Posts from — December 2011

We did what we do every single year: we woke up the kids at the crack of ass, gave them a completely unhealthy breakfast of nutella as an apology for waking them up so early, and drove downtown on empty streets to volunteer.  Before we had kids, we got to do cool volunteer projects such as cook at DC Central Kitchen.  Now that we have kids, we are assigned to doing “kid-friendly” activities which do not involve stirring enormous steaming vats of macaroni and cheese or working with knives.  This year, we made the Christmas cards that they handed out on the streets as they delivered meals to the homeless who couldn’t get to shelters.  I have never drawn so many Christmas trees in my life.  And Josh donated his blood.

I like reading all the Christmas posts where people describe what they did for the holiday.  I was a bit commented-out by writing Creme de la Creme blurbs on Saturday, but I liked seeing photographs of trees or reading about what was served at various meals.  I’m always curious how people choose whether to make Christmas Eve or Christmas Day the focus.  I’m a big fan of nativity scenes and “Silent Night” and beautifully decorated trees, especially when there is meaning behind most of the ornaments.

So this is my ignorant question:

Up until the actual Christmas Day posts, all I saw this year in regards to Christmas was the enormous consumerism.  The Black Friday pepper spraying incidents and all the subsequent craziness that followed (such as the man who dropped over dead and people stepped over his body to continue shopping).  The continual push from mid-October to December 24th to buy things.  I know the vast majority of people don’t shop in this manner, but people do seem to get very stressed out with Christmas shopping.

I don’t understand the pressure of Christmas gift giving, which is why I’m asking about it.  We don’t have a holiday like this, and the only Jews who do participate in this manner with Chanukkah do so as mimicry of Christmas (yeah, that whole 8 days of presents things… that’s an American tradition created to resemble Christmas).  I buy people birthday gifts, but I only have to concentrate on one person at a time.  And I get the twins a present for Purim, and my nieces a present for Chanukkah/Christmas.  But it’s easy to shop for children.  I don’t think I’d do well with the pressure of having to purchase dozens of unique gifts for various individuals all at the same time.  I would probably crack under the pressure and cry, or I’d phone it in and get everyone a gift card, hating myself in the process.

Someone explained to me that people give bigger gifts on Christmas than they do for birthdays.  Where it would be excessive to buy someone a computer for their birthday, it’s completely reasonable to buy it for Christmas.  I’m not sure this is entirely correct, which is why I am turning to you, o’ People of the Internet.  When you’re buying people a gift, would you opt for doing something extravagant for Christmas and something more subdued for a birthday?

And because I need to live vicariously through you — what did you get as a gift for Christmas this year?  And what was your favourite gift you gave?

Hopefully I haven’t offended anyone.  I really am curious about this and am trying to understand the gift-giving side to the holiday.

We woke up this morning because it sounded like someone was trying to drag a body into our backyard at 7:36 am.  An arrhythmic thumping of someone running themselves into the fence gate.  “What the fuck is that?” I asked Josh, and he started to pull on more clothes so he could go outside and investigate.  “Please be careful.”

I peered into our backyard, seeing nothing out of the ordinary, and then stepped into the hallway at the same time the ChickieNob came out of her room to tell me that she was scared.  I sent her to wait on my bed, walking around the upstairs of the house until I found the location of the noise.  It sounded as if someone was being scraped apart inside our attic.  I also knew that this wasn’t the most likely scenario.  It’s not a finished attic.  If someone was being dismembered, they’d probably come crashing through the ceiling at some point as their body rolls off the beams.  Plus, you know, it also seemed unlikely that a killer would enter our house, go into the attic, somehow get rid of the ladder and pull the attic door back into place, and then take apart his victim up there.  I just want it said that I kept my imagination somewhat in check.

Which left the more likely scenario that an animal was in our attic, destroying our children’s preemie clothes that I had stored away up there, not wanting access to them because the one time I loaned them out to a friend, I felt so distraught over it that I decided that I’d buy all friends who had preemies a new wardrobe for their child rather than give them our old clothes.  I am fine doling out anything in the size of 0-3 months and larger; it’s just those tiny nightgowns made for two-pounders that I have difficulty refolding when they’re returned.

