Category — Friday Blog Roundup

I’ve been trying to convince the kids that when adults get together, we like to put on a record and dance in the middle of the living room, mostly doing the robot.  The reason they have never witnessed this is that adults would never engage in this behaviour if there were children around.  But yes, the moment they are out of the house, or when I go over to another person’s house, we’re dancing in the living room.  Or the kitchen.  I mean, we aren’t picky.  We’ll just all gather in a group and do the robot for hours at a time.  And then laugh and laugh and laugh.

Do you realize how much brain power I use trying to annoy the twins?

*******

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.

Battlefish is back with a post after a long winter.  She talks about the depression that caused her absence: “It wasn’t like this every single day, but most days (even now still to some extent) I was able to get by without thinking about anything and it would be an okay day. And then there were days it would just all crash in on me.”  It made me smile when I saw a post pop up in my rss reader, and reading it felt like a fragile thaw.  Like a corner has been turned, or, at least, someone has peeked their head around.

No Kidding in NZ tells readers to stop apologizing for the fact that they don’t have children.  She points out, “But our existence is not offensive, our No Kidding lives are not discourteous to any others, and therefore having increased visibility as people without children – talking about the fact we have no children, whether in a casual one-line comment, or in response to others, whether correcting assumptions, or by refusing to justify our lives or respond to invasive questions – is not impolite either.”  I love the ending, and if we were in a movie, I would have been standing up and cheering while she walked by in slow motion.

Infertility Honesty has a post about coming out of the grieving stage and moving into the overlapping rebuilding stage.  She is simultaneously dealing with a nervous system disorder, but she writes, “My mind then did something it has rarely been able to do for the past seven years, it skipped around the meadow of possible endings and transitions.”  And I love this: “My losses and experiences will always be a part of me, in need of being tended to and integrated into my life, but perhaps there does come a time when the foundation is built, the legwork not so extensive.”  It’s a gorgeous post.

Res Cogitatae has a moving post about visiting a beach for the first time since her father’s accident that left him paralyzed.  But it’s really about what we carry with us due to our life experiences, the unique struggles we each have based on what we know first hand.  She writes, “One day my children will not want to swim in the rock pool. They will want to dive into the waves, just like their father, just like I once did. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to do it again.”

Lastly, Jewish IVF has a post about how she feels differently about things this week.  It’s not one thing, but it’s several things all coming together; feeling like she’s taking care of items on her to-do list, setting and respecting her own boundaries, pushing herself to join with things.  She tries to explain her feelings at a baby naming ceremony: “It was beautiful and I felt overwhelmed but not so much that I had to run out. Or cry. It was encouraging rather than not. I’m not sure I can explain it.”  I think it’s encouraging because you realize that you’ve gotten through something. That you endured.  And that’s not a small thing.

The roundup to the Roundup: Bothering the twins.  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 June 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.

I am not normally (1) a napper or (2) into crystals, but I want to take a nap on a $75/half hour crystal bed.  I want to awaken in a perfect state by lying down on what amounts to “a baby bouncer for adults.”  I could do without a pine-scented eye mask — I really don’t like the smell of pine needles — but if they had one that was the scent of sunscreen?  And the sounds were beach sounds?  And the cost wasn’t $75?  I would be all over that.

Maybe I just want a nap.  Period.  I am feeling really burned out and could use a few hours of down time.

Which makes it sound like that old commercial for Polly-o string cheese.  I want a nap on a crystal bed.  But hold the pine-scented mask.  And hold the vibrating crystals.  Hey, Jimmy, give this girl a nap with nothing.  Nuttin’?

Yeah, like just a nap.

*******

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 Mother’s Day (and by extension, Father’s Day).  She writes, “There was, of course, the usual onslaught on social media, as there is today for Father’s Day, where the curse of social media is that people seem to place importance on being seen to recognise their parents or partners. I will admit that I was a bit fed up that my normal feeds this morning were clogged up with northern hemisphere people cheerfully wishing their fathers or husbands a good day, and even resented* those people who tagged on wishes for ‘those who find today hard,’ and wondered why, if they acknowledge that today is hard for some people, do they post about it at all?”  Additionally, in a world that marks the same idea on different days on the calendar, social media means you’re living it again and again and again.

