522nd Friday Blog Roundup

I’m spending Black Friday avoiding all commercial spaces.  I’m avoiding stores, the streets near stores, or places where people have once considered placing a store but didn’t.  I don’t like shopping when all is calm.  Retail spaces on Black Friday is how I imagine Hell.

That said, I have a friend who live-Facebooks (like live-Tweeting, but on Facebook) her Black Friday adventures.  And I totally love following along from home.  It’s like the Santa tracker: no one wants to actually be Santa, flying around in the cold, schlepping heavy boxes.  But seeing where Santa is while you relax with your hot chocolate = totally cool.

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So I went to the food store on Tuesday, which was a huge mistake.  It was pre-Thankgiving chaos coupled with first-snowstorm-of-the-season chaos.  But I needed ingredients for dinner, so I braved the lot, parked, and went inside.

I was standing in the yogurt aisle, looking for Fage, when a man (who works in the dairy section) came up to me and said, “looking for something?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“The Fage?” the man asked.  He was unpacking boxes, so I thought he was offering to go out of order and jump to the Fages.  But he shook his head.  “There’s no Fage left in the state.  It’s all gone.”

“What do you mean that it’s gone?  I just bought some three days ago,” I told him.

“Nope.  There’s no Fage left in the country.  Go anywhere.  You won’t find it.  They’ve discontinued it.  Won’t return my calls.  Every day I place an order and every day I get a response from the system that there is no Fage to be found.  There is no Fage anywhere in the world.”

I walked away, but not before insisting that Fage didn’t go out of business and being told that nowhere in the entire universe was this brand of Greek yogurt.

To be on the safe side (and to get yogurt), I decided to brave a second store.  Sure enough, the shelves in this store were lined heavily with Fage.  In fact, it was on sale.  4 for $5.  I guess when he says there is no more left in the entire universe, he means that 45,000 square foot universe cordoned off by the outer limits of the parking lot.

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We are about 2 weeks away from the Creme de la Creme list CLOSING.

The 2014 Creme de la Creme list is open for entries until December 15th.  No one will be added after December 15th.  Read the post to see how to be a part of the Creme de la Creme, which is open to every member of the ALI (adoption/loss/infertility) community.

Consider that your weekly reminder.

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Stop procrastinating.  Go make your backups.  Don’t have regrets.

Seriously.  Stop what you’re doing for a moment.  It will take you fifteen minutes, tops.  But you will have peace of mind for days and days.  It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments in order to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

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And now the blogs…

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

• “Do You Need to Plot Out a Novel Before You Start Writing It?” (Stirrup Queens) — thank you, Lori!
• “Our Surrogacy Journey, Part 1” (Oh Baby, Baby)
• “If you wouldn’t say it to a pregnant woman, don’t say it to a bereaved one” (The Lewis Note)
• “Snippets” (A Half-Baked Life)
• “Birth Plan Schmurf Plan” (The Long and Winding Road… to Parenthood)

Okay, now my choices this week.

A Little Pregnant has a post about the aftermath of infertility and taking her child back to the IVF clinic.  She writes: “It’s not like you forget it, the grind of infertility, once you’ve had children and distance. The best way I can describe it is that it’s no longer who I am, but it’s still who I have been. (It will never be who I was. I wonder if that’s true for anyone.)”  But it’s the tattoo that got me.

Charlotte in Our Hearts has a beautiful post talking about observing that commonly used crumpled paper analogy and realizing how it related to her crumpled heart.  She writes: “We taught my second graders that words crumple hearts, and I realized that death crumpled mine. It’s a hard pill to swallow knowing that I carry a crumpled heart, but I am slowly learning to accept it.”  Go over and read the whole post.

Lastly, Kveller has a moving post about a couple gaining a child and losing their faith.  It leaves them feeling unmoored.  What was the point to all of this?  The most sobering line was “For our one daughter, we’ve had to say goodbye to 10 other babies.”  It’s a really moving post, applicable beyond Judaism or Christianity (or choose your religion).  How do we find meaning in the meaningless when someone (a child) is going to one day want an answer?

The roundup to the Roundup: Uh… happy Black Friday?  There actually is Fage.  Your friendly Creme de la Creme reminder.  Your weekly backup nudge.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between November 21st and 28th) 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.