Posts from — September 2009
Suck it Entertainment Weekly: Melissa and Josh's Top 50 Beatles Songs
Josh and I spent dinner (my choice–egg noodles with tomato sauce, my reward for all the work I did on the living room today) going over Entertainment Weekly’s 50 Best Songs by the Beatles list. Perhaps that list was the best Entertainment Weekly could do because they only think about these things in weekly increments. But we think about our best of lists 24/7. Mostly in chronological order rather than from best to semi-best. Our original picks are in red. The others appear on both lists*.
- Please Please Me
- Love Me Do
- All My Loving
- I Should Have Known Better
- If I Fell
- Can’t Buy Me Love
- Eight Days a Week
- Help
- You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away
- Yesterday
- Norwegian Wood
- Nowhere Man
- Michelle
- In My Life
- Taxman
- Eleanor Rigby
- Here, There, and Everywhere
- Good Day Sunshine
- And Your Bird Can Sing
- Got to Get You Into my Life
- Fixing a Hole
- When I’m 64
- She’s Leaving Home
- With a Little Help from my Friends
- Fool on the Hill
- Your Mother Should Know
- Hello, Goodbye
- Strawberry Fields Forever
- Back in the U.S.S.R.
- Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da
- While My Guitar Gently Weeps
- Blackbird
- Rocky Raccoon
- I Will
- Mother Nature’s Son
- Helter Skelter
- Cry Baby Cry
- Come Together
- Something
- Octopus’s Garden
- Here Comes the Sun
- Carry That Weight
- Two of Us
- Let it Be
- The Long and Winding Road
- Yesterday
- I Want to Hold Your Hand
- Lady Madonna
- Hey Jude
- The Inner Light
28 songs different from their list. Feel free to argue any of your favourites or openly mock us for our terrible taste, but if you want to add one (or more) songs to the list, you’ll need to tell us which one(s) of ours that you’re knocking off. I guess it’s fair game once you tell Entertainment Weekly to suck it. Next up (according to Josh…not me…), the best of Jethro Tull!
*ones that made EW’s list that did not make ours: Hard Day’s Night * A Day in the Life * She Loves You * Tomorrow Never Knows * Across the Universe * Penny Lane * Help * Revolution * We Can Work it Out * I’m Only Sleeping * I’m a Loser * Paperback Writer * Happiness is a Warm Gun * Rain * I Want You * I Am the Walrus * I’ve Got a Feeling * I Saw Her Standing There * Dear Prudence * She Said She Said * You Won’t See Me * Day Tripper * I’m Down * Lovely Rita * Ticket to Ride * I’m So Tired * All You Need is Love *
September 5, 2009 20 Comments
Friday Blog Roundup
For everyone who was holding us in their hearts this week–thank you. We have emerged out the other side for the time being.
ChickieNob: I’m really scared there’s a Von Rothbart in my room.
Josh: Lucky for you, Von Rothbart is usually accompanied by a 60-piece orchestra so if you don’t hear violins coming out from under the bed, you’re probably safe.
The problem is that the guitar class is listed for youths and adults ages 9 and up. “Do you think this is going to awkward?” I asked him.
“No, why would it be awkward if you showed up to a class packed with 16-year-olds who want to learn how to play ‘Aqualung?’ All the class needs is a tweak in the title: Guitar Level I and Cougar Hunting.”
So I’m back to the drawing board, trying to find a guitar class that is dirt cheap and will allow me to mostly phone it in because just as Barbie thought that math was hard, I think that developing callouses is harder.
Weekly What If: What if you had to take a guitar class with a bunch of teenagers and you could reasonably pass for younger than you are. Would you lie about your age in order to fit in better or would you proudly state your age on the first day? I’m not talking about creating a deceptive situation where you are concealing marital status et al–simply fudging the number in order to not look like the loser you are when you’re sitting in the back of the room clutching your Rise Up Singing (not that this what if is in any way tied to a real life situation).
In other words, would you ever lie about your age?
