Category — Friday Blog Roundup

Tuesday morning, I was emailing with A about crickets, and I had this overwhelming thought that before the day was over, I would see a cricket in the house.  Sure enough, I was making cookies in the middle of the day when I realized that I was missing an ingredient.  I decided to jump in the car and go to the store to get it so I could finish the batter.  As I went to the front door to get my shoes, there, at the bottom of the stairs, was an enormous cricket.

Where did this cricket come from?  I have no fucking idea.  Seriously, I think that this is my own personal horror movie — I think about crickets and suddenly they appear in my house.

I was right near the Dyson so I plugged it in and sucked up the cricket with the wand.  Thankfully, the canister is clear so I could see that the cricket was inside once I turned off the motor and everything stopped swirling.  But once everything stopped swirling, the cricket started jumping.  JUMPING AROUND INSIDE THE VACUUM CANISTER.  I turned the machine back on, certain it would now be killed by being slammed with raging force against the plastic.  But when I turned it off, it staggered a bit and then started jumping again.

I turned back on the vacuum, sat down at the table, composed a long email to A about the cricket which was churning around in the machine for a good 5 minutes.  I hit send.  Stopped the machine.  The cricket started jumping.  This went on for about an hour.  Sometimes the cricket would fake death and lie still for a moment, and I would crouch down to examine him through the plastic, but he’d always pop back up and start hopping amongst the dust particles.

You may ask yourself why I needed him dead vs. just leaving him in the vacuum until Josh got home and could deal with him.  Because that’s just not the way I work.

I finally had a brilliant plan (brilliant for cricket killers like me.  Probably not brilliant if you’re an entomologist).  I soaked a cotton ball in bug killer and then sucked it into the machine so it was in the canister with the cricket.  At first I couldn’t get him to hop over to his new little bed, but using a flash light to direct him (no, I got nothing accomplished that afternoon in case you were wondering), I got him to jump onto the cotton ball, where he snuggled up and died.  And I took a photograph to prove to A how enormous this thing was.  It could have snapped me in half.

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Thank you to everyone who emailed me the picture of the largest cricket-like thing in the world.  It made me remove New Zealand from my list of places to visit.  At least, I removed that section of New Zealand from the list.

He looked too large to be sucked into a vacuum.

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In talking with A, I was trying to figure out where my cricket fears stem.  I’ve never liked crickets, but until recently, my fear of crickets didn’t factor into decision-making.  I went camping and walked around outside at night.  But at some point in my life, I went from cricket-hating to cricket-phobic.  They went from something that repulsed me, but that I didn’t think too much about unless one was right in front of me, to something that I actively worried about.

The only thing I could tie it to was that I’ve always thought of people who veered from expectations as cricket-people.  Which accounts for the majority of eighth grade.  That person who you thought was your friend but turned out to be talking about you behind your back — cricket-person (get it, because they jump out at you unexpectedly).  That group of friends you always ate lunch with who suddenly tell you that you can’t sit at their lunch table — cricket-people.  I had a few very cricket-y people in my life, and perhaps that led to me to transfer my feelings about cricket-y people onto crickets themselves.

Something quite interesting to think about.  I tend not to trust people that I deem cricket-y in my head, therefore there are few of them in my life because I don’t tend to keep people close who are cricket-y in nature.  But even noticing this fact about myself and wondering if there’s any connection between my dislike of people who behave unexpectedly and crickets doesn’t change how much I scream when I see one of them hopping around inside the Dyson canister.

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Getting off the topic of crickets, we had two more Creme prize winners this week.  A Blanket 2 Keep was the winner of the crocheted afghan provided by Wistful Girl’s World.  Thank you, Wistful Girl!  And then Home Grown Love was the winner of the babylegs provided by Here We Go Again.  Thank you, Jen!  Reminder: the deadline to have a post on the Creme de la Creme when it goes up on January 1st is coming up quickly.  The deadline is December 15th.

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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:

• “Et Tu, Muppets” (Willcarryon)
• “Ice Lanterns” (Hiding Scars in my Yarn)
• “All the Married Ladies” (The Maybe Baby)
• “Dark and Ugly” (By the Brooke)
• “Maybe Someday” (The Pursuit of Pregnancy)
• “New (Old) Patient” (From IF to When)
• “Letting Go of Our Babymakin’ Fantasies” (Hannah Wept, Sarah Laughed)

Okay, now my choices this week.

