Category — Uncategorized

I didn’t bother with my Friends Day video from Facebook, but I did like their post that told you how many degrees of separation you have between yourself and everyone else in the world. Apparently, it’s no longer 6, Mr. Guare.

3.57.

That’s how many degrees of separation we have between ourselves and everyone else in the world. It drops a little lower to 3.46 if both people live in the US. Mark Zuckerberg is separated only by 3.17 degrees, as am I. Isn’t that weird? I have the same web as Mark Zuckerberg? That doesn’t sound right. But there it is.

How far apart are you from the rest of the world?

A few months ago, I described a song like this: “It’s sung by a woman… and maybe I heard it in the car… and it sort of sounds like this, but not really like this…” AND YOU WERE ABLE TO TELL ME THE NAME OF THE SONG. Which is ten kinds of amazing, but let’s not talk about that. Let’s talk about the fact that I did this again this week, but this time I played the song via the tiny keyboard on my phone’s version of GarageBand. I gave you 17 whole seconds of the song played on something that sounded like a Casio keyboard… and it was crickets.

This is the thing: the song came into my head as I was driving to the school to pick up the kids. I was stressed out; really stressed out. I was looping through the neighbourhood because I got there a little early, my mind on other things, when I started humming this song. And I had no clue why I was humming it or what I was trying to tell myself by humming it. All I knew was that something about it made me want to burst into tears.

I was positive it was from a movie or a television show. At first I was leaning toward television show, but I kept getting flashes of New York in my head and felt like it came from a romantic comedy. Meg Ryan? No. Woody Allen? No… Maybe? No… Tom Hanks?

I finally started Googling things like, “Romantic Comedies Set in New York.” And there, on the list, one title popped out at me: Jeffrey. Like the play by Paul Rudnick. They made it into a movie in the 1990s.

Do you know how hard it is to find Jeffrey? My copy is buried in the back of the storage room, and it’s on a VHS tape. iTunes doesn’t have Jeffrey. Netflix doesn’t have it. Amazon doesn’t have it. But Hulu has it for free. And you can see it below:

Anyway, before you watch, I want to tell you that this is one of my top 5 favourite movies of all time. It has been a while since I’ve seen it because my only copy is on VHS tape, but before I was married and got the DVD machine, I watched this movie a lot. Like a lot. I watched it whenever I was stressed out and I needed a good cry. And I am happy to report that I can still recite it.

If you only look at the surface story, it feels a little dated. But it’s really a story about going forward even though you’re scared. It’s about the impermanence of relationships and how difficult it is to give your heart to another person — any other person — because… people die. People go away. Shit happens… life happens. And we lose those people that we’ve invested all of our emotions in, that we’ve let into our heart. But even knowing that: we need to do it anyway.

As someone who is constantly scared… well, this movie spoke to me.

So if you need a good cry (and a good laugh, but mostly a good cry), watch the movie above. Especially when Nathan Lane explains the meaning of life, and later Jeffrey pulls out the red balloon.

That part gets me every time.

Really, what better love story can I give you on Valentine’s Day?

Gather round, kids, because I have 5 audio book copies of Life from Scratch and Measure of Love to give away.  Which, if I’m doing the math correctly, is 10 audio books total.  But it probably makes sense to give them as a set.  I mean, getting book 2 without book 1… makes for confused listening.

So, if you would like a free copy of Life from Scratch and Measure of Love all you have to do is go leave a comment on someone else’s blog.  Then come back here and provide a link to their post.  Yes, commenting other places on the Internet can win you two free books.  This is about spreading the love.  It also counts if you use the list that forms in my comment section and go and add a comment to those posts, too.  Just let me know you’ve done so.

You can enter as many times as you wish between now and next Wednesday (the 17th).  I’ll close this drawing at 11 pm ET and announce the winners in the Roundup that Friday.  Each comment in another place (as long as you post the URL below on this post so I know you actually left a comment) counts.  This is a way to spread attention and give you plenty of good, comment-worthy posts to read.

Even if you don’t want to listen to two audio books, feel free to join in the comment fiesta, win the books, and give them as a gift to a friend.

And… go!

