Category — Friday Blog Roundup

The comment love fest (and annual giveaway) is heating up, so you really get two Roundups this week — the one you’re creating in the comment section over here and this one.  I am baking all weekend and trying to get my first round of boxes out on Tuesday, so you only have until Monday morning to comment elsewhere (and compliment that person’s writing) in order to win.

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So, does everyone know about Cyclesista?  It started probably five years ago as a way for people to connect with others cycling at the same time.  (Someone help me out with this — my blog is almost five years old, and I think it was there before I started blogging.)  People submit their blog name and what they’re doing (IUI or IVF) and then they can visit the other people cycling at the same time — giving support and getting support.

Equally fun is going back through the archives and seeing old blogs.

I was trying to remember the five original members this week.  I believe it was Things Get If’fy, Journey to the Centre of the Egg (which became Rememberella), Prop Up Your Hips (now deleted), Stella and/or Ben, and Jenny from the Infertility Block?  Correct me if there were others who came before these members.

The torch has been passed a few times now, and it is currently run by Bea and Jen.  Seriously, no one needs to cycle alone.  Go add yourself to this month’s list if you’re not on it.

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Who will be the next Limerick chick?  Only you can determine that.  Go over and vote (hint: it won’t be me).

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The Weekly What If: what if you could either be transported to the first show or the last show of your favourite band.  Would you rather go see them before they became the polished musicians you know them to be; to catch that first spark?  Or would you rather go enjoy their last hurrah?

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And now, the blogs…

BigP and Me has a moving post about whether or not to give a lost twin a name.  She writes, “It feels like if I give her a name, it means she was more than she was.  She was hope and possibility.  I wonder if naming her makes her out to be more than that?  More than she was.”  I feel that the naming of things is such a gut, personal decision, but I also love the discussion of what naming someone means, how that helps (or doesn’t help) us heal.

It is what it is (or is it?) has a post about her adoption story and how it contributed to how she processed her child’s birth.  Because she was never told about the moment of her birth but rather the placement in her parent’s arms, she always saw herself as someone who was “hatched.”  She explains: “Unless you have been raised without that knowledge you simply cannot appreciate how profound it is to know.”  The post gives a lot of food for thought.

Here We Go Again has been keeping a secret — but it’s one she placed in clear sight in another post.

Finally, Bloodsigns hit it out of the park with her post on the classroom orgasm incident this week.  The story she tells of her own experience as a teacher showing a controversial film illuminates how no one can speak for the way anyone else processes an event and that almost parental-like care teachers should have for their students.

The roundup to the Roundup: The comment love fest winner will be announced on Monday (so keep reading those posts that are being linked to in the comment section this weekend).  Do you know about Cyclesista?  Answer the Weekly What If.  And lots of great posts to read.

So I have to say thank you for something.  Usually, when I want to say thank you for something, I bake.

But that instinct isn’t going to work here because there are too many people to thank.  There simply isn’t enough butter in the world for that many batches of chocolate chip cookies.  And beyond that, there are too many people that I suspect are out there but. I. don’t. even. know. who. you. are.  That’s the part that scares me — missing out on thanking all of the amazing women that I can’t thank because I’m truly clueless as to how many people are behind this wave.  Also, there is the problem of actually getting said cookies to you.  That whole computer screen barrier.

Life from Scratch has become this huge success and it is entirely due to bloggers.  Namely, book bloggers who took it under their wing and celebrated it with posts and reviews on Good Reads or Amazon, as well as other-topic bloggers (for lack of a better term because it wasn’t just book bloggers) who knew me through this space who read it and talked about it and arranged online book tours and participated with posts.  I am talking about all of YOU.  And I’m talking about THEM.

And yes, I am going to get very emotional about this and you can’t stop me, because that is enormous.

It speaks to the power of bloggers in general.  I didn’t get in the New York Times book review.  I didn’t do the morning talk show circuit.  I connected with bloggers and you guys reviewed it.  And because of that, it moved into the 7th slot on Kindle’s content list.  Right under books that have a huge publicity budget behind them such as Hillenbrand’s book (of Seabiscuit fame).

The words “thank you” are too small.  Even if you scream them at top volume, it isn’t enough.  Frankly, baking cookies for all of you wouldn’t be enough.  But I don’t know how to gather all of you into one space so I can hold this huge parade with dancing acrobats and flame-eaters and elephants in order to show you how ecstatic I am that you are in my life; that you took my book and ran with it and made this happen.

When you see the bloggers in the sequel, when I am celebrating book bloggers and other-topic bloggers in the second book, you will all know that I am talking about you.  It’s not a strange coincidence or a discussion of random bloggers in general — I will actually be talking about all of you.  The people who took the time to review it and blog about it and tweet about it and all of you who will do so in the future.

Because you changed my life.

