Posts from — August 2009
Book Tour #20: Moose
This book isn’t about infertility, but when I read about the way the author, Stephanie Klein, viewed her body, it was impossible to not apply those same thoughts to infertility–the maybe-this-will-work and the internal punishments when it doesn’t. The frustration of a body that will not perform as you wish despite hard work and your best efforts.
And, at the same time, I could take the story for what it was because it’s a universal struggle–melding the image we wish to attain with what we actually have to work with.
There was a girl in college who was in our group who informed me one night that she ate anything she wanted by chewing and then spitting out the masticated food into a cup. It was her equivalent to chewing tobacco. She did it discreetly, but not privately. I mean, she sat at the table with us and chewed and spat into a plastic cup, participating in the conversation. She thought it was better than vomiting because it didn’t bring with it all of the health risks from vomiting.
That night, I asked my boyfriend about it and he sort of shrugged it off. He thought it was weird, but he was so accustomed to it that he didn’t really consider it. I remember lying awake in bed and wondering if eating disorders were so common that we didn’t bat an eyelash at anyone who wasn’t ending up as a story in People magazine.
I am always conscious of how I speak about my own body and how I speak about the ChickieNob’s body (the Wolvog as well, but probably less so). How I speak about food and how we use food. It is a hard line to walk–knowing my words can influence her negatively, but will probably not be enough to influence her positively in the face of what she will encounter outside the house.
And it was both painful and wistful to be transported back to the middle school years through the book.
How did the author’s weight transformation impact your view of her story (she looks quite svelte on the book jacket)? Did it give credence because she “conquered” her weight? Or did her story become more dismissible because she conformed to what society says looks good?
I was never bothered by the jacket photo but I’m also not one to be bothered that almost all infertility books are written by those who have moved on to parenting (even if they are still in the throes of family building). Writing about weight loss when you’re in the throes of weight loss is sort of like trying to fight with someone when you’re upset. You’re going to have a clearer focus and a more persuasive argument if you’re coming at it from a rational point rather than an emotional point, and people rarely lose their passion. It is more often the opposite effect–people keep their passion but gain rationality rather than find rationality when they’re in the hold of passion. It is also the difference between a new artist and an older artist–who can still access the emotional content but who has gained the ability to examine a moment with retrospection.
And I found her in the perfect place for retrospection.
She’s after the moment timewise, but it’s at the surface emotionally due to her pregnancy. Seeing the journal entries was just enough of a taste to get the teenage Stephanie; and frankly, I’m not sure I could have handled or taken seriously an entire book by the teenage Stephanie. The adult Stephanie is a more likeable narrator, not dismissing or negating her former self, but also not keeping to the one note of “it’s not fair.”
Did she need to remain overweight to have insight into what it’s like to be overweight? For me, the answer is no. But that’s also because she never claimed to understand what it was like to be an overweight adult. By keeping a tight focus on youth, she doesn’t make empty promises into holding a deep understanding of overweight adulthood. Though her body image from those formative years obviously comes into play even in adulthood.
Stephanie Klein writes “Years later I’d feel slightly superior because I’d once been fat. That’s the thing…when asked if I’d change my past if I could, I think for a moment and always answer no. There’s something…that just makes it mildly worth it. Because a sensitivity is tattooed on a part of you no one else can see but can somehow guess is there. It’s always with you.” How do you relate to this with regards to infertility?
If you asked me the same question about infertility–to not have gone through it–I’d probably answer the same thing. Because then I wouldn’t have these children, these friends, this sensitivity. If you asked me the same question when I was starting fertility treatments, I probably would have answered differently. Especially if the change would undo the pain I was in. It’s like asking someone if they wish they hadn’t broken their leg after falling off a ladder. The obvious answer as they writhe on the ground would be “yes.” But ask them the same question after the bone has healed and they met their spouse in the emergency room of the hospital and even if they have some lingering pain whenever it’s about to rain, they’d probably tell you that they’d put up with that for all they gained from the experience.
Stephanie describes how she would picture herself slim, and how that image did not look like her at all. Did you/do you picture yourself slim and if so who do you model yourself on? Are you realistic when you imagine the slim you or do you picture someone you could never be like?
I imagine myself much lighter than I am. Someone took a picture of me right before my wedding that shocked the crap out of me. I couldn’t believe that was what I looked like. It goaded me to exercise more and eat healthier, but all that went out the window with infertility. I haven’t truly found that ground again and keep looking for it. I would like to be healthier–which does include some weight loss–but I lack the motivation. It’s just strange to think of myself as thin and then see myself in the mirror.
Hop along to another stop on this blog tour by visiting the main list at Stirrup Queens (above this one). You can also sign up for the next book on this online book club: It Sucked, and Then I Cried by Heather Armstrong (aka Dooce).