Maybe Baby? has a post about the paradox of hope and fear. Newly pregnant and terrified, her friend doesn’t understand the way she is viewing and treating her pregnancy. She writes: “I think its hard for someone who has not dealt with loss to understand my emotions. I don’t like talking about it. I try to find other causes for symptoms I might get.” And it’s the paradox addressed in the final paragraph of why we keep trying that makes this post incredibly moving.
Teddy Lifeslurper has a post that cracked me up. Especially the captions. Look closely at the pictures.
Lastly, Three of a Kind has a post about the memorial service for Senator Kennedy. It is a beautiful post that contains a quotation written by Senator Kennedy and sent to the families of those who lost a family member on the anniversary of 9/11 (he sent a letter each year). And it’s the quote that entwines itself so deeply in not only Kathy’s situation and following that light right now, but they are beautiful words for anyone who has been through a loss.
The roundup to the Roundup: a bunch of random thoughts, the Weekly What If, and great posts to read.
September 4, 2009 21 Comments
The 68th 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.
I recently unpacked the Barbies from my childhood so we could use them. I not only have Barbie, Ken, and Skipper, but I also have the lesser known Scott, who was a roller skating friend who loved to wear muscle shirts.
This was one of my favourite outfits: one-piece leopard print clamdiggers:
This was an outfit Barbie wore when she had a date with my Andy Gibb doll:
Some of my favourite shirts and jackets for Ken:
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. On the Road to Baby 2. Hobbit- ish Thoughts & Ramblings 3. Infertili- T & A 4. Wise Guy 5. Delenn 6. Becoming Whole 7. Building Heavenly Bridges 8. Our Journey, but not our plan 9. Are You Kidding Me? |
10. Once A Mother… 11. Weebles Wobblog 12. Destined to be an old woman with no regrets 13. Blue Gingham Jumpers 14. Tales of my Thirties 15. Life Happens When You’re Making Other Plans 16. Dragondreamer’s Lair 17. human, being 18. The Bear and The Comedian |
19. The Infertile Sushi- loving Princess 20. Our Family Beginnings 21. Melissa (SMBC) 22. karlinda 23. Kim |
- 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.
September 2, 2009 22 Comments
A Post in Which My Heart and Head Agree to Disagree
Last week or so, the New York Times had an article about PTSD for parents after a NICU experience that Josh forwarded to me, perhaps because I am Tums abuser whenever we need to go remotely near a hospital (though lest you think I am the only neurotic one, Josh commented recently after a doctor’s appointment that he couldn’t breathe. I think lack of lung power trumps stomachache). I think the most interesting part of the article compares the NICU to being in a war zone:
“The NICU was very much like a war zone, with the alarms, the noises, and death and sickness,” Ms. Roscoe said. “You don’t know who’s going to die and who will go home healthy.”
Experts say parents of NICU infants experience multiple traumas, beginning with the early delivery, which is often unexpected.
The article touches on other interesting points–that seeing sick children other than your own can also play into the trauma and that men experience PTSD at a higher rate than women following a NICU experience. How the NICU experience affects you later is not just the duration of time that you’re in the NICU or what your child goes through, it’s a whole host of other elements including what you observed, how you dealt with the emotions in the moment, and your coping mechanisms overall.
In other words, it was actually a good thing that I locked myself in the bathroom that night and cried like an animal according to research.
The point of the article is that while NICUs are focusing on the infants, that parents should be considered as well. I actually have to commend our NICU–the nurses and doctors and social workers did an amazing job of addressing our feelings even when they couldn’t give us answers and helped us aid them in caring for the twins while they were there.
I would never categorize myself as having PTSD, though I have to admit that I have a lot of anxiety whenever we have any medical issues involving the twins. Sometimes, the heart just can’t keep pace with the head. But that may just be my genetic make-up and not a result of their early birth. You can only blame so much on my uterus.