I actually read this incredible post by Edenland before the last Roundup came out, but for some reason, I wanted to hold it for this week.  And I can’t explain why.  This post is haunting, raw, brutally-honest.  More than one person wrote that they had their breath taken away by her words.  I am sure you will too.

The Zen of the Egg Hunt has a story about the transfer from hell — the one where your worst nightmare comes true and you have the wrong time written down.  But it’s the moment where her husband runs into the room that I started crying too.

For We Are Bound By Symmetry has a post about coming full circle with the idea of “just relax”, and how much she would like to take that idea to heart as she awaits her third beta.  Except she can’t.  She writes: “During all my years of TTC, I scoffed at the advice to ‘Just Relax.’ Never once did I seriously consider relaxing. You fight for what you want, after all, right? And fight I did. Tooth and nail. After so many years, months, days, hours, minutes and seconds of stressing, worrying, trying, researching, and fighting, I think that’s all I know how to do. And I don’t want to anymore. I don’t want to stress. I don’t want to research. I don’t want to worry.”  It’s about the worrying that never stops.

Lastly, The Maybe Baby has a post about her daughters, Jovi and Isa, on the three year anniversary of their loss.  I found this part of the post so incredibly moving that I think I must have read it now 20 times: “Notes from friends remind me of how much we were cared for when we returned home empty handed three years ago. In the midst of our raw grief, we were weepy. We were cavalier and stone-faced. We made inappropriate jokes. We winced at innocuous comments. We were fragile. We were invincible. We were needy and wanted company. We were offended at social demands and wanted to be left alone. We had to have been simply unbearable.  And yet we were picked up and held and loved and fed and reminded to bathe (um, sorry) and taught little by little how to be human again. And for the most part, I think we succeed. On most days.”  Please read the post in full and send her love.

The roundup to the Roundup: The crickets are out to get me.  Do you know cricket-y people too?  More Creme winners.  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 2nd and December 9th) 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 am currently on my 4th Blackberry in under a year.  You may be wondering how one person goes through four Blackberries in one year, so let me take you through this process.

• I buy a Blackberry.
• I notice that within one week, a bunch of features aren’t working.  Such as the camera.  And the voice recorder.  But I don’t really care because I still have a functioning phone and access to email.
• I stop having a functioning phone.  Said phone will freeze, and the battery will need to be popped out in order to get it restarted.  And then it freezes again.  And we repeat this process — sometimes two or three times a day.
• I tell the phone company about it and they say they will send me a new phone.  I feel very thankful that we purchased phone insurance.  The replacement process could not be easier!
• The “new” phone arrives.  It is sticky and scuffed and scratched.  It is obviously someone else’s old phone.  I call the phone company about this and they apologize.  When they said, “new” they really meant “previously owned.”  They do not ship out new phones despite the fact that when we signed up for the insurance, we were told that if there was ever a problem, we’d get a new phone.
• Phone company agrees that a phone that is sticky (um… why is it sticky?), scuffed, and scratched is not okay, and they agree to send another phone.
• The next used phone arrives and we set it up.
• It works for a few months.  Then the phone begins to freeze for two minutes at a time.  It unfreezes on its own, so while I find this annoying, I do nothing to fix the situation because I have such a seething hatred of my phone company by this point that I would rather not have a fully functioning phone than deal with them.
• Now the phone begins resetting itself.  Sometimes it does this while I’m in the middle of a phone call and the line goes dead.  Then the screen goes black and the little white bar appears, creeping across the screen like an elderly woman in the crosswalk on a green light.
• Which means another trip to the phone company store.
• We go to the phone company where we are told that (1) no one is there who knows anything about Blackberries, but they are happy to Google our problem and see if any solutions are listed online.  (2) Unless we are willing to pay several hundred dollars, we cannot switch to a different type of phone because I still have one more year on this cell plan and they will not waive the new cell phone rule even though I am on my third phone in under a year.  So I will need to pay the full price — not the $200 or so “new contract” price.  (3) The only solution is… to send me another used phone.
• They send me another used phone.  It takes two hours to set it up.

What have I learned from this experience?

