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299th Friday Blog Roundup

One Roundup away — which means one week away — from the great Cake Extravaganza.  Since the linky tool worked well last week, next Friday, upload a picture of a piece of cake (and don’t get hung up on the words “a piece of cake” — if you want to bake a whole cake or celebrate with an oreo or simply walk by the bakery and take a picture and not put anything in your piehole, it’s all good) and then link to your blog post.  It would be lovely if you wrote something about what community means to you.  Why you love being part of the ALI community, and how you feel when you read a particularly satisfying blog post.

So get to it — you have one week to set up your celebration and I’ll meet you back here to have a virtual party.

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Wait … don’t go run off and take pictures yet.  We still have to do the rest of this week’s Roundup.

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Speaking of great posts and driving readers to them (since that is the purpose of the Roundup), while we stopped doing the Kirtsy’d Pick O’ the Day for the time being over at the LFCA, I have been Stumbling posts daily with decent results.  Sometimes, the post only gets 20 additional reads, but sometimes, the post gets several hundred additional reads.  If you clicked over and looked at my Stumbling line and it isn’t impressive, you’re probably looking at it early in the day.  I tend to Stumble a lot in the morning and it keeps all those posts at “1 view” for a few hours before the hits start happening.  But scroll back a day or two and you’ll see that I generally have a bunch of reads on each post that I Stumble.

Why am I telling you this (beyond the point that I want you to picture me with my morning coffee, scrolling through great posts)?  Because if you see a great post (especially one you wrote yourself) that you want me to Stumble, pass it my way via email with “Stumble” in the subject line.  Why do I want ones that you wrote yourself?  Because I’ll know then that the author is totally cool with me Stumbling it.

I do this almost every morning, so feel free to send me stuff as often or as infrequently as you wish.  It can be ALI-related or simply a kick-ass recipe or photograph you found.  I just like to find good things and send them back out there again.

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The Weekly What If: What if you could be locked inside one store all night, utilizing the merchandise (or in the case of food, consuming it) without needing to pay?  Which store would you choose for your lock-in and why?

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And now, the blogs…

Just Being has a post about Hope’s tenacious hold on our heart.  She explains that you cry in the beginning because you actually have hope each month that each cycle could be the “one.”  And then time passes.  She writes, “You’re two years older. Your ovaries are probably older even than that. And you feel a hundred. And a part of you has died. You never cry when you get your period, you never talk about how exciting it would be if it were ‘this month’.”  You need to read the post in full to get the arc of Hope’s life-span.

Bottoms Off and On the Table has a post about a dream where she argues herself back into reality.  I can’t say much more without ruining the emotional impact the post has when you read it in full.

Single Infertile Female has a heartbreaking post explaining her anger.  She deleted a recent post upon rereading it and states that while the anger felt out-of-character, there was a lot of truth in the words.  My heart broke with her words: “It isn’t supposed to be this difficult.”  A lot of the post may ring true for you too.

Thinking Miracles has a post about what she has been sweeping under the proverbial rug.  She writes, “I’ve been shoving lots and lots of stuff under there, and I think it is about to hit critical mass. The silliest things set me off. Someone will say something completely harmless and in my head I go into meltdown mode.”  It’s an honest, well-written post — complete with graphics.

Lastly, Working on It has a post about the direction of her blog (I am hyperaware that I love blog posts about blogging.)  She writes about her desire to start a new blog, “I’m starting to think that part of my desire to make a fresh start with blogging is linked to my new-found desire for order generally. I used to be very comfortable with a certain amount of disorder, mess, open ended-ness. But something has changed now.”  It’s about trying to find order in the chaos of life, of finding yourself through words, of allocating your time.  And it’s just a wonderful post.

The roundup to the Roundup: One more week to the 300th Roundup and the Cake Extravaganza to celebrate.  Send me stuff to Stumble.  Answer the Weekly What If.  And lots of great posts to read.

10 comments

1 Heather { 07.30.10 at 7:40 am }

I want to get locked in a mattress store. So I can sleep. Alone. 😉

Or maybe some fancy cooking store.

2 Baby Smiling In Back Seat { 07.30.10 at 8:15 am }

Is there such thing as a massage store? I don’t suppose there’s a store with masseuses waiting all night to massage the burglars, but maybe with massage chairs, massage tools, etc.?

Note to the naughty-minded: No, not THOSE kinds of massage tools. Getting locked in a sex toy store would be a whole different experience. Actually, on second thought…

3 a { 07.30.10 at 9:00 am }

Anyplace with the good chocolate (Godiva, Fannie Mae, Bissler’s) for obvious reasons…

I also wouldn’t mind a nice clothing store, so I could spend 8 or 10 hours trying on clothes…then I might be able to finally find something I like and that looks good on me.

4 mrs spock { 07.30.10 at 10:23 am }

When I was a kid, I used to think being in a candy store all night was a great idea- though that is not appealing now.

Can I stay at my favorite restaurant all night, with the chef available for me?

5 Toni { 07.30.10 at 3:11 pm }

That is such a good a what if. I used to work in a grocery store and I always thought how much fun it would be to have an entire grocery store attached to your house as the pantry. Then when you wanted a snack, you could just mosey on over and get what you wanted. But I think maybe instead I’d pick something like a hot tub or pool store; barring of course that the pools and hot tubs are fully usable and have not been frequented by 100s of customers throughout the day. Always with the stipulations.

6 the misfit { 07.30.10 at 5:16 pm }

I’m very touched to have been included. Thank you.

7 Calliope { 07.30.10 at 9:48 pm }

I want to be locked in an all night coffee shop with my dearest friends. And maybe we’d lock in a cute dj too.

8 S.I.F. { 07.31.10 at 6:07 am }

Just saw this Mel… Thank you, for being you… for being such a strong support to us all.

And seriously, I STILL haven’t figured the stumbled thing out. How pathetic is that?

I think I would want to be locked in a Costco. They’ve got a little of everything; mattresses, big screen TV’s, food, computers…. I think I could make that work.

9 Grace { 08.02.10 at 10:19 pm }

oh my gosh, my answer to this question is, hands down, TARGET! i have thought about this ever since i first walked into a target (in fact, i recently wrote a post that was a love letter of sorts to target)…i would ride bikes down the aisle, sleep on the beds, and before i left for the morning, i would put on as many layers of cute target clothing as i could and then waddle out the door. 🙂

10 loribeth { 08.03.10 at 11:52 am }

A bookstore, of course. : )

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