Category — Friday Blog Roundup

This New Yorker article is, hands down, the funniest thing I’ve read in a long time.  I say that even though I’m supposed to be offended… I think.  At least, I’ve been told that I should be offended.  It takes all the ridiculous of the Mommy Wars, the mother pandering, and mom-focused advertising and rolls it into one neat parody.

Are you a mom? No? Then you don’t need to read one more word. Go on, shoo! I’m not trying to be mean; it’s just that you probably won’t understand a lot of what I’m going to say. It’s a mom thing. If you’re a mom, you know what I’m talking about. Right, moms? Go, us!

I’m not saying that moms are better than other people, but there is, well, something different, something special about us.

That Jenny Allen is a funny lady.  Part of me wants to print this out and tape it to the inside of the kitchen cabinets so I can crack myself up as I’m cooking.  Thank you, Jenny — seriously, this made my day.

*******

Rosh HaShanah — the Jewish New Year — starts this weekend.  It kicks off a string of big deal holidays — Yom Kippur, Succot, Shemini Atzeret, Simchat Torah — that pop up one after the other all the way between now and mid-October.  I am hosting a family dinner on Sunday night where I am making a whole roasted chicken, mushroom stuffing, and green beans.  But for dessert, I’m making Kveller’s Apple Pecan Galette with Salted Peanut Butter Caramel.  Seriously.

On Rosh HaShanah (which translates to “head of the year”), we say “shanah tovah” which means “a good year” (שנה טובה) or the longer “shana tova umehtookah” which means “a good and sweet year” (שנה טובה ומתוקה).  So shanah tovah, y’all.

*******

And now the blogs…

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

• “Enoughness” (Stirrup Queens) — thank you, Keiko!
• “Men and Infertility” (Too Many Fish to Fry)
• “The Grandmothers I Know” (Creating Motherhood)
• “Surrogacy in the News — Written by Me” (The Smartness)
• “No Woman Came Up to Me” (The Infertility Voice)
• “Imagine” (No Kidding in NZ)
• “Why Not Me?” (A Glimpse Inside)

Okay, now my choices this week.

From the week before (but I only read it this week, so I’m counting it), Searching for Our Silver Lining has a powerful post how part of you dies during the navigation of infertility, and how she is choosing to live at this time.  She writes, “One of the cruelest things about infertility is that something begins to die as you go through the process. With each passing month, with each BFN, with each round of treatment, with each and every moment of worry and fear. All of it killing you slowly and leaving you in a corpse-like state. Some call this process the ‘deathless death,’ reflecting on all the pain and grief that comes from being a victim.”  Please go over and read the whole thing: it’s amazing.

Also from last week (I got caught up with reading over the weekend), The Barreness has a post about a fight with a friend.  I guess I loved this post because she takes you through the whole roller coaster, all the way through the end of the ride.  The friend, frustrated that she has pulled away and judging her for how she deals with infertility, needs to hear how her judgment has affected the friendship.  After the explosion, they are able to come to a new place together.  I thought it was an important read for anyone struggling with a friendship.

I read a bunch of moving posts on September 11th, but Stupid Stork’s story of what happened that day stuck with me long after I stepped away from the screen.

Lastly, Mojo Working has a gorgeous post about what she believes in, which illustrates the similarities behind our differences.  I especially love the final thought: “If we want a better world, a better future, we are going to have to stand up and create it ourselves.”

The roundup to the Roundup: Best parody of all time.  Rosh HaShanah starts this weekend.  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 7th and September 14th) 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.

Twice in the last month, I’ve noticed that a blog I read has suddenly been deleted.  The first time, I wrote my friend — who is local — and asked her what was up.  She didn’t know that her blog was gone.  It turned out to be a glitch, and she got her blog back.  Fast forward a few days later and I clicked over from a comment to a blog that hasn’t been updated in a few weeks.  I knew there wasn’t a post in my Reader, but sometimes I’ll go to a site to make sure the Reader is updating.  The pictures were all messed up on her blog.  So I emailed her about it.