• Blackberry makes a cruddy phone.  No one should go through four phones in one year.
• I will never buy a Blackberry again.
• I will also never buy a phone again that doesn’t have its own technicians at its own store.  Because it is too frustrating to purchase a phone from people who know nothing about said phone and cannot fix it if it breaks.  If the phone maker doesn’t have a brick-and-mortar space (either its own store or technicians set up in a store that deal with that particular product) that I can go to for help, I’m not purchasing the product.
• I hate my phone company and should leave it.
• I would find it preferable to not have a phone at all than deal with trying to get a phone to work.

So that’s my first world problem and vent.

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After a brief pause, there have been more Creme de la Creme prizes.

• Somewhere in the Middle… took Fertility Alphabet Soup’s offer of a cigar box purse.  Thank you, Denver Laura!
• And Burble took Still Life with Circles’ offer of a handpainted mizuko jizo watercolour.  Thank you, Angie!
• And The Rocky Road to Motherhood took CD1 Again’s offer of a handmade crocheted scarf.  Thank you, April!

Others will be announced next week as they’re claimed.

Don’t forget, we’re nearing that first December 15th deadline for the Creme de la Creme.  If you haven’t chosen your post yet and you want to ensure that you’re on the list when it goes up, you have about two weeks to get it in.  The final cut-off for being on the list at all is a few weeks after that, but I will not be able to get up the posts that come in after December 15th on the list until after January 1st.  So stop procrastinating — the list is amazing so far.  I’ve loved every post I’ve read.

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I finally returned the overdue library book (it was the Steve Jobs book), apologized, and paid the fine (only $1.50 for the additional days).  The librarian was lovely; told me that it wasn’t a big deal, and all was well (I am such a self-flagellating rule follower).  But the kicker is that as we were getting out of the car, the Wolvog said, “I really love the book and don’t want to let it go.  Can’t we get it on iBooks?  It would make me feel better if we could always have it on iBooks.”

It would be meta — the book Steve Jobs on Steve Jobs’ iBooks…

I’m not usually this cranky about purchasing books, but seriously, the boy couldn’t have asked four days earlier so I could have returned the book in time and still finished 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:

• “It’s Your Turn… Maybe” (Detour)
• “Camelot” (By the Brooke)
• “What Once Was” (Mrs. Spit… Still Spouting Off)

Only 3 posts last week?  We can do better.  What did you read this week that moved you?  Made you think?  Made you laugh?

Okay, now my choices this week.

Hope Delayed admits that she “just can’t do it today.”  On the way to her 5th Thanksgiving dinner (damn!) she realizes that she has to bail as a matter of self-preservation.  She writes, “I can’t take the pictures with grandpa showing four generations. I can’t take the discussions about who’s kid is walking and who said their first words. I can’t take the pregnancy announcement again. I can’t take all the adorable little kids running around having fun and getting in trouble.”  It’s about finding the balance between taking care of yourself and not wanting to miss out on life.

Words and Pictures has a funny (and sort of by default not-so-funny because it’s so damn true) post about all the things people say to those struggling with infertility.  All done in plasticine.  Need I say more?

Lastly, Family Rocks: The Life of Peg has a beautiful post about things that are easy and hard.  The whole post is moving, but the final one packed a punch: “It’s easy to get things done around the house when I’m by myself.  It’s hard to feel so alone.”  It’s a gorgeous, must-read post.

The roundup to the Roundup: I hate my phone.  Creme prizes galore (and don’t forget to submit your post).  Returned my library book.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between November 25th and December 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.

I am a big fan of rules.  I like to be given a set of instructions, and I like to follow them.  I’m the sort who does really really well when someone says, “I’d like 500 words written about iguanas, and I want it by 4 pm on Tuesday.”  I can promise you, you would have those 500 words about iguanas by 3:59 pm Tuesday.  Who am I kidding?  You’d have them by 5 pm Monday.  Unless you told me that you only want the piece on Tuesday.  In that case, I would finish it by Monday and then place a post-it note reminder some place conspicuous so I don’t forget to give it to you promptly at 4 pm Tuesday.

I have a library book due today.  On Tuesday night, I realized that I would never finish it in time.  I began stressing out about the idea of leaving the book unfinished.  I started talking incessantly about how I couldn’t finish the book rather than sitting and reading the book.  My plan was to return the book to the library and then linger there for hours until the book went back on the shelf so I could snatch it up and check it out again.

Finally, Josh gently said, “at 50 cents a day, why don’t you just keep the book out a few extra days, apologize to the librarian, and pay the fine.”

