Category — Friday Blog Roundup

Last year, I admonished Stephanie for running into a store for tampons and bypassing the Michael Jackson frog statues.  Who the hell leaves behind a Michael Jackson frog, especially one grabbing his crotch?  Fine, fine, fine, the ceramic cow skull I understand (those hollow eyes are sort of creepy), but Michael?

Fast forward to this week when Josh picks up the mail and texts that there is a package for me.

Guess who has come to live in my house?

Great statue or greatest statue?  Ever.

Thank you, Stephanie.  This made my year.

*******

We went to see Jackie this week.  Normally I hate going to the movie theater because I can’t relax with a bunch of strangers around me AND I had already endured the movie theater recently to see Rogue One,  but I wanted to see Jackie that badly.

It didn’t disappoint.  There were chunks of the movie where I forgot that I was watching Natalie Portman.  It was so beautiful.  It’s one of my top favourite movies of all time, and I already know that I’m going to buy it the moment it comes out on DVD in March.

*******

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:

• “Holiday Grief Sneak Attack” (My Path to Mommyhood)
• “MicroblogMondays: Trigger” (In Quest of a Binky Moongee)

Okay, now my choices this week.

The Empress and the Fool has a post about the media’s coverage of infertility as well as the stories out of Hollywood of women easily popping out babies in their forties without a care in the world.  Okay, so I loved this post for the term “cryo-stash,” but she makes a really important point about the stories we put out into the world and how they affect people beyond ourselves.  And, moreover, “I’m not sure how much of my private life I’m morally obligated to divulge in the interest of the public good.”

My Path to Mommyhood has a bittersweet story about a misunderstanding stemming from the fact that she was holding a colleague’s baby.  She writes, “I found their flash of belief in this magical baby delivery endearing though, and their amazement and brief moment of OH MY G-D IT FINALLY HAPPENED! to be just incredibly heartwarming.”  It’s really a post about everyone who is waiting with you when you’re waiting to build your family; even the people you don’t really think about who are silently cheering you on.

Lastly, Bent Not Broken has a beautiful post about aunthood.  We call that “the honey and the sting” in Hebrew — the thing that brings you so much happiness that also makes you ache at the same time.  Or, as she perfect states: “Definitely a weird gray space of where I held happiness and longing at the same time.”  Go read the whole post.

The roundup to the Roundup: Thank you for the greatest frog statue ever!  Go see Jackie.  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 December 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.

In the vein of last minute Christmas ideas — an activity and a stocking stuffer.  Actually, those would be two last minute Christmas ideas because the activity is not the stocking stuffer.

Anyway.

We participated this year in a really fun idea called Cookies for Cops.  It’s a program through MADD where local families bake cookies for police departments around the area.  I have a fantastic friend who arranged for all of us to drop off our cookies at her house, and she delivered them for us.  If you Google “MADD Cookies for Cops,” you can see if they’re holding a program in your area.  And if not, start one because you get the fun of baking and then other people get the fun of eating.

Speaking of baking, my silicone spatula broke while making muffins.  This is the second time the clear handle has snapped in half, so when I went to Bed, Bath, and Beyond, I decided to get a different brand.  I ended up with a blue Core Kitchen spatula, and I love this thing so much that it makes my heart hurt.  For some reason, it’s not on the store’s website, but I did find it on this one.  There are huge display cases of them in-store by the baking aisle.  It’s really heavy and sturdy.  Even my muffin batter can’t break it.  I think.

*******

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:

• “Beginnings, Endings, and Messy Stuff in the Middle” (Torthúil)

Okay, now my choices this week.

IF Pomegranate has two posts: one about waiting and then the followup after the phone call musing on a future conversation with her sister about egg donation.  It’s all the considerations that the average person doesn’t think about such as the risk to the egg donor and genetic links.  I empathized with the first post, and I was glad she received the phone call with the second.

The Road Less Travelled has a post about the Syrian refugee family that has moved in across the street from her parents’ house, watching them as they experience snow (perhaps for the first time).  In a week when Monday was filled with bad news from the Electoral College vote, it was sweet to encounter this story of a Canadian Christmas scene.

Anabegins returns with an update.  I love the magic of the RSS feed reader that always lets you know when someone has popped back up.  She ends the post with a sentiment that I feel, too: “I wish I could feel hopeful that next year will be better — and the threshold is set pretty damn low here — but it seems like the world is falling apart around us, spiraling downward faster than I can blink.”  Holding strong with you for 1461 days.