The next day, I clicked over again to see if the picture thing had resolved itself, and HER WHOLE BLOG WAS GONE.  While I was waiting to hear back from her on email, it drove the point home of how someone online could just disappear into thin air.  It’s not that people don’t go missing from the face-to-face world, but it is so easy online to just delete and move on, dropping an email address or url.  Though that seemed out of character for the blogger, so as I baked muffins, I started thinking through a much more likely scenario: she had been kidnapped.  Yes, and the kidnappers had forced her to delete her blog to prove to her family just how serious they were about the ransom.  And now it was up to me to contact the authorities and tell them that she has been kidnapped by blog-deleting psychopaths!

Uh… and then she wrote and told me that the blog was back up.

I did make her promise that she would let me know if she was ever going to ditch her blog for real (vs. computer glitch), but it sort of brought to mind how far is too far in trying to get in touch with a blogger who has deleted her blog?  The act of deleting may signal a break from all the readers OR I know plenty of people who have deleted their blog yet we still remain in contact via email or Facebook.  Part of the question is answered by how close you are with the blogger.  Do you have a friendship that exists off-line?  Then you’ll probably have a few avenues through which to reach the person.  But what about all the people you only know online?

Emailing to ask if everything is okay is clearly (in my mind) within the realm of appropriate reach because I often email with this blogger.  But what if she hadn’t responded or if she had ditched that email address too, would it have been okay to contact her via Facebook?  Is that going too far into the privacy of someone you know online to friend them on Facebook after they delete their blog?  Can I tweet her?  What if you had the person’s address — send a letter?  Or is the only proper response to let that person drift away and disappear into the ether?

How much is too much when reaching out to a blogging friend?

Food for thought.

*******

And now the blogs…

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

• “Grief” (Growing Griswolds)
• “Two Hundred and Eightieth Day” (Bébé Suisse)
• “It’s Right There” (Hope, Trust & Truth)
• “In Sanguine, Veritas” (The Infertility Voice)
• “Twenty Years Ago” (Hobbit-ish Thoughts and Ramblings)
• “The Not Wasted Life” (My Three Ring Circus)
• “Just One Baby” (MissConception)
• “Knocked Over: On Biology, Magical Thinking, and Choice” (The Rumpus)
• “Back to School” (Certainly Not Cool Enough to Blog)
• “Sleep, Eat, Love” (Kmina’s Blog)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Mrsfit Mrs has a post on the fifth anniversary of family building that I love.  I love it for its unflinching honesty.  It is about looking back on what she has come through (seven losses to get to her daughter) as well as where she is going, all the while being true to herself and open with her readers who have been along for the ride.  I love the twist of understanding in this thoughts: “With RPL, the hazard is that I shared pregnancies with many of you who hold some-number-of-month old babe in arms right now. I did my best to forget that, even if I’m keenly aware of each of my sisters who lost their hopeful starts as mine endured.”

Ginger and Lime has a post that starts with injections and ends with an admittance that she doesn’t believe IVF will work for her.  She writes: “Most of the bloggers I started following in March 2010 (when I fired up The Intertubes for the first time) are now parents. While I was treading water, doing absolutely nothing due to my own potent combination of depression, anxiety, and no reasonable way to pay for treatments, you all were out there fighting. I vacillate between seeing your successes as inspirational (“if she can do it, maybe I can too”) and seeing them as tick marks on some Cosmic Scoreboard for a game that I am never going to win.”  Again, I was drawn to this post too for its unflinching honesty.  It takes a lot of bravery to state your truth (though I hope she is proven wrong and it does work).

More Room in My Heart also has a post about starting up IVF again to add to her family and how it is different this time around.  She admits, “I found myself wanting to tell the nurses in a bragging sort of way…this is my 6th fresh cycle…I could do this in my sleep…but who wants to brag about that?  Someone insecure? Someone wanting validation? Someone not wanting to be one of the women in the waiting room anxious about the process? Someone who accepts and knows the process, no hand holding or coddling necessary?”  Go over to read the whole post.

