the rack on the lowest setting. I keep the pizza stone in there just because I think it helps conduct heat. Take the first dough out of the refrigerator.

Roll it out by sprinkling some flour on it (not the flour above… just some extra flour) and placing a piece of parchment paper between the dough and the rolling pin. Press the dough into a 9-inch pie plate and cut off the overhang with kitchen scissors. Roll out the leftover dough and make a second circle by placing the bottom of the pie plate over the dough.

You want a circle that fits the exact dimensions of the bottom of the pie plate. Place this dough circle inside the pie plate, creating a double-thick bottom crust. Refrigerate the dough inside the pie plate.

Peel and slice the apples and toss them with lemon juice so they don’t brown. Mix the dry ingredients (sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, flour, and salt) and toss into the apple bowl too (save just a bit of the sugar to use later).

This is going to look like a lot of apples — mostly because it is — but I promise that it will all fit in a 9-inch pie pan. It will mound slightly in the center.

Now roll out the second pie dough to make the top crust. Lift it over the mound of apples and press the edges together with the back of a fork (the top of the pie plate crust to the top crust). Cut off any excess dough. Using the kitchen scissors, snip a few holes in the top of the crust in order to allow the pie to vent. I sometimes put it in the freezer for a few minutes to allow it to firm up again.

If you want to get all fancy, brush the top of the pie with some egg white or water and sprinkle on the remaining sugar.

Place in the oven and lower the temperature to 425 degrees. Bake 25 minutes. Reduce the temperature again to 375 degrees. Bake for another 30 minutes. The pie is ready when the top crust is a golden brown.

Allow it to cool and start work on your ice cream.

Honey Ice Cream

Ingredients for the Ice Cream

2 cups heavy cream
1 cup milk
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup of honey

Make sure your ice cream maker has been in the freezer for 24 hours (you know, the part that goes into the freezer… not the whole damn maker). Place all four ingredients in a pan and gently heat (slow and steady) until the honey is melted and combined. Remove from the heat and allow it to cool slightly. Transfer the mixture to another container and place in the refrigerator for a few hours. Make sure the mixture is COLD before you use it.

Start the ice cream maker and freeze according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Mine usually takes about a half hour to freeze into ice cream, so I like to start it at the beginning of dinner so it’s ready when I serve the pie.

Voila — a new take on apples and honey.

Kathy from Four of a Kind is holding a new blog hop/writing exercise, and the nostalgic side of me loves this idea: revisiting an old blog post that fits within the weekly theme and then giving the follow up story.

This week’s theme is “waiting,” so I plugged that term into the search bar on my left sidebar and worked backwards through old posts, starting with 2006 because I figured they would be the most interesting.  I got to read again about my bag of McBlood, trying to find a doctor who would order the thrombophilia testing, and my addiction to pee sticks (and why we can’t keep them — or Oreos — in the house).

And then I found the perfect post for this.

Five years ago, I wrote about my friend’s breakup with her boyfriend of two years, talking about how we can transfer what we know about discussing a breakup with someone brokenhearted to discussing a pregnancy loss.  Not that these two events are synonymous, but people often know the right thing (and the wrong thing) to say when someone tells them about a breakup, and sometimes, it’s very similar to the line of comforting and questioning that can be used during a pregnancy loss.

I wrote,

In relationships and infertility, it’s out of our control. We can only do so much to make it happen. And that’s very frustrating to a woman who has been taught that if she works hard enough, she’ll achieve whatever she wants.

And I still believe that, wondering if we do a disservice to girls by telling them they can achieve anything they want.  We don’t tell boys this because it’s implicit in the world they inhabit.  I can’t think of a time that I’ve heard a bunch of men debate whether or not they can “have it all.”  But we tell girls this, and it’s a rude awakening when we discover that these elements of life that mean so much to us are essentially out of our control.

And I still like the language ideas presented at the end:

But right now she needs to mourn. And the best words we can give in the loss of a relationship: I’m so sorry; talk about it; do you want me to comment or just listen; talk about the good points; what did you learn from this–are also the ones we can use to help a person mourn a pregnancy loss: I’m so sorry; talk about it; do you want me to comment or just listen; tell me about how you felt while you were pregnant; how do you want to remember this loss; what did your RE learn from this. Instead of pushing them. Before they’re ready. To move on and try again.

My friend’s story has a happy continuation.  They broke up and then got back together months later.  They ended up getting married one day before the manuscript for Navigating the Land of If was due to the publisher.  I was a bridesmaid in the wedding and I wore the turkey cutlet.  They have since had a daughter who turned one this summer.  When she was in the throes of that breakup, she would have never believed this blog post, five years later.  But look at how things turned out for her.