Lastly, Bent Not Broken has a post about celebrating Christmas and finding triggers where she didn’t expect them; namely, a baby that shows up at the party.  She writes, “It seemed like most of the day there were two themes of conversation: breastfeeding and our president elect.  I did not wish to engage in either of these conversations so I found the bathroom to be a welcome escape.”  Something I suspect many people will deal with this holiday season, so I echo her sentiments at the end: wishing you “a happy, or at least not terrible, holiday season.”

The roundup to the Roundup: Cookies for Cops and excellent spatulas.  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 December 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.

Truman went back to the vet this week.  I thought his eye looked a little strange when I gave him breakfast, but it was still dark in the room and I was barely awake, so I chalked it up to weird lighting and moved on.  Later in the day, there was a cricket in the house, and I think you are all aware of the loud screams that I emit when I see a cricket.  Afterwards, I went to (1) calm Truman and (2) calm myself by getting love from Truman when I saw that his eye was red.

Like weirdly red.

I waited about a half hour and then called the vet because as I waited, it looked like Truman’s eye was turning inside out.  I would post a picture, but it may make you throw up in your mouth.  They told me to bring him in, so we drove over while I sang Truman’s favourite song — “Strike the Bell” — over and over again.

She checked that it wasn’t a brain tumour and then determined that there was an injury to his eyeball.  About three days earlier, I had opened a new bag of hay, and Truman had been happily rubbing his face in it while chirping on about how good it tastes by wheeking non-stop.  In fact, I had moved him several times when he tried to sleep with his face in the hay bowl, something that confused him because was I aware that this bag of hay was particularly delicious?  It seems that Truman has poked himself in the eye with said hay.  Good going, sport.

We’re only a few days into the eyedrops, but his eye has mostly gone back to normal.  It’s still clouded over, but at least it doesn’t look like it’s turned inside out.  The injury is still there, which freaks me out because the next step would be taking him to a guinea pig ophthalmologist.

Has he learned not to rub his face in the hay bowl?  No.  He was doing it again within 24 hours of returning from the vet.  Because the hay is that freakin’ good.

*******

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:

• “It’s Not Just a Brick” (The Empty Cookie)
• “Dinner Parties” (Ms. Infertile)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Notes from the Ninth Circle has a post contemplating her worth.  She bleakly wonders, “I wonder sometimes if the reason why God won’t give us another baby is because I’m not worth enough because I don’t do enough, don’t do well enough, at taking care of the family that I do have and the child that He did give me already.”  Even when your brain rationally knows your worth, it’s hard to convince the heart to shut its mouth.  Thank you for writing this.

Birds, Bees, and Medicine is taking care of herself, and that means calling a therapist to check herself for depression.  It’s an important read; moreso because she is a therapist herself, and she points out the importance of having an outsider judge your mental state vs. relying on yourself.  Good advice for non-therapists to take to heart.  You wouldn’t self-diagnose cancer, right?  You would go to a doctor if you felt something abnormal and allow them to judge the facts.  The same goes for our brains.

The Empress and the Fool has a post about people who give her know-it-all advice on the babies she is gestating.  The reality is just as nothing can prepare you for some life events, no one can know how your parenting experience is going to go.  I love this: “I am under no delusions about the rigors of raising children, while I am simultaneously humbled by the recognition that this is something I will not concretely understand until I am inside the experience, but treatment and miscarriage are also exhausting, except they are of the soul-sucking sort and entirely bereft of the joys that make parenting gratifying.”

Lastly, POF and Now What? has a post about family myths, those stories we tell ourselves about how our life should look.  She counters the list with all the myths she has removed from her definition of self, and all the things she actually is accomplishing.  It’s a really important post, and I hope everyone pauses to make their own three lists.

The roundup to the Roundup: Truman’s eye injury.  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 December 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.

I cut Truman’s nails for the first time this week.  Prior to this point, I brought him back to the place where we got him, and the woman there cut his nails for $10.  But she retired at the end of the summer, and while our vet is happy to trim his nails if he happens to already be there for an appointment, it feels a little weird to drive out there strictly for a mani-pedi.

It was time to put on my big girl panties and take care of my pig’s nails.

I was given the advice to trim just a little off the tip, spreading out the task over several days.  This is great advice in theory, though I’m not sure Truman’s heart (or mine) could take several sessions of clipping in a single week.  The poor boy immediately panicked when I held his paw, and he let out the saddest, most terrified shrieks as I cut.  It took a good half hour of stroking his back interspersed with picking up his paw and attempting to cut again to finish his hands.

