446th Friday Blog Roundup
Josh really wanted to join 2013 and get a DVR. We… uh… still have a VHS. When a deal came up through our television provider, he asked if we could take one home, much in the same way little boys ask for puppies. So we got a DVR. And he set it up. And then I stopped sleeping.
You may think that I stopped sleeping because we suddenly had all of these amazing shows to watch. No, that wouldn’t be the case. The first night after he set up the DVR, it took me about two hours to fall asleep. This isn’t that unusual, and I blamed it on Candy Crush (shouldn’t we blame everything on Candy Crush?) getting me frazzled before bed with level 34.
The next night, I was sleep deprived, so it shouldn’t have taken me long to fall asleep. But it did — an hour — and then I couldn’t stay asleep. I woke up three or four times.
The next night, I was ill and sleep deprived, so sleep should have come pretty much immediately. But again, long time falling asleep and then I couldn’t stay asleep.
Finally, on Wednesday night, I was still awake at 4 am. I hadn’t been able to fall asleep yet. I woke up Josh, close to tears, and asked him to do something about the awful DVR which was casting this bizarre glow over the room. The light from the number display had been keeping me awake for days. So he threw a towel over it for the time being and fiddled with the brightness setting.
The glow from all of these devices is killing me.
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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:
- “What Do Teens and Elderly Women Have in Common Beyond Commentary about their Uteruses?” (Stirrup Queens)
- “Conflict Online” (Lavender Luz)
- “Dear-Me-from-999-Posts-Ago” (Stumbling Gracefully)
- “The Reality of Breastfeeding” (PAIL Bloggers)
- “Not Riding the Roller Coaster” (Stirrup Queens)
- “Dealing with the Naysayers” (Too Many Fish to Fry)
- “On Defining Myself” (Sprout)
- “Mother” (Baby Smiling in Back Seat)
- “Our No Kidding Lives” (No Kidding in NZ)
- “Deep” (Cullen’s Blessings)
Okay, now my choices this week.
Notes from the Ninth Circle has a post about a viral Huffington Post piece that mentions that the author is parenting after infertility. In fact, he even links to a post about infertility in the original version on his site. But when the post was reprinted on the Huffington Post site, that link got stripped. It’s the frustration that this big part of the story is being left out.
Serenity in Chaos has a very powerful post about how her infertility experience inadvertently affected a friend who came after her. She writes: “Unfortunately she experienced a miscarriage and because I had sort of “silenced” them through my experience to say nothing more than those words above, my friend got quite angry at the lack of support at that time. She told me afterwards that she felt robbed of the sympathy.” The post highlights the unique way we deal with (and seek comfort) when facing infertility.
Lastly, Something Out of Nothing has a post about encountering an infertile woman in literature: “It once again left me wondering, where is the real story, our story, in popular media? We are the strong, brave women, who live every day outside the bounds of what is considered “typical” to pursue our dreams of a family. Aside from our blogs, which seem to be read mostly by people in similar situations, who is writing (and reading) our stories?” It also has a cool side story about two sensory activities.
The roundup to the Roundup: The glow of electronics is keeping me awake. And lots of great posts to read. So what did you find this week? Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between May 31th and June 7th) 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.
15 comments
Besides the glow, what gets to me is the beeping! Why does e.g. my microwave have to beep at me? What if, hypothetically speaking, I wanted to get up in the middle of the night and quietly prepare myself a snack without disturbing the sleep of others in my household? What then?
I am fully prepared to pay more for the machines that don’t beep (and have larger font, yes, I am getting old and crabby!).
And that is yet another reason why I don’t have a TV in my bedroom. We moved into our house over a year before my daughter was born, but for some reason, after she came, the green glow from the wired smoke detector in my bedroom started preventing me from sleeping. Then, a few years later, the TV in our living room acquired some electrical anomaly and started turning itself on randomly. When it would do it in the middle of the night, it wasn’t the sound that would wake me up; it was the sudden appearance of light through my doorway. (The possessed TV now lives in the basement, on a power strip that is turned off when we’re not using it. Although we’ve forgotten to turn it off once or twice…and then I wake up wondering who the hell is talking in my house in the middle of the night.)
I had to buy a new alarm clock to replace my new alarm clock because it was so bright that it kept me up even when I pointed it at the wall. I feel your pain!
For the Roundup this week I loved this post by KeAnne about fat-shaming: https://babywithatwist.wordpress.com/2013/06/05/fitnessgrams-the-latest-in-fat-shaming/
Oh and this one by Gemini Momma! “How the Cheerios Commercial Got it Wrong” http://threegeminis.wordpress.com/2013/06/06/how-the-cheerios-commercial-got-it-wrong/
You could put a piece of black electrical tape over the display or the towel works. I had to put a towel over my alarm clock for a year until I eventually found out how to dim it.
I hide my alarm clock on the second shelf on my nightstand so that it faces towards the wood and therefore doesn’t cast a bluish glow towards me. Also, our cable box/DVR can be turned off so that there is no glow. However, I have taken control of the remote b/c my husband only turns off the tv instead of turning off both the tv and the cable box.
My mom had issues with the glow from machines. She ended up putting paper/cloth over many of them. Even the speaker lights which were in a different room, because they were too bright during the day. Me, I can’t stand ticking clocks! Even my wrist watch can be too loud on my night stand some nights.
I loved this post! It’s amazing what a simple comment can do to our day. http://thekoobers.blogspot.fi/2013/06/a-welcomed-comment.html
haha, my husband used to complain about the digital glow of our alarm clock. I was like..dude..really? I just did not get it. I’m the type that has the windows fully exposed so I can see the moon. You know, from behind the glare of that street light. Now we’ve got a newborn in the room again, and instead of using one of those little clickable lights you can mount on the wall like we did for the other two, I just keep our bathroom light on and the door cracked open. Reminds me of the hospital, and the hospital was a calm place for me. Well, it was a calm place for me the next day.
I have to admit, the first couple of times I read the beginning of your post I thought you were saying you didn’t have a DVD player yet, just VHS. LMAO. 🙂
I can’t relate but a friend of mine had to hide his cable box in his bedroom closet – it was the only jack that accepted the cable box but he can’t sleep because of the glow.
Hope it’s cool – I’d like to share my own post. I finally got the courage to discuss my struggle with postpartum depression after struggling with IF and loss. Perhaps my reading list is not wide enough, but I have not seen PPD discussed much on ALI blogs though I searched desperately at the time. For me, the pressure to “just be grateful” caused enormous shame and guilt and prevented me from discussing it until now.
http://littlechickennugget.wordpress.com/2013/06/05/the-very-bad-time/
WOW…THANK YOU for sharing the link. I was SO surprised when I checked the stats in my blog and found out so many people have read my latest blog post. Now I know why!!!! 😀
There is a feng shui idea that electronics in the bedroom suck out your energy. The idea is that if you have a tv, you should close it in a tv cabinet, etc. at night so your energy does not leave you while sleeping.
I have been known to put white nail polish over blinking lights on appliances. The beeping kills me too. I wish it would say, “battery low in hall smoke detector” instead of me wandering through the house trying to find the source of that blasted beeping. Is it my medication reminder? My cell phone low battery alert? The full charge alert on my ipod?
http://stupidstork.blogspot.com/2013/06/ghosts-and-fairy-tales.html
Has infertility turned you into a ghost or your former self?
Jessah at Dreaming of Dimples – http://www.dreamingofdimples.com/2013/06/departed-denver-discouraged.html
Such a heartfelt post about coming to a crossroads with treatments – really resonated with me this week.