391st Friday Blog Roundup
I had to go into the storage room this week to get our microscope because Christy gave me this really cool science project to try; extracting DNA from strawberries. (And it worked, it really worked!) We bought this microscope in 2002 to examine my saliva for ferning. I was in that time period before you actually get to the RE, but the appointment has been made, and you’re trying things such as green tea and Robitussin and spitting on slides. I packed it up in 2003 and put it in the basement.
So I went down to get it from the basement and inside the box was my unopened Lego Harry Potter sorting hat set. It has since been discontinued, but I bought two of them back in 2001, one that I left unopened and the other that I kept on my desk. I liked to use it as an ice breaker when a student had to meet with me because, let’s say, they plagiarized their paper. Before we spoke, I would have them spin it and see which house they were sorted into and then say something like, “huh… you got Ravenclaw… that’s really interesting because plagiarizing is a pretty bone-head move, and I think Rowena Ravenclaw would be pretty horrified with you right now.”
Oh sorting hat.
The thing is, I don’t know where the opened sorting hat is. It’s probably also somewhere in the basement. But that would mean opening up and unpacking dozens of boxes to find a small ziplock bag filled with Legos. But part of me doesn’t want to open this second set… and I have no idea why. I would never get rid of it. (Actually, who am I kidding. If someone offered to pay the Wolvog’s college tuition, I’d part with it.) We want to use it. And yet instead of gleefully tearing off the top and setting it up, it has been sitting in limbo on the kitchen table since mid-week.
Would you let me sort you if I opened my Lego Harry Potter sorting hat?
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The ChickieNob cried this week because her brother started reading the same book she was reading. They don’t have a lot of book crossover with the exception of the stuff we read together. They both like biographies, but don’t want to read about the same people. The Wolvog has read every Magic Tree House and the ChickieNob is more partial to Sister Magic and American Girl Doll books. The ChickieNob has been making her way through the Junie B Jones series this spring, and this week, the Wolvog decided to read them as well. And this is devastating to her.
I tried to explain to her the concept of a book club, and how people purposefully choose to read books together and discuss them. She could not wrap her brain around this, and kept saying, “I would not like that at all. Only one person is supposed to be known as the person reading the book.” Daddy has erudite American history books, and Mommy has smutty 50 Shades of Grey, and the Wolvog has his Magic Tree House books, and THE CHICKIENOB CLAIMS THE JUNIE B JONES SERIES HANDS OFF.
I don’t know — would you rather be the only person around who has read a book (and feel special because of it?) or would you rather read a book as a group?
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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:
- “Don’t Ignore” (The Misadventures of Missohkay)
- “Don’t Ignore: The Secret Life of the American Infertile” (Too Many Fish to Fry)
- “The Scar Remains” (My Life After Loss)
- “Just Ask” (Stirrup Queens) — thank you, Lori!
Okay, now my choices this week.
Lessons from an Infertile Social Worker has a post about the first time she breastfed her son after her son’s birthmother gave her the go-ahead in the hospital. I really loved reading through the moment, feeling the power of that act through the screen. She writes, “The first time I breastfed my son, I cried. It was perfect. He was perfect. He was my child. I was finally a momma.” It’s a great post.
Breathe Gently has a post about how she was feeling after retrieval and the fertilization report. It is a post about sinking into doubt and then finding a way out of it back into hope. She writes of transfer: “Tomorrow we’re going to transfer an embryo, something that we created. It may stick, it may not, but we’re having a go. And isn’t this what the goal has been all along? To give ourselves, and our potential baby, a chance?” I had a huge smile by the last line.
Multimama tells a story about why we shouldn’t judge others. She admits about the new mother in her playgroup: “She was skinny and I, feeling fat in post-baby mode, felt a flash of jealousy. In that moment, and for no good reason at all, I made a whole set of assumptions–that she had gotten easily pregnant with the cute little boy at her side, that we wouldn’t have much in common.” Of course, they do have a lot in common, though that wouldn’t have been discovered if she hadn’t set those preconceived notions aside.
Edenland has an amazing post about the changes afoot in her house. I think it’s incredible to watch someone jump, to have them allow you to see that initial step. And how breathtaking is this ending when they come home from their respective trips: “In Africa I bought myself a red wooden mask. In Mexico, Dave bought himself a green ceramic mask. We then met each other back at home. And took them off.”
Lastly, Family Building with a Twist has a post about her son’s first day at daycare. I cried reading this post, my preschool woes still pretty fresh in my mind (my G-d, do y’all remember when I hid in the library?) It’s a bittersweet post about your child growing up and inviting the rest of the world in.
The roundup to the Roundup: Should I open the Harry Potter sorting hat (and would you let me sort you)? Do you like to be the only person reading a book? And lots of great posts to read. So what did you find this week? Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between April 27th and May 4th) 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.
18 comments
You could sort me but I always secretly thought I would be a Ravenclaw and might be very disappointed if your hat deemed me something else 🙂
My favorite post this week was “Please Ignore…; or, Infertility Revisited” by Secret Sloper about the little voice you hear suggesting that you’ll never be satisfied with your life – that once you’ve reached a resolution with infertility, there will be something else to obsess about (and her conclusion after the birth of her son that the nagging voice was wrong)
http://parkslopepurgatory.blogspot.com/2012/05/please-ignore-or-infertility-revisited.html
Books are for everyone! The more people the better, so you can go see the movie together! And talk about the book! And the characters!
