Category — Friday Blog Roundup

We downloaded Google Earth for the iPad, which is a free app.  It has brought us hours of amusement.  First and foremost, I love that when you put in a new location, the screen sucks backwards as if you have suddenly lifted into the air, and then you fly across the screen until you land in the new place.  We virtually visit Disney World, using our fingers to drag ourselves between the park and the Contemporary Hotel.  We walk through neighbourhoods in London, seeing how all the streets intersect.  I sometimes go back to old places I’ve lived and follow the roads between different landmarks.  It’s as good as Adele, in that regard, if you’re looking for a good cry.

But our absolute favourite thing to do is to put in fictional places and see where Google Earth places us.  We’ve looked up Privet Drive and Hogwarts (Hogwarts is obviously unplottable, but we still tried it anyway).  We’ve looked up Neverland (it brings up nothing).  Terabithia (again, nothing).  Radiator Springs (if you add in Route 66, it takes you somewhere in Arizona where the road layout is close enough to Radiator Springs that if your children don’t poke around too much, they will totally find it believable).

I think it is a major failing of Google Earth not to pepper in a few additional, fictional locations.  Or, at the very least, create a second app called Google Earth Fantasy, where you could go to the Shire or Whangdoodleland or Cockaigne.  Wouldn’t you love to see a map of London and then see Diagon Alley coming out from behind of The Leaky Cauldron?

What fictional place would you want included in Google Earth Fantasy?

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Today is obviously Friday the 13th.  I couldn’t remember ever remarking that it was Friday the 13th in a Friday Blog Roundup even though it happens all the time.  By which I mean that the Roundup is always on a Friday and Friday the 13th is always a Friday, therefore, the two must intersect.  I searched my own blog and found mentions of it in pretty much two year jumps.  The last time was 2010, so it feels like we’re ripe for another remark about the date.

I wrote this last time and it still stands, except instead of noticing it on Twitter, I noticed it when I was writing down plans for the weekend and I said, “oh my G-d, it’s Friday the 13th this weekend!”

Today is Friday the 13th.  That only occurred to me because someone Tweeted about it earlier in the week.  I also missed the fact that it was 8/9/10 on Monday.  I am not the brightest woman when it comes to dates, though I have 2012 circled on my calendar not just because the world is ending that year, but because it’s also Queen Elizabeth’s diamond jubilee.

Though I’m usually fairly anxious around certain dates, allowing my imagination to run towards grotesquely disturbing scenarios, I’ve never had big feelings concerning Friday the 13th.  Even if I live … like … 2 miles from Camp Crystal Lake and I totally know someone who knows someone who is the cousin of the counselor who decapitated Mrs. Voorhees.

It’s one of those dates that I feel like I should have big feelings about.  If I’m not worried, then I must be a fool.

You know how girls pinched each other’s arms with a Cootie Shot to ward off boy germs?  Mentioning that it’s Friday the 13th feels like a horror Cootie Shot.

Do you care about Friday the 13th or are you not superstitious about the date?

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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:

• “A Letter to My Fertile Friends” (MMCC – IF Only)
• “Failed” (Are You Kidding Me?)
• “What I Was” (TheStorkDiaries)
• “Has Anger Solved Your Other Problems?” (DoctorMama)
• “Plan B” (Even Miracles Take a Little Time)
• “Mawage, that Bwessed Awangmen” (Eggs in a Row)
• “Devastation…” (For We Are Bound By Symmetry)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Baby Smiling in Back Seat has an interesting post about theft, and it made me consider tangible items (of which I had none) and non-tangible items (of which the perspective sort of changes whether you ask me or you ask the person “stolen” from — I don’t know if you can really steal friends, but someone else, for instance, might say I stole a friend).  It’s not only an interesting topic on a very organ squirmy subject, but it also makes you think about the various ways you may have inadvertently or purposefully trespassed on another person’s life.  Food for thought.

Miss Conception has a post about the hidden side of grief, the additional things that are missed after the initial loss.  The day before what should have been her baby shower, she sits with her grief over her twins.  It is not just the twins who aren’t here, but it is all the happy moments that can’t be partaken in due to their death.  She writes, “Now…there will be no celebration. Tomorrow there won’t be any acknowledgement that they were supposed to be here at all. No one will even know that it was supposed to be my shower because the invitations never got the chance to be mailed. It will be just another day, like every other.”  But it’s not just another day to her.  Please shower her with love as she mourns her loss.