Back when we were in our first round of treatments, Josh came home from work one day with a book about breadmaking.  He gave it to me, along with a pizza stone, and hinted that maybe I needed a hobby; a distraction from obsessing about each cycle.  A friend of his suggested the book.  The couple had done fertility treatments and ultimately built their family through adoption.  They knew how stressful it could be.  They thought this might help.

I threw the book.

But days later, I opened the book and started working my way through the lessons because I hated the idea of wasting book and pizza stone money.

Here’s the thing: it didn’t help.  Nothing could distract me from what my mind wanted to focus on.  But we did end up with some delicious loaves of bread, and I still use the book to this day.

I don’t know if I believe in hobbies as distractions, but I do believe in hobbies as a way to feel control when you’re in situations outside of your control.  A stitch is a stitch.  If you pull the string in this movement, it will make a stitch.  That is within your control.  Transfer an embryo to your uterus and hope that it sticks?  That’s out of your control.

So that’s what I got out of it.  I liked having a place in life where I could follow the directions and the end result was pretty much what I expected to happen.

Katherine A left a comment on the leveling up post last week that reminded me of that time between bouts at the clinic: when the twins were here but we weren’t ready to add a sibling.  All of the energy I poured into building my family was still there — that level of energy doesn’t just dissipate once the moment is over.  But it had nowhere to go.  There was nothing to research, nothing to measure, nothing to chart, nothing to jot into a spreadsheet.  No daily appointments, no daily medications.  I didn’t have a single timer set.

On one hand, it was such a relief to be done for a bit.  On the other hand, I felt so lost without a goal to focus on.

Katherine A writes:

I needed a hobby other than trying to get pregnant. It sounded so strange to reduce so much stress, sadness, money, etc to that point, but my life had really become so focused on ‘leveling up’ in that particular pursuit that I’d mostly neglected all the other parts of life I usually would have been working on. It seemed odd to let go – even in a temporary, small way – of something I’d put so much effort into and just enjoy where I was.

Yes, that is exactly it.

I forgot until that comment that I ultimately purchased a culinary school textbook and worked my way through the lessons.  I knew how to cook, but I didn’t know how to cook.  So I cooked, with the twins strapped to my chest in a double carrier.  For months I worked on making up my own recipes — my crazy-ass chocolate chip cookies are courtesy of this time period — and I kept a blog about working my way through the textbook.

By the time the textbook was done (skipping over several chapters on things that made me feel squicky), I felt more settled.  I felt like I could find ways to make myself feel happy or occupied.  I felt full again, focused again, even though I was — for all intents and purposes — lacking a clear focus in comparison to family building.

I don’t think it’s important to start a hobby as a distraction.  I think it’s important to start a hobby as a way to feel in control.  To take small steps towards a goal where the steps mean something.  Where X leads to Y which leads to Z.  To remind yourself that not everything in life is a roller coaster like infertility.

What will you teach yourself this year?

Gimlet Media, who keeps knocking it out of the park in terms of lining up podcasts, just put another great podcast into the iTunes store for download: Surprisingly Awesome.  Each week, the hosts take something pretty commonplace — like adhesives — and tell you all sorts of cool and interesting facts about the topic.

I started with the broccoli episode, and I’m working my way backwards at the moment.  Broccoli.  Not something I’ve given much thought to.  I like to put it in my mouth and chew it up, but beyond that, I used to spend exactly zero minutes of my day thinking about broccoli.

But after that first episode?  I had to go to the grocery store, and I looked at the produce section in a totally different way.  Were you aware of how many vegetables are related to broccoli?  Meaning, they are the same plant but they present in different forms?  And did you know that when you’re eating the top of a head of broccoli, you are chomping on millions of tiny flower buds?  And that people taste broccoli in different ways depending upon their genetic makeup?

I did not know these things.

Best of all, the episodes, thus far, have been okay and interesting for kids which means that I can play it in the car in front of the twins, unlike Jesse vs. Cancer.  That’s pretty unusual on the podcast front.

Oh — and you totally know the hosts of the show even if you don’t think you know the hosts of the show.  Adam McKay is the former head writer at SNL and he made Anchorman and The Big Short.  Adam Davidson is the founder of Planet Money.

You’re welcome.  I knew you were looking for a new way to spend 45 minutes or so of your week.