And I’m going to beg you to keep doing it.  To keep talking about it and recommending it to your friends and leaving a review on Amazon or Good Reads (people who write kind reviews are my favourite people in the world) and tweeting about it (my G-d, I love all of you who have tweeted about it).  Because I’m greedy like that.

The Internet has been my support for almost five years now.  And I owe you guys so much — my sanity, my health, and all of my thanks.

Thank you.

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Okay, I’m going to take a pause to have a good, old-fashioned, hormonal cry.

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Instead of the Weekly What If: name one person who changed the trajectory of your life.

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Voting has started at Limerick Chicks and yes, I have a limerick in the running.  BUT I’m not going to ask you to vote for me.  I’m just going to ask you to vote — to go over and read them and laugh (or cry) and then vote for your favourite one (which may or may not be mine).

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And now, the blogs…

If you have not yet read the analogy The Shifty Shadow wrote about loss, you need to run over there.  Because it’s just that brilliant.

Stumbling Gracefully has a post about her greatest fear.  She explains how even skating close to her fear brings out a reaction: “If the losses of strangers do this to me, what kind of havoc would the loss of someone close to me wreak?”  It is a raw, deeply honest, sometimes difficult to read post.  But that’s why you should read it anyways.

Just Us and the Cat has a post about new forms of employment she can now get that she’s tubeless.  It’s dark humour at it’s finest.  Personally, I’m rooting for her to join a harem.  As she points out: “Advantages: I’ve always liked Turkish food. Disadvantages: Would probably need to lose weight before applying. A more serious barrier is that the Ottoman empire is defunct.”

My Rotten Eggs has this really incredible post about the ending of a friendship with her cousin’s wife as well as bumping into her at a store.  The de-friending wasn’t about infertility and yet was wholly connected to infertility and their two different paths in life.  It’s a moving post.

One Wheeler’s World has a post about getting to know herself again through her blog.  I love her blog-each-day challenge to explore herself.  She writes, “An opportunity to just throw myself out there…messy hair, unshaven legs, and all.    An opportunity for ME to get to know me in ways that I’ve honestly been putting off for a long, long time. ”  Come by for the free therapy.

Lastly, Bloodsigns has a post about whether she needs her space.  I love this point: “Social media is just that — social — and success does depend on one’s ability to be social (or, if we were talking about a business context — self-promotion and networking) — which isn’t, despite your kindness Dear Readers, something I’m good at.”  It is such a gorgeous post, such an important post, such a brilliant post — I think you’ll be missing out if you don’t read it.

The roundup to the Roundup: I am weepy grateful for all of you and there is nothing large enough that I could do to properly thank you.  Answer the Instead of the Weekly What If.  Vote for your favourite limerick.  And lots of great posts to read.

On Thursday, I went to get the mail, and there was a package in my mailbox.  I was, you see, expecting a package — a book — from Barnes and Noble.  But the package was from Amazon so I had a moment of weirdness where I stood there and tried to make sense of it.  The package didn’t feel quite like a paperback book, but I had never seen said book so perhaps it came with a plastic-y cover.

I opened it right there by the mailbox because what else do you do when your book arrives from the wrong company?  Though it wasn’t my book at all.  It was the fifth season of Family Ties.

And I started bawling.

See, I didn’t even need to watch the DVD.

It all comes down to being heard.  And when you are heard so enormously like I was this week — a tiny admittance at the end of a post — you bawl at the mailbox.  Because that act of leaving a comment, of sending an email, of sending someone the episode of Family Ties that they mentioned at the end of the post is just an extension of a hug; of wrapping your arms around the person with a simple “me too” or “go ahead and cry” or most commonly — “I just wanted you to know that someone heard you.”

Baby Smiling in Back Seat heard me.  And like a fairy godmother, she granted my wish.

And I got to have a good cry; times two.

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Part of kindergarten is apparently honing your comedic skills, and every day, a child is chosen to tell a joke.  The ChickieNob takes this very very seriously.  She will not perform anyone else’s material — the girl writes her own jokes.  When she tells me this, it makes her sound as if she is two seconds away from composing her own version of the Aristocrats.  One day, you will turn on Comedy Central and she will be there, chomping on a cigar with Denis Leary (in her two pigtails), reciting her own tale of debauchery.

Er… you may not want to watch this at work.  I mean, I watch this at work, but I work from home.  So…

She came home this week upset because her act fell flat.  She wanted me to try it out on you because she thinks she has written something amazing, and it’s everyone else who just.doesn’t.get.it.  So this is the ChickieNob’s joke (and it is more appropriate for all offices):

What instrument does a cow play?

A moo bass.

She further explained that “a moo bass” was the punchline, though she feared that the reason that her class didn’t laugh was that they didn’t understand that some of her favourite opening bass lines sound like the lowing of a cow.  She told me that she knew that there wasn’t a problem with her joke, but was it possible that her classmates didn’t listen to the same music?

Please, please, for the love, please don’t ask her why the punchline wasn’t something like, “a horn.”  I asked this.  It was a big mistake.  Ditto “a cow bell” and “a moooooooooooooooooooooog.”

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Instead of the Weekly What If: Tell your favourite joke.  Or, at the very least, post a link to something on the Web that makes you laugh.

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And now, the blogs…

Infertile Fantasies’ birth story was crazy enough that I had to call Josh mid-day to tell him about it.  I seriously can’t say anymore without ruining it.

Renovation Girl weighs out the pros of stopping family building.  She holds the cons at bay with one hand and gives herself a full post to think about what she gains by stopping.  It is a bittersweet list; a bittersweet post — to sit with the person at the end of a road.  And just hold her hand.  And listen.

Love, Hope, and Faith has a post about falling in love with a place, a place she couldn’t imagine ever liking as of a few years ago.  It’s not just the photographs; it’s the larger idea that we can grow accustomed to something that didn’t really fit us at first.

Child Bearing Hips has a post that struck home for me about the way she eats (which also happens to be the way I eat…)  She writes: “There is a little voice in my head that tells me I SHOULD be able to eat an ice cream cone and not worry about gaining weight. Which I should… but I take it to a level where I’m wanting that ice cream cone every night. And something else I’ve noticed… I love feeling full. Having a nice, big plate of pasta with eggplant parm and garlic bread – send me to heaven right now.”  Infertility can quite literally bury the emotional eater.  A monthly cycle?  Drenched in anxiety and disappointment?  I feel like infertility is one long marathon of trying to seek comfort.  This post just gave me a lot of food for thought about my own eating habits.

Lastly, Baby Steps to Motherhood has a post about survivor’s guilt.  The three years after her loss were marked by guilt, and a seminar helped her to let go of those feelings and get to a good mental space.  But now that she is there, she is noticing something in regards to her blog.  She writes, “I feel that I have lost readers because I am no longer drowning. I feel as if I have survived the torture and no one wants to hear about how happy I am while I still fight this battle.”  It’s an amazing, raw post.  Please read it in its entirety and give her your thoughts.

The roundup to the Roundup: Hearing someone and letting them know it is pretty much the best gift you can give.  The ChickieNob’s joke.  Please leave your own joke or favourite link to something funny.  And lots of great blogs to read.

Came across this little upcoming book description in Publisher’s Weekly, and call me crazy, but I don’t think I’ll be reading it:

Sold his horror debut, Breed … which follows a group of very desperate New York parents in an infertility support group.

When I am queen of the world, I’m going to ban the pairing of “desperate” and “infertile.”  In my world, treating a disease or trying to circumvent a problem doesn’t equal desperation.  Google the two words together and you get over 800,000 hits.  You’re a writer; you can stretch farther than this cliche.  But I’m really glad to see that infertility is entering into the horror genre.  I’ve always found infertility terrifying so I’m glad to see the literary world in agreement.

And I hope there are zombies.  Zombie reproductive endocrinologists.

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The Weekly What If: What if the best reproductive endocrinologist with a nearly 100% success rate was a zombie.  Would you go to him?  What if he was local and inexpensive with a great shared risk program?  Had a warm bedside manner and always called you with test results himself?  Literally the only thing out of place was that he was part of the undead and wanted to eat your brains.

Just wondering — you know, if horror infertility books are the next big thing, I want to do my research and stay ahead of the curve.

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Write Mind Open Heart has kicked off her annual Limerick Chicks contest.  She is taking entries until February 28th, and I have decided to get mine in early this year.  I have chosen to pick on Forever Reaching because I’ve read her forever and she has been quiet this month.  She’s not the only one, so this limerick is dedicated to all who feel that they are in a writing slump.  And NYCPhoenix — I hope knowing there are people out there cheering for you will give you the energy you need to write again.

Forever Reaching has been quiet
She tweets as if on a blog diet
She’s looking to be inspired
She’s written out; tired
Hoping like a phoenix she’ll rise up and riot

Vote for meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

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And now the blogs…

The first one goes off the beaten track because it’s an image rather than words (I think this is the first time I’ve done this?).  But once I saw it, I couldn’t stop thinking about Bionic Mamas’ painting “Baby is Gravid.”  It defies being described (though I will give you the heads up that it’s a nude and features her pregnancy), so I implore you to click over and just marvel at the skill.

Park Slope Purgatory has a post about that limbo place between optimism and pessimism where she can’t really wrap her mind around the pregnancy.  She describes that space perfectly — where you want to believe and yet she explains she is living more in a place of “if” than a place of “when.”  And I love this: “But I’m doing my best not to grieve a potentially devastating day before I absolutely have to.”  Please hold her hand today as she goes in for the ultrasound.

Knocked Up By Another Man has a post looking back a year into the past.  I love this way of looking at the scars of infertility: “The scars of the journey remain on my heart. But instead of being something bad, they are mixed with the love of Fairyegg’s gift and the pride of our determination. Instead of marring our hearts as parents, I think the scars add to the character of our love for E.”  Isn’t that beautiful?

Lastly, Sesame-Seed-Sized Dreams has a heartbreaking post about a vivid dream that ties in with the loss of their daughter.  The description of the dream — in and of itself — is interesting as you try to interpret it, but it’s the final lines that really squeezed my heart: “Trying to make babies is a big game of uncertainty. I know all that but I still find this so hard.”  Such a beautiful post — please read the whole thing and give her comfort since the cycle is over.

Actually, really lastly, I thought Songs for My Unborn Children is a really cool idea — a blog where she is telling a story in poems.  She already knows the ending (which sort of reminded me of Drama 2B Mama, where you start the story already knowing how it ends).

The roundup to the Roundup: Zombie reproductive endocrinologists are all the rage.  Answer the Weekly What If (would you let a zombie near your girlie parts or man sack?).  What do you think of my limerick?  And lots of great posts to read.

It must be near Valentine’s Day because everyone and their mother (by which I mean every infertility organization and clinic … since it would be odd if everyone’s mother started writing me emails) are sending me tips on how to not allow infertility to decimate my sex life.

But I’m not really sure how you don’t have infertility decimate your sex life — at least for a short time.  I mean, it’s sort of like an anorexic’s relationship to food — you need food to live, but your relationship with food is killing you.  And you need intimacy in a relationship, but, come on, the sex-not-equaling-baby thing is soul killing.

It is really hard to want to have sex for fun after you’ve been having sex for days in a timed-manner or want to have sex when you’re bloated to hell from drugs.  Or when your heart hurts.  It is really hard to have sex when your heart feels like a shriveled raisin-of-a-thing barely beating under your ribs.  How are you supposed to become stimulated when you are just so fucking sad?

So if you are having mind-blowing sex this weekend, rock on.  But if you are not; if your body is so traumatized from transvaginal ultrasounds or you feel like sex is just a reminder of what is not working in your body or you are so sad that you can’t get intimate, then stop beating yourself up and stop reading those articles and stop putting MORE pressure on yourself.

You will get back to a happy sex life if you two are both going to work to get back to that place of intimacy.  But all problems don’t have to be solved at the same time.  Sometimes, solving one solves some of the other ones too.  So if not-letting-infertility-destroy-your-sex-life feels like too big a task right now, take the night to eat through a box of chocolates in bed.  And cuddle.  And tell each other what you love about each other.  And promise each other that this is a moment in time and the future won’t look like now.

I feel like instead of “Spice Up Your Sex Life During Infertility!” articles, there should be a simple Michael Pollan-like mantra:

Have sex. If you can. And if not, don’t stress and have it later.

14 words.  That’s the advice I wish I had read back then rather than the articles I did read that just made me feel guilty.  And I was reminded of that this week when I read my 3000th email on sex and infertility.

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Instead of the Weekly What If: taking sex out of the equation, would you rather get a really good box of chocolates to eat without any impact to your body (they would magically be without calories or fat) or get an hour-long massage?

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And now, the blogs…

Okay, this post is from last week, but I read it in my Reader on Friday, which means that I have two options — say “oh well” and move onto the next post, or break the rules and bring it to you this week.  I’m breaking the rules…  I am Vulnerable has a post about soup and vulnerability.  First of all, it starts out with a gorgeous story about finding a recipe she loves from a woman who has already died.  It then goes into the way she wants to live: “But I have to say that your comments and then the discovery of Leila’s blog have only reinforced for me the desire and intention to live with an open heart. Because everything is impermanent, but everything ripples out in ways that we cannot even begin to imagine. And I want my ripples to be reflections of who I am and what I believe most strongly.”  Like many of her posts, I felt myself nodding and it gave me food for thought.

The Eternal Guest Room has a post about the jumbled thoughts in her head when she can’t sleep.  Oh, this thought rang so true for me: “I feel like people must be tired of listening to me by now. I’m even kind of tired of listening to me at this point. I feel like I talk about it less and less, because I’ve already said it all, again and again, and it’s so old and tiresome.”  Didn’t she capture that amazingly well?  I just thought this was an aching, raw, dark, silent-scream-of-a-post.

And lastly, Two’s Company. Three’s a Family has a post about time spent with pregnant family.  It was a good night, but it had those moments.  You sort of felt as you read the post that you were the author, sitting in the room, silently processing the situation, knowing a very different reality than the one the family suspects.

The roundup to the Roundup: Have Sex. If you can. And if not, don’t stress and have it later. Chocolate or massage?  And lots of great posts to read.