My Scar Smiles at Me also has a post about mourning, which becomes an exploration of why we mourn, why we don’t just sweep life under the rug.  This thought took my breath away with its brilliance: “Yes, I don’t want to grieve every moment of my life. But I finally just said to my husband, ‘I don’t want to spend all day on the toilet, but no one wants to never ever take a shit’  its part of life and I while I don’t mind keeping it to myself now and then, the reality is we don’t talk much about our bowel movements at work, but there is unspoken space (both in time and equipment) provided for that necessary part of life.”  You have to read this whole post.

Lastly, With Just a Little Help has a post about being ok-ish after their last IVF cycle.  She relays a frustrating conversation with the physician’s assistant who messes up telling her important information about her embryos, as well as a difficult conversation with their parents.  But it is a final phone call — a call from a friend — that reminds her that she is still ok-ish.  A great post about the aftermath.

The roundup to the Roundup: Which fictional places would you like to see on Google Earth Fantasy?  Do you care that it is Friday the 13th?  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between January 6th and January 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.

I’m starting this on Thursday night, while the twins are finally asleep after standing by their windows post bedtime calling out to us, “I think I see something moving out there, something that is even faster than a plane.”  It makes me understand Christmas Eve, why people follow Santa on NORAD.  Except that it is even more exciting because Befana isn’t coming to any other house in our neighbourhood as far as we know.  The twins asked several times today whether she was visiting any of their friends, and I kept repeating, “no, she only comes to houses of people who believe in her.”  And they couldn’t wrap their minds around the idea of someone not believing in her.  What could possibly be gained by not believing in her?

So I pose that question to you: what is gained from not believing in magic?  In not believing in all the one million impossible things that our minds conjure up?  I guess I’ve never understood why people don’t continue to believe in at least versions of the things they believed as a child.  I still look in the Bay for Chessie every time we’re by the Kent Narrows.  I’m sure I’d do the exact same thing if we lived near Loch Ness.

I’m asking this as a serious question: why stop believing in unicorns and monsters and fairies and wizards?

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I meant to blog about or at least Tweet about the 2011 Creme de la Creme list closing to new submissions, but since I forgot, I’m keeping the list open until tonight.  11 pm EST tonight (as in, January 6th) is the last possible moment to submit a blog post for the Creme de la Creme of 2011.  The rest of the blurbs will be going up slowly over the course of the month.

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The twins and I have signed up for Codeacademy, which may just be the most addictive website ever.  The Wolvog already knows Javascript, but the ChickieNob and I don’t, and he is along for the ride (he is seriously the best cheerleader in the world.  I feel so freakin’ good when the boy is congratulating me for figuring out how to create a new variable.  He is so earnest that he actually makes me feel smart).  We like to bark at each other, “code academy!” like we’re drill sergeants and we have talked about making our own t-shirt uniforms to wear when we sit down together for lessons.  Not that we’re geeks or anything.

Is anyone else doing Code Year?

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As of writing the Roundup, the Kindle version of Life from Scratch is still enormously on sale as part of an Amazon promotion to fill-your-Kindle (assuming, of course, that you just got a Kindle for a holiday gift and it is empty).  So if for some crazy reason you haven’t read it yet, here’s your chance for 99 cents.  A huge, huge, huge enormous thank you to everyone who has been helping spread word via their blogs or Twitter or Facebook or email or however else you are telling people about this.  Thank you thank you 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 as well as the week before.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Gifts Worth Giving” (Miss Conception)
• “Little Girls” (The Lotus Flower)
• “Turn Turn Turn” (MissOhKay)
• “Well, Hello 2012” (Unruffled Lanie)
• “Resolutions of New Years Past” (Clay Baboons)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Our Own Creation has a lovely, brief post on what should have been Zoë and Lennox’s fourth birthday party.  It is so quiet, so filled with all the hope she felt for those children, that you can’t help but feel your throat close as you read it.

Uppercase Woman hits it out of the park with her post on body acceptance.  I love this thought, “As Americans we attach so much virtue to dieting, to the idea that the only times our body are mildly acceptable as fat people is when we are in a perpetual state of hunger and deprivation to try to chisel ourselves down to a smaller version.  But I won’t go there again.”  I love her usage of the term “body acceptance” instead of “fat acceptance” (because frankly, there are plenty of reasons why people hate their body).  And this final point is great: “It’s hard to love ourselves and treat our bodies as objects to be treasured when we don’t like how we look. Trust me. I live this every day.”  A must-read post.