Is he fucking kidding?  Isn’t keeping out a library book past the due date as badass as snorting coke off your dashboard as you do 90 up the shoulder of I-95 the day before Thanksgiving?

Keeping out library books past their due date is illeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeegal.

What?  It’s not actually a law?

I decided to let Josh be a bad influence on me and keep the book out a few extra days.  I can’t remember the last time I was this wild.

What would you have done if you were in the middle of a book you really wanted to read with no chance of getting your hands on it again for a long time?  Would you have returned it and bought a copy?  Not returned it and eaten the fines?  Returned it and waited months to check it out again?  Hang around the library until it goes back on the shelf?  Or something far crazier than the options I was considering?

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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:

• “Sometimes There are Just No Words” (I Believe in Miracles)
• “Dancing” (Bio Girl)
• “Stages of Life” (Anabegins)
• “Gandhi and Gestone” (The Lucky Life)
• “My Twi-Life” (Aidan, Baby of Mine)
• “For November – Not Quite a PSA” (I Lost a World)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Do Without Doing has a post about scars— the physical kind as well as those left behind by infertility.  I especially love the ending: “It seems like every piece of my life has been touched by infertility.  Scars do heal, but they leave a mark.”  You’ll need to read the whole post to understand.

Waiting for Little Feet has a letter she wrote to her grandmother who has been gone for 10 years.  Though they didn’t really connect on an emotional level while her grandmother was alive, she has since felt a kinship with her knowing their similar fertility stories.  She sees her grandparent’s marriage in an entirely new light; a situation created both by circumstances and the time period in which the miscarriages were experienced.  She cannot go backwards in time and talk about this with her grandmother; she can only go forward knowing that strong women came before her.  A warning; bring tissues for the end of the post.

Reese Dixon has a fantastic post about watching the Muppet movie with her son.  Okay, her post got me bawling at this point: “Then came a part in the movie when Kermit and Miss Piggy sang Rainbow Connection, and I totally lost it. I was overwhelmed in that moment of watching my baby love something that I loved, awash in the nostalgia of my own childhood, reconnecting with what felt like long lost friends, and that scene in Matilda came back to me. As bad as things were before, that’s how good they became.”  A beautiful, must-read post about realizing how far you’ve come.

Life and Love in the Petri Dish has a post about her sister becoming her egg donor.  The post was fascinating.  The lines that stuck out the most for me were that “Her take home message was that my sister’s ability to donate eggs to us would be a gift, an amazing gift. And one that we might need to work a little harder on just learning to receive and say thank you for, rather than analyzing it and then analyzing it some more.”  That was just a huge, huge, huge thought — applicable in so many places in life.  I loved how this post made me think.

Lastly, The Elusive Second Line has a post about being 5 dpo.  She admits, “My husband was concerned that I was going to be upset if this cycle didn’t work, I assured him that I wouldn’t be since I did not expect it to work.  I lied.”  But that wasn’t why I loved this to-pee-or-not-to-pee post.  It’s for this line: “Decisions suck. Almost as much as infertility.”  Damn straight.

The roundup to the Roundup: I play by the library rules and lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between November 18th and November 25th) 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 the anniversary wishes.  I sure do love that boy.

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The twins were asked to create a word problem in math class that they would also solve themselves both numerically and with a picture.  The Wolvog wrote: “Wolvog had seven iPhones.  His mum gave him three more iPhones.  Now how many does he have?”  He then proceeded to draw 10 iPhones featuring various apps (when he showed me his homework, he chuckled to himself, “I didn’t include Siri on this one since it’s actually an old iPhone 4 and not the iPhone 4S).

The ChickieNob is a little more dramatic, and she brought an intensity to her word problem, the likes of which I’ve never seen repeated on a xeroxed worksheet: “The Wolvog had 9 apples.  When he went to sleep, the ChickieNob took some and then he had 8.  How many apples… OH NO!  The Wolvog is coming… but how many apples?  How many apples did she take!”  She explained that she wanted the problem solver to feel the intensity of the apple theft, the fear of being caught.  It’s method mathematics.

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I get a lot of PR pitches, dozens of them each day.  Many are about pregnancy or baby products, which — as you can imagine — really make my day.  I mean, what infertile woman doesn’t love getting six emails in the span of two hours asking them to hawk baby stuff?

