Category — Friday Blog Roundup

Thank you for the birthday wishes.  My birthday, for the most part, was wonderful.  I got woken up with cards, cashed in a massage gift card I’ve held onto for 10 years, and picked up my free Starbucks drink.

And then Truman started acting weird.

He had actually been acting weird for about two days.  He was very quiet.  He would eat if I brought him food, but he wouldn’t wheek for food when I opened the refrigerator.  He wasn’t responding to his name.  He wasn’t greeting me with squeaks in the morning.

In the afternoon, he started to wheeze, so we called the vet.  She was heading out of town and trying to finish up appointments, but she told me to bring him over immediately.  He has an upper respiratory infection that we caught early, and I think he also has an ear infection.  We currently have him on antibiotics, so he’ll hopefully be better soon.

But I’m really scared this time.  I don’t like the way he is tilting his head and hobbling around.  This is what Cozy did right before he died.  Granted, Truman clearly has an infection and mucous in his nose and ears, and Cozy had a brain tumour and his eyes were popping out.  But it’s hard to watch him stumbling as he walks and trust that all will be fine in a few weeks.

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Life from Scratch has been chosen for an Amazon promotion.  It’s currently only 99 cents — a fraction of a cup of coffee.  So… pick up a copy for yourself or gift to a friend and get your beach reading set?

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Stop procrastinating.  Go make your backups.  Don’t have regrets.

Seriously.  Stop what you’re doing for a moment.  It will take you fifteen minutes, tops.  But you will have peace of mind for days and days.  It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments in order to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

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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:

• “This Dream Stands Before Me” (Inconceivable!)
• “Seeds” (A+ Effort)
• “Mind Your Own Womb” (Nadirah Angail)
• “Truth, Death, and Mother’s Day” (Infertilityhonesty)
• “Politics, Babies, and My Body” (The Barreness)
• “I Want to See My Story” (My Path to Mommyhood)

Okay, now my choices this week.

The Empty Cookie has a fantastic post about the recent Captain America controversy.  Not exactly infertility-related, but I loved this post because she sums up so well the problem with dismissing history (or, really, pretending that origin stories aren’t important in the present time period).  Captain America, like many comic superheroes, was created by Jewish writers using art to respond to anti-Semitism.  Comic books have always been a home for power fantasies, where the disenfranchised could fight back.  To make Captain America part of Hydra shows a lack of understanding on the part of current writers as well as a complete insensitivity to the current rise in anti-Semitism.  She writes, “It’s piss poor writing from someone who obviously needs to check his privilege. It’s gross and dishonoring to the people who created him and the millions of people murdered by Nazis.”  It’s something we talk about often in this community — do you always keep the origin story front and center in your mind, or do you rewrite family building history and pretend the current situation is the only situation?  And what do we lose when we sweep history under the rug, and how does it affect the people around us?

A Half Baked Life also has a non-infertility-related post that I think has a powerful message that also ties into our community and the greater world.  She writes about the shooting at UCLA, both as a former UCLA student and as a current administrator on a college campus.  She asks such an important question: “With all of our social media voyeurism and instantaneous sharing of news, why do we do so much ‘looking out,’ instead of looking out for each other, from the moment we understand what empathy means?”

Lastly, Bent Not Broken has a post about the move and her new home, and I love the idea of fresh starts.  She writes, “This house will be a house for healing.  This house will be a house for us to grow, not in number, but in love.  This will be the house where we put infertility behind us.”  I love that so much.

The roundup to the Roundup: Truman is sick again.  Life from Scratch is on sale.  Your weekly backup nudge.  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 27th and June 3rd) 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.

The case of the totally weird receipt that ended up in my mailbox.

I opened my mailbox to collect the mail.  The receipt below was inside, tucked in with the letters.  53 cents taped onto a receipt from the post office.

We’ve been trying to figure out why this was left with our mail.  The Wolvog believes that when I purchased a stamp last week, I walked away without collecting my change.  Which I know isn’t true because I remember placing the quarters in my purse and thinking that I should transfer them to the separate coin purse that I use for paying parking meters.

But isn’t that odd?  Chasing me down to give me back 53 cents?  Thank you, post office.  You guys often go above and beyond, but this really is the pinnacle of good (and intriguing) customer service.

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Stop procrastinating.  Go make your backups.  Don’t have regrets.

Seriously.  Stop what you’re doing for a moment.  It will take you fifteen minutes, tops.  But you will have peace of mind for days and days.  It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments in order to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

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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:

• “Caveat Emptor” (A Half Baked Life)
• “Adoption Is” (No Bohns About It)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Something Out of Nothing writes about trying treatments again to have another child.  She worries, “This time, it doesn’t just affect Hubby and me. There’s a two-year-old girl whose life could be turned upside down for anywhere from a few months to the next eighty-or-so years while we figure out whether or not she’ll be granted a sibling.”  It is a great post about facing fears and moving ahead.

Silent Sorority has a post about meeting up with other bloggers.  I love the title: “The Exhilaration of Acceptance.”  Isn’t that exactly what it feels like when you find your group online?  She writes, “It doesn’t need to be a grand gesture. In fact, it’s the gentle gesture that often leaves the largest impact. A friendly smile, a nod of the head, an extended hand or kind word can change someone’s day. It can also change someone’s life.”  Finding that connection online has changed so many people’s worlds, and I love that she is getting to come face-to-face with the people who changed hers.

Evil Mom has a post about not knowing where life will take you, and how certain things circle back into your life in unexpected ways.  I guess posts like this give me hope that the things that I think have floated away indefinitely will possibly come back one day, albeit in a different form.  I especially love this: “Life is weird. Weird isn’t bad, it’s just unexpected.”

Lastly, In Quest of a Binky Moongee has a post about her mother making other people baby clothes.  She doesn’t necessarily want to see all the beautiful things her mother is making for other people, but her mother doesn’t understand her point-of-view.  So she keeps peeking at the sweaters.  I love the end of the post, the hope looking forward to the day her mother begins knitting for her child.

The roundup to the Roundup: The case of the odd change.  Your weekly backup nudge.  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 20th and 27th) 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.

It was a week of bad news — not for me but for good friends — and it kept coming day after day.  Bad medical results.  A funeral.  A gloominess hung over the week, punctuated only by more grey rain.  I felt numb, maybe because our friends are too close so their news is too big to wrap my brain around easily.

Still, it was bizarre to find myself crying as I scrolled through Facebook because I read that a local clown had died.

Ken-zo the clown owned a bar in Baltimore that we visited a few years ago.  It had a two drink minimum before the magic show, and I had my drinks quickly to get them over with because I don’t like alcohol.  I ended up getting too drunk to read the book I brought with me, so I talked to Ken about magic.  I just wanted to learn a few magic tricks, something I could master with my complete lack of coordination and my inability to carry through practicing hand movements for hours at a time.  He humoured me and told me about various tricks that I could pick up on my own.  I still have the list I wrote down before the show.

I couldn’t put into words why I fell apart with that story and not the ones that happened to people whom I care about a lot.  Maybe it was the realization that we’ll all be gone someday.  That one day someone else will be telling a story about a conversation they had with me, and they’ll muse how odd it is that I once was here and now I’m gone.  Or maybe it had just been such a fun night, and this person who had built a space that made me so giddy with magic (liquor notwithstanding) was now gone.

It says something when you can quickly recognize a face you only saw once as you scroll past it on Facebook.  It was that memorable a night.

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Stop procrastinating.  Go make your backups.  Don’t have regrets.

Seriously.  Stop what you’re doing for a moment.  It will take you fifteen minutes, tops.  But you will have peace of mind for days and days.  It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments in order to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

*******

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:

• “Plans in Pencil” (Family Building with a Twist)
• “This is Motherhood, Too” (Still Mothers)
• “Leading Up to THE Appointment (Part One)” (No Good Eggs)
• “Making a Transfer Plan (Part Two)” (No Good Eggs)
• “Other Options and Donor Stuff (Part Three)” (No Good Eggs)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Raven Rambling has a belated Mother’s Day post.  It took her some time to put her thoughts into words.  After years of being asked when she would have children, she realized this year that not only was no one asking her questions about family building, but they were pretending that her dogs were her children.  She explains, “This Mother’s Day, which had been intended to make me feel included, made me feel more alone than any other Mother’s Day before it.”  It’s a wonderful post about belonging.

Hope Floats Among the Cherry Blossoms has a post about something I think many of us has experienced — being the last person in a group without a child.  Her online forum group is still in touch, and she tries not to talk about how she feels about this with them.  “I edited it out because I did not want to hurt anyone’s feelings or push them away. But, the distance continued to expand either way.”  It’s a post about not knowing where her journey will go, but realizing that different people come into your life at different times.

Lastly, My Perfect Breakdown has a post about her child picking up her husband’s mannerisms.  She writes: “When we chose to adopt we knew we’d never see any of our physical attributes in our child … But, regardless of what our child looks like, what I didn’t really think about is that our child is bound to pick up on our mannerisms because children learn through mimicking.”  It’s an interesting discussion of nature vs. nurture.

The roundup to the Roundup: Crying about a stranger.  Your weekly backup nudge.  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 13th and 20th) 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.

It’s Friday the 13th.  I have a compulsive need to say that every Friday the 13th.  As you were.

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Hey, remember that whole “do yoga, drink water, get sleep, eat well” thing I was doing?  It didn’t last long.  I’m still doing yoga every morning, but after weeks of drinking huge amounts of water, I’m back to forgetting to drink anything until around 3 pm when I suddenly remember that enormous cup in the kitchen.  I also haven’t layered in a proper bedtime, which should have happened by now.

Forget the whole food thing.

Gizmodo had an interesting article about why we stay up past the point when our body is telling us to go to bed.  I do this.  I know I’m tired, but I stay up anyway.  I definitely don’t get 7 hours, though a lot of that has to do with the fact that it takes me a long time to fall asleep, and then I’m not very good at staying asleep.

I would like to learn how to be a better sleeper.  I wish there were sleep classes.

*******

Stop procrastinating.  Go make your backups.  Don’t have regrets.

Seriously.  Stop what you’re doing for a moment.  It will take you fifteen minutes, tops.  But you will have peace of mind for days and days.  It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments in order to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

*******

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:

• “That Day” (Stirrup Queens) — thank you, Nonsequiturchica!
• “I Want My Kids to Struggle” (Lavender Luz)
• “Starting Conversations” (Bent Not Broken)
• “Week in Review: Motherhood After Infertility” (Leah Campbell)
• “Microblog Mondays: Unnecessary Competition” (Searching for Our Silver Lining)
• “Taller Than I” (Mrs. Spit… Still Spouting Off)
• “Not Having Children” (NotQuiteOld)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Outlandish Notions has a beautiful, poetic Mother’s Day post that made me feel as if I was lying in the hammock, watching the trees as I rock back and forth.  You’ll need to click over and read it to feel it, too.

River Run Dry has two posts this week on the idea of softening.  She points out that soft usually has negative connotations; someone wishy-washy, poorly defined, incapable for standing up for herself.  But as we all talked about it, she realized how tension was affecting her.  She explains: “I can’t believe I never saw this before now. It’s so prevalent in my day to day life, but I never saw it before.”  And that is the beauty of conversation online, which sometimes feels like the backyard fence.  Sometimes you just need to hear, “me too.”

Infertilityhonesty writes about being wished Happy Mother’s Day as a random greeting in May.  She wonders, “what I would say if someone addressed me personally (“I’m a survivor of infertility, so for me it isn’t”) to the greater conundrum of identifying the issue and coming up with a social protocol that includes us all.”  It’s a great post about seeing the holiday through a different lens.

Lastly, Articulation wonders why the really important things in life don’t come with an operating manual.  Moreover, there seems to be people (though I would guess that it’s just an outsider’s perception, and the person living their life sees it in a different way) who can riff on life without an instructions, churning out moments without falling flat.  It’s a great post.

The roundup to the Roundup: It’s Friday the 13th.  I need sleep lessons.  Your weekly backup nudge.  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 6th and 13th) 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.

It has either been raining or in a state of pre-rain for… weeks. At least, it feels like it has been weeks.  Baseball has been cancelled a bunch of times, and I’ve been using up the cheaper hair gel because why bother with the good stuff when my hair is going to frizz anyway?

I’m not a big fan of rain (see above: frizzy hair), but I didn’t realize how much it affected my mood, especially since I consider myself immune to needing outdoor time.  Josh always says that when we need to crawl into underground bunkers because zombies are roaming the surface of the earth, I will thrive because I am perfectly content never stepping into the sun.

But we may need to rethink this because every time I wake to another day of greyness, I want to curl up into a ball and sob.

Are you affected by the weather or indifferent toward rain?

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My friend and I took our sons to an arcade that had an original Super Mario machine.  [Quick trivia question: Mario made his first appearance in this arcade game before showing up in Super Mario Bros.  Don’t Google.  Put your guess in the comment section.]

I haven’t played in at least 24 years but probably longer.  It was amazing to feel the muscle memory kick in the second my hands grabbed the joystick.  I wasted a game getting accustomed to the controls, and then immediately started sailing through the boards.  I remembered the location of every hidden coin, every portal.

I coached the boys, telling them where to squat down and jump up.  The only thing I was missing was a track suit and whistle as I prowled behind them, critiquing their technique.  That’s what I want to be when I grow up: an arcade coach.

*******

Stop procrastinating.  Go make your backups.  Don’t have regrets.

Seriously.  Stop what you’re doing for a moment.  It will take you fifteen minutes, tops.  But you will have peace of mind for days and days.  It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments in order to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

*******

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:

• “#StartAsking for Recognition” (No Kidding in NZ)
• “NIAW: #StartAsking Yourself” (Unpregnant Chicken)
• “Perfect Imperfections” (Lavender Luz)
• “#StartAsking About What Causes Infertility” (Searching for Our Silver Lining)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Family Build With a Twist has a post about life long after resolving infertility.  As you’ve probably guessed, resolving infertility doesn’t wrap up the experience in a neat package that you can set in a storage box, never to look at again.  As she writes, “As the mother of a tiny human well into childhood as opposed to babyhood, I should be over all this infertility stuff, right?  I’m not.”  Clearly this resonated with me because I feel the same way.  (And, yes, I am a glass half empty person, too.)

No Kidding in NZ has a post highlighting the Joy Olympics — the exact opposite of the Pain Olympics in which the person is told that they have no right to be happy (instead of no right to be sad).  It’s a bizarre idea; that people believe there is only one path in life in which you can feel joy.  And it made me stop and think about all the other places we play the Joy Olympics in life: you can’t be happy if you don’t get married, own a home, go on vacations.  It’s a really thought-provoking post that will have you recheck the way you view the world.

Lastly, do you ever get that feeling where you think you should do X without really knowing why, and then by doing X, you end up being in the right place at the right time?  Hello, Universe?  Our Wish has a post about a day when she was considering taking a day off of work, and what happened when she decided to go in anyway.  Trigger warning: a miscarriage is discussed in the post.

The roundup to the Roundup: The rain is bringing me down.  Super Mario muscle memory.  Your weekly backup nudge.  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 29th and May 6th) 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.