My Path to Mommyhood writes about telling people that she’s not adopting.  She’s doing it slowly, and she’s doing it with a lot of justification, feeling like she needs to explain their decision to stop their family building plans.  In trying to protect her heart, she’s causing herself more stress.  The fact is, she shouldn’t have to protect her heart.  Her heart is already raw; it’s up to the rest of the world to just lean in and hug.

The Road Less Travelled is my Canadian twin.  She has a post about splurging for better seats on an airplane, and I nodded through the whole post.  It pains me to needlessly spend money, and I’m fairly bitter about air travel, but I agree wholeheartedly: “We didn’t get the child we wanted so much — but we CAN have some of those little luxuries that make life more fun and pleasant. So why not?  Life is short… pay for the preferred seat!”  Good advice.

Lastly, Non Sequitur Chica has a post about diversity that was a perfect parenting moment of kids not following the script.  I will probably spend the rest of the day humming, “Hi ho the deerio we all have different skin” to myself.  It’s hard work and it’s important work, but talking about big ideas doesn’t always go as smoothly as you hope.

The roundup to the Roundup: Give me a nap with nuttin’.  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 June 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.

Linus has learned a fun little trick.  Sometimes I need to use the phone’s speaker when I’m on a call so my hands can be free to take notes.  Several times I’ve given him an extra treat before these calls so he’ll be quiet in the background.

He has now learned to wheek whenever he sees my hand reach for the phone.  He stands at attention, watching my hand, and the moment my fingers close around the plastic, he happily wheeks as he runs back and forth.  “It’s time!” he cries as he kicks into the air, popcorning across the cage.  “She must talk over speaker phone!  She is my hostage!  I am going to keep doing this until she reinforces this terrible behaviour by giving me another treat to get me to be quiet.  I am so smaaaaaaart!”

But this is where you’re wrong, friend.  The twins are now home for summer and can take you out of the room when I need to make a call.  I hope you enjoyed that extra lettuce because the treat train is pulling into the station.  Or out of the station.  Whichever phrase makes more sense in cutting off my guinea pig from his piggish ways.

*******

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:

• “Giving Up” (The OCD Infertile)
• “Chapter Twenty-Three: Musings on Motherhood” (My Journey Creating Life)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Different Shores has a post about bringing children to the workplace (and the comment section is hopping — dive in there!).  I’m in the camp where it makes sense if you’re visiting an individual at the workplace and bring along the kids, but not for the sole reason of introducing your co-workers to the kids.  I gave the example of visiting Josh at work.  I brought the kids to his workplace to have lunch with him.  Other people swung into his office to see the kids, but the reason to bring them to the office wasn’t to have his co-workers meet them.  If the intent was introducing the kids, we did that outside the office.  If the people weren’t close enough to see outside of work hours, then they probably didn’t need to meet the kids.  Feel free to disagree with me — I want to hear the other side of this.

I love Anabegins post on feeling like something has changed and that she has become more herself.  I have felt this sensation before, too, and she describes it perfectly.  She begins, “Lately I feel like I’m a different, but vaguely familiar, person to who I have been for the past decade or so. I think I’m rediscovering the real me, buried under years of working too hard, sleeping too little, being too anxious and sad and exhausted, to really have much of any personality at all.”  Go read the whole thing.

Lastly, I love reflective blogoversary posts, and Kmina doesn’t disappoint with her musings at eight years.  It is about writing for eight years (and reading blogs for eight years) but it’s also about living eight years since the start of the blog.  She writes, “I am also kinder than I used to be and I hope I can hang on to this. I hope life allows me to remain kinder than I was before. This is not really a matter of choice, life can drive you to places you had no idea you could end up into, so I can only hope for the best and cross the bridge of worst if I get to it.”  A good reminder.  Here’s to eight more.

The roundup to the Roundup: Undoing Linus’s bad habits.  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 June 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.

The Roundup is back.

There seems to be a lot of podcasts recently about infertility or loss.  I don’t know if going to listen to them.  While I love hearing other people’s personal stories, I don’t love reading or listening to a reporter talk about something they’ve never experienced.  To that end, one of them seems one-sided based on the description, and I don’t like my thoughts pre-chewed for me.  I prefer my reporting to be simply reporting, with conclusions drawn and not handed to the listener.  The other is probably well done.