Too Many Fish to Fry has kicked off a series to balance out the mainstream media’s coverage of outlying fertility cases.  She is presenting just your average infertile woman, in this case, Bodega Bliss.  The idea in and of itself is fantastic, and the accolades need to go to both writers; Bodega for giving her story and Fish for how she presents it.  But moreover, it’s just a beautiful, heartbreaking post to read; both unique and at the same time accessible to anyone who has experienced a loss or wants to understand.

Lastly, Infertile Fantasies has a post kicking off 2012, that is also about the various reasons why people blog and how certain blogs read.  This obviously resonated with me: “For myself, I blog to think. More than that: I connect to think.”  It is about not being done with a space, but not really knowing what to write.  And sort of being comfortable with that is a valid place to be — and blog from — too.

The roundup to the Roundup: Why stop believing in the things that made you happy to think existed as a child?  Creme de la Creme is still open for another few hours.  We’re doing Code Academy; how about you?  Please help me spread word about the Kindle deal.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between December 30th and January 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.

Last Roundup of 2011.  We don’t really have exciting New Years plans.  Part of me regrets not pulling something exciting together, and part of me knows that not having plans is the right choice.  I think I sometimes get wrapped up in the “shoulds” without really considering my wants, and I go along with things out of obligation instead of true desire.  I like being in my pyjamas in a warm house with a book or a movie.  I like hanging out with just the kids and Josh.  I don’t like champagne or wearing real clothes or sitting in a car or talking over music.  But all those facts go out the window sometimes.  And even when they don’t, you get something like this, where I feel like I’m missing out by not making plans.  Even though I don’t really want them.

What are you doing for New Year’s Eve?

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The Kindle version of Life from Scratch is enormously on sale for a few days as part of an Amazon promotion to fill-your-Kindle (assuming, of course, that you just got a Kindle for a holiday gift and it is empty).  So if for some crazy reason you haven’t read it yet, here’s your chance for 99 cents.  99 cents.  You can’t even get a cup of coffee anymore for 99 cents.  And a book is going to last a lot longer than a cup of coffee.  Our daily library fines are more than 99 cents.  Think about that — you can keep my book out from the library for an extra day and pay more than you would if you bought your own copy.

That said, if you truly do love me — and I use the term “love” loosely here to even refer to lukewarm fondness toward me — please help me spread word about the deal before it’s over.  Tweet it, Facebook it, Google+ it (is that even a term?), blog about it, email about it, buy a copy for your best friend.  Tell your coworkers about it as you stand around the cooler drinking copious amounts of water.  Write it in chalk on your street.  Write it across your boobs because that’s where guys are looking while they talk to you.

Pretty please?

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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:

• “The Longest Night” (Mrs. Spit… Still Spouting Off)
• “Infertile. Pregnant. Myself” (The 2 Week Wait)
• “Here Comes the Sun” (My Life After Loss)
• “Occupy Blog Street” (Stirrup Queens) — thank you, Lori!
• “A Christmas Carol” (Searching for Our Silver Lining)
• “I Wrote This” (Eggs in a Row)
• “Christmas and Infertility” (Our Little Pebbles)
• “Dusting Yourself Off at Christmas” (Viva la Vida)
• Untitled (A Little Blog About the Big Infertility and Adoption Too)
• “Preggo Don’t Preach” (Mommy Odyssey)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Awful But Functioning has a post about the loss of their cat that mixes into the story of the loss of her daughter, Maddy.  It is a gorgeous post about what happens when life continues, and she writes: “At first I was frustrated. Deeply. Eye-roll-y frustrated. But as more names and pictures that filtered past, the frustration melted and I looked at my hot mess of a child, yelling while looking like he was making snow angels but in a grassy lawn, and realized I was lucky. I was so, so fucking lucky. We rode on the elevator in the parking garage after the event with a couple with no children with them. I felt embarrassed, standing there amid my jewels and riches.”  It’s a gorgeous post about life after loss.

Bottoms Off and On the Table has a post about why she hates Christmas.  I think I loved it for this line: “Gift giving at the office is like orgasms.  It’s best when it happens simultaneously.”

Geebaby also has a post about being on the fence about Christmas.  I read so many great Christmas posts, happy Christmas posts, that maybe I was drawn to these two because they were different and because they were just as honest.  Like this: “More than anything, Christmas makes me feel every year like a terrible actor in some bizarre play, woodenly going through the motions and hitting marks. Drink coffee, open gift, thank giver, eat cheese.”

