Posts from — November 2009

I was standing on the street corner, trying to juggle my cell phone, purse, and shopping bag when a stretch limousine stopped beside me at a traffic light.  The back window rolled down and I shit you not, Brad Pitt stuck his head out the window and said, “Mel.”

I know.

So I looked around as if there was someone else nearby and he laughed and said, “Hey Stirrup Queen, hop in.”

And even though my mother is going to kill me for getting in a car with a stranger, I got into Brad Pitt’s stretch limo.  My heart was pounding so quickly that I couldn’t even hear what he was saying, something about finding the site, and IVF, and recognizing me from the BlogHer video.  It was the most surreal moment I’ve had in my life.

Okay, that didn’t actually happen.

But I did end up in the back of a stretch limo this evening.

A few months ago, right before BlogHer, I was contacted by this very cool documentary maker who wanted to pick my brain about a four part television program she wanted to make for PBS examining the health issues for women from birth (really the teen years) to death (more like your 80s).  And I absolutely loved her and wanted to be part of this project so badly.  Except it was in Chicago.  And I live in DC.

A few weeks ago, she wrote and asked if I wanted her to fly me out to Chicago to be part of this series and while I wanted to very badly there were two issues: (1) I have been a class-A freak lately about traveling on my own and the thought scared the bejebus out of me and (2) I had a reading in Detroit the same weekend.  Alexandra (the producer) told me that she could film my part on Friday and I’d still be in Detroit on Saturday as planned.  So three legs of a plane ticket were purchased, bags were packed, and I flew to Chicago this morning.

Except reality was that I cried in the car as Josh drove me to the airport.  I cried going through security.  I cried when I got to the hotel for a very long time.  I left multiple phone messages of myself crying for Josh at work while he tried to draft a document.  I cried in the shower.  I cried whenever I encountered someone in the hotel who asked me how I was.  I cried.  Did you get that part that I cried a lot?  And I emailed my friend, Julie, while I cried and she tried to give me advice and I told her the only thing I had energy to do was cry and bother her.

At 3:30, I went downstairs and met up with a nice woman who was going to the same filming and we shared a car service.  She told me her name was Ariel and we chatted about kids and the PBS series and such and I finally thought to ask her last name and she said Gore.  I was in a freakin’ car service with Ariel Gore.  As in, the woman whose book is on my “read soon” list.  I would have peed myself, but I had used up all of my body fluids on tears earlier in the day.

Just me, hanging out with Ariel Gore.  Not crying.  With a lot of makeup on my face.

So I got to PBS and met others in the conference rooms where we were hanging out.  Kathleen Puls Andrade was there and Dina Bair.  And a fertility doctor and an oncofertility specialist and psychiatrist and lots of cool people.  Then I was brought downstairs to makeup where the makeup artist covered up the fact that I had been crying all afternoon and put more makeup on my face than has ever been on it before.  She was like a magician.

As I waited around to tape my segment, I snapped pictures.  Then they asked me to stop snapping pictures unless I could turn the sound off my camera.  And I couldn’t.  So I stopped snapping pictures.

Dina, Me, and Kathleen

The conference room door

Paula Zahn, standing on the set, talking to the audience

More of Paula before they asked me to put the camera away because it was noisy

Random cameraman

So it’s my turn to go onstage and I go up with a fertility doctor from Northwestern.  And Paula Zahn (oh yeah, I forgot to mention that the whole series is being hosted by Paula Zahn formally from CNN) asks fabulous questions and we answer them.  She wants to know about the emotional side of infertility and I TELL HER ABOUT OUR BLOGROLL AND ALL OF YOU AND IT’S GOING TO BE ON THE AIR, OUR BLOGROLL IS GOING TO BE ON THE AIR (that’s a hint to please not cut that part).

After my interview was done, I moved into the audience for the next segment on balancing work and home.  And I stayed until 8ish.  Afterward, people were going for drinks, but I hadn’t eaten because I was too busy crying in the afternoon and I also wanted to call Josh and talk to him so I said I was going back to the hotel.  Before I left, I took some pictures with Paula and the producer, Alexandra, who was the whole reason I wanted to be involved in this project in the first place because she is amazingly brilliant.

Oh look, Paula got herself a brand-new olive-skinned child.  Oh wait…no…that’s me.  I’m 35 years old and she can rest her cheek on the top of my head.

Just me and Paula.  Paula Zahn is so warm and clever and funny and immediately puts you at ease.

The incredibly brilliant Alexandra

After I said goodbye, I went outside to meet the car service and the driver, Tosin, told me that we had to drive back in an enormous white stretch limo because of a mix-up with the other car.  So instead of a normal sedan, I got into a stretch limo with full bar–the kind with the wrap around seat that people have sex on in the movies.  And I totally cracked up because honestly, my life is about sitting on the floor outside ballet class and baking brownies and playing Legos.  But here I was, miles from home, in downtown Chicago in a white stretch limo wearing (and my mother will kill me for this one) my grey LL Bean pull over fleece jacket over my nice clothes because I didn’t have the strength to shlep my black dress coat with me to Chicago.

