Category — Friday Blog Roundup

Hey.  Maybe you’ve been thinking that you want to learn programming basics; things like conditionals, variables, or arrays.  Or maybe you have a kid, and you want them to learn how to program.  Or maybe you’re staring down summer, wondering how you are going to fill the brains in your household.  Or maybe you’re a teacher looking for something to recommend students.  Let’s just leave it at that there are a lot of scenarios where you will be happy with the following news.

The twins’ book is the deal of the day over on the Manning site beginning at midnight tonight and running all day Saturday.  Ta da!  If you click on that link right now, you are going to see other books.  But if you click Saturday morning, you will see their happy little programming-for-beginners book on sale.

Please help them pass along word via your social channels.  Post it on Facebook, email it to a friend, post it on your school listserv.

They will answer any questions that pop up as you (or the person you recommended it to) reads the book.  Just send them my way, and I’ll make sure they answer.  So it’s like ordering a book AND getting your own, personal programming tutor.  You can’t beat that, right?

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It’s Friday the 13th.  I don’t know why I have a compulsive need to always point that out when the Roundup falls on the 13th.

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Stop procrastinating.  Go make your backups.  Don’t have regrets.

Seriously.  Stop what you’re doing for a moment.  It will take you fifteen minutes, tops.  But you will have peace of mind for days and days.  It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments in order to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

*******

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:

• “Squawk Box: Infertility was the Easy Part” (Unpregnant Chicken)
• “An Easter Note to Self” (Infertilityhonesty)
• “Sitting and Thinking” (The Barrenness)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Torthúil is writing a series of posts for her five year blogoversary, and the first looks at the last five years through the lens of her fertility clinic.  It’s not a happy place, though she lists a good memory or two.  “I was trying to think the other day if I have any happy memories whatsoever of The Fertility Clinic. There’s really only one, and that was when I picked up my drugs for IVF.”  It’s precious, as she says at the end, to have a blog and all of the memories from the past five years contained in one place.

A Dozen Years has a post about the prenatal depression.  She is currently pregnant after infertility, and she writes about her struggle with depression during the first trimester.  She explains that she was already prone for depression and coming into pregnancy from a stressful period.  “That combination of traits makes me a pretty likely candidate for something called Prenatal Depression. An obvious diagnosis with a pretty unmistakable meaning. And I had crashed head-on into it.”  This post should be required reading, and I’m so glad she’s doing better.

Lastly, Anabegins writes about the realization that she has changed over the years, despite thinking at first that it was just appearances that were different.  She’s not the same person that she was six years ago.  I love the moment that it dawns on her: “But even being able to articulate what I am working on is a huge HUGE step forward from the constant chaos of anxiety and overwhelm I was dealing with back then.”  It’s a great post about pausing and reflecting on the ways you have changed over the years.

The roundup to the Roundup: The twins’ book is the deal of the day on the Manning site.  It’s Friday the 13th.  Your weekly backup nudge.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between April 6th and 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.

We are officially out of baby teeth.  The Wolvog had his final two teeth pulled this week.  That was a special experience.  It kicked off with a sleepless night because he was worried about how this whole thing was going to go down.  It was followed by my alarm going off at 5:45 am. (Don’t worry — we didn’t sleep anyway, so what’s the difference between 5:45 am and a normal wake-up time when you haven’t been to bed yet?)  And a silent drive to the office where we had clearly been slotted before all other appointments because they did not trust us to remain calm and collected.

The dentist, to his credit, listened carefully to the Wolvog’s fears about needles and his gums, and then agreed that they could try to do it without Novocaine.  The Wolvog has a high threshold for pain and a low threshold for needles in his mouth.  He rocked that Novocaine-free double tooth pulling like a boss.

They gave me those final two teeth in a gaudy tooth-shaped holder.  It was bittersweet to know that was it.  No more baby teeth.  No more forgetting about said baby teeth.  That stage of life was over; the door closed.

I would have curled up on the floor in the dentist’s office and cried, but we had already given them enough drama for one day.

*******

Stop procrastinating.  Go make your backups.  Don’t have regrets.

Seriously.  Stop what you’re doing for a moment.  It will take you fifteen minutes, tops.  But you will have peace of mind for days and days.  It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments in order to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

*******

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:

• None… sniff.

Okay, now my choices this week.

No Kidding in NZ has a post about resilience.  They are words you need to hear, especially #5: “Stop being so hard on myself, and show myself some self-compassion – I don’t need to justify my actions to anyone when they are coming from my heart.”  It’s a great post that everyone should internalize.