I nicked him on the last nail.  I knew it had happened because he immediately started thrashing and squeaking.  When I pulled his hand away, his blood was smeared against my skin.  I felt awful.  He felt awful.  He still is looking at me strangely, as if to say, “I thought we were friends.”  I am so sorry, Truman.

Especially because I’m going to have to that again soon.

*******

The twins’ book, Hello Scratch! is on sale (1/2 off!) until December 15th from the Manning website.  They write: “Just enter mlbelllt in the Promotional Code box when you check out. Expires Thursday, December 15. Only at manning.com.”  You know, if you were looking for a totally awesome Christmas gift for an elementary or middle school aged kid…  Just sayin’…

*******

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:

• “For December: Staying Afloat” (Different Shores)

Okay, now my choices this week.

I also picked a Different Shores post, though a different one.  I loved her post about Jennifer Aniston.  Admittedly, I never paid much attention to her while she was on Friends.  I liked her on the show, but… you know… I’m too busy mooning over Doctor Who.  But in recent years, especially since she always sticks to the same message, driving it home every chance she gets — women are more than their uteruses — I have been impressed by her efforts and cheering her on.  Thank you, Jennifer Aniston, for using your platform to spread such an important message, and thank you, Different Shores, for highlighting it.

Ms. Infertile has a post about questions at dinner parties.  I love the power in this ending: “I speak about many ways this path is resolved and how the childless resolution is one that sadly gets too little focus: infertility might have tried to make me childless, but it didn’t made me childfree, I chose that. There is power in that choice.”  It’s a gorgeous piece that will make you think twice before asking questions at the next dinner party.  For us, it’s infertility.  For someone else, who knows what they dread as they go into social situations.

Lastly, Who Shot Down My Stork? has a post that made me laugh so hard that I cried.  It’s about her child, who is currently going through the stage where she places everything in her mouth (and makes sure you’re watching before she does it so you know).  I tried to read this to Josh but gave up at this: “She learned to push them back, exposing the tasty underbelly of the crib, and proceeded to gnaw her way into blissful oblivion.”  I was still laughing hours later.

The roundup to the Roundup: Poor Truman gets his nails clipped… by me.  The twins’ book is on sale.  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 December 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.

While hate crimes are still rocking our area — swastikas drawn on schools, churches, and cars seems to be a daily occurrence — a visual protest is countering the racism, antisemitism, and homophobia.  Mike Pence’s new neighbours are hanging rainbow flags outside their houses.

I love this because it not only shows the spirit of that neighbourhood — which is an expensive but cozy section of the city — but without yelling a single word, it makes a loud statement.  It’s a date-night sort of section to the city, but I want to drive down there with the kids in the next few days so they can see it.  A coward anonymously draws a symbol of hate and runs back to hide.  A brave person hangs a flag of inclusion outside their permanent home and stares hate in the eye.

*******

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:

• “When Your Loved Ones Just Don’t ‘Get It’” (Dear Sugar Radio)
• “How to Get From Thanksgiving to New Years When You’re Not in the Mood” (Stirrup Queens) — thank you, Jess!
• “The Beasts Who Fought for Fairyland Until the Very End and Further Still” (Catherynne M. Valente)

Okay, now my choices this week.

A+ Effort has a post about the new Texas law that requires fetal tissue to be buried or cremated.  She addresses it from the perspective of someone who had to carry her gestational remains.  She writes: “I rode in the elevator with a happy couple holding their new baby in a carseat while I held mine in a baggie. I will never get over that.”  This new law covers any miscarriages that occur in a medical facility (vs. at home).  And yes, this new law — like the one in Indiana — should concern everyone who cares about reproductive choices and the ability to treat infertility.

Notes from the Ninth Circle has a post about her current cycle and the hard decisions infertile women already face.  The Femara works too well, and she discovers she has four follicles.  She doesn’t know if she should proceed with the cycle or not, and she admits: “I wish G-d gave clear yes/no answers.”  Sending her good thoughts and peace of heart.

Lastly, Res Cogitatae has a gorgeous post about what the mirror both shows and hides.  It is a very realistic description of motherhood — the highs and the lows — and it should be required reading for every teenager; probably more helpful than those exercises where they need to carry a bag of flour around for a week, pretending to “parent” a baby.  Life also plays a role in parenthood.  I cried and nodded reading it.  Thank you for writing this.

The roundup to the Roundup: A rainbow-coloured protest.  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 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.