I took out the camera to take a few pictures for the Wolvog.  I couldn’t believe I was in a limo and he wasn’t there with me to enjoy it.  Tosin calls back, “was that a flash?  Are you taking pictures, Melissa Ford?”

And I explained that I wasn’t going to be embarrassed about it.  I was taking pictures.  I wanted the Wolvog to see it and to prove that I had been in a stretch limo that night.  Because literally, I’m 35 years old and I’ve never been in one.  I had an opportunity once at a funeral, but I turned it down because I didn’t want my first time to be tied to something sad.  And I didn’t want one for our wedding, didn’t want one for prom.  But I couldn’t stop laughing that I was in Chicago, coming back to the hotel from a television filming, in a stretch limousine.  This just wasn’t my life.  But what a great story for popping my limousine cherry.

Tosin told me to hand him the camera and he pulled over by the hotel.  And he took these:

Check out the stocked bar…

I went looking for some food and finally gave up because all of the nearby restaurants were closed.  Tosin must have gone into the hotel and set this up, but when I stepped into the lobby, the men at the desk all whistled and called out, “That’s Melissa Ford!  I can’t believe it’s Melissa Ford.”

A nice ending to a very surreal night.

Tomorrow, I fly to Detroit, to my best friend and a reading.  I was going to say no to this opportunity in Chicago because I was so terrified to travel.  I didn’t want to be alone so far away from home.  And I’m glad that I did this, regardless of how hard it was emotionally to come here.  Because it really was a very cool day.  Though I’m glad my real life is ballet classes, brownie-baking, and Legos because my face could not handle makeup like that all the time.

When I have more information about air-dates and video clips, I’ll put them up.

The wishes on 11/11 were some of the most moving comments I’ve ever read.  I started crying a few wishes in.  I’m very hormonal this week, but it was also so hard to read the heart placed in the open.  Like all of the linking things, I realized too late that if I threw my wish in there, it would screw up the chain.  So my wish is that I come home safely from this trip and that I get through it with few tears.  This is my last time I have to travel and I keep focusing on Sunday.  Returning to my home.

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My travel saga from last weekend (as opposed to my current travels this weekend) ended with a packed Amtrak train and three hours with nothing to do except listen to the two men behind me because I had to hold all my things on my lap and therefore couldn’t take out the papers I needed to edit.

I was seated in front of two men who were discussing their “little fellow.”  I assumed for the first sixteen minutes or so that they were talking about a child.  Then, one of them said, “do you remember how little his tail was when we first got him?”  And suddenly, Little Max, sounded like either one of the Illuminati or an animal.  It became clear a moment later–when one mentioned how Little Max cries with meows whenever the man eats tuna–that the son they had been discussing for 22 full minutes is a cat.  Across the aisle was the nail clipper and next to me was this kind woman who offered me her kiwi slices who went through half a bottle of hand sanitizer on the trip.  She washed her hands every time I coughed, even though she wasn’t touching anything and finally built a newspaper wall between us.  The newspaper wall sort of closed off any more offerings of kiwi slices.

I think I’m the type of person who is meant to be home.  My friend, Anat, is someone who is meant to travel and life (like paying a mortgage) gets in the way and keeps her from exploring.  I’m someone who is meant to spend her life baking brownies.  At home.

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In case you couldn’t actually picture how the Golden Haiku will work (since it is different and more far-reaching than the Creme de la Creme), I’m showing the lobby map that will be the doorway to the list.

The day the list goes up, those individual states will be linked to an umbrella category of the blogosphere.  The reader will jump to a room that contains all the blog posts that fit in that topic.  It’s essentially what Bridges tried to do, but more a burst of information than a slow reveal over time.

Those in the ALI community can participate in both the Creme de la Creme AND the Golden Haiku.  Those outside our community can only do the Golden Haiku.  The two lists will go up two weeks apart from one another.  The Creme is much more surprise-oriented, where you get to see how your post is described.  The Golden Haiku is more more doorway-oriented, with the idea being to build entrances into each area of the blogosphere that people can easily walk through.

You can submit the same post for both projects, or if you’re deciding between two posts, consider which one you’d rather have read within our community and which one you’d rather send out to the general public.  But please do participate in both projects.

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Last week, I didn’t get a chance to enter the winning squares from Blogger Bingo.  The winner, in case you didn’t see, was Once a Mother.  She won with a yellow card:

• Free Space–a post that mentions a recipe.
• Post from before 2008 that mentions a recent purchase.
• Post that has song lyrics from April or May of 2008.
• Post from any September that mentions a restaurant.
• Post that mentions a spouse, partner, or friend from December 2007.

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Favour: you can vote once a day, and it’s literally a click over, hit a vote button, and you’re done, but Lauren is trying to become the new face of E.L.F.  She doesn’t have a modeling background and she hasn’t been airbrushed or worked on.  She’s just a real woman who could be your neighbour who wants to spread the idea of healthfulness.

She writes: “I am a real woman. Period. No fake parts, no fillers. I was the fat kid.”  Wouldn’t she be a great person to inspire?  She already jumped up to the top 300 people in the past few days.  Can’t we give her some votes?