It’s not a post about infertility–in fact, it’s a post about eating disorders–but it is also about when people lash out without knowing someone else’s story.  Surrender, Dorothy recounts a nasty email she received after she sent a response directing the person to her book where she wrote deeply on the topic of eating disorders.  There is the initial reaction and the deeper reaction, and I love this post because it points out that when we connect with someone new (or, frankly, sometimes someone we know quite well), we don’t know what else the other person is going through.  So be kind.

Jewish IVF has a post about this year’s Pesach, a difficult time on its own made more difficult by her recent loss and an emergency with her niece.  Even though it’s normally one of her favourite holidays, she writes, “I wasn’t in the headspace and didn’t want to participate in general life, let alone prepare a massive holiday.”  Go give her some extra support.

Lastly, The Road Less Travelled has a post about upsetting comments on a post about infertility and depression.  She gently points out that we created this pressure — “we” being society as a whole — and writes about living without children, “Those who deviate from the norm — by choice or circumstance — are objects of curiosity and concern, pity and paternalism, sometimes even derision and scorn.”  But the real reason you should read this post is because of this line: “Deep down, I always felt that I could have a good life without children — because I already did, up to the point we started trying to conceive.”  Such important words for everyone to remember.

The roundup to the Roundup: The last baby teeth.  Your weekly backup nudge.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between March 30th and April 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.

Pesach begins tonight.  I’ve spent the week alternating between cooking and cleaning; two tasks that don’t really work well together.  Cooking creates more mess and requires a clean-up afterward, and cleaning burns energy and requires you to cook afterward.  But somehow the two tasks have slowly come into balance so I have a clean house and food for the seder table.

My cousin and I both host — one of us takes the first night and one of us takes the second night.  We’ve been having Pesach together for 42 years!  Isn’t that incredible to think about?  There have only been maybe two or three years where we haven’t been together for Pesach.  That is why I host; why I continue to do this tradition year after year: Because our mothers have had decades of Pesachs together, and we have had decades of Pesachs together, and our kids are now into their second decade of having Pesachs together.

Unlike the older generation, my cousin and I change the menu every year.  We make meat for the meat-eaters and make everything else on the table vegan for ourselves.  We make tiny tweaks each time the holiday rolls around to make it a little bit better, like last year’s realization that I could get Josh to roast the shankbone outside so I don’t need to smell it — win!

Realizing your own history is sort of amazing…

*******

Stop procrastinating.  Go make your backups.  Don’t have regrets.

Seriously.  Stop what you’re doing for a moment.  It will take you fifteen minutes, tops.  But you will have peace of mind for days and days.  It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments in order to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

*******

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:

• “Words of Wisdom” (The Road Less Travelled)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Different Shores has a post about an article on living child-free that I would have missed otherwise.  I especially loved this point: “One thing that hit me around the same age as Elizabeth was the notion that my future was a bit amorphous, potentially a long stretch of nothing; what were the landmark events that would punctuate it, give it structure, slow down time?”  It’s the story of a woman who has taken control of her life and given it shape.

Pages, Stages, and Rages has a post about how the Beatles keep looping back in her life, including Yoko Ono’s experience with secondary infertility.  Like her, I never thought about Paul McCartney and gun violence together until the march, but he did lose his best friend not far from the march site in New York.  There have been many things written this week about the marches, but I loved this post because it weaves it into a personal history vs thinking of it as a single point in time.

Lastly, Dubliner in Deutschland has a post about finally holding her daughter at the end of a long family building road.  I was teary at the opening, imagining the world waiting while she looked at her daughter: “It’s Friday morning. The house is quiet. My husband’s at work. The kitchen is a mess. There’s a huge pile of laundry in the basket and I wonder if I’ll even find a moment to shower today.”  It can wait, and I’m glad you have these days of wonder in the meantime.

The roundup to the Roundup: Pesach begins tonight.  Your weekly backup nudge.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between March 23rd and 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.

The twins had a snow day on Wednesday, which I suspect means that we’re going to lose a day of spring break.  But I’m not going to focus on that right now.  Instead I’m going to focus on the fact that I got an extra hour of sleep.

They took the day to organize themselves for the Penny War.  This just may be the most brilliant fundraising game.  Each kid brings in all of their pennies for Pennies for Patients.  You get one point for each penny, and 1000 points for each dollar.  (I guess you get extra points because no one needs to count out 100 coins.)  You dump all of your pennies into your grade’s bucket.  BUT you can also bring in nickels, dimes, and quarters and REMOVE points from another team’s bucket.  So if I put a nickel into another grade’s bucket, they lose five points.

The grades have been sabotaging each other’s buckets, which amuses me to no end, so they gathered in the Wolvog’s room to count out coins, sorting them into their penny boxes and sabotage bags.  Go forth and conquer, kids.