Lastly, Waiting for Little Feet has a post about being asked about her pregnancy… when she’s not pregnant.  Her trip to Aruba turned out to fall smack into everyone else’s babymoon.  But it’s a chance meeting on a boat that reminds her that you never know what someone else went through to get the life you observe from the outside.

The roundup to the Roundup: What are you doing for New Year’s Eve?  Please help me spread word about the Kindle deal.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between December 23rd and December 30th) 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.

Our coffeemaker died this week sending us into utter panic.  When Josh called out to me, I ran downstairs without my glasses on — that’s how frantic this news made us; and we both stood there as if we had discovered that someone changed the locks on our house and we now had no way in.  Coffee is our gateway to consciousness.

Which is why I didn’t research coffeemakers.  Usually, if I’m going to buy an appliance, I like to think about it.  I like to look up reviews online.  I talk to people about what they like or dislike about said appliance.  I may even look around to see where I can get the best price.  I buy appliances like elderly people drive, slowly and carefully with my coat belt trailing out of the car.

This is as much thought as I gave this very very necessary purchase: I thought about which store would have the most coffeemakers in stock (I put my money on Bed, Bath, and Beyond, though Target and some department stores were also considered).  I drove to said store even though it was four days before Christmas and the store was understandably insane with people diving after cotton candy machines and shearling blankets.  I ran through the aisle with the kids and visually scanned the coffeemakers for the one that had the least amount of buttons.  I called Josh and read off two model numbers and asked him to look at which one had the smaller amount of negative reviews on Amazon.  I then grabbed the better coffeemaker, ran to the front of the store (though not before the ChickieNob was distracted by a picture frame that she wanted to get as a gift that said, “in loving memory” and I had to explain to her that the person really wouldn’t appreciate being reminded of their own mortality… Merry Christmas!), thrust my money at the cashier and screamed, “oh please oh please I need this so baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaadly” while I writhed on the floor, shaking from lack of caffeine.

Literally, all of that is true until we get to the writhing on the floor part.  It was more like I stood at the cash register, drumming my hand on the counter like my skin was crawling, which it was.

Our coffeemaker had a good run.  She was 14 years old.  We used her every single day.  In coffeemaker years, that’s like… 700-something years old.  Still, it broke my heart, memories of how the ChickieNob got so excited as a baby to watch the orange ball travel up the clear frame to show the water level.  The mornings of just me and the coffeemaker, quietly dripping while I stood at the counter, mug in hand.  I had to photograph the coffeemaker before Josh disposed of her useless carcass.  And then I kicked myself for not buying the picture frame.

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If you Google “Queen Melissa,” I am the second hit.  I’m not sure why this delights me.  I’m also a little dumbfounded that there isn’t a Queen Melissa somewhere.  It’s a fantastic name, Royalty.  You may want to use it.

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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:

• “Tick Tock” (Outlandish Notions)
• “Dear Mrs. Duggar” (The Misadventures of MissOhKay)
• “Festive with Whine” (Bodega Bliss)
• “Reflections on Pregnancy and Loss” (Mission: Motherhood)
• “Fall On Your Knees” (With Every Heartbeat)
• “Black Christmas” (No Oven for the Bun)
• “Choosing” (This Was Supposed to be My Symphony)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Mommy Odyssey has a beautiful post for her first blogoversary about how she sees the community.  Like many, she started writing because she simply needed to get out her story.  Then she discovered there was a whole world of women and men out there, all writing their stories too.  I sniffled through this: “I never imagined that something as simple as a blog would be such a salvation. I never imagined that this space would bring me to women who I now consider some of my closest friends in the world. Women who are oceans away, but who I love like sisters.  Because they – you – understand. Because in my darkest moments, they – you – have been there for me beyond anything I thought was possible.”  Go wish her happy blogoversary after you read (and nod) through the post.

Project Progeny has a post about parenting, and what shapes our parenting style.  But it’s also about how we have no clue how the choices we make will also lead to the relationships we’ll have with our children down the road.  It’s really a fascinating read and gave me a lot to consider.

A Real Life returns to blogging with a story about an encounter in an elevator.  The woman mistakenly asks about her non-existent kids several times, and the writer doesn’t correct her.  It’s just as much about the things we say to others without knowing how much they stay with the person as it is the writer’s musings on why she didn’t let the woman know that she didn’t have children yet.

Lastly, From IF to When has a post about judging others that sparked a good conversation in the comment section.  She makes an excellent point: “My opinion on the way someone else is living his or her life doesn’t matter, and neither does yours. I think it’s easier to get wrapped up in what another person is doing. It’s harder to let it go – let people live their lives and speak their minds without passing judgment.”  It’s about the times when we judge, when we form opinions on other people’s lives without knowing all the facts, nor frankly having to live out their choices.

