Category — Uncategorized

A super stunning article in Tricycle about miscarriage. It begins: “Today I would be (am?) eight weeks pregnant. But I am waiting to miscarry. I am waiting to no longer be waiting. My body is still catching up to what my mind learned last Friday.”

Isn’t that the most perfect description of it: The body catching up to what the mind knows. Both with miscarriage and with a pregnancy-less cycle in general: We are always waiting for our body to catch up to what the mind knows. And existing in that space between is a space of disbelief and hope.

The worst of hope. The hope that isn’t really hope but we call it hope because we don’t have another word for it. Those times when you talk yourself into not believing something because… chance exists.

This is a beautiful essay. A must-read.

If you haven’t heard about it yet, Representative Ayanna Pressley and Senator Tammy Duckworth introduced a new bill: The Support Through Loss Act. If it passes it “would mandate at least three days of paid leave for people who experience pregnancy loss (in the legislation, this includes unsuccessful fertility treatments and failed adoption or surrogacy arrangements). Paid time off would also apply to partners of pregnant people.” It gives funding to NIH for pregnancy loss research and loss data collection.

Yes, we already have the The Family and Medical Leave Act, but that is dependent on the size of the company and the length of time you’ve worked there. This would (hopefully) cover everyone by expanding emotional protections and giving people space to grieve.

You can read the wording on the bill. It’s really a beautiful piece of humanity.

Modern Mrs. Darcy started a fun conversation on Instagram: What are your reading dealbreakers? As in, if the book contains X, you will stop reading it. She states her own dealbreaker and points out that there are also exceptions to her personal rule. Really good writing can help you through a dealbreaker topic.

Infertility as a plot point in my dealbreaker. I hate it when I start a mystery and there is an infertile woman because I know that she’s going to turn out to be portrayed as desperate due to her desire to have a child. Desperate enough to muuuuuuuurder. By the way, the infertile woman is ALWAYS the murderer. Or the victim. She’s never the sassy friend nextdoor who needs to nip out to give herself a Follistim injection but ultimately has nothing to do with the murder.

What are your reading dealbreakers?

Have you played the Terms and Conditions game? An evil corporation wants you to agree to the terms and conditions, and your job is to NOT agree to the terms and conditions.

It’s a way to teach the nefarious ways sites have of getting you to agree to things. And while some are clearly real tactics (confusing wording), others such as the spinning on/off buttons are just funny. I was surprised they didn’t have a questions with thousands of words in tiny print that you need to read carefully to know if you want to check yes or no.

I like to think of myself as pretty savvy, but the message at the end:

We attempted to access your data 29 times
and you were kind enough to give it to us 6 times.
That’s better than 51% of players
You took 247.88 seconds to complete the game
That’s faster than 53% of players

You can replay ones you got wrong (keep scrolling past your answers), and it certainly made me more cognizant of websites that ask you to accept all cookies.

Let me know how you did if you play.

I like the Olympics as much as the next person, but I didn’t expect to feel quite so emotional when the games began. I barely registered that they were delayed last summer—too much was happening in the news cycle, and it wasn’t as if they had been on and stopped. They just didn’t start. But lots of things just didn’t start.

But when the music began to swell as the opening ceremony began, and I realized the enormity—of people finally realizing their dream to how much we’ve lost along the way, I burst into tears, sobbing through the montage of athletes training and home videos of their families cheering them on.

It has been such a hard year and a half, and right now doesn’t feel any different (to me) from last summer. Even with the vaccine, it still feels precarious, and I’m filled with worry. The opening ceremonies were about the world coming together… sort of… even though we’ve proven through our behaviour over the pandemic that the world isn’t all on the same side, working together to defeat this virus. So here we are.

I pulled myself together after a few minutes of sobbing and made it to the end of the 4.5 hour ceremony. I didn’t expect to feel so moved, so angry, and so hopeful all at the same time.