Category — Friday Blog Roundup

I got nominated for my first Liebster Award.  I’ve seen this on a bunch of blogs, but I’ve never been picked. (Unless you count the times someone says, “I don’t know who to tag.  If you’re reading this, you’re tagged.”)  But this week, Em-i-lis picked me.  ME!

So thank you, Em-i-lis!

And I apologize if you did pick me, and I have completely blanked on that experience.

These are her questions and my answers:

What is your favorite nickname, bestowed by another or self-inflicted?

I was called Mickey back in middle school/high school.  And I really loved that nickname because the cutest boy in Hebrew school gave it to me.  That really cute boy didn’t age very well.  I am basing that on a Google search I just did.  I’m now highly disappointed.  But he was really cute when we were twelve.

With whom would you most like to have dinner (that you’ve not yet)?

I have a long lost family member that I connected with due to the family tree I’m making, and I would love to fly out to the West Coast and meet her.

Why do you blog?

Mostly because Josh would like other people to help carry the burden of listening to my thoughts.  Since I started blogging, I have mostly stopped bringing up huge topics at midnight when he’s trying to fall asleep.

What’s your favorite way to spend an afternoon?

Reading on the sofa next to Truman’s cage.  With hot chocolate.  And fuzzy socks.

What have you learned about yourself and/or your interests via blogging/writing?

I learned what it feels like to belong.  To fit somewhere.  For so much of my life, I didn’t have a place I fit.  And then I found writing and it was like slipping into an almost finished puzzle.  Then I would forget how I fit in writing and struggle in other places.  But every time I returned to writing, I would think, “oh yes!  I belong here.”

Let’s break for an easy one: Sweet or salty?

Sweet.  All the way.

Off the top of your mind, what are your favorite three books that aren’t your own (for you pubbed authors)?

• Harry Potter heptalogy (I know it is cheating to put 7 books but I need to break the rules)
• The Phantom Tollbooth
• Handmaid’s Tale

What’s some of the best advice you’ve ever received?

Always shit before making a big decision.  Or… maybe less disgustingly, make decisions on a relaxed body.  Before you hit send, before you make up your mind, before you take any steps that are no-going-back points, make sure that nothing physical is goading you to make up your mind faster than you wish.  Also, Carla Cohen’s advice to “just wing it.”

If you love to cook, what’s your favorite utensil? If you hate to cook, what’s your favorite dish prepared by others?

A solid spatula.  Like a pancake turner?  I use it for stirring, all the time.

What’s one of your favorite destinations (you could have gone once or many times)?

We go to Chincoteague a lot, so that’s up there as a favourite destination.  But I equally have a lot of love for the Book Mill in Montague, MA.

Who am I tagging?

• Loribeth from The Road Less Traveled
• Luna from Life from Here
• Justine from A Half Baked Life
• Lori from Lavender Luz
• Karen from River Run Dry

Consider yourself lucky that you were the first five people who popped into my brain!

Your questions:

1. Longest you’ve ever gone without a shower.
2. Tell us about a recent disappointment.
3. Tell us the person you’d most like in the car with you for a road trip.
4. Which do you like better: goats or sheep?
5. Do you like to watch scary movies?
6. What do you call yourself when you’re talking to yourself inside your head?
7. Name someone from your kindergarten class that you wonder about to this day.
8. What is the best song for picking up your mood?
9. How do you organize your socks?
10. When no one is home, do you close the bathroom door?

Everyone else, feel free to answer these too.  By the way, Josh contributed #9 and #10.

*******

Thank you for weighing in about the Creme de la Creme.  Sounds like there is a critical mass of people so… onward!  The list will open for submissions on the 15th next week.

*******

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:

• “I Didn’t Make it Into the Newspaper” (Little Chicken Nuggets)
• “I Took a Walk” (Too Many Fish to Fry)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Wordgirl’s “Self Contained” is a post that I read a bit late, but I’m including it this week because it blew my mind.  You will cry reading it.  You will probably recognize something of yourself within it.  It was simply the most beautiful thing I’ve read in a while.

Misfit Mrs. also had a post about an anniversary that I was late to read that really belonged in last week’s roundup.  Can you tell that I’m behind on my reader?  Read it for that ending: “I feel like the patron saint of improbable, though. Or at least I owe a small corner of my home to building an alter to that currently undetermined saint. The savior of lost causes, the champion of losers, or the queens of epic failures are all in my court.”  But really, the entire thing is just lovely.

And the Vial Makes Three has a post about which one will carry the child that made me laugh.  It was, by far, amongst some actual heartfelt content, the best use of hashtags ever: “I am delighted to celebrate vicariously with these wonderful women, but (in all honesty) it makes me jealous. I know when it does happen for us it’s gonna be swell… it’ll be great… we’re gonna have the whole world on a plate.  #musicaltheaterref #merman #gaybies.”

Lastly, Andmom has a post about the word “just” — a word I’m guilty of using in a post this week.  It’s about needing more than and less than, and trying to fit into a system that is clearly not designed with her child in mind.  The frustration comes through every word of the post, and I hope that they find a solution that works.

The roundup to the Roundup: Get to know me… and I’d like to get to know you.  Eighth Creme de la Creme is starting next week.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between October 4th and October 11th) 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 calendar has flipped over to October… at least we still have one of those paper, flippable calendars on our wall.  It’s a freebie from a funeral home, which feels a little macabre (remember that time is passing, people!) but their squares are so big and empty.  Anyway, back to the original thought: October.

October is traditionally the kick-off for the annual Creme de la Creme list.  This will be the eighth list in existence.  (You can peruse old lists: such as 2006 or 2007 or 2008 or 2009 or 2010 or 2011, or last year’s, 2012.)  As always, I like to give people a heads up that I’m going to open the list on October 15th because I know there are those who like to get high up on the list.  The list is posted in the order in which the entries are received.  In other words, if you want your post to be the first one everyone reads, make sure you submit it right as the list opens on October 15th.

Submission collection will end again on December 15th.  Which means you have two months to choose a post.

Can I get a show of hands to gauge how many people plan to submit this year?  Want to make sure we have a critical mass before I plow ahead with plans.

In other words, now would be a good time to speak up and say hells yeah to an 8th year.  A simple “yes” or “me” is enough to let me know that you’re planning to submit.  A “reading but not submitting” is enough to let me know that there are additionally those out there who will read/support the list if I put in the work.

*******

Thank you to all who suggested the friendship pin as a good alternative.  Don’t get me wrong; we’re mastering that rubber band loom since I shelled out the money for it.  But I also dug out my old seed beads and some safety pins.

Want to be my friend?  I’ll trade you…

*******

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:

• “On Scars and Healing by Kathy Benson” (Exhale Literary Magazine)
• “The Dining Room Table” (Mrs. Spit… Still Spouting Off)
• “Faith and Fertility Treatments” (Genuine Greavu)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Tales of a Batty Nurse has a post about being a homebody that struck home for me (pun intended).  I could have written this line: “as much as there are places I’d like to see, I’m also very content to spend the majority of my time at home.”  I also just like being at home.  Which is a problem for someone who also likes to travel.  But there is something so nice about being in my own space.  I related to this post a lot.

The Maybe Baby (Babies) has a gorgeous post about a friend who has aged with her over the years, and they shared a “can you believe this really happened” moment bringing together their children.  Perhaps it’s knowing how long in the making this moment took.  Perhaps it was just the happiness the post contained.  It’s knowing that the next generation is finally here to carry on the troublemaking.

Lastly, From IF to When has a post about becoming unstuck.  It’s about that adult tendency to worry about change rather than embracing it.  It’s about the safety in the monotony of everyday life.  She’s pushing herself outside her comfort zone at least once per day.  Safety is in numbers, so if you want to join her in shaking things up, raise your hand in her comment section.

The roundup to the Roundup: Eighth Creme de la Creme is starting soon… right?  Bring back the friendship pin.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between September 27th and October 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.

So I rounded up all the answers from my Candy Crush questions last week, and I posted the results over in an article on GeekDad.  It was interesting that the worst level of the 10 worst levels (meaning, 18% all said the same level was the worst level, and then 9 other levels were chosen by multiple people) was the same for people who were still in levels below 100 as it was for people who had gotten to the end of the game.  Almost 1 out of 5 people all said the same level sucked.

I would like levels to come with a rating similar to knowing the par on the mini golf course.  I want to know the average amount of tries it will take to pass a level.  If I knew it took the average person 40 tries to pass a certain level (I’m looking at you, 201), I would go into playing that level with a different mentality.

By the way, I tried Pet Rescue.  I’m not sold on it yet.  I didn’t really get it.

So… yeah… hardest levels of Candy Crush posted over on GeekDad.

*******

My friend and I get coffee once a week or so at Starbucks, and last spring, I downloaded the app for my iPhone and started collecting stars.  This week, I officially became a gold member:

I wanted to write about the grotesque consumerism that grabs us as we move through our week, but instead, I need to comment on the capitalization on the congratulations notice.  Why are these words capitalized: stars, gold, and gold card?  Other words in those sentences are not capitalized.  I want to Start randomly capitalizing Various words in my sentences too.

So… I’m solid gold now: solid freakin’ gold.  I wonder if I will get to learn a secret handshake.  Any other fellow gold star members out there?  Feeling very Sneetch-like today, mostly because I have stars upon thars.

*******

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:

• “A Look at Loneliness” (Peesticks and Stones)
• “What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day” (Hide and Seek)
• “A Shrinking Room” (The Empress and the Fool)
• “Infertile Does Not Equal InCOMPLETE ~” (Confessions of an (In)fertile Mrytle)

Okay, now my choices this week.

It probably will shock no one that I love MoJo Working’s post comparing infertility to Candy Crush.  She had me with the title.  I don’t think I’ve ever clicked over from my Reader so quickly.  Feedly got whiplash.

Barren Mare returned with a post about… life.  About being away and then returning to her blog.  I love this post not just because it contains this line: “But I’d like to leave you with this in the meantime: I think we’re having a happy ending.”  I love it because it feels good when someone who has been gone from their blog for a long time pops up and speaks.  They don’t have to say anything profound.  It’s just nice to hear their voice, as the saying goes.

Lastly, Me Plus One has two interesting questions on her blog tied to being a single parent by choice.  This is why I love blogs; because they give you insight into someone else’s world.  I found the comments to be just as thought-provoking as the post.

The roundup to the Roundup: The 10 hardest levels of Candy Crush according to you.  I’m a gold star member at Starbucks.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between September 20th and September 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.

Passing along two cool things I learned about this week that both were told to me because I blog.  Which means that if I didn’t blog, or if I had chosen to write about a different topic that day, I would not know of either of these things.  Isn’t that a strange idea; not just the roads not taken, but the information not known.  Anyway, mind blown and onward.

The first is Coursera.  Did you know that you can take classes online for free?  Another Dreamer told me about it in a comment.  You can go peruse the course listings, decide what you want to learn, and then take a class without ever leaving your home.  For someone who likes to learn for learning’s sake, this is the most brilliant, wonderful thing I’ve ever found.  And yes, I am probably going to sign up for one of the computer programming classes to complement what we’re learning from the book.

The second is The Room.  A friend mentioned it in a comment on GeekDad, and I decided to download it because he described it as similar to a text-based game (my favourite kind of game) upgraded with graphics.  And that is exactly how I would describe it too.  You feel as if you are in the room, actually touching each safe, picking up the various items you find and using them to solve the puzzles.  The Wolvog and I are working on it together (though I accidentally found one of the keys when I was trying to show the game to Josh, and I feel majorly guilty that I did it without him).  Would have paid a lot more for this game but was grateful that it was only 99 cents (and there is a free version for iPhone with in-app purchases).  Gorgeous graphics, sort of creepy music (but we keep the sound off).

Passing on the love since I was grateful to learn about both these things.

*******

Akismet saves me from a lot of spam — upward of 300 pieces on a regular day.  But it also sometimes yanks in perfectly normal comments that don’t discuss Viagra.  When it pulls them into the moderation folder, I see them and approve them immediately.  When it pulls them into the spam folder, well, I have to admit that lately I’ve gotten lazy and hit “delete all” without looking closely at the spam folder.  Looking closely means scrolling through 300 comments that are gibberish strings of random words, ads for sexual aids or… well… actually they’re pretty much all ads for sexual aids.

Bea noticed that her last few comments weren’t on the blog, so I dove into the spam folder and found two comments underneath one for “medieval fuck screens dragonball.”  So… while Akismet is catching the dragonballs, it’s also catching perfectly normal non-dragonball comments.

Please let me know if your comments are not going through.  I know Akismet sends a few to moderation each day, and I haven’t been able to get that to stop.  But I will dive into the dragonball-filled spam folder and pull out comments because I don’t want your words to go missing after you took the time to write them.

*******

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:

• “Selling the Fantasy of Cancer Survival” (Stirrup Queens) — thank you, A!
• “Outing the Single Hussy” (Knocked Up by a Test Tube)
• “Dear Writers: Success is Mattering to Somebody” (BlogHer)
• “The Bitch in My Head” (Where the Bleep is Our Stork?)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Project Sweet Pea has a post about BFPs in the ALI blogosphere (as opposed to the face-to-face world).  I loved this post because it tells the whole picture.  Sure there is envy, but there is also the fact that she writes, “I need to read about these BFPs. I need to know that this can work for people. That there is a possibility this might work out one day for me too.”  It’s a sweet post.

Persnickety Chickadee writes about how before she started trying to become pregnant, she had never had an overnight in a hospital.  Infertility has made her practically blase about surgery.  She writes, “Look, growth as a result of infertility. Not sure I wanted it in this way, but it is here.”  Sending her good thoughts for a quick recovery from the surgery this week.

Lastly, Two Adults, One Child has a gorgeous post about a run she took to quiet her mind.  You seriously need to read this post in full, but here is a taste: “Street lights overhead, casting a pattern of light, then dark, then light, then dark — not unlike the recurrent pattern of hope and despair with which I am so familiar.  Month after month.  Year after year.  I am comfortable here.  I know this place.”  The final line will break your heart.

The roundup to the Roundup: Coursera and The Room.  Are your comments in my spam folder?  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between September 13th and September 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.

My old yoga teacher used to talk about the monkey mind, which jumps from thought to thought, never settling down to tune in to the moment.  My brain has gone totally simian.

In a 20-second period, I jumped from “I feel like a sad blob” to “maybe I should pick up the kids early from school so we can read Harry Potter” to “I think I’m getting my period” to “let’s go to the Faroe Islands.”

I’m not entirely sure why the Faroe Islands.  It was one of those things where an article mentioned the place and my monkey mind made me Google it.  And then I saw pictures.  No, wait, I saw these pictures.  And then I watched the video made by a travel service.

And then my monkey mind went wild, like a golden lion tamarin who has found an untapped treasure trove of unblemished fruit.  How could I focus on anything like… work… when the Faroe Islands existed?  And for that matter, how could I focus when I had to think about all the other places I’d love to visit: how I want to get to Mingulay one day.  And ever since I saw a pictures of the Azores in my National Geographic Kids book when I was eight, I’ve wanted to go there too.  And Iceland — I need to get to Iceland at some point.

Then I Googled airfare to the Faroe Islands and came back to earth like a sad monkey.

There are a lot of places we want to go, and a few places we should go to before we go to all of those places.  Israel, for instance, trumps the Faroe Islands.  I have a feeling I will get there at some point if I want to put it at the top of my wishlist.  But not now.

Where would you love to go?

*******

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:

• “Time Out” (Two Adults, One Child)
• “He’s a Watcher” (The Little Grape)
• “Little Red Hen” (AndMom)
• “Childfree – the Life for Me” (a guest post)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Here We Go Again has the most brilliant, simple idea in her post.  I’m not going to ruin it by telling you it here, but suffice to say, when you read her post, your mouth with drop open and you’ll say, “daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn, that is really really smart.”  Feel free to tell her that in a comment.

The Medicated Momma has a tale of two baby showers.  She writes, “I hate that I can’t get a baby shower invitation in the mail and not just stick it on my fridge and move on with my life without weighing my options with best case and worst case scenarios about the state of my uterus.”  Sending her a lot of good thoughts that today brings her good news.

Mellow in the Midwest has a post unpacking everything on her mind before her second baby arrives.  While she rationally knows that it will all work out since things have a tendency to work themselves out, she also admits that “All of this physical stuff I’ve checked off the list, but I still feel utterly unprepared emotionally and know that there’s no way to feel differently. There’s no way to prepare for the change that’s coming.”  It’s a great post about feeling off-kilter, not knowing what to expect, but also knowing that cool things are about to happen.

Lastly, Searching for Our Silver Lining has an incredibly helpful post about the NICU that you should bookmark and pass along to any friend or family member who ends up with a child who remains behind at the hospital.  This advice would have been invaluable during our NICU stay.  It’s a must-read.

The roundup to the Roundup: Where do you want to go?  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between September 6th and September 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.