What my heart knows: that I feel a tremendous sense of guilt whenever the topic of prematurity arises. That I have a lot of fears–some well-founded and others the product of my vast and unending chasm of what ifs. That worrying does me no good, yet I also know I can’t stop doing it.
*******
The New York Times is providing me with all sorts of food for thought. Today they had four responses on the idea of memoir (and by extension, blog writing) and children’s privacy. I think it’s pretty obvious where I fall. My story pretty much ends about two millimeters after their story begins. I try not to write about them even though they are the most fascinating people I know beyond Josh. I’m aware that I write about myself enough to provide their schoolmates with endless fodder for taunts (your mum has crusty ovaries, your mum has crusty ovaries!), but I stop at writing about them. I don’t need to embarrass the thirteen-year-old Wolvog and ChickieNob with Googleable stories from their childhood (beyond the time that the ChickieNob told the woman in the food store that I had a special bandaid in my underpants–that story was just too good to keep silent. So bullies of the future, feel free to tease the kids about pantiliners).
And this is the place–their health–where our stories are so tightly entwined that it makes it difficult. I don’t want to betray their privacy, and yet, I have an overwhelming need to discard my own in exchange for the support one receives when they state they need it. But I can’t talk about myself without talking about them when it comes to how I process something in regards to their health, therefore, I remain essentially silent about myself and just disappear into the ether for periods of time. And half the time, no one but myself knows I’ve been away because I am naturally flakey with email.
I also know how much comfort I have gained from reading other people’s prematurity stories–how it makes me feel less alone, so there is also an impulse to share in case our story helps another person feel less alone.
Is it possible that the New York Times has been reading my mind?
To each his sufferings: all are men,
Condemn’d alike to groan—
The tender for another’s pain,
Th’ unfeeling for his own.
Yet, ah! why should they know their fate,
Since sorrow never comes too late,
And happiness too swiftly flies?
Thought would destroy their Paradise.
No more;—where ignorance is bliss,
‘Tis folly to be wise.
Isn’t it so true? We all have shit to deal with; we all think we are being so compassionate to others and lament how no one understands our pain. And at the same time, would we ever want to know the future knowing full well that happiness is fleeting so we should enjoy it when we have it since “sorrow never comes too late.”
In the prematurity article, the second point that moves people towards PTSD is the idea that prematurity often comes with no warning. And unlike the ripping-the-bandaid-off-quickly mentality, it’s the surprise of the premature birth that brings about such fear in the future. What else don’t I know? What else am I about to be told that I have no clue is on the table? That’s all I can say about prematurity–that once you’ve had one surprise, followed by another and another and another, you become very wary of all surprises–both good ones and bad. Which I think is true of most off-the-beaten path situations with conception since we are taught from such an early age that if we so much as think about a boy, we will become easily pregnant, carry a baby for 9 months, give birth to a little pink or blue bundle and live happily ever after.
And when that doesn’t happen, you start wondering in all aspects of life, what the hell else do I not know?
And perhaps this is more indicative of a child who overall is healthy. That when the issues pop up, they are so wholly unexpected because you’re lulled into this idea that prematurity is an event rather than a life course. That once you move through babyhood, prematurity is over. Therefore, it sucks to read studies following the results of prematurity well into the later years–both for the child and for the adult.
Because we are so over prematurity.
And so, without going into details that I don’t feel are mine to tell, I would like your general good thoughts on Thursday. To feel like you’re with me just as I mentally took you with me for my sonohystogram last year.
While Show & Tell will go up Wednesday night, I won’t be around a lot for the rest of this week. There will be directions in that top post on where to go to pick up Thursday’s clue for Blogger Bingo (where the clue is usually listed, there will be a link to the person posting it for me).
If you need directions with the good thoughts, you can just apply them to wishing for peace-of-heart for me. I think that walks the line between their privacy and my need for human contact. Which makes me sound like one of Maslow’s monkeys wanting cloth mommy over the wire one. But, as the New York Times points out, it’s a fine line to walk.
September 1, 2009 65 Comments