Our friend recently had a bat in her house.  It flew around the upstairs, in and out of the bedrooms, and the exterminator told her that it came through the attic.  80% of bats have rabies, she told me (a quick Google search just now yielded a less impressive number of .05% of bats have rabies, but let’s go with 80% for the sake of this story).  Schrödinger’s Bat — since until we opened the attic door and let it fly out was both a bat and not a bat at the very same time — banged itself against the roof and beams of the attic, making the ChickieNob call out from my bed, “I am very very scared.”

And then we heard Josh’s voice outside bellow, “get out of here!”  The scraping stopped immediately.  I pictured the killer sighing with ennui and carrying the dismembered corpse out through the hole he made in our roof (the only explanation I could come up with for how he got into our attic without a ladder).  I pictured Schrödinger’s Bat taking flight after him through the same hole.  Josh came back in the house and returned upstairs.

“It was a crow.  On our roof.  Eating a dead animal.  With his beak.  When I called out to it, it took the dead animal in his mouth and flew away.”

Our preemie clothes were not defiled, our roof intact, corpse parts not strewn across the beams of our attic.

All was well in the house again.

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After we had kicked out of bed all the children who had accumulated under the blanket while the crow ate its breakfast, strangely amplifying it so we could all enjoy the crunch crunch crunch of small animal bones and sinew, Josh and I went back to sleep.  And we were almost successful.

Our neighbours are evangelical deaf Christians, and they have a vibrating clock alarm.  Every year, on December 24th, for a reason known only to them, they leave their alarm sounding for several hours.  Every time it goes off naturally after a ten minute period, we get a two minute pause of silence; just long enough to allow our frayed nerves to relax.  And then the alarm goes off again.  Because it vibrates, it causes a bunch of houses in the neighbourhood to shake.  Josh went over to talk to them, agreeing that it would be better if he did it than if he left it to me because I have potty-hands when it comes to signing, and I was more likely to shriek and sign obscenities at them.  But they refused to answer their door.  Yes, they were home.  He rang the doorbell for about ten minutes as the ChickieNob returned to my bed to ask why our house was now shaking.

When I wrote about this on Facebook last year, we all had a good laugh about this sounding like a joke: evangelical deaf Christians who have been trying to convert us for ages are sounding the alarm on Christmas Eve day.  But I’m not laughing.  I don’t want my soul saved.  I just want to sleep.

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No lie-in today, despite the fact that we stayed up exceptionally late last night because we were gleeful over the idea that we were having our first chance to get sleep since Thanksgiving.  I am cranky and hating crows, our neighbours, and Christmas (since I can’t believe that it’s an accident that the alarm has been going off now for THREE HOURS.  Yes, it has been shaking the wall behind my back the entire time while I’ve been writing this.  And looking back at Facebook and emails from years past, it always happens on December 24th).  I’m off to write Creme blurbs, so if you see the list on New Years Day and it has a lot of parenthetical statements about how crows and our neighbours suck, you’ll understand why.

Our coffeemaker died this week sending us into utter panic.  When Josh called out to me, I ran downstairs without my glasses on — that’s how frantic this news made us; and we both stood there as if we had discovered that someone changed the locks on our house and we now had no way in.  Coffee is our gateway to consciousness.

Which is why I didn’t research coffeemakers.  Usually, if I’m going to buy an appliance, I like to think about it.  I like to look up reviews online.  I talk to people about what they like or dislike about said appliance.  I may even look around to see where I can get the best price.  I buy appliances like elderly people drive, slowly and carefully with my coat belt trailing out of the car.

