For several years, I haven’t cared what my hair looks like. I usually wear it twisted back so people don’t realize that it actually goes all the way down my back, almost to my waist. And it’s just sort of…there. And I didn’t care about it until a few weeks ago when suddenly, I CARED. I cared very much and I wanted it cut and styled NOW. I wanted to have cute pigtails again and wear it down without looking like I am carting around a nest for crickets. As you read this, Nasali is chopping off my ponytail (I hopefully have ten inches for Locks of Love) and I will reveal this weekend my cute new hairstyle.

For 2 1/2 years, I didn’t really care what my blog looked like. It’s sort of like our house. I like it neat and clean, but I don’t need it decorated. Our furniture doesn’t exactly match. And by “exactly” I mean not at all. The best we have going is an overall theme of the same fake wood colour from Ikea (it’s birch! Except it’s not!). But suddenly, driving back from Shenandoah, I CARED. I cared so much that I wanted to tear down the whole blog until I could figure out how to make a header and clean everything up. Luckily, I didn’t because I seem to be frightfully bad with understanding how to make a header.

We’re still working on the header and when it is finished, it will have a row of quick links running across it. Calliope made it for me, allowing me to be the biggest pain in the ass in the world and write back 3000 times, “but can we change this?” I love what she made. But the part I love the most is the picture on the left-hand side of the header. It comes from Vee.

Now I’m going to get all weepy.

That picture is how I imagine the Land of If–the world of infertility. There is a quiet honesty that comes out at night. It is a time when people are still and reflective. When people pause from movement to listen. I love the thin houses, the mountains in the background. Doesn’t the space look insurmountable, but cozy? A space unto itself, but part of something larger? I have loved that picture for so long and I was so grateful when she told me I could use it.

So…ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-changes over here: the sidebars are pretty much the same. The header and template is obviously different and I’ll soon have the quick links under the header so you can quickly access…stuff. But I had already moved around stuff recently on the sidebar, bringing the search engine and blogroll up to the top right side, so I don’t think I’ll fool with that stuff too much more.

The bigger changes are happening over at Lost and Found. The Face-to-Face post information moved to the left sidebar. The front page now only shows the daily post. And that sidebar blogroll…gone (gasp!). The blogroll post is now updated daily and is the only way to access the blogroll. The problem was that the blogroll program was sometimes down and the blog loads left to right. Therefore, if the left sidebar wasn’t loading, nothing could load. So I had to take it down. I’m really sorry that I had to get rid of that. I also couldn’t get the search engine to load onto that blogroll post so the only way to access that now is through the top right hand side of Stirrup Queens.

It feels so good to clean up things. And I hope you like the new colours and header and personality of the space. Oh, and I do plan on designing a header for Lost and Found too. Just give me time to recover from all of these changes.

children mentioned and photographed…

Right on the heels of the forgotten pants and salt is this week’s trip to the potato chip factory.

A few weeks ago, I had run into our local organic grocery store so I could spend $4 on hot dog buns instead of the usual 98 cents (when the economy takes a down turn, I like to plump it back up by wildly spending on barbecue accouterments), and ended up bringing home a bag of potato chips. As we crunched through dinner, I read the back of the bag.

“Hey, this factory is in Virginia and Virginia is the next state over. Which means it must be close. We should go see how potato chips are made.”

And by indelibly writing those words into the minds of persistent four-year-olds, a trip was born.

I have been accused in the past of not having a great sense of space and distance. For instance, I may see two rocks in the Potomac River and think they’re not very far apart and try to jump them and become stuck on a rock in the middle of the water and need to have a park ranger come and help me out. Hypothetically. Or I may plan a trip to Canada that has us driving for 29 hours during each 24 hour day. With sightseeing in Halifax crunched in there as well.

Did I say space and distance? I meant space, distance and time.

After I had already told the ChickieNob and Wolvog that we were going to the chip factory and it would be twenty kinds of fabulous and we would eat nothing but potato chips for five solid hours, I asked Josh if we could do this for Succot. He mapped it out and informed me that the chip factory was not a quick half hour jaunt as I had promised but instead was three hours away in the Shenandoah River Valley near Skyline Drive.

Luckily, our friends own a cabin out there and invited us to their sukkah. At eight in the morning, we piled into the car. By eight thirty, I was spinning tales of what we’d see at the factory–we’d be shuffling along with all the other people who had decided to weave a chip factory tour into their Succot celebration, led by a strapping twenty-something who casually leaned against the wall while we watched the chips fall gently onto the conveyor belt like autumnal leaves.

By nine I was asking everyone in the car if they could smell the oil as we approached.

By nine thirty, I was begging Josh to find a McDonalds so I could feed my coffee addiction.

By ten I was asking Josh if we could stop and pee.

By ten thirty, I was back to asking everyone about the oil.

By eleven, thanks to Google Maps, we were lost.

