This is what happens when it rains: my tooth starts hurting necessitating a drive to the dentist in a downpour. Which means I get stuck in a terrible line of traffic because there has been a fender bender. Which means I try to take a short cut discovering if I had just waited, I could have been through the traffic in two minutes except I couldn’t see around the SUVs. Which means I drive an additional ten minutes out of my way. Which means that a traffic camera goes off and I will be getting a ticket. Which means I arrive at the office with the pain miraculously gone. Which means the pain comes back as the dentist starts fucking with things but finds nothing wrong. Which means I leave the office in more pain that I was in when I entered with the entire day gone and nothing accomplished.

And how was your day?

And incidentally, was it in any way connected to the grey dreariness that accompanies rain?

Barren Advice coming later tonight.

children mentioned…

I thought this post up on Lindsay’s blog was really interesting especially in light of a new storyline that has been happening in the doll world at our house. We had a fairly traumatic trip to the pediatrician a few weeks ago that culminated in the ChickieNob screaming and me sitting on the floor sobbing afterwards with her. The pediatrician called two times after the visit to check in on her mental well-being and I told the doctor that the ChickieNob wanted to talk about the visit non-stop. The doctor encouraged me to let her talk about it because it was healthy.

After a few days, that topic of questioning was replaced with new and more interesting sets of questions including, “why do people have to wear clothes?” and “what do bears do all day?”

A few days ago, the ChickieNob started insisting that she needed me to play doctor’s office with her. It couldn’t be Daddy–it had to be me. The visit began much like our usual doctor’s office game which is really just a reenactment of an old Max and Ruby episode. Then suddenly, the ChickieNob strayed from our usual storyline and started talking about her own traumatic visit to the doctor and making me act it out with her–sometimes following the story to its actual end and sometimes veering off into a happier tale.

I am always the doctor and the ChickieNob is the Mommy and Minnie Mouse is the baby. The ChickieNob does a much better at mothering than I did at that doctor’s visit, but to be fair, I had to act in the moment with an actual crisis at hand and the ChickieNob has the benefit of three weeks of deep thought on the matter.

I’m not sure if this game is for her to make sense of what happened or to show me what she wished I had done or to make me feel guilty as all get-out. And if there will ever be a release–is this the figurative draft form of a post and she’ll soon hit publish and release it away from herself?

I asked a while back if people felt the thought was complete or the peace gained if they didn’t hit publish. We also often discuss the unhealthy side to blogging–how another person’s situation can escalate our own fears, how we can become more upset than we would have if we were merely living our own life vs. living our life while reading so many others. Yet here is this article that states the enormously positive aspect to blogging–the release of those words, the feedback gained, the cheap therapy.

I definitely use blogging as such–the cheap therapy and the more vocal therapy. So much of therapy is just sitting there and talking it out but blogging is really a conