Category — Friday Blog Roundup

Taking a break from Hurricane Irene prep…

*******

I’m still pouring drinks over at the bar.  Thank you to all who have taken pity on me declaring Google bankruptcy and told me what I missed this past month.  I’m set to keep up now.

*******

I would like to add that the port-a-potty story is only amusing because it didn’t tip.  If it had and we had been covered in… well, do I really need to spell out for you what we’d be covered in?  If it had tipped over, I wouldn’t have told the story at all.  I would have been too busy bleaching myself.

Even more amusing, the next day, we went to the beach again and the port-a-potties were being trucked away due to impending hurricane.  We took photos of the port-a-potties’ departure.

The ocean was incredibly strange on Wednesday morning.  As east coasters know, the Atlantic beaches generally have big waves that crash right at the shore.  But on Wednesday morning, the big waves were much farther back in the ocean, leaving yards and yards of calm, clear water.  You could see tiny fish and we collected buckets of enormous sea shells.

Weird (and wonderful) trip to the beach.

*******

So to recap my week: went to the beach, experienced an earthquake while in a port-a-potty, comforted my son when Steve Jobs announced his retirement, the twins split into separate rooms (more on that in the future), did back-to-school stuff, and we’re now preparing for a hurricane to hit the coast.

*******

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:

• “Are You Infertile? The New York Times Thinks You are Rich and Whimsical” (Too Many Fish to Fry)
• “Confessions of an Infertile Imposter” (Stumbling Gracefully)
• “The Butterfly” (Team Baby)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Team Baby has a post called “Depth Perception” about a questionnaire that she filled out for her therapist and the feelings it brought to the surface.  I love the way she describes the advice from her therapist: “We then talked about grieving some more; I feel like she keeps hammering home the same points: this is hard; this is unfair; you need to grieve, but not too much; focus on the present, don’t imagine the future, don’t dwell on the past. It reminds me kind of like when I took belly-dancing classes; you’re instructed to do 27 things at once, most of which are in total contradiction of each other, and you feel like a complete buffoon.”  I hope it was as helpful for her to write the post as it was for others to read it.

Endo&Beyond is trying to find an outlet for her grief.  She writes, “When I have finally worked up the courage to tell people in my awkward way they have all faded away …  I guess I don’t have anything to offer them now.  I guess I am one of those poor friends who isn’t there for them either.  Maybe they’ve got their own blogs wondering why no one hears them.”  It’s a sad post but also a beautiful one.

Lastly, The Cornfed Feminist implores you (and herself) not to judge double strollers.  She writes about the walks she is taking in the evening: “I’ve seen deer running around out there, herons, geese, ducks with ducklings, and jumping fish, plus some really cool birds. Unfortunately I don’t stare at any of that as intently as I watch the strollers.”  I especially love the dinner party idea at the end of the post, and I wonder why more people don’t do this — connect all the individual people they know who are experiencing infertility (or name-that-problem).  After all, she points out that “the online fertility support groups are helpful, but there’s no food. ”

The roundup to the Roundup: Thank you for taking pity on my Google bankruptcy.  My trip to the beach and all the crazy things that have happened this week.  And, of course, lots of great blog posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between August 19th and August 26th) 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 had one of those when-it-rains-it-pours weeks, though it was all good stuff.  First, we were at the beach and I picked up hermit crabs with my hands.  Which may sound like nothing to you, but is ENORMOUS for me.  I do not usually pick up things such as hermit crabs, so I was very proud of myself for squelching my fears and picking them up.

Don’t judge.

Then I found out that Babble named Stirrup Queens one of their top 50 pregnancy blogs; which may seem amusing since I write about how I can’t get pregnant, but I do like that the site has expanded the definition of pregnancy to include us.  I also really loved the write up paragraph on my blog, even though it made me blush.  This blog was also given the award as being the “most informative.”  Thank you, Babble.

Lastly, Real Simple listed my book, Life from Scratch, as one of their reader-picked 21 great summer reads books.  It was fairly trippy to see the cover of my book on the Real Simple site.  I don’t know who Cindy B is, but I’d like her to know this: thank you for taking the time to suggest my book.  It was two minutes of time for you, and perhaps right after you did it, you clicked away and didn’t think about it again.  But it was two days of smiling for me, and your actions will stick with me indefinitely.

Beyond Cindy B, I want to thank everyone who has supported me with the book. (This is the part where I get all weepy.)  Obviously, an enormous thank you to everyone who has read it.  Thank you to everyone who has sent an email to someone telling them about the book, or lent their copy so a friend could read it too.  Thank you to everyone who has written about it on Facebook or liked my author page (I will be posting things from the sequel there soon).  Thank you everyone who has ever Tweeted about the book.  Again, it’s 140-characters for you, but it means the world to me.  Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to write an Amazon review.  I’m not sure how they help, but I’ve been told that they’re important.  I know it takes time to write a review, so I’m grateful to everyone who has done this.  Thank you to everyone for the one million ways you’ve supported me with this book, some of which I’ll never know about.

That’s the most important point: thank you.  Those two words don’t feel like enough.  I wish I could infuse them with everything I think in my head so you could understand how much your actions mean to me.

*******

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:

• “Saying Goodbye to an Alias” (Creating Motherhood)
• “A Tale of Two Tubies” (Mommy Odyssey)
• “In Which I Get Annoyingly Philosophical” (By the Brooke)
• “For Better or Worse” (By the Brooke)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Flotsam has a moving post called “Let it Out” which catches up readers on the last month of her life.  She writes beautifully about the fragility of life and marriage, but beyond that, she writes about needing your blogging space and being unsure you can use it.

Reproductive Jeans has a post about what she’d really like to put as her Facebook status.  It’s one of those posts that need very little explanation — just pointing the arrow so you head over to read it yourself (and let her know what you’d like to put in your own Facebook status bar but never would).

No Kidding in NZ has a post thinking about life in the future; namely, when she is a little old lady.  I love this point, “And so I realise that so much of our loneliness – or rather, so much of our happiness – is dependent on our attitudes.  My mother doesn’t expect (or want) her daughters to be there every day, or to telephone every day.  And so she doesn’t sit there pining for us, she goes out and gets on with enjoying her life.”  It’s an interesting read; especially since life has no guarantees and the best laid plans have a way of crashing down.

Lastly, My Infertility Story has a post about wondering if she made the best choices by treating her infertility.  She asks, “Here we are, 2.5 years later and I’m wondering if we had just let it go and let things happen naturally if we would have a baby right now! I know it’s irrational and unhealthy, but I’m still always finding ways to blame myself. Did I rush things?”  There is no way to know what the road not taken holds, except to try it.

The roundup to the Roundup: A rundown of my week followed by a million thank yous in regards to my book.  Beyond that, lots of great blog posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between August 12th and August 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.

This week.

There is a lot to unpack and not a lot of time to unpack it.  I’m finding it very difficult to gather my thoughts into words.  At the current moment, they are forming more into grunts and screeches than they are into rational sentences.

Instead of unpacking something real, I instead bring you my thoughts that came at 2 am on Wednesday night.  How would you feel if you found out unequivocally that mermaids were real and living in various bodies of water that you visit?  Would you be excited, hoping to see one?  Would you feel sort of anxious, wondering if you had unknowingly swam with them?  Would you be totally jealous, wishing you too could be a mermaid?

Sometimes I think we spend so much time wishing that fantasy was real, that we don’t really consider the outcome of having our fantasies coming true.  Or, I think that often we feel the outcome of wishes come true and yet still forget when we start chasing the next wish.  Sometimes what seems like it would be the most fantastic thing in the world turns out in reality to be a nightmare.  And other times, what we hoped would be fantastic delivers exactly as planned.

Substitute the word “mermaid” for a whole host of other things.

I was thinking about that at 2 am instead of thinking about other things, but regardless, I was wishing that my brain had an off-switch and I could just get to sleep.

*******

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:

• “Trying to Find the Positive” (Whitney and Erick)
• “Finding My Sight” (Not a Fertile Myrtle)
• “Balance” (Smartness)
• “Bile” (Sideshow Barb)
• “The Power of Our Love” (Dragondreamer’s Lair)
• “Unexpected Fallout” (Write Mind Open Heart)
• “XY with Several Chromosomal Abnormalities” (Fierce and Nerdy)
• “The Matrix” (Just Being)
• “Across the Universe” (Still Life with Circles) – read Esperenza’s comment

Okay, now my choices this week.

CD1 Again has a raw post about discovering her husband’s ex-wife is pregnant.  It is a tiny post that is a punch to the stomach, especially the timing of the announcement.  And I found that even after I left my comment, that I came back to read it again, as if I expected something else to be there.  A side note, it’s her birthday, so please be sure to wish her a happy birthday when you stop by.

The Kir Corner has a fantastic post about why she started blogging that resonated with me so absolutely. I love this: “I had no idea what I was doing.  I was not consumed with followers or page views.   I could barely hit publish.  My technique was poor and scattered, much like I was at the time.  Kir’s Corner was just a place I could set my troubles down on and leave them.”  I love her release of the label and the peace it brings.

Lastly, I am Vulnerable has a post about aging, a topic that is often on my mind.  I think it’s probably on many people’s mind in this community because infertility has a way of conjuring up mental hourglasses where the sand is dripping away at breakneck speed.  But this post is about what is lost and what is gained with aging.  And I have to admit that after I read it, I realized how much I didn’t miss aspects of those days that I’m nostalgic about.  Yes, I want parts of it, but you can’t take parts without taking the whole.

The roundup to the Roundup: How would you feel if you discovered mermaids were real?  Beyond that, lots of great blog posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between August 5th and August 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.

In elementary school, if for some reason we couldn’t go out on the playground for recess; for instance, if there was going to be a nuclear war between DC and the USSR, we’d stay in the classroom and get to see one of the two filmstrips the school owned.  I always wanted to be the film projection helper, but I didn’t actually know how to thread the film so I was never chosen.  This is still a source of sadness for me.