This is as much thought as I gave this very very necessary purchase: I thought about which store would have the most coffeemakers in stock (I put my money on Bed, Bath, and Beyond, though Target and some department stores were also considered).  I drove to said store even though it was four days before Christmas and the store was understandably insane with people diving after cotton candy machines and shearling blankets.  I ran through the aisle with the kids and visually scanned the coffeemakers for the one that had the least amount of buttons.  I called Josh and read off two model numbers and asked him to look at which one had the smaller amount of negative reviews on Amazon.  I then grabbed the better coffeemaker, ran to the front of the store (though not before the ChickieNob was distracted by a picture frame that she wanted to get as a gift that said, “in loving memory” and I had to explain to her that the person really wouldn’t appreciate being reminded of their own mortality… Merry Christmas!), thrust my money at the cashier and screamed, “oh please oh please I need this so baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaadly” while I writhed on the floor, shaking from lack of caffeine.

Literally, all of that is true until we get to the writhing on the floor part.  It was more like I stood at the cash register, drumming my hand on the counter like my skin was crawling, which it was.

Our coffeemaker had a good run.  She was 14 years old.  We used her every single day.  In coffeemaker years, that’s like… 700-something years old.  Still, it broke my heart, memories of how the ChickieNob got so excited as a baby to watch the orange ball travel up the clear frame to show the water level.  The mornings of just me and the coffeemaker, quietly dripping while I stood at the counter, mug in hand.  I had to photograph the coffeemaker before Josh disposed of her useless carcass.  And then I kicked myself for not buying the picture frame.

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If you Google “Queen Melissa,” I am the second hit.  I’m not sure why this delights me.  I’m also a little dumbfounded that there isn’t a Queen Melissa somewhere.  It’s a fantastic name, Royalty.  You may want to use it.

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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:

• “Tick Tock” (Outlandish Notions)
• “Dear Mrs. Duggar” (The Misadventures of MissOhKay)
• “Festive with Whine” (Bodega Bliss)
• “Reflections on Pregnancy and Loss” (Mission: Motherhood)
• “Fall On Your Knees” (With Every Heartbeat)
• “Black Christmas” (No Oven for the Bun)
• “Choosing” (This Was Supposed to be My Symphony)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Mommy Odyssey has a beautiful post for her first blogoversary about how she sees the community.  Like many, she started writing because she simply needed to get out her story.  Then she discovered there was a whole world of women and men out there, all writing their stories too.  I sniffled through this: “I never imagined that something as simple as a blog would be such a salvation. I never imagined that this space would bring me to women who I now consider some of my closest friends in the world. Women who are oceans away, but who I love like sisters.  Because they – you – understand. Because in my darkest moments, they – you – have been there for me beyond anything I thought was possible.”  Go wish her happy blogoversary after you read (and nod) through the post.

Project Progeny has a post about parenting, and what shapes our parenting style.  But it’s also about how we have no clue how the choices we make will also lead to the relationships we’ll have with our children down the road.  It’s really a fascinating read and gave me a lot to consider.

A Real Life returns to blogging with a story about an encounter in an elevator.  The woman mistakenly asks about her non-existent kids several times, and the writer doesn’t correct her.  It’s just as much about the things we say to others without knowing how much they stay with the person as it is the writer’s musings on why she didn’t let the woman know that she didn’t have children yet.

Lastly, From IF to When has a post about judging others that sparked a good conversation in the comment section.  She makes an excellent point: “My opinion on the way someone else is living his or her life doesn’t matter, and neither does yours. I think it’s easier to get wrapped up in what another person is doing. It’s harder to let it go – let people live their lives and speak their minds without passing judgment.”  It’s about the times when we judge, when we form opinions on other people’s lives without knowing all the facts, nor frankly having to live out their choices.

The roundup to the Roundup: Our coffeemaker broke.  I’m the second hit on Queen Melissa.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between December 16th and December 23rd) 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.

When I told the ChickieNob about the butter situation in Norway, she was absolutely horrified.  4 sticks of butter cost about $26 US (though Colbert reported $740 per box).  She immediately wanted to send the good people of Norway our butter, which I explained probably would go rancid on the way over.  And beyond that, we would be sending the butter blindly to a random address, and Mr. Pedersen at Ullevålsveien 1 in Oslo may not be appreciative to receive a random package of rancid butter regardless of our intentions.