Lastly, Certainly Not Cool Enough to Blog has a must-read post that is a reminder to all that there is always another way a day or event is viewed, the underside that we often forget as we glance at the exterior.  She discusses the endless stream of back-to-school posts and how while she doesn’t begrudge those writers their thoughts, she explains how those posts affect her as she moves through life without her son.  She doesn’t ask to be remembered out of obligation or on special occasions, but rather to have the inquiries to her emotional space come on those ordinary days when she is deeply missing her boy.  She explains, “But maybe once in a blue moon; just a quiet nod to the ongoing agony of loss that ebbs and flows as life marches on. Especially as life marches on.”

The roundup to the Roundup: How far is too far to go to contact a friend you met online?  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between August 31st and September 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.

We had an encounter with a spider this week on par with the cricket-in-my-hair incident.  Tuesday morning, we were about to leave the house, and I picked up my purse.  It was taking the kids forever to put on their socks and shoes, so I decided now would be a fine time to dispose of a few pieces of paper that I had been carrying around in my purse.  You know, neaten things up.

As I picked up my gargantuan purse, something jumped out at me and landed on the kitchen floor, and I took my purse — the gargantuan one that happened to be holding an iPad at the moment — and threw it across the room in reflexive surprise.  On the floor, a few inches from my bare foot, was a spider that was larger than Queens, New York; a brown recluse spider (p.s. don’t click the link if you don’t want to see a Wikipedia picture).

The body itself was a bit smaller than a dime, but the span of the legs took the spider to about four centimeters.  Meaning; it was too big to hit with a shoe, my normal method for killing spiders in the house.  Oh, and I should mention at this point that I was screaming this long, continuous shriek interspersed with a high-pitched “oh my G-d oh my G-d oh my G-d” and then more screams while the kids — who were totally confused — stood on the steps holding the shoes they were supposed to be putting on.

I grabbed the Dyson and sucked the spider into it, and once I knew it was safely inside the clear canister, I turned off the vacuum and said in a calm voice, “got it.”  At which point the ChickieNob burst into tears because (1) I had freaked her out with my Lily-Potter-facing-Voldemort-like screams and (2) she really hates spiders.

After I calmed her down, the reality of the situation kicked in: I had been carrying an enormous, brown recluse spider in my purse for G-d knows how long.  I told the kids that I was certain that it had climbed inside when I left my purse open outside while I was talking to a friend the day before, but the more likely scenario is that it jumped in while we were at the beach.  Which means I’ve been carrying around a brown recluse spider for days.  FOR DAYS.

I reassured the ChickieNob by pointing out how quickly I had dealt with the situation.  Sure, I dealt with it loudly, but I dealt with it and the spider was gone.  But for the rest of the day, I felt invisible spiders crawling on me.  I felt like I was covered in spider bites.  Though you’ll be happy to know that the Apple snap cover actually works.  Beyond protecting the iPad when I dropped a flashlight on it earlier this year (while the flashlight took a chunk out of the cover, the iPad underneath was unaffected), it also kept the tablet in one piece when I threw it across the room and stomped on it in an effort to get around the spider so I could get to the Dyson.  Can’t recommend that snap cover enough if you’re a flashlight dropper or purse thrower.