Anyway.

One of the films was The Red Balloon, which was fine.  But my favourite film was the other film: All Summer in a Day. It was based on a Ray Bradbury story and it was about children living on Venus where it rains every day.  The children (save one) have never seen the sun, though scientists have predicted that the rain is going to stop and the sun will come out for two hours on this one particular day.

One child is beyond excited about this because she is from Earth and she remembers the sun.  Moving to Venus has been impossibly hard for her, and this is her one chance to enjoy her old life.  But she is the victim of a prank and the loss used to (and still does) make me feel physically ill.

I’ve found the film in three parts (apologies, you’ll have to watch them one after the other for this indoor recess) on YouTube.  Wait, why are we having indoor recess?  There isn’t inclement weather.  There isn’t a threat of the USSR attacking our playground.

Because I’m at BlogHer and doing the Roundup properly will be too difficult on the technology I brought with me.  Since I can’t give you your normal playtime, I’m giving you an alternative recess rather than moving straight into the next lesson.  Because that’s the other option, you know: extra math.

The Friday Blog Roundup will be back next week. In the meantime, use the comment section below to add your favourite blog posts and I’ll have all the ones from last week and this week in the next Roundup.

And tell me what your elementary school did for indoor (or alternative) recess.  Did you also have this film?

Part One:

Part Two:

Part Three:

I have been double-fisting Jon Ronson’s books this summer, which sounds far dirtier than is actually the case.  What happened was that I really wanted to read The Psychopath Test after downloading the sample from Kindle.  But I got squeamish over the idea of reading about psychopaths and having the book in my house (Ronson thinks he’s neurotic, but he obviously has nothing on me).

I knew I liked his earlier book, Them (I used it in a sociology class I taught), so I decided to get The Men Who Stare at Goats for the beach, feeling that it was a less-scary alternative to the more current The Psychopath Test.  But midway through the paper version of Men Who Stare at Goats, I got an electronic version of The Psychopath Test (which isn’t as scary as I feared).  So now I had two Ronson books at the same time — one that I could read on the beach (paper) and one that I could read in the hotel room (electronic).

And both are fantastic.

He’s first and foremost an excellent writer with a knack for choosing subjects that with very little work become infinitely interesting.  An article about Al Dunlop in a newspaper may not hold my interest.  A chapter about Al Dunlop in Ronson’s very capable hands becomes fodder for dinner conversation as you relay what you just read.  Both were literally the type of books that (1) you want to read with others so you can all talk about it and (2) make you forgo other activities so you can read another chapter.

Really really good reads.

Well done, Mr. Ronson.

So that is my beach read recommendation: something you can jump in and out of effortlessly because you always remember where you left off.  What are your beach read recommendations for anyone looking for a book?  I mean, beyond Life from Scratch.  Which, I heard, rocks.

*******

Plans are underway (thank you, Kristin!) to grab lunch/dinner at BlogHer.  If you’re going to the conference or will be in the San Diego area, go over and let her know so you stay in the loop.

*******

And now the blogs…

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

• “On This Day” (Slowmamma)
• “Living with Infertility, Take Two” (Hannah Wept, Sarah Laughed)
• “Don’t Wanna Be All By Myself” (The Pursuit of Pregnancy)
• “Right Where I Am” (Still Life with Circles)
• “Livin’ the Dream” (Not Imitation Cheese)
• “Typepad is the Devil” (Smartness)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Still Life with Circles has a lovely series of snippets about her Beezuz, Thor, and Lucy, and I thought the simplicity of jumping from thought to thought really showed her reach as a writer.  The snippet that particularly got to me was the one about the unacknowledged waves to the pigs.

Are You Kidding Me gets to the heart of the matter with life on the Internet, with a word of helpful advice: if it bothers you, get off of it.  It’s as simple as turning off the computer.  But I do love her unpacking of blogs and social media sites.

I LOVE this post by Edenland about the sign next to her bed.  You will need to click over to see what it says, but I think it’s something everyone should post in their eye-line upon awakening (or your own variation).  And it’s this piece of honesty that I makes this post brilliant: “I battle with severe – and I mean HUGE self-esteem issues. My thinking can get all warped and slide into paranoia, delusions, extreme fear. It’s really bad, and sometimes I spiral down so very low. Like that fucked-up dreg from a piece of soap that nobody wants to wash themselves with.”

Lastly, Finding My New Normal had a dream about rainbows and explains how this ties in to her current donor egg cycle.  She writes: “So what started as dates on a piece of paper has turned into something that may actually happen.”  The words are infused with her excitement; her nervousness, her happiness, her embracement of hope.  Cheer her on for this leg of the journey.

The roundup to the Roundup: My beach read book recommendations — what are yours?  Will you be at BlogHer and do you want to get together?  And lots of great blog posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between July 22nd and July 29th) 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.