Category — Friday Blog Roundup

Congratulations, Atlantic.  You win for most obnoxious infertility-related story for dedicating inches and inches of space to mock the fact that people are curious about egg freezing.  No, you don’t need to click over to read it.  It just — and I know this is really funny — goes through how to freeze chicken eggs.  Get it?  You’re concerned about egg freezing so you ask the health editor at the Atlantic about egg freezing, and he tells you about freezing chicken eggs.  Hilarity ensues.

Just imagine the jokes James Hamblin could make about chemo.  I’m inviting him to my next dinner party, that joker.

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Amazon chose Measure of Love to feature as one of the books of the month for the entirety of August.  Which is all kinds of cool, and they’re offering it as a $1.99 deal on Kindle.  I’d love any help in getting word out there about the promotion.  And a massive thank you to everyone who has already Facebooked and tweeted.

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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 is Like Getting Rejected from Your Dream Job Over and Over Again” (Stirrup Queens)
• “Travel Essentials and Learning to Let Go” (Invincible Spring)
• “Breakdown, Breakthrough – Part One” (Life from Here)
• “My Adoption Backstory and an Epiphany” (An Engineer Becomes a Mom)
• “Mama is a State of Mind” (Queen of the Slipstream)
• “Better To Be Too Soon Than Never At All (In My Opinion)” (Where the *Bleep* is Our Stork?)
• “Hard” (It Is What It Is (or Is It?))
• “Other People’s Pregnancies” (By the Brooke)
• “My Parenting Philosophy” (Anabegins)
• “Say a Little Prayer for Me” (Katydid Cancer)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Stupid Broken Eggs has a post about finding faith through her experience with infertility.  There are a lot of posts that go in the other direction, questioning religion in a crisis, so it was interesting — to me — to hear this perspective.  It’s a post about recognizing all the tiny things that are making her path a little easier, and I like this part: “I also think that this journey has helped me renew my faith. I’m not the most religious person- in that I don’t attend church every Sunday and some days I have a mouth of a truck driver. But, I do have my faith. I believe and I trust in God always. I have seen prayer work and I pray daily.”

The Question Now Becomes has a post about being settled in the reality that they are now a family of four.  They bring the twins out to see her in-laws and her husband says some beautiful words about how their family came to be.  I got chills when I read them repeated in the final paragraph: “But the most important thing is that everyone loved on A&P, passed them around so much they fell asleep within seconds that eve. And as we swept home in our newly minted mini-van the next day I felt like what he’d said had rung true, we are a family now, made and re-made again.”  Gorgeous.

The Destiny Manifest has a post about the changes she wants to make.  She got me with one of the first lines: “I apologize if it is tiresome to keep reading that “it’s been a hard week” — it is equally as tiresome to keep living hard weeks.”  She made me think about all the things I’d like to change and the step I’d need to take to change them.

Two Adults, One Child has a post about trying and not trying at the same time; namely, that she can’t really casually try (story of my life).  I love the rules she has made for her life (including her blogging) for the next three months.  Cheering her on as she puts them into action.

Lastly, The Great Big IF has a post about moving back and forth through grief, swimming in circles rather than grief being a trip across the pool and out the other side.  She does better and then she does worse and then she does better again, and it is all swimming; not drowning.  The entire post is very powerful, and this thought will gut-punch you: “Today my conclusion to share is that I have no conclusion. And for a girl who has to resist looking at the ending of a book before she’s barely past the beginning, you can imagine how much energy I’m spending in accepting this nebulous, grey future I have before me. There is no spreadsheet, no pick-your-own-ending. It’s a game of chance. It always is, but it’s getting harder to trick myself into thinking the opposite.”  Moving, right?  Go read the whole post from beginning to end.

The roundup to the Roundup: Most obnoxious health article ever.  Measure of Love is on sale (and I’d love your help to spread word).  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between July 26th and August 2nd) 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 is the seventh anniversary of the Friday Blog Roundup.  Seven years ago this week, I started doing a roundup of posts I found because I wanted to have a conversation with more people about the things I read.  On average, I highlight four posts per week. (I obviously read a lot more than that, but I grab 4 from the ones I bookmarked.) With very few exceptions (maybe five times EVER), I post 52 times per year.  I’ve done this for 7 straight years.  That is 1,456 blog posts that I’ve highlighted.

Thank you for reading the roundup, but moreover, thank you for clicking over to read what other bloggers wrote.

I miss a lot of good stuff, and I have deep regrets about that.  I’m glad you guys contribute to the “second helpings” section to remedy that.  I also sometimes think about highlighting many more than four posts, but I also know that everyone has limits, and the more I choose to highlight, the less chance that people will have time to click over to read.  So I keep it to four, hoping that is manageable.  And I send a very huge thank you out to the people who click over, read, and comment.

Everyone wants their words, their experience, their emotions to be heard and acknowledged.