*******

Stop procrastinating.  Go make your backups.  Don’t have regrets.

Seriously.  Stop what you’re doing for a moment.  It will take you fifteen minutes, tops.  But you will have peace of mind for days and days.  It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments in order to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

*******

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:

• “Update from Yesterday” (Countingpinklines)
• “She Will Not Have My Eyes” (The OCD Infertile)

Okay, now my choices this week.

My Path to Mommyhood has a post about PCOS and about how taking care of one aspect of her health may be creating issues in another area.  She writes, “That was when I couldn’t stop crying. I mean, PCOS is one of many pieces that robbed me of having children, but it couldn’t stop there, apparently. And I received very little counseling about how it would affect me longterm. Only how it affected my reproductive life.”  It’s about the “ever after” that sometimes comes with what contributes to infertility.

Lavender Luz expands your definition of openness with a new way of looking at open adoption.  In her definition, the openness is on the part of each individual in the triad vs. only looping in the concept of contact.  It’s not the first time she has talked about this, but it’s such an important point to drive home for everyone involved with adoption AND the advice is really applicable outside of adoption, too, since openness helps in any relationship.

Lastly, In Quest of a Binky Moongee has a post about surrogacy; namely, the legal stuff other parents don’t have to think about.  She explains stuff that still needs to be done now that the twins are here and why she has waited on certain tasks.  The bureaucracy hoops she needs to jump through will make you start hyperventilating.  It all works out in the end, but it’s an eye-opening post.

The roundup to the Roundup: Dispatches from the Penny War.  Your weekly backup nudge.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between March 16th and 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.

I am sad that Toys R Us is closing.  The one that I went to as a child closed down years ago, so I can’t even jog through it one last time.  I’m sad for the people who will lose their jobs.  I hope the independent toy stores remain in business and aren’t squeezed out by Amazon, too.  Yes, this is partly because I still buy toys (for me), but… I think in my mind, I tied the toy store news to the walkout; the idea that these kids are growing up and that a lot of the wonder they felt as kids has been sucked out of their lives as they consider reality; that they have to walk out of school and beg lawmakers to place their lives — children’s lives — before guns.

I am sad that Stephen Hawking died.  There are very few times when I archive a news alert, but I archived that one.  Reading it made me feel like a little hole had opened up inside my body.  The world needs great minds; I’m sad that one is now gone.

And I am sad about the Cleveland clinic’s malfunction that compromised 2000 embryos and frozen eggs.  So far the embryos they thawed for scheduled procedures haven’t been viable.  And then, in the same weekend, another malfunction in California.  What a huge blow for potential parents.  If you are using a fertility clinic, you have usually already gone through emotional upheaval to end up in that space.  To have this happen — TWICE — in a single weekend is heartbreaking.

A hard week.

*******

Stop procrastinating.  Go make your backups.  Don’t have regrets.

Seriously.  Stop what you’re doing for a moment.  It will take you fifteen minutes, tops.  But you will have peace of mind for days and days.  It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments in order to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

*******

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:

• “Adolescence and Adoption: How Adoptive Parents Can Support Teens” (GoodTherapy.org)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Infertile Phoenix has a post about failure.  It’s a powerful post, detailing a near fail during her college years and a change in majors, leading up to her attempts to build her family.  She calls herself “an expert at failure.”  She is once again in a situation where the effort expended is not matching the outcome.  But this time, she comes armed with history and knowledge.  “I think I will pass.  I will be okay if I don’t.  I am still going to move to a different state, and I am still moving on with my life.  Just like I’ve done with everything else so far, I will survive.”

One Step at a Time has a moving, raw post about her child’s sensory issues.  She opens with the assessment period, explaining that waiting for the report was nerve-wracking.  “And when it came I was prepared to fight it tooth and nail. I was ready to rip it apart just like they had ripped every part of my son with analysis. And I did that for myself. Just to get it out of my system. But in the end I just didn’t respond.”  The post goes through the ups and downs until she arrives at their current solution.  It’s a wonderful post; even better that she put this information out there in case it helps someone else.

Lastly, Bent Not Broken honours the four year anniversary of learning she would not be able to have children, a day that she calls “The Day Dreams Died.”  The anniversary rolled around this year on a day when she was going to have to see a new baby and spend time around her nieces and nephews.  She writes, “I know I’ve neglected this space lately, but today, on a day where I’m feeling not being able to have children viscerally, I’m glad I have it.”  THAT is why I love blogging and our community in particular.

The roundup to the Roundup: Hard week.  Your weekly backup nudge.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between March 9th and 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.