By eleven fifteen, we were driving the same 1.1 mile of farmland for the third time.

By eleven sixteen, Josh was trying to explain that there was no chance that the factory was located in one of the dilapidated farmhouses we were driving past. His knuckles were white as he gripped the steering wheel tightly, trying not to snap at the ChickieNob as she processed her recently developed existential crisis and asked for the fortieth time that car trip, “why do we all need to get old?”

By eleven twenty, I asked him to pull over so I could take a photograph of the farm road to show everyone where Google Maps told us to go.

By eleven twenty-one, I was back in the car screaming because when I opened the door, I was greeted by a swarm–a SWARM–of crickets. Literally, a sea of crickets. It’s as if instead of grass, a lawn has been entirely recreated out of little greenish-brown crickets. CRICKETS!

By eleven twenty-two, I am using that photographic memory that saw the chip factory’s phone number once in my life to perfectly recall it and dial.

By eleven twenty-three, I am patiently explaining to the woman on the other end of the line where I am and she is telling me that I am in the middle of fuck-nowhere and several miles from the factory. She tells us to come back to the main road, go through a covered bridge, and find them in an industrial warehouse lot. This makes, of course, a lot more sense than making hundreds of thousands of bags of potato chips in a farm kitchen.

By eleven twenty-four, we’re on our way and I am talking about the crickets. Non-stop. Just non-stop cricket talk about the swarm.

By eleven thirty, we are at the potato chip factory. The parking lot is empty save for a few employee vehicles. Our fellow imaginary Jews, the ones we thought would be also incorporating a chip factory vacation into their day were apparently celebrating Succot at home. Without sour cream and chive snacks.

We went inside where they humoured us. We stood at the window and watched the chips come through the machine where they were salted by people who were trying very hard not to feel self-conscious as two four-year-olds pressed their faces against the window. We got to see the chips fall into bags and get loaded into boxes. We tried some samples and purchased several varieties to make up for our embarrassment for being the only ones in the building, obviously misunderstanding that the invitation to see a chip fry is not the same as a bustling factory tour.

But they were damn good chips.

When we got back into the car, I asked Josh how many kinds of cranky he would have been with me if we had driven 3 1/2 hours just for the chip factory (our original plan) and were now on our way back to D.C.

And at eleven fifty (the twenty minute stop over also contained a ten minute bathroom break where the ChickieNob–recently potty trained–made me say 97 times, “do I hear rain?” before she’d actually pee), we were on the road to the cabin, our friend’s sukkah, with a bag full of chips and heart full of horror that so many crickets could exist in such a small patch of space.

Oh, and I also asked Josh if we could drive to Florida next week for Simchat Torah since, you know, it’s only a few hours from D.C.

The Temple Mount in Jerusalem is one of the holiest spaces in the city. The site is where the Temple once stood before it was destroyed. The largest accessible portion of the retaining wall that enclosed the Temple Mount is the Western Wall. That’s probably the space that immediately jumped to mind when I mentioned Jerusalem–that large stone wall where people go to pray. On the southern portion of the Temple Mount, you can see the Hulda Gates. They were the gates used at least three times a year by pilgrims flocking to the Temple during the three festivals: Pesach, Shavout, and the holiday that is happening today–Succot.

Every time a pilgrim came to the Temple, they would enter through the eastern gates and exit through the western ones.

Except when they were in mourning.

Those in mourning entered against the stream of bodies through the western gates and exited out the eastern side, giving everyone a very clear and visible reminder that they were in need of comfort. Most of the time, people did not know one another at the Temple. It was a pilgrimage site, therefore, visitors may have come from Jerusalem, but they may have come as far away as Egypt. And this was how everyone knew to speak to the stranger about their loss.

Today is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day. Some people are mourning today and no one in their workplace has the slightest idea that they’ve even suffered a loss. Some people are mourning today and are doing so in silence because everyone avoided them when the loss occurred and they don’t want to repeat that feeling of separation. Some people are mourning today and no one knows quite how to comfort them.

What we need is a space to walk in through the out door.

Unlike the loss of an adult–who has lived his or her own life, collected friends and family members, built memories–when a baby dies, he or she is often only mourned by the parents and a few close friends or family members. A baby who dies in utero is even more abstract to outside mourners.

Which is why it is even more important to create ritual that allows others into the mourning space. It is a way of honouring the loss as well as gathering comfort from community. The established ritual for this day is to light a candle at 7 p.m. in your own time zone, which creates a wave of light as each candle is lit. I encourage you to also find your own figurative out door to walk through today (or, if you’re feeling gutsy, find an actual exit to enter). To reach out to others in mourning as well as let people know that you are remembering someone (or more than one loss) who was very important to you.

Several thousand years ago, mourners were announcing their loss on this day at the Temple Mount. I hope they received the comfort they were seeking. I hope you do as well.