August 16, 2009 9 Comments
Good Humour
This afternoon, we went to the pool without water or snacks because I was so distracted by Draco Malfoy’s ill-treatment of Harry Potter in the train car in book six that I simply couldn’t properly pack the pool bag. I mean, yes, I had my copy of book six as well as a random plastic dinosaur in the bag, but no food or water.
The whining began an hour into swim time.
So we promised them ice cream if the Good Humour man returned. Which, of course, he did, because he must make half his money off of parents who are so distracted from rereading JK Rowling’s tale that they can’t move the goldfish crackers already ensconced in a ziplock bag from the counter to the pool bag.
Josh went out with the twins to see what $5 could buy with my added plea to make the money stretch far enough to purchase a vanilla ice cream bar encased in chocolate for me.
As I was watching from my pool chair, daydreaming about my ice cream treat and that brilliant Hermione Granger who has memorized every damn potion in the world, two middle-aged women paused in front of my chair and stared at me.
“Are you a physician?” one asked.
“No, I’m sorry,” I said, not really sure why I was apologizing except that I felt badly if they wanted medical advice and I couldn’t provide it.
“Are you sure you’re not a physician?” she asked again.
I sat up a little. “Is someone hurt?”
“No, it’s just that I’ve been looking at you since you arrived and I really think I saw you on television a few weeks ago. It was a physician, talking about a book…”
“About infertility?” I asked.
“Yes! That was it! A book about infertility.”
“That was me,” I admitted. “But I’m not a physician. I’m just an infertile woman.”
“Oh,” she said.
And then no one spoke. I mean, they continued to stand there and I continued to sit there, but the conversation was over. So I just said, “well, now.”
And one of them said, “well, we were right. We saw you.”
And then Josh returned with the twins and only two ice cream treats because apparently $5 does not go very far in Good Humour land. Unless you are female and you go back out to the Good Humour truck and smile brightly and ask what you can get for the remaining $1 and have him give you an ice cream sandwich to share with your husband because you are kind and thoughtful, even if you are not a physician.
August 15, 2009 31 Comments
Friday Blog Roundup
So interesting how few of you want to have dinner with eighteen-year-old boys, even those who can suck out all your blood OR make your front teeth grow really long with a spell. What? These are not endearing traits?
Just so you don’t have to ask, this is how I tackle my Reader after I’ve been gone for two weeks (and this is a modified version of what I do on a daily basis). I start with the letter A blogs. I start reading the first three lines and if it grabs me by the balls, demanding a comment or a very close read, I skip it. If it’s simply a “I just went to the farm and picked berries and made these pastry” type post (er…), I read it and move on–sometimes with comment but usually without if I’m tackling 600 unread posts.
Then, after I’ve gotten the list down to all-posts-that-need-my-absolute-attention, I start tackling them, commenting, reading in full. I start with the ones that feel like they’ll slide down the fastest. Then I go for the ones that are going to make me think. Then I go for the ones that are going to make me cry.
Which is to say that if you write something and I can tell that it will be incredibly moving, it may take me a few days to read it hence why comments sometimes pop up on days-old posts.
I worked at a literary magazine for three years and we got several hundred submissions a week. We published under 20 stories a year. This is how the process worked. All stories were logged in on ledgers. Each staff member would grab about 30 at a time. You would read the first paragraph. If it grabbed you by the balls, you set it aside to read later. If it didn’t grab you one paragraph in, we had to set it aside because we knew that there were going to be close to 100 great stories that we’d have to whittle down to 20 stories by the end of the year.
If it was rejected, you entered that in the logbook and sent back the reject note immediately. Anything that was in your hold pile got a longer look. Sometimes the story in the hold pile was simply a good read and then you wrote the author a note about it. Sometimes, it was fantastic and you knew that you wanted everyone in the world to read the story too so you nominated it for consideration.
Consideration was a special file box that held the stories that a staff member believed was a good fit for the magazine. Before the weekly staff meeting, everyone was expected to have read the stories in that box and taken notes. When the meeting began, the person who had nominated it for consideration explained to the staff why they wanted everyone to read the story. You were essentially pleading for everyone else to agree with your assessment that it was worth reading. And then people would discuss it and pick it apart and compare it to other stories and try to consider how others will read the story especially in light of the other things already set for the magazine.
And sometimes everyone agreed and it was accepted for publication. And sometimes people rejected it and the nominator wrote the author a nice note about their story. And sometimes we spent several weeks arguing about the same story.
I didn’t notice it until I started writing the Roundup, but obviously old habits die hard.
Now read these nice posts that I’m offering up for consideration.
Still Life with Circles has a post about a section of the Grand Canyon that is a free speech zone and how it relates to her blog and life without her daughter, Lucy. She writes: “I now realize that the greater part of our story is not how she died, but how we lived.” You should read it (see, getting into magazine staff mode) because you will be blown away by how important it is to speak your mind, say your words, and take them off your heart. It’s simply a gorgeous post.
Wishing4One has a post about her visit with her friend’s wife. The woman is aware of Wishing’s infertility–it is a topic that comes up during the conversation–yet she spends the visit complaining about her children. It is difficult to know if she thought this was helpful (“eh, kids, they’re not really that great”) or if it was simply a woman venting about the difficulties of raising two under two. Was it a “you had your turn to complain about your uterus and now I’m going to use my venting time to complain about my children”? Regardless, I love hearing about Egypt and it is an interesting look at how those complaints are processed.
Our Family Beginnings has a post about reading what you love. It is a post not forgiving (which connotes a wrong-doing), but understanding the desire to not read something that your heart isn’t committed to reading. And understanding that just because something is written and you are reading it, doesn’t mean that it is written for you. “Put the book back on the shelf, because that book wasn’t written for you, and that’s okay.” And at the same time, it is a rallying cry to being true to your own story. I smiled reading this post.
This post from Our Own Creation because it needed to be said. It needed to be screamed. And if words could be thrown against walls and shattered, it needed to be thrown too.
Lastly, Unwellness has a great post summing up what she learned at BlogHer and so much of it applies to not only blogging, but living. I laughed at this line: “I suffer from this paralyzing binary brain that simultaneously thinks I am brilliant enough to blog but also thinks that nothing I have to say in response to people’s posts or comments is all that important” and then realized that it wasn’t funny at all, but instead, enormously true for so many of us. I just love the ending of the post and I imagine her calling out the word “write” over her shoulder as she settles
down to work on her manuscript.
The roundup to the Roundup: Those booooooooooooys. Answer the Weekly What If. How I cleaned up my Google Reader while neglecting my inbox. And, of course, great posts for your consideration.
August 14, 2009 18 Comments
The 65th Circle Time: The Show and Tell Weekly Thread
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.
One trip to the farm today = 4 rustic tarts: peach, raspberry, strawberry, and blueberry. Served with cream. This is how I spent my afternoon.
I am so in love with making pastry.
What are you showing today?
Click here or scroll down to the bottom of this post if this is your first time joining along (Important: link to the permalink for the post, not the main url for your blog and use your blog’s name, not your name. Links not going to a Show and Tell post will be deleted). The list is open from now until late Friday night and a new one is posted every week.
| 1. Weebles Wobblog 2. Our Family Beginnings 3. Becoming Whole 4. The Road Less Travelled 5. Not A Fertile Myrtle 6. Parenthood for Me 7. Dragondreamer’s Lair 8. Orodemniades 9. It’s Stork Season… |
10. Destined to be an old woman with no regrets 11. Life from Here 12. A Little Hope 13. Not The Path I Chose 14. Once A Mother 15. Life, Family and the Pursuit of Sanity 16. Sassy IFLady 17. I won’t fear love 18. Alana- isms |
19. M de P 20. In Due Time 21. Hobbit- ish Thoughts & Ramblings 22. In one ear 23. JJ @ Reproductive Jeans 24. Beebles |
- If you would like to join circle time and show something to the class, simply post each Wednesday night (or any time between Wednesday morning and Friday night), hopefully including a picture if possible, and telling us about your item. It can be anything–a photo from a trip, a picture of the dress you bought this week, a random image from an old yearbook showing a person you miss. It doesn’t need to contain a picture if you can’t get a picture–you can simply tell a story about a single item. The list opens every Wednesday night and closes on Friday night.
- You must mention Show and Tell and include a link back to this post in your post so people can find the rest of the class. This spreads new readership around through the list. This is now required.
- Label your post “Show and Tell” each week and then come back here and add the permalink for the post via the Mr. Linky feature (not your blog’s main url–use the permalink for your specific Show and Tell post).
- Oh, and then the point is that you click through all of your classmates and see what they are showing this week. And everyone loves a good “ooooh” and “aaaah” and to be queen (or king) of the playground for five minutes so leave them a comment if you can.
- Did you post a link and now it’s missing?: I reserve the right to delete any links that are not leading to a Show and Tell post or are the blogging equivalent of a spitball.
- If you want it…
I’ve now placed a Show and Tell archive on the sidebar that will be updated each week in case you miss it. And click here for the icon code if you wish to have it for your blog. It links to the archives.
August 12, 2009 40 Comments
Hello world!
August 11, 2009 1 Comment