I’ve talked a lot over the last 7 years why I don’t like to be called a leader, but I have no problem with being called a chief pollinator.  Someone who spreads around information, bringing people together that they may otherwise have missed, or introducing them to someone who might help.  A connector.  After all, my name means “honey bee” in Greek.  It’s fitting that a Melissa would be a pollinator.

This week will be one of the rare occurrences when I don’t post a traditional Friday Blog Roundup because I’m at BlogHer.  But I hope you’ll take a moment to celebrate this community with me.  Please let everyone know in the comment section one post you read (whether it ever was featured in the Roundup or not) that you’ll never forget.

I thought I was going to hate the new version of Gmail and dreaded seeing my inbox switch over, but I have to say, I am in love with the new system.  My social media notifications go into one column, and I can read/delete/archive them in huge batches.  Anything promotional goes into another column, and I can now quickly drag product pitches over there and never have to see them again.  I’ll just comb through that column once a day to make sure no legitimate emails got stuck in there.  It’s like having a turbo spam filter.

And then the rest of my emails are all coming into my normal inbox.

I get a lot of email every day, and a chunk of my evening is spent separating out the emails I need to read from the ones I just need to glance at and archive.  And don’t even get me started on my annoyance over the amount of junk mail I receive.  Now I can scroll down a column, hit “all” and poof — they’re gone.  Archived.  Trashed.  Whatever I want.

Well done, Google.

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Last week, we drove down to Carmen’s for water ice.  As we drove over, I realized that I had no cash on me.  I hate using a credit card for a small amount of money, so I decided that I would buy a Crave card (one of their gift cards) and use it immediately, keeping the remainder for another day.  Problem solved.

Except when we stepped up to the door, there was a sign saying their credit card machine wasn’t working.  We went inside anyway to see if it had miraculously been fixed and they just hadn’t taken the sign down.  Alas, it was like Ladyhawke — they could only take cash, and we had no cash, no ATM card, no blank check.  We only had the credit card, and they had a broken credit card machine.

We were going to have to leave without water ice.

I told the twins we could come back on the weekend, and the ChickieNob promptly began to cry.  It had taken us a while to get there, she had debated flavours in the car, and now she was going to have to wait days for her water ice.  Carmen’s is also nowhere near our house — a long drive — and she knows from past experience that the best laid plans sometimes don’t happen when we need to figure out how to get there again.

As we crossed the lot, we heard a woman call out to us.  “Come back,” she said.  “Let’s figure this out.”

So we went back in the store, and the owner came out from the back room.  Apparently, after we walked out, the employee went to tell him how sad the ChickieNob had been, and being the parent of a similarly-aged kid, he decided that they must have water ice that day.  They simply couldn’t be expected to wait.  He brought out a portable credit card machine that they use for their carts, and rang up our water ice.  It tasted even better than it would have if we hadn’t thought we wouldn’t be having water ice that day.

That’s the sort of nice step a family-owned business can do for its customers.

Later that weekend, we came back because I had indeed promised the kids water ice on the weekend.  So they ended up getting two water ices in one week.

Thank you, Carmen’s, for not sending away two very sad eight-year-olds sans water ice.

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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 is my Therapy” (Mama Said Knock You Out)
• “Birth Plans” (Stumbling Gracefully)
• “Advice, and Double Dark Chocolate Beet Muffins” (A Half Baked Life)
• “Straddling Worlds” (Searching for Our Silver Lining)
• “Six Years into this Lonely Walk… Saudade” (The Empty Cookie)

Okay, now my choices this week.

No Kidding in NZ has a post about setting up your future when your future isn’t following the course you thought it would take.  In other words, answering the internal question, “what’s next for me?”  She writes, “When a big life goal – whether you’ve held it for your entire life, or simply the years in which you were trying to conceive – is taken away as an option, we often feel that we need to replace it with something equally big. How do we save the world, make a difference, feel as if we’ve achieved something, and leave our mark on the planet if we’re not going to be a parent?”  She answers with her own advice for this question.

Starlit Dreams has a happy post about gratitude.  Maybe it’s having read her for so long, to know how dark some of the dark days were, that it made me smile hugely to read her post and think about this happy space keeping her from sleep.  May everyone get to feel that type of contentment in their lives.

On the opposite end was Baby, Borneo or Bust’s post about moving, also starting from a place of being unable to sleep.  You can practically feel the excitement of the night before your life changes popping off the screen.  Wishing her safe travels.

Lastly, Baby Makin’ has a post about when her job and her infertility collide.  This line really moved me: “Will I ever be able to tell my child to ‘make something pretty!’ when I drop them off and see their excited faces when they bound up the stairs at pick up time with their project from the day?”  And then this one: “I give her a small smile to try and make her feel better. She doesn’t know, however, that I’m crying inside, wondering if I’ll ever have a little girl like her.”  That last one got me crying.

The roundup to the Roundup: Love the new Gmail.  Thank you, Carmen’s.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between July 12th and July 19th) 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.

Thank you for all the notes and comments and Facebook updates and Tweets for the twins.  They’ve been reading it all, feeling good about the article.  And it once again cements in my mind that aphorism that it takes a village to raise a child.  All your words are part of raising them too in this global community, where the actions of adults (giving them a chance to write this article and helping them out during it and cheering them on after its done) guide the future of the children.  Because you wrote a comment, the twins felt encouraged.  Because they were encouraged, they’ll continue to write.  Because they continue to write, they continue to feel good about themselves.

So not to get all gooey emotional, but it is emotional to see people care about two people you love a lot (and think are pretty great, even if they do set up their matchbox cars and Legos all around your desk so that you step on them when you try to get up from your seat) and make their world bigger.  I try to always do this for other people since I can see how much opportunities or support can change a person.  And all of your support has definitely changed them for the better.

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It feels like summer is moving at warp speed.  Like school just got out yesterday and now we’re suddenly at some midway point and then in an eye-blink summer will be over.  I don’t know how to slow things down.

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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:

• “One. Enough?” (River Runs Dry)

Okay, now my choices this week.

First post by new blog, The Second Bedroom, is a frank look at an infertility diagnosis, as well as moving into a new blogging space, one that gets her to say quietly, “This is me, an infertile.”  It conveys that disbelief one feels ending up somewhere completely unexpectedly.  It’s a great first post.  Go welcome her into this corner of the blogosphere.

I am really really happy that the Listen to Your Mother videos are now up for those of us who couldn’t crisscross the United States to support our fellow ALI bloggers.  Both Family Building with a Twist and Lavender Luz have up videos of their performances.  Please let me know any others that are up (sorry — I’m behind in my blog reader) so I can update this entry.

From IF to When has a powerful piece on the way the online ALI community has changed.  She writes, “Like the elephant in the room, it’s sucking up the clean air to the point where all I can smell is shit. I’m stating a fact that’s been somewhat apparent for a while, but that no one has wanted to address. Me included.”  It’s a thought-provoking piece, meant to start a conversation.

Lastly, Project Progeny has a post about going back to Albania.  I love this line because it’s applicable to so many places and people: “It took me five seconds to remember why I love Albania, and three days to remember why I was so ready to leave.”  It’s a post about finding the place you love is also the source of your frustration.  Sort of like family itself.  A great post.

The roundup to the Roundup: Thank you.  Summer is going too fast.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between July 5th and July 12th) 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… a few months ago, I opened up a contest to have a character named after you in the upcoming book Apart at the Seams.  The contest closed this week and I pulled an entry using the Random Number Generator.

The winner of the Say “I Do” to Measure of Love contest is… #30: Lori!

So when you see her name in the book, you’ll know exactly how it got there.

I mostly want to say an enormous thank you to the 73 entries in the contest.  Each of those felt like a little hug.  I am beyond grateful to all of you for the support with the book, Measure of Love: reading it, tweeting about it, reviewing it, Facebooking it.  Every small thing helps.  It’s just a review or a tweet to you, but it is a huge huge huge thing to me.  So thank you.

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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:

• “We’re Not Just All a Little Bit Racist, We’re Also a Little Bit Hateful” (Stirrup Queens) — thank you, Cristy
• “The Children I’ve Never Know” (Sydney Morning Herald)
• “The Trouble with (Just) Leaning In” (A Half Baked Life)

Okay, now my choices this week.

My Lady of the Lantern has a tiny post about napping, and I’m highlighting it because she states this truth that I’ve never heard someone say before (and if I had heard it said when I was in the throes of babyhood, it would have saved my sanity).  “Much of the first year of her life, I have waited for Figlia to fall asleep, so that I could x, y or z. Now, I am not so affected by her napping or non-napping. I can engage her in stuff and do some of mine too.”  It’s hard to realize how that will change; that the nap will cease to hold the same importance.  But it will.  So bookmark her post and return to it when you need it.

The Destiny Manifest has a beautiful post on the anniversary of their daughter’s birth and death.  On what should have been her first birthday, a mother reflects on the first year after the loss of her daughter.  And what could have been a day when she felt completely alone, a network of friends came out to light candles, release balloons, and remember with her.  She writes, “It makes my heart sing to feel so much love from friends I’ve never met face to face. I read so many caring messages and saved so many pictures, and every one of them lifted my spirits and made me feel so much better.”  It’s really a post about the power of togetherness.

Lastly, Stupid Broken Eggs has a powerful post about how our words are sometimes read (and affect) another person.  Reading a discussion on an open forum about another person’s weight gain, she points out how her own body changes are tied to stress, and perhaps instead of judging, those people could reach out to the person in question and ask them if everything is okay.  She refrains from joining the conversation: “I don’t need to be jumping into a pot of boiling water head first and full of progesterone and steroids… that’s a recipe for disaster I do believe.”  But her words are just as powerful here, and what comes next in the post is beautiful moment between friends.

The roundup to the Roundup: Winner of the contest. And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between June 28th and July 5th) 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.