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The Weekly What If: If you could have an article written about you or your picture featured in any magazine, which one would it be?

Mine would, hands down, be People Magazine.  That’s when I’ll know I’ve made it.  When I’m in People.  I am such a lover of that magazine.

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And now, the blogs…

Birds and Squirrels has a post about turning 35.  I turned 35 this year, so the feelings are still fresh in my mind, but beyond the AMA, she is discovering that she cares about how her body is changing.  She writes, “It disturbs me that I am starting to care about these things. I’ve always wanted to be one of those sassy, vibrant, kick ass women who grow old unapologetically, that are still out digging in their gardens in their 80’s, and traveling to new and strange places until the very end. I have a feeling that those women don’t worry about dry skin, fine lines and gray hairs.”  But more importantly, she asks for a birthday gift that all of us can give her: “What I would like is for someone to sit with me and remind me of all the beautiful things that getting older brings, none of which I can think of right now.”  Even though her birthday has passed, please go over there and tell her your words of advice.  And if you have no advice, at least compliment her on the great post and wish her a happy belated birthday.

Magpie Musing has a post about the word “stigma” in conjunction with infertility.  She points out how often this word is used, how it doesn’t quite fit the definition of stigma, and asks why infertility is a taboo topic, especially when so much can be gained by talking about it.  An inspiring post.

Trying to Get Knocked Up By Another Man has a post titled “Wind.”  It is a gorgeous, moving post that begins with her egg donor, a friend, who she describes as this: “And in one of my darkest moments when I couldn’t see any light, she brought some to me. She brought light to my future.”  She goes through her fears about this cycle, the guilt, the whirlwind of thoughts about whether they should proceed.  And then, as she says, the wind stops and there is calm.  I just thought this was such an incredible post about doubt and finding the strength to keep going.

Lastly, Infertility UGH has a post about her mother’s tendency to gossip and why she is holding her at arm’s length.  I love this post because it is about accepting someone for who they are and loving them, and at the same time, knowing someone so intimately that you have to hold them at arm’s length to protect your heart.  It’s complicated and messy and the post literally aches a bit, but it is also brilliantly stated.

The roundup to the Roundup: I loved the wishes.  You can learn a lot on a train when you eavesdrop.  Join along for the Creme de la Creme and the Golden Haiku.  Blogger Bingo winning posts.  Vote for Lauren!  Answer the Weekly What If.  And lots of great blog posts to read.

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.

Wishes for 11/11 certainly aren’t closed, keep adding them, but it’s time for Show and Tell too.  Class, come to order.  You, in the back, spit out your gum.

This week, Serenity was in town, so Somewhat Ordinary (she’s invite only) came up and Lindsay and I went downtown (well, I went downtown later and only joined the threesome for lunch).  It was chaotically wonderful, especially because the last time I saw Serenity, she hadn’t conceived Owen yet and Lindsay wasn’t parenting (despite reading Somewhat Ordinary since her blog began years ago and despite the fact that we live somewhat close-ish, this was our first time getting to actually be face-to-face!).  And it just amazes me what can happen in two years.

On a different blogger note, Kristin told me to expect some packages in the mail and I was a little confused.  When they arrived, I opened them and started crying at the generosity.  Kristen, Cassandra, Wiseguy, Dora, and Mrs. Spock put together a package of holiday ornaments.  My kitchen table was covered in a sea of blue.  Thank you so much–this meant the world to me.

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.

November 11th.  11/11.

Make a wish.

Here’s how this works: (1) Make a wish in the comment section (and don’t believe that stuff about how if say it aloud it won’t come true.  That is precisely when the parts that are within another human being’s control can come true).  (2) Then leave a comment on the blog of the commenter directly before you (so it’s a chain.  #2 comments on #1, #3 comments on #2, etc. If the commenter above you didn’t leave an address, just go one above that.  The point is to find new blogs/leave a comment–not stress).

The first person who comments on this post gets a free ride and does not need to leave any comments.  The last person who comments on this post gets…screwed.

It would be nice within your comment to refer to their wish (if it ties in to the post you read and comment on) and if you can grant any part of it, to do so.  If you can’t, because their wish is outside of human control, don’t feel badly.  But if you have the power to grant a wish, why not do it?

Remember how I forgot to pack pants?  And how I accidentally enlarged the font on my computer?

Yesterday, I was having lunch with Somewhat Ordinary, Serenity, and Lindsay and we took a picture before we had to leave.  Lindsay uploaded hers to Facebook and I commented on how terrible my boobs looked (all I could think of was how Sunny at the cookie exchange next month would be telling me once again that we needed to do something with my bra situation).

I called a friend last night and bitched about how I had bought three of these new bras and they were already terrible.  This morning, I grabbed one and decided to tighten the straps the final centimeter–as tight as it would go–and put it on.  And my boobs fell out.

And I realized that I had been loosening the straps.

Not tightening them.

A quick yank in the other direction gave me nicely perky boobs.

Reason #2067040 why you wouldn’t want me doing brain surgery on you.  Reason #2067039 is the fact that I don’t have a medical degree.  But #2067040 is my inability to properly operate a bra.