Listen, I’m just going to lay it out there. It seems like it’s a shitty time for everyone. I know I’m not the only person out there who has been engaging in unconscious teeth grinding because I’m reading it across the blogosphere. Is it the change in season? The wave of losses that are rocking our community? The general depression that seems to be sweeping across the world when one considers affairs of state?

I felt so much better after I went out last night. I met up with Sell Crazy Someplace Else, Barren is the New Black, and Antigone Lost. We drank coffee and ate cookies and coveted shoes and talked about crickets for so long that I cringed the entire walk up to my house. Afterwards, we met up with a bunch of other bloggers including Uppercase Woman. Hugging Cecily is like drawing from a well. Her daughter is so lucky to have her as a mother. Do you know what I mean? I just think about how hard it is to be a little girl these days and how Tori is going to get these amazing hugs from her mother. She is so grounding.

And then I was in the shower this morning (if you haven’t noticed from past posts, I do all of my thinking in the shower and car and absolutely no thinking at other times of day) and I was thinking about how I just want to join one of those group hugging parties but I don’t really want strangers to touch me and I don’t really want to leave my house which…you know…makes it difficult to attend a party.

What I wanted was a virtual cuddle party. One that did not involve a random man groping me under the guise that we were cuddling or make me hold hands with someone who was very very very sweaty. But what would this look like online? A bunch of random comments that read like phone sex?: “I’m touching your arm right now.”

That wouldn’t make me feel good.

But what if people just left one nice thought about you or your blog? As in “I really like you header” or “You have great hair!” or “that last post you wrote was fantastic.”

Wouldn’t that make you feel good?

So on my way to BlogHer DC where I am speaking on a panel about how we can use online resources to support one another, I am declaring this Random Reassurance Week.

Oh, come on now, I’m just saying what we’re all thinking. We all want a virtual hug. These last few weeks have sucked and we all just want someone putting their virtual arms around us and grounding us. Perhaps you’re embarrassed to admit it, but I’m not. You can only ensure that you get what you need by asking so…I’m asking.

This is sort of a delurking/kindness week in one. If you’ve never commented on the person’s blog before (or rarely do), delurk and let them know that they’re appreciated. After all, what sort of message does a person receive if you read and run? If you do comment regularly or semi-regularly on the person’s blog, tell them one nice thing such as why you keep coming back to read their blog, what you like best about them, or what colour crayon they would be if they were a crayon.

Don’t feel as if you need to squeeze all of your kindness into today. Spread it out over the week. And since this doesn’t truly have a start date or end date, feel free to declare your own week on your own blog. Call it Random Reassurance Week and I’ll know exactly what you need from me as I read the post.

Just when you thought I could not get any more touchy-feely, I pull this out of my ass…

But, then again, you knew about my kumbaya-ness.

Welcome back to Show and Tell. Everyone is welcome to join, even if you have never posted before and just found out about Show and Tell for the first time today. In fact, we hope you do go back to your blog and post your own Show and Tell item and then return with the link to your post. Details on how to participate are located at the bottom of this post.

Let’s begin.

Beyond the moment when I had to pee so badly that I made Josh pull over to a random hotel so I could go in and use the loo, we had a perfect day. My brother was in Baltimore for a conference so we drove down to the Inner Harbour, reliving our childhood by singing the Power Plant theme song, discussing the merits of Au Coton, visiting the the flag shop where I got the Albania keychain for my first car, and–of course–eating Oasis water ice which is not quite as good as I remember it to be.

But the best part was being out on the Chessie paddleboats in perfect 70 degree weather. No, actually the best part was Josh agreeing to do all the paddling and allowing me to sit my lazy ass in the back with the ChickieNob.

I love Baltimore.

Inner Harbour, Baltimore

The head of our Chessie boat (Chessie is the Chesapeake Bay’s equivalent to the Loch Ness Monster)

What are you showing today?

Want to bring something to Show and Tell?

• If you would like to join circle time and show something to the class, simply post each Sunday (or earlier in the weekend or on Monday if you can’t do Sunday), hopefully including a picture if possible, and telling us about your item. It can be anything–a photo from a trip, a picture of the dress you bought this week, a random image from an old yearbook showing a person you miss. It doesn’t need to contain a picture if you can’t get a picture–you can simply tell a story about a single item.
• Label your post “Show and Tell” each week and then come back here and add the permalink in the comments section below (make sure you don’t just comment that you participated: add a link to your blog in your comment so people can click over). I post a new Show and Tell post every Saturday night or Sunday. I usually move people up into the body of the post every few hours.
• Oh, and then the point is that you click through all of your classmates and see what they are showing this week.
• If you want it…
  I’ve now placed a Show and Tell archive on the sidebar that will be updated each week in case you miss it. And click here for the icon code if you wish to have it for your blog. It links to the archives.