Then she had the brilliant plan to make the good people of Norway brownies since they will not be able to afford the butter to make the brownies, and brownies ship better than butter.  Again, I told her that while this was a great idea in theory, Mrs. Eriksen of Tøyengata 51 may be a little scared to eat brownies sent by a strange American child who was heartbroken over the idea of her butter difficulties.

The ChickieNob is still at the drawing board, trying to solve Norway’s butter crisis.

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Fugazi is releasing all the old tapes they made at their shows and placing them up for sale on the Dischord website.  The problem is that I can’t remember which shows I was at (though including the location is helping somewhat — I totally remember being at Sacred Heart) and then there is the other fact that I prefer to have the original recordings (okay, so I moved from vinyl to CDs to now digital copies at some point) vs. the show versions.  But still, it was fun to peruse the archives.  I couldn’t help but notice that they recently uploaded a concert from Oslo, Norway.  Not that punk rock has anything to do with butter.  Mostly.

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A few months ago, I was standing in the kitchen, cooking brunch, when the ChickieNob opened the door to let in her friend.  I heard her say sympathetically, “I see that you now have a vision problem” and in my head, I immediately imagined that her friend, L, was sporting an eye-patch like a pirate.

But no, her friend, L, was merely sporting a pair of enormous reading glasses with the lens popped out.  Her mother followed her into the kitchen and explained that this was a new look she was trying out, a look that was enormously appealing to the twins.  They also wanted us to destroy two pairs of old glasses so they could walk around in enormous spectacles sans lens.  So for a few months now, they have been wearing glasses with the lens popped out, sometimes out of the house, but usually while they’re playing.  The ChickieNob especially enjoys wearing them while she’s reading.

Until last week when they wanted to wear them to school for the first time.  I was (1) worried that the other kids would make fun of them and (2) worried that the glasses would be disruptive, but I let them walk out the door with them because it wasn’t a fight worth having.  I totally forgot that I let them wear them to school so when I popped into their classroom later in the afternoon, my first thought was, “what the hell is on my child’s face.”

The glasses-to-school thing was a one time deal because while the kids did not make fun of them and they were not disruptive, the other kids did decide that it would be a great idea to poke their fingers through the empty lens slot and touch their eyes.  So they’re back in our spectacles case.

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The kids learned how to make a gingerbread house this year.  They made it with a nasty milk carton as the central support, covering the waxy cardboard with icing and attaching graham crackers to make the walls.  Needless to say, I offered them many things to dispose of said gingerbread house without consuming it.  They agreed to do so if I would let them make what Josh has dubbed a “Chanukkah Hut”: a house made out of brownies (that are attached together with nutella mortar) and decorated with blue and white candy.  Delicious.

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The Wolvog lost another tooth.  Rather than go through this again, I wrote the word “TOOTH” in all caps on a post-it note, and then placed my ring and thumb drive on top of it so I would not be able to get through the evening without looking at the post-it note again.

*******

I thoroughly enjoy some of my spam comments.  I mean, beyond the strange gibberish ones or the Viagra ones.  Some of my recent favourites:

• “I’d actually rather pee on the golf club but yeah, I agree with you, George.” — left with a link to an engagement ring site.

• “Did you ever think that making a speech on economics is a lot like pissing down your leg? It seems hot to you, but it never does to anyone else.” — left with a link to a loan payoff site.

With some extra googling, I found the first one originally as a comment on a golf site, and the second is a quote by Lyndon B. Johnson.  I guess my question is why spammers utilize urine in so many of their fake comments.

What has been your favourite piece of spam lately — blogwise or emailwise?

This post is for the 99% of the blogosphere.

Every year around this time, sites trot out their top 100 lists (yes, I’m looking at you, Babble).  They open up their blog awards as click-bait, slapping advertisements down the side of the page while they encourage nominees to encourage their readers to vote for them.  They do calls for the best of… the best of the food bloggers and the best of the tech bloggers and the best photography.  They create clickable lists of people to follow on Twitter — declaring certain accounts the accounts you need in your feed if you’re going to have your finger even touching someone who is touching the zeitgeist, making us believe that we’re not part of the zeitgeist anymore since there is a 1% living it for us.