*******

And now the blogs…

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

• “Plumbing” (Stupid Stork)
• “Coming to Terms and Honey Lavender Ice Cream” (A Half Baked Life)
• “Home” (Return to Go)
• “On Friendship and Infertility” (Hapa Hopes)
• “Stop! I Want to Get Off” (No Kidding in NZ)
• “Do We Really Choose” (No Kidding in NZ)
• “Blog Agony” (Womb for Improvement)
• “Memories” ((In)fertility Unexplained)
• “What They Say” (Glow in the Woods)
• “Too Fertile” (Follow Every Rainbow)
• “TL;DR Part One” (The Yellow Blanket)
• “Tradeoffs” (Serenity Now!)
• “Sometimes People Do Change” (Dragondreamer’s Lair)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Three is a Magic Number has a beautiful sign-off post ending her blog, bringing in the concept of trail markers.  Because isn’t that what we’re also doing sometimes for one another; leaving clues for the people who end up walking this same path which not only lets them know that others have been here but gives them small bits of information to follow as they chart their own journey emotionally, physically, and financially.  And I love this: “The end of trail sign, as I learned it in Girl Scouts, is a ring of rocks surrounding a solitary rock in the center. Which is fitting, really, because that’s exactly how this community has felt to me over these last three years: A seemingly solitary gal encompassed in an endless circle of really strong, really tenacious, really lustrous ladies.”  Please read the whole post.

The Bickerstaff Blog has a great birthday post that I am positive that I’ll remember each year on my birthday.  She explains the title of the post, which ties in a Sandra Cisneros short story, “So today, I am 29, but I am also 28 and 24 and 23 and 21 and 19 and all ages in between.  My 29 self wouldn’t be who she is if it weren’t for my 28th year, or my 23rd year when I got married.”  And I loved loved loved her family’s birthday cake tradition.

Non Sequitur Chica has a post about trying to fill the unfillable hole left by infertility.  It’s about all the other bits of life that happen that sidetrack your plans to tackle infertility, and how you need to let yourself get sidetracked so that infertility isn’t your whole world.  I know she says that the post ends in a bitter place, but I saw the post ending in a really good place; of a life lived rather than waited for, with sights set on the future while also focused on the present.

Lastly, one of the most beautiful posts I read this week was A Half Baked Life’s “What You Need: A Recliner, Chocolate Cake, Perspective.”  I don’t know if it was the story itself, the way she told it, the fact that she still has the chair from the story… Reading this made me feel sad and comforted and joyous and quiet all at the same time.

The roundup to the Roundup: I survived attack of the brown recluse spider.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between August 24th and August 31st) 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 the end of summer; I can’t really deny that at this point.  We even have leaves crunching underfoot outside.

I am in the throes of “just one more.”  The ChickieNob always adds a few to whatever number I tell her is sufficient.  “We can stay for five minutes,” I’ll tell her, and she’ll counter, “how about ten?”  If I give her two cookies, she’ll ask for three.  She gets this quality from me.  If Josh is rubbing my back, I wait for him to stop and then I ask for him to get out just one more knot in my shoulder so I can extend the backrub by a few minutes.  If we are leaving an amusement park and I’ve negotiated one more ride, I also know that I will be asking for one more beyond that before we leave the gates.

I am a horder of experiences.  I always want more of anything pleasant.  And summer is pleasant; not having the twins at school is pleasant, having a loose bedtime is pleasant, dropping everything to go lie on the beach is pleasant.

Last weekend, we went to a baseball game.  I realized as we drove there that we were nearing the end of the season.  That we maybe had room for one more game, so I started campaigning for one more game, and Josh granted me one more game.  When we got to the park, it started raining and we crouched down in the food row, shelling peanuts onto a napkin and reading Harry Potter 3 aloud.  The rain kept coming down and the game was held off for hours.  Part of me wanted to go home, especially once this man dropped his damn container of barbecue sauce on my jeans and then insisted that it didn’t touch me (like hell it didn’t, old man, like hell it didn’t).  And then the other part of me was a mixture of cheapness (we paid a lot of money for those seats!) and moreness (just one more game!).  If they hadn’t played, that more I had just negotiated would be moved into ready position, and then I wouldn’t have gotten an actual one last game.

We stayed.  The Nats won.  We left the park with me trying to figure out how I could extend summer just a little bit more.  Like one more week, please?

*******

Can we speak for a moment about Chocolate Cherrios?  I bought them.  I became that woman who buys Chocolate Cheerios and then stares at the other pictures on the back of the box while she eats them, dreaming of Cheerio concoctions.  What would a bowl of half Dulce de Leche Cheerios and half Chocolate Cheerios taste like?  THERE ARE PEANUT BUTTER CHEERIOS.  People, there is a whole world of flavoured Cheerios that I never knew about until a fateful trip to the cereal aisle this summer.

Back in my day, there were two kinds of Cheerios: plain and honey nut.  Plain was your everyday Cheerio; honey nut was when you were feeling fancy.  But now there are something like 12 Cheerio flavours.  Do children today know how good they have it?

The twins actually won’t eat them.  The Wolvog doesn’t eat any dried cereal, and the ChickieNob isn’t willing to forfeit dessert to have them. (I’m not willing to let them be her breakfast.)  Good.  More Chocolate Cheerios for me.  I’ve been eating them as a snack before bed.  Oh my G-d, they are so good.  They are so insanely good.

I think they must put drugs in them because why else would a woman in her late thirties be writing about Cheerios in this manner?

*******

And now the blogs…

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

• “I Just Feel It” (For the Love of Baby Liam)
• “Another Sports Analogy” (Something Out of Nothing)
• “Deleting Your Blog is Like Going Back on a Promise” (Stirrup Queens) — thank you, St. Elsewhere
• “Friday Night Leftovers” (Life As I Know It)
• “Irrelevant” (Mrs. Spit… Still Spouting Off)
• “Thank Yous” (Stumbling Gracefully)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Happiness at the Core has a beautiful post about being asked about her necklace which contains her daughter’s footprints.  She explains: “I began to wonder why I was so relieved when someone didn’t ask about my necklace.  I love talking about Maya so wouldn’t I welcome questions about my necklace?”  It is a post about holding her daughter, who died shortly after birth, close to her heart, and finding out that the right words came to her when she needed them.

Return to Go has a post about a trip to find a cabin that appeared in a book.  The book mentioned a cabin in the woods where people became pregnant, and she held this knowledge in the back of her head until this moment when they happened to be on a trip in the very same area where this cabin appears AND she was ovulating.  You’ll need to click over to discover if they ever found the cabin.

Writing for Life has a post that made me smile about meeting up with two bloggers and riding home feeling embraced.  She writes: “Again it’s about recognition, belonging, understanding and support. Also, we didn’t have to talk about all things infertility and loss all day long, we already knew each others’ stories. Of course it came up but we also got to know different sides of each other with a promise to meet again someday, hopefully soon.”  I love it when people pop through the screen, and you meet them in the face-to-face world.  Embraced is the perfect word to describe those connections.

Lastly, Something Out of Nothing has a post set on the nearby college campus.  As the campus springs back to life with the new semester, she writes, “It made me think, One day, Hubby and I will be dropping our child(ren) off at college, helping them get settled into their dorm room. They’ll be making new friends, coming home for the holidays, venturing into their adult lives.  And it felt so very far away.  But then, so does holding a newborn in my arms.”  It’s a post that while tempered by reality is filled with hope, filled with possibilities.

The roundup to the Roundup: My awful habit of “one more, please?” Chocolate Cheerios are insanely good.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between August 17th and August 24th) 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.

I told the ChickieNob that I had forgotten to ask but I was writing a post where I mentioned her.

“Then I’m angry with you,” she said, pushing her eyebrows together to convey her extreme anger.

“It’s not about you.  It’s about something you said.”

“Oh, then I’m not angry with you.  What was it?  Was it when I said that saliva is the heaviest thing in the body?”

“No, I’m not going to write a post about that because it’s not true.”

“It might be true.  You don’t know.  You don’t know how much saliva weighs, and it might surprise you,” she told me.  “Was it how I want to be in the Olympics, but I don’t want anyone to watch me?  So I want to be an Olympic athlete that no one sees?”