You could sort me, if you wanted. But I’d probably start excavating for the open one instead.
May’s encounter with her step-father was…interesting
http://nutsinmay.wordpress.com/2012/04/30/sometimes-you-love-people-not-because-but-anyway/
Thank you so much for including me in the RoundUp! I’m having a rather cranky day and you just made it much brighter 🙂
I think the more people who are reading a book the better as I love to be able to discuss whatever it is I’m reading/have read.
Also, feel free to sort me. I’m just now reading the books for the first time (about done with #4), though of course I saw all the movies. I wonder which house I’d end up in…
I’ll totally be sorted. 🙂
Sometimes I really want to be the only one to read a great book, just like I hate when artists release a song I adore off an album that was released with another song as it’s trailblazer.
You can sort me any time…
I belong to a bookclub & enjoy hearing different perspectives on a book…unlees they hate a book I loved. If I love a book, I mean really deeply love, I don’t want to share that with anyone.
Oh, sort me! Sort me!! 🙂
I just joined a book group to be forced to read things I wouldn’t normally pick up. Like the external validation discussion … sometimes I need external motivation, too. 😉
Only people from the race who knows Joseph may read the same books as I do. A girl I went to college with told me that she never really understood A Wrinkle in Time and I never had any opinion of her intelligence after that. (And rightly so, I might add.)
And props to HereWeGoAJen for the AofGG reference! Does that mean I am of the RWKJ?
Thank you so much for the inclusion, and please sort me!
I don’t mind sharing a book, but if I read a book and love it and then it becomes popular or something, I sort of feel ownership. Seems petty and ridiculous 🙂
Ooooh, sort me, please!
I enjoy reading the same books that my husband is reading so we can talk about them. And I am reading 50 shades of baaad just so I can bitch about them with other people 😉 If other people weren’t reading it and talking about it I wouldn’t have bothered.
Loribeth’s post, In the Closet, tells the sort of quietly moving story I wish more people were aware of: http://theroadlesstravelledlb.blogspot.com/2012/05/in-closet.html
And sort away, though I’m secretly afraid that I’m all Muggle.
I sympathize with the ChickieNob – there’s something very special about being caught up in the world of a book, and realizing that other people might be in that same space – that’s a lot to wrap your head around. But how I love that the Wolvog is also reading Junie B!
Thank you, Erica! : ) I am so far behind on my Google Reader it’s not funny, but I hope to add something to the second helpings later.
I had one of those mini-microscope thingies to check my saliva too, although it never did work very well.
You may sort me anytime. : ) (Jen, love the reference to “the race that knows Joseph.”)
I love sharing books with people — although some of the ones I like are relatively obscure — I would probably be more surprised than anything to learn that someone else I know has also read it.
Books are definitely to be shared. There’s nothing more wonderful than being able to have someone to share your favorite parts of a book and have them know what you are talking about and maybe that just being their favorite part too. A friend/co-worker and I just both finished a series together. We had so much fun discussing the books and I never would have been able to discuss this with her if I hadn’t persuaded her to try the first. LOL
I’d love to be sorted too!
And my link I’d like to share this week:
It’s all about healing for Cristy at Searching for our silver lining
http://searchingforoursilverlining.blogspot.com/2012/05/heal.html
Sort me! Sort me! Sort me!
Thanks for another roundup… this comment cut short on account of reading the rounded up posts…
Bea
Oh, I definitely like to share books. More than that, I love to listen to audio books together.
I’d also like to share Living Our Life in Cycles’ post
http://livingourlifeincycles.blogspot.com/2012/04/my-week-of-niaw-on-fb.html
about NIAW and how she incorporated that into her Facebook status updates. I love her messages and how she brought awareness to IF.
Now I feel like I want to find a book club 🙂
This post really moved me, it’s about mourning your fertility and find balance and patience while you wait for your turn:
http://fertilitydoll.wordpress.com/2012/05/04/despair-tarot-cards-and-acceptance/
I would totally allow you to sort me!
As for a book…I would neither like to be the only one who had read it nor be in a book club. I like being able to discuss books with people who have read them, but I often don’t get the same things out of books that other people do. I learned this in my honors class, reading philosophers. I spent the entire class going “really? How did you get X out of Y? I totally didn’t see that! I suck…” and decided that a book club probably would never be for me.
I can understand ChickieNob though. She wants something that is just hers, something only she has done – and for her, right now, it’s reading that book. Never mind that she’s not the only person who has ever read them – as far as she knows, she’s the only one RIGHT NOW, and that’s important to her. To have her brother “co-opt” that is, very understandably, quite upsetting. I know what it feels like to be in a silent “competition” with someone and it sucks.
For second helpings, I would like to draw your attention to a post by Pamela at Silent Sorority, in which she interviews the author of a groundbreaking new study on the subject of women living without children after infertility. For those of us who fall into that category, the Q&A and the dissertation itself are incredibly validating — and even if you don’t, I would still urge you to read for some wonderful insights.
http://blog.silentsorority.com/2012/04/30/the-new-it-girls–give-it-up-for-non-moms.aspx?ref=rss
This haunting gorgeous piece of writing belongs in the New Yorker, but for some unexplained reason we get to read it on a blog: http://bloodsigns.wordpress.com/2012/04/29/the-oleander-the-groves/#comments /Someone get this woman an agent. Pronto!