In case you are interested in listening, the first is Reveal, which has an episode about IVF.  The second (which I’m more inclined to lend my ears) is IVFML, which is a miniseries on infertility, told by people who have experienced infertility.

Let me know how they are if you listen.

*******

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:

• “Adoption, Sex, and the Pursuit of Love: Why Adoptive Parents Need to Talk to Their Kids About Sex” (Diary of a Not-So-Angry Asian Adoptee)
• “Running the Race with One Leg” (Anne Heffron)

Okay, now my choices this week.

My Path to Mommyhood talks about the final moments of her family building journey, giving away the things they had amassed in preparation for a baby.  It’s a bittersweet post, but that’s what makes it an important read.  It’s about the parts of infertility no one thinks about when they scroll past a story about IVF in the newspaper or suggest that people should “just adopt.”  (Y’all know how I feel about that phrase.)  She writes, “It was overwhelming. The giant pile of things, of hope, of all the love and support, everything we had for a baby so very wanted and so very hoped for … gone.”  Abiding with her through this step, and I promise if you read it that it has a peaceful ending.

On the lesser discussed aspects of infertility front, ANDMom has a post about how infertility is still haunting her, even though she’s finished building her family.  It is a constant reminder of her own journey as people around her get pregnant naturally.  It never ends.

Lastly, Our Misconception has a post written from two points of view — husband and wife — about IVF during their surrogacy journey.  It’s funny and eye-opening (well, at least for the general public) and difficult, and it captures that world of hope and hurt well.

The roundup to the Roundup: Podcasts about infertility.  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 June 2nd and 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.

Linus loves biting in the same way that I love to sleep in on Saturdays.  A guilty pleasure.  He waits until he has your undivided attention, and then he slowly chomps down on your shirt and yanks his head back in slow motion while he watches you.  When we say, “No!” he drops his mouthful of shirt and looks at us in confusion.  How could we not like that?

He loves to reward me for giving him a back massage by biting my hand, and then follows that up by happily wheeking and jumping about in joy.  He bites the bars of his cage as if he’s attempting a prison break.

The only thing he hates?  Biting things that are meant to be bitten.

I got him a colourful chew toy, but he gives it wide berth.  I bought him chew sticks that I was promised guinea pigs love.  He does not.  And an empty toilet paper roll?  Forget it.  That thing is terrifying.  He makes special care to never walk near it lest the inanimate rubbish attacks him.

He’s lucky he’s super cute.

*******

I am working on a research project for Reward Volunteers about the intersection of volunteerism and social media.  If you have 3 minutes after reading the Roundup, commenting on all the great posts, and telling me your second helpings, then can you fill out this survey and tell me why you volunteer?  You’ll be entered to win a $200 gift card if you do.  If you’ve already filled it out, thank you!

*******

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.

Not an infertility post but definitely a feel-good post.  Pics and Posts writes about a special teacher as she retires as well as a very cool project she did with her students about freedom quilts and the Underground Railroad.  I love this post because she captures something I have always felt about the special place a former teacher holds in our family: “I love her not only because she is awesome but because she just loves my son, and even today–three years after he finished second grade–she is a friend of his heart.”

With Every Heartbeat recounts a difficult conversation with a clueless couple 9 months after losing her daughter.  As I said in her comment section, we teach kids how to say they are sorry or thank you, but how many people teach their child how to interact with someone in mourning?  How to ask a question and be a good listener?  Offer comfort?  These are the lessons we should be imparting to the next generation because you get clueless, thoughtless adults when you don’t.

Lastly, Bent Not Broken muses on her experience on Mother’s Day.  “But despite all of the love and support from friends there was an intense feeling of being different, especially when it came to my family.  I was caught in the middle of a group chat with my mom and my sisters. Messages were flying back and forth. Plans for the day.  Pictures.  Descriptions of gifts. Not one big hurt, but 100 little hurts.  And not one inquiry about me or how I was doing.”  It’s that death by a thousand paper cuts that makes living with infertility and loss so painful.  Sending a hug.

The roundup to the Roundup: Cutest little biter in the world.  Take the survey.  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 May 19th and 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.