“No, I’m not going to bother to write about that because it’s really not a possibility.  Part of being in the Olympics is agreeing that people can watch your event.  It was what you said about blogs.”

“Oh, about how deleting a blog is like breaking a promise?”

“Yes — I’m writing a post about that.”

“Did everyone enjoy it?”

“I haven’t finished the post yet.  No one has read it yet,” I said.

“But are they anticipating it?  Are they getting excited thinking about it?”

“Well, they don’t know it exists yet, so they’re not really feeling much of anything.”

“I think they’re probably getting very excited thinking about how there is going to be a post about blogs some time in the future.  They’re thinking about what they might say back in the comment section.  People can just sense that it’s coming!”

“That’s not really the way blogging works.”

“Well, that’s how I’d make it work if I were in charge,” the ChickieNob said, and went back to daydreaming while eating her ersatz chicken patty at the slowest rate you can possibly imagine.

*******

BlogHer has this new series going, and it’s giving advice to new parents keeping in mind the multitude of ways families form.  The first “crib sheet” is for parenting after infertility or loss, giving new parenting tips specifically to those who have been through treatments or are parenting after a loss.  There is another crib sheet for parenting after adoption, one for surrogacy, one for being a single parent by choice.  There are ones on raising your child with your heritage while being part of another culture.  One of parenting a child with Down syndrome.

So it’s a really cool project because it gives real life tips that sort of fall through the cracks with parenting books.

And the first one was written by me, and the response in the community came from our very own Jen.

*******

And now the blogs…

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

• “On Having it All” (FireWife)
• “August 9th Redux” (It Is What It Is)
• “You Can’t Have it All” (Stumbling Gracefully)
• “August Break 6” (Outlandish Notions)
• “What You Wanted” (Project Progeny)
• “Unexpected Grief” (An Unwanted Path)
• “I Say We’re Adopting, and You Say…” (The Ranunculus Adventures)
• “Negative Comments” (A Smaller Version of Me)
• “Searching for a New Lightness” (A Thousand Oceans)
• “Narrative Bias and Why Context Matters” (Silent Sorority)
• “If I Could Turn Back Time with Jamie” (The Kir Corner)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Project Progeny has a gorgeous post about asking herself what she wants.  When asked what she wants, she answers: “I just want everybody to be happy.  This is what I say when pressed, more often than not. I want everybody to be happy and content. But does this just mean everybody else? Or am I included in ‘everybody’ too?”  Not only does she tell the exercise that has been getting her unstuck, but the poem at the end is gorgeous.  A must-read post that you’ll want to bookmark and return to again and again.

Slice of Pie has a sweet post about how her daughter’s obsession with checking out her mother’s bellybutton led her to discover her mother’s estrogen patch.  She writes, “And she looooves it. She loves to poke at it, pick at the edges, kiss it (air kisses only) and otherwise entertain herself with it. She asked what it was (“That?”) and I told her it was my patch.”  The hazards of doing treatments with a toddler around.

Too Many Fish to Fry is taking charge of her blog’s direction and leading the way in a post called “Bye, Bye Balloon!”  It is about having her eyes opened to what is in front of her instead of thinking about what she doesn’t have, and how she needs to have this release in order to move forward.

Musings of a Hormonal Egg Basket has a post I related to a lot about the fears that grip her late at night.  She explains: “I’m stressed that I am not living my life to the fullest that I possibly can because there is no way to know how long we get to be here.  That feeling gives me a pit in my stomach. I don’t want to miss anything and at the same time I’m tired and need a break from the worry and normal life drama.  I need a break from my own thoughts.”  I have to believe that we’re not the only two kept awake by thoughts like this.

Lastly, Creating Motherhood has a post that cracked me up about how she’s going to be someone’s third wife someday.  She will definitely be the best wife, the one that will make her partner laugh.

The roundup to the Roundup: If the ChickieNob ruled the universe…  A new series that kicks off with parenting after infertility.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between August 10th and August 17th) 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.