The roundup to the Roundup: Our coffeemaker broke.  I’m the second hit on Queen Melissa.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between December 16th and December 23rd) 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.

One morning, I wake up and have this really funny story that would probably only be amusing to me, Josh, and these two other men that we know.  So I log onto Facebook so I can write this man and tell him the story (knowing that he is going to crack up as much as we are), and I discover that at some point, he unfriended me.  He also unfriended Josh.  Though Josh is still connected to his husband.  Which makes me think that we only offended one person in the couple (I was never connected to his husband on Facebook).  Unless we didn’t offend him at all and this is all a tech glitch.  Or a misunderstanding.  Or a button inadvertently hit.  Because the man has several thousand friends, so it can’t be that he’s paring back his account to just those who know his middle name.  So it either has to be a mistake or I have to be an enormous bitch.  It’s one or the other.

Except I can’t really ask.  I mean, if it was a good friend, of course I could say something without looking too strange (though I might not).  But for someone who is just an acquaintance who may even need help having his memory jogged since it has been five years since we last saw each other, I can’t really write him a needy email asking why we’re no longer Facebook friends.  In those cases, you just need to slink away and wonder what the hell you did.  Or didn’t do.

And these are the times when I hate Facebook.  Because if it didn’t exist, I would have just emailed the man and told him the story, and we both would have had a chuckle over email.  But Facebook took what should have been a mindless, amusing exchange and turned it into this great big drama of what-the-hell-did-I-say-to-make-him-unfriend-me.  And now the story isn’t quite so funny anymore.

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And the winner of the #2 slot on the Creme de la Creme is…

Drum roll, please.

DSpence at Donating Hope, otherwise known as #71 (thank you, random number generator).  Congratulations, DSpence.

When the list goes up on January 1st in the morning, it will have — give or take — 222 blogs on it.  Doesn’t that sound delicious?  You can still submit to the Creme de la Creme, but your post will not be on the list when it first goes up.  It will be added during the month of January (the list it technically open for submissions until January 5th, though it will take me longer than that to write all the blurbs and get everything up).

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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:

• “My Big Announcement” (Write Mind Open Heart)
• “This Damage Runs Deep, Real Deep” (Becoming Parents)
• “Why Writing a Book is Like a Dysfunctional Relationship” (My Fascinating Life)
• “Article ‘Looking for Closure in All the Wrong Places’” (The Road Less Travelled)
• “A Broken Compass” (Bodega Bliss)
• “Dark Passenger”  (MissConception)
• “Raising Human Beings and Life Lessons from the Duggars” (Millions of Miles)
• “Holiday Blues” (From IF to When)
• “Emotions Choc-a-Bloc” (My Lady of the Lantern)
• “400 Words” (Outlandish Notions)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Stumbling Gracefully has a beautiful, raw post this week about what it really means to meet on that common ground.  What she is mourning is the ease in which decisions are made.  She writes, “I’m jealous that their relationship is strong enough to withstand the turbulence of two young children, that they have such confidence in their own foundation so as to entrust it with such an incredible and precious weight. I’m incredulous that their addition didn’t require negotiation or anger or anxiety or resentment.”  It’s just such a powerful post.

A Little Blog about the Big Infertility has a post about the upcoming holidays.  She gives her rating system, explaining where she usually emotionally spends the holidays and where she is on the continuum this year.  Where do you rate on her scale?

No Kidding in NZ has a post about acceptance; what it means and what it doesn’t mean.  She explains: “For me, acceptance means the ability to live our lives the best way we can, within the constraints of our lives.  In other words, we can’t have kids (whether short term or permanently), but we can still have a good life, enjoy ourselves, and appreciate the parts of our life that we wouldn’t have if we have children.  That latter part is the hard bit often.  Acceptance doesn’t mean that we are rejoicing we don’t have children, and it doesn’t mean we didn’t really want them.”  Go read the post in full.

Lastly, Hannah Wept and Sarah Laughed has a great post about what she learned about living and taking risks.  It’s about how we try to hold onto control, and why we may sometimes want to let go and jump without knowing where we’ll land.  She has decided to leave the safe path, the small path, and go big or go home.  And it just made me smile to see someone grabbing at the brass ring.

The roundup to the Roundup: The problem with Facebook.  The winner of the second slot!  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between December 9th and December 16th) 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.