For a long time, my favourite PR pitch was one for beef jerky, that pointed out how much kids love jerky:

I think that the relevancy that our products have to your users is that Jerky is one of the biggest under-rated snack foods for kids!  Although my opinion may be biased.  It is high in essential nutrients like protein while being low in carbs, fats, and calories…plus it tastes good and kids enjoy eating it!  Not to mention the convenience and long shelf life.  I think it would be a good (and interesting product) for your users to read about.

So in one pitch, he managed to miss that I am (1) kosher, (2) a vegetarian, and (3) write about an inability to have children and therefore my readers most likely wouldn’t be looking for great snacks for kids.  I also liked that jerky was capitalized, as if it were a proper name.

That was my favourite one.

My new favourite is for bacon-lube.

I thought you might like this.

[Company name removed] is pleased to announce the launch of baconlube!  Yes, the world’s first bacon-flavored personal lubricant.

[Product name removed] is water based, proudly Made in America and is the gold standard of meat flavored massage oils.  Baconlube is like the McRib of sex – it’s delicious, makes men crazy, is here for a limited time and is in short supply, so don’t miss out.  We only made 3,000 bottles of this pork flavored nectar.

They thought I might like this?  It’s more like, “I love this!”  The best part is that they offered me my very own bottle — one of the 3,000 bottles of pork flavoured nectar — so I could have a meaty, salty vagina.  And I’m not sure how I can say no.

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November’s IComLeavWe kicks off on Monday so this weekend is the last chance to sign up.  When the list closes on Monday night, I’ll use the random number generator to choose one person from the list to have their Creme de la Creme submission moved to the #6 slot on the list).

Speaking of the Creme de la Creme, we have 134 submissions on the list.  Pretty please, don’t wait until last minute to get your submission in.

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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:

• “Where’s My Hogwarts Letter?” (What the Blog)
• “I Made it to 1 Week, 5 Days…” (No Oven for the Bun)
• “iBliss” (Little Dragon Fruit)
• “Food Stamp Etiquette: Human Kindness” (Creating Motherhood)
• “The Allure and the Tyranny of the White Picket Fence” (Too Many Fish to Fry)
• “Enjoying Your Pregnancy! No, Seriously” (Too Many Fish to Fry)
• “That Time I Was Bullied – Repeatedly – As a Kid” (Hannah Wept, Sarah Laughed)
• “How Can We Talk More Freely” (Bodega Bliss)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Les Terres Fertiles has a post about sex and infertility, namely, how sex changes when you discover you’re infertile.  I love her analogy: “The best analogy I can come up with at this point is hunting.  I’ve never hunted before, but I can imagine that if a hunter was told that they can continue to shoot their gun at targets, say, on some sort of shooting range, but they can’t go out and actually kill animals, that there would then be something important missing from the shooting experience, even though all the mechanics are the same.”  Truly, you need to read the entire post.

Eggs in a Row has a post about her sister-in-law’s loss and the awkward space she is in knowing about the loss without having been told about the pregnancy.  She sums it up like this: “I am frustrated that I am supposed to pretend that I don’t know, especially since my sister-in-law decided not to tell me that she was pregnant.  I’m assuming that she didn’t want to tell me because she knew a third sister would be upsetting, and I (as bad as this sounds) was relieved to pretend (to her) that I didn’t know, because it was less baby talk. But, now I’m in the position that I can’t tell her how sorry I am.”  I found the whole post very moving and kept thinking about it after I closed the blog.

Lastly, Scrambled Eggs has a post about a man she met on a flight.  It’s about how fate has a way of arranging airline seats so you’re sitting next to someone who has the potential to either change your life or change the way you see the world.  It’s a good story — go over and read it.

The roundup to the Roundup: I really do love that boy.  The ChickieNob and Wolvog’s math homework.  Would you turn down the baconlube?  Last chance to sign up for November’s IComLeavWe (and don’t forget your Creme de la Creme submission).  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between November 11th and November 18th) 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 love reading the wishes each year and adding my own, but it is always bittersweet as well.  To see so much yearning written out on the screen, and the reality of how much of life is really out of our control.  That all we can do sometimes is wish and wait to see what happens.

But how damn cool is it that it’s 11/11/11 today?

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EPT started following me on Twitter.  It was seriously like an addict getting followed by @Meth.  When I saw the name, I literally started twitching.  As a former peestick addict who can’t keep them in my house because I have no patience and go through them ridiculously, it gave me pause to see that pop up.

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I have serious Siri envy.  I didn’t really care about the app when the iPhone first came out beyond copying the woman’s voice to speak to the twins and annoy them (my Siri voice is very different from my GPS voice, and is frustratingly calm and robotic in the face of their tantrums: “Do you mean, ‘I’m not going to eat this.’  Here are a list of restaurants in your area.”)

And then, right before bed one night, I saw the commercial on television.  That night, I dreamed that I had an iPhone with Siri.  I was actually having a nightmare, but in my dream, I kept calming myself by speaking to Siri and listening to her response.  I rationally knew that it was just a computer program, but I kept saying in the dream that it made me feel less alone.  I woke up from the dream and told Josh that I now had Siri envy, knowing full well that we wouldn’t be getting an iPhone and having no other way to utilize Siri (and yes, I’ve already tried similar apps, but they don’t speak back to you in that soothing voice).

Oooh, I don’t know what to do with my Siri envy.  Those who have it, is it just as amazing as I think it is?

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On the topic of something I love: Pacific’s Vegetarian Pho Soup Base.  I am literally in love to the point where (and I’m embarrassed to admit this) I hid the remains of dinner deep in the refrigerator so Josh wouldn’t find it and take it to work.

First and foremost, it is difficult to find vegetarian pho at all.  I make a similar soup base, but it takes me hours to make enough for about 2 meals.  I haven’t made it in awhile because it’s so much work.  So it’s hard to make at home and it’s difficult to find out at a restaurant.

The soup base let me make dinner in about ten minutes.  I steamed some broccoli and carrots, fried some shallots, chopped some cilantro and green onions, and made the rice noodles. (I totally forgot the tofu until we sat down to eat.)  Heated up the soup in the pot I used to fry the shallots and poured over each bowl.  Oh my G-d — it was so damn good.

I was going to write about it on our local listserv, and then greed got the best of me.  I am waiting to put up the note until I have gone to the store and horded 5 cartons.

Greatest invention since Siri.

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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:

• “Motherhood in the Time of Separation” (Slowmamma)
• “Blogotopia” (Stumbling Gracefully)
• “Is My Introvert Showing” (The Misadventures of Missohkay)
• “Out of Proportion Sad” (Write Mind Open Heart)
• “Trick or Treat” (Lesbian Dad)
• “A Birthday Story” (Baby, Interrupted)
• “Love Your Body Day” (This is More Personal)
• “Spoken Word Blog Roundup” (Four of a Kind)
• “Worst Parents Ever” (Stirrup Queens) — thanks, Keiko!

Okay, now my choices this week.

Life of an Army Wife has a post about the different ways she and her husband are processing grief.  This point spoke volumes for me: “Communication at times is lacking in relationships.  Its a necessary thing if one wants to receive what they most desire.  Mind reading is not an option.  In the last few months I’ve had more sit down, evening discussions with my husband than most couples have in a year’s time.”  It’s a gorgeous post, and I send a lot of good thoughts for that road to acceptance.

The Lotus Flower writes about needing a date with her husband after the loss of their child.  Since the loss, they’ve spent time with each other, but always with others around.  It is time for them to do something alone.  I love this thought: “we need to start guarding our time. We have a lot of friends and a lot of family. That’s a lot of support – which is great. But it’s also a lot of phone calls and offers to visit. And because I was raised as a good southern girl, I feel a lot of pressure to return phone calls, and it’s VERY difficult for me to refuse an offer to visit.”  It’s a good reminder that sometimes the best support is giving people the space they need to grieve.

Uppercase Woman has a fantastic post about her body.  About how we treat our bodies and how we think about our bodies.  I love, love, love the ending: “This is what I have, now. Peace with the external world while my internal world still struggles. Perhaps, at last, in my fifties I’ll have peace inside too. Only a few years until I find out.”  Go over and read the whole thing.

Lastly, MissConception has a raw post called “Guilty as Charged” about what she is feeling after her loss.  She takes the blame for the loss of her twins even though she intellectually knows her body was outside her control.  She asks the heartbreaking question: “How could I possibly try again, knowing that another child could die as a result of my need to be a mother?”  Please surround her right now with love.

The roundup to the Roundup: Happy 11/11/11.  I can’t believe EPT would do this to me.  I have a scorching case of Siri envy.  I fell in love with Pacific’s vegetarian pho.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between November 4th and November 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.