352nd Friday Blog Roundup
This week.
There is a lot to unpack and not a lot of time to unpack it. I’m finding it very difficult to gather my thoughts into words. At the current moment, they are forming more into grunts and screeches than they are into rational sentences.
Instead of unpacking something real, I instead bring you my thoughts that came at 2 am on Wednesday night. How would you feel if you found out unequivocally that mermaids were real and living in various bodies of water that you visit? Would you be excited, hoping to see one? Would you feel sort of anxious, wondering if you had unknowingly swam with them? Would you be totally jealous, wishing you too could be a mermaid?
Sometimes I think we spend so much time wishing that fantasy was real, that we don’t really consider the outcome of having our fantasies coming true. Or, I think that often we feel the outcome of wishes come true and yet still forget when we start chasing the next wish. Sometimes what seems like it would be the most fantastic thing in the world turns out in reality to be a nightmare. And other times, what we hoped would be fantastic delivers exactly as planned.
Substitute the word “mermaid” for a whole host of other things.
I was thinking about that at 2 am instead of thinking about other things, but regardless, I was wishing that my brain had an off-switch and I could just get to sleep.
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And now the blogs…
But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week as well as the week before. In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:
- “Trying to Find the Positive” (Whitney and Erick)
- “Finding My Sight” (Not a Fertile Myrtle)
- “Balance” (Smartness)
- “Bile” (Sideshow Barb)
- “The Power of Our Love” (Dragondreamer’s Lair)
- “Unexpected Fallout” (Write Mind Open Heart)
- “XY with Several Chromosomal Abnormalities” (Fierce and Nerdy)
- “The Matrix” (Just Being)
- “Across the Universe” (Still Life with Circles) – read Esperenza’s comment
Okay, now my choices this week.
CD1 Again has a raw post about discovering her husband’s ex-wife is pregnant. It is a tiny post that is a punch to the stomach, especially the timing of the announcement. And I found that even after I left my comment, that I came back to read it again, as if I expected something else to be there. A side note, it’s her birthday, so please be sure to wish her a happy birthday when you stop by.
The Kir Corner has a fantastic post about why she started blogging that resonated with me so absolutely. I love this: “I had no idea what I was doing. I was not consumed with followers or page views. I could barely hit publish. My technique was poor and scattered, much like I was at the time. Kir’s Corner was just a place I could set my troubles down on and leave them.” I love her release of the label and the peace it brings.
Lastly, I am Vulnerable has a post about aging, a topic that is often on my mind. I think it’s probably on many people’s mind in this community because infertility has a way of conjuring up mental hourglasses where the sand is dripping away at breakneck speed. But this post is about what is lost and what is gained with aging. And I have to admit that after I read it, I realized how much I didn’t miss aspects of those days that I’m nostalgic about. Yes, I want parts of it, but you can’t take parts without taking the whole.
The roundup to the Roundup: How would you feel if you discovered mermaids were real? Beyond that, lots of great blog posts to read. So what did you find this week? Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between August 5th and August 12th) 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.
9 comments
I love CD1Again…she’s awesome. Thanks for noticing her too. xoxo
I haven’t been on the roundup in so long and to come here and see that here, well it HUMBLES me, as YOU often do. Thank you my friend. Thank you so much.
As for the mermaids, as long as they were NICE mermaids, like Ariel and not the scary kind in the Goblet of Fire, I’d seek them out. I love anything that speaks of magic and so I’d have a true wish to swim among them. xo
I think mermaids are kinda creepy, so I wouldn’t be too happy if I found out they were real. Maybe it’s because I grew up pre-Ariel, and my first real exposure to mermaids were the Sirens in The Odyssey.
But in the spirit of your question: I am someone who is pretty firmly grounded in reality. I am prone to looking at potential outcomes – all of them. People consider me pessimistic, which I’m not, really. I just see many sides of things and tend to warn others that the rosy view is not the only view. So, if a wish came true, the odds are that I might have considered the unfortunate side-effects already. Like mermaids – if they were real, I think they’d be kind of jealous of our ability to be free on land and sea. And jealousy never ends well…
FYI, one of the links in the list from last week’s open thread (not sure which, I wasn’t paying very close attention to what I had just clicked) set off my virus scanner alert!
Wow, thanks! I so appreciate the recognition, Mel. And you’re right – the nostalgia is pretty selective. Most of that period in my life I wouldn’t want to revisit under any circumstances.
I’m now puzzling over what mermaids are standing in for… But to answer your question, I would probably be excited and want to meet one, though I’m a bit shy by nature and would probably feel scared and thrilled all at once. But I do love the thought of discovering something magical in familiar territory.
I’ve read some great posts this week. One that really moved me was this one in which Dresden aka Calliope tells the story of her emerging online self, and how she is moving out into the light and blogging under her own name.
http://creatingmotherhood.com/2011/08/11/saying-goodbye-to-an-alias/
My yoga instructor always says something very wise: “I wanted a motorcycle. I wanted one for years. The moment I got that motorcycle was a happy one. But not because I had the motorcycle, but because the heavy feeling of “wanting” was finally gone.”
I wish I could hang on to that more, want less, and appreciate more.
On another note – I’m not much of a self-pimper, but I wrote a post early this week that I’m kind of proud of. A rather too long, epic recounting of my lap surgery:
http://mommyodyssey.wordpress.com/2011/08/07/a-tale-of-two-tubies/
I’d worry that the mermaids would be exploited, hounded, endangered.
wow. thank you so much for including me in your roundup. no, really. thank you!
By the Brooke had two wonderfully written posts in the past week, struggling with some of the philosophical issues all of us who have lost children deal with — i.e., do things really happen for a reason, & is it possible for things to ever get “better.”
http://bythebrooke.blogspot.com/2011/08/in-which-i-get-annoying-philosophical.html
http://bythebrooke.blogspot.com/2011/08/for-better-or-worse.html