435th Friday Blog Roundup

So I’m still trying out other RSS reader options.  Netvibes would be great if it consistently pulled in my feeds.  I’m holding off judgment for right now since I’m sure they’re swamped and weren’t prepared for the deluge of new users.  I’m also trying out Feedly, which pulls in feeds as quickly as Google Reader BUT I’ve only used it on the phone.  Currently the app pulls in the feeds via Google Reader, though they say the site will switch over to their own replicated RSS feed grabber once Google Reader closes permanently.

I’m glad I’m not alone in still caring about blogs.  I like Twitter and Facebook, and they definitely fill a niche.  But blogs fill a very different niche, one where I like to spend the bulk of my online time.

More than one person wrote to ask if the closing of Google Reader would affect producing the Friday Blog Roundup.  Hells no.  There will still be a Roundup week after week after week.  It’s not going anywhere.

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I knew this was going to be a fairly stressful week, workwise, so on Tuesday, I picked up the kids from school and drove toward the city in order to restock my stash of Canfield’s Diet Chocolate Fudge soda.  There is one store in the area that still sells it, a place I’ve nicknamed “Island of Forgotten 1980s Food.”  I’m not sure if they are selling food that has been there since the 1980s or food that is still being manufactured and yet no other store has carried it since the 1980s, but I figure that either possibility is fine when it comes to diet soda.  That stuff doesn’t rot, right?

So we drove about a half hour under the pretense that we were picking up other things at the store because who wants to admit aloud that they’re driving that far for chocolate soda?  Still, when we entered, the twins said, “so we should probably get the big cart so you have space for all your soda.”  And then I pretended again that we were there for things other than soda.  And they repeated that we should get the big cart for all my soda.

We entered the soda aisle and it was CRAMMED FULL of Dr. Brown’s.  Dr. Brown’s were EVERYWHERE.  It looked like a virus.  There were six-packs of Dr. Brown’s cherry soda on top of the Diet Cokes.  And there were big bottles of Dr. Brown’s root beer blotting out the Orange Crush.  Everywhere you turned, tucked into every crevice of the aisle, choking out all other soda, were three billion extra bottles and cans of Dr. Brown’s.  Listen, I like Dr. Brown’s as much as the next woman, but you couldn’t see any other drink due to the Dr. Brown’s that was choking out the beverage selection.

I started taking apart the aisle, pulling out the Dr. Brown’s to see if my soda was hidden behind the towering wall of cream soda cans. (I swear, the six-packs were multiplying while we were there, building a soda wall as if we were in Minecraft.)  But the store was completely out of Canfield’s Diet Chocolate Fudge.  And when I asked an employee about it, she told me that maybe I wanted to try something from the Dr. Brown’s selections instead.  They must be popular, the woman told me, because there were so many of them.  This was right before she was crushed by a swelling wave of Cel-ray.

If I am cranky, it is because I am without my soda.

Because someone over-ordered Dr. Brown’s and now they don’t have room for my drink.

We didn’t need the big cart.

What food/candy/drink do you miss most from the 1980s?  I bet you that this store carries it.

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And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Infertility Junk Bingo” (The Smartness)
• “I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar” (A Separate Life)
• “Let’s Make a Documentary” (Silent Sorority)
• “The 10K Surrogate Abortion Scandal and the Angles Missed by the News” (The Smartness)
• “Talking to Children in Our Family about Adoption Part 1: The Booklet” (Funny Little Pollywogs)
• “A Story that Begged Me to Write It Down” (Stirrup Queens) — thank you, St. Elsewhere!
• “Tired” (Project Progeny)
• “Forgiving the World” (Lavender Luz)
• “The Heart of Life is Good” (One Thousand Single Days)
• “Our Eulogies to Ree” (Jump Over the Rainbow – It Won’t Rain Forever)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Torthúil has a post looking forward to this upcoming year.  Her workplace asks her to fill out an intention form for the next year, and her post explores the far-reaching side effects of infertility.  She admits, “I want to be a parent and I’m willing to take on ART and its risks, and whatever else the journey might bring. I’m not going to change my mind about that. But still, when it comes down to actually saying that my professional life is no longer priority number one, I feel some discord.”  It’s a situation I know a lot of people in the community have struggled with; how to balance family building with all the other parts of life affected by the schedule and emotional drain of treatments or adoption.

An Unwanted Path has a beautiful post about a baby she lost four years ago.  She writes, “Whenever I mention my losses, it happens. People tell me to move on, remind me how lucky I am, or they ignore my mention, or worse — they get silent as if to say, “You’re not over that yet?”  No. I’m not over that yet.”  It is a post about balancing the idea of life continuing on without forgetting the past.

A Woman My Age has a very moving post about the process of losing her mother.  I cried when I read, “I’m back to that space when she first had a stroke and the first thing on my mind in the morning was her and the last thought I had before going to sleep was her.”  She captured this familiar thought so perfectly, that bookending.   It’s a really important read.

Lastly, The Great Big IF sums up her current state in one word: sad.  It begins: “I am surrounded by good news and other people’s hope. It should wash over me like a contagion and I should revel in the fact that new life is being celebrated everywhere I turn. Except that I am not in the mood to celebrate. Not anymore.”  It contains the vivid image of her 50-pound heart, the simple truth of sadness.

The roundup to the Roundup: Still trying out Google Reader replacement options.  What food/drink/candy do you miss from the 1980s?  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between March 8th and March 15th) 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.