Because then there are the rest of us.

The 99% of bloggers who write the content that doesn’t get recognized in any enormous way.  The daily posts about both the remarkable and mundane elements of life.  The people we actually connect with and love and would cry if they left the blogosphere.  The 1% are the bloggers we’re dying to meet just to see what they’re like in the face-to-face world.  The 99% are the bloggers we’re dying to spend time with because we just know it would be a fantastic conversation with a likeminded individual.

Blogging was — at one time — about leveling the playing field.  About taking away the gatekeepers of publishing and allowing every voice to have the potential to be heard.  And that is still what it is, though it’s almost as if people are too scared to allow ourselves equality, so we create these “best of” and “top blogger” lists in order to remind ourselves of some old time that doesn’t actually need to exist.

And for anyone who makes the argument that these lists tune out the cacophony of the blogosphere, allowing voices to be heard, I’d accept that argument if the lists changed yearly.  But they don’t.  And we all know that.

Five years ago, I started the Creme de la Creme as a response to this idea of separating out some bloggers from others; giving 1% attention while ignoring the 99%.  Because we all have amazing posts — not just once a year, but actually quite frequently.  And I can prove it with the evidence of the Friday Blog Roundup, which has been happening for 5 1/2 years.  Every week, for 5 1/2 years, I have been able to find at least 4 posts from various bloggers which are remarkable; noteworthy.  And the point is that it’s not the same bloggers weekly.  Almost 100% of the time, there is at least one blogger on the list who has never been featured prior to that point and the other three bloggers vary, bringing in all areas of the blogroll.  So if you take 286 Roundups (yes, the Roundups are misnumbered as we discovered last year though kept due to laziness) and multiply that by an average of four posts, that comes out to 1144 posts that I found remarkable, written by an average of 500 or so unique bloggers.  And if we add in the posts that you bring to the mix each week, we add in several thousand more.  Which — in my not-so-scientific opinion — proves the point that there are more than one or two infertility bloggers who deserve recognition.  There are actually 100% of us who do.

Movements have a manifesto; a clear vision for what they hope to accomplish and change.

This is mine, the one I’ve been repeating in various ways over the years.

Occupy Blog Street.  Sit down on your blog and write something today.  Hit publish.  Read everyone equally — mixing the 1% and 99% together to create a single entity.  Ignore “best of” lists.  Declare 2012 as the year of telling YOUR story and then tell it. (Though you may only get to December 21st because that’s when the world will officially end.  We’ll all understand if you miss blogging those last few days of the year since none of us will be around to read those posts.)

Check your stats once a day, and then wean yourself to once a week, and then wean yourself to once a month. (I would tell you not to check at all, but how else will you know the amusing Google searches that bring people to your blog?)  Do not judge the worth of a post by how many comments it gets, but instead judge the worth of a post by how it made you feel to write it.

Choose a blog to read just because you like the look of the header and layout and not because you found it on a top blogger list.  Use StumbleUpon and find posts you would have never found otherwise.  Stumble other people’s posts that you like.  Make sure you let your favourite bloggers know how much they are appreciated.  Everyone needs encouragement from time to time.

And most important, don’t feel badly if you’re not included on a top blogging list; if no one bestows an award on your blog this winter.  You’re in good company with the 99% of us who never make those lists either (nope, I’m not on them).  Other people’s opinions do not matter as much as your own.  And you know, in your heart of hearts, that your blog is not only worth writing but it is worth reading.  So re-read your own blog, make a day of it to curl up on the sofa and re-read your own thoughts.  And marvel over them.  Give yourself your own reward; make it out of paper cups and duct tape and gold foil.  Put all of your blog posts in a Word file because your words are important and worth protecting (you’ve done this, right?).

Every voice matters.

Photo Credit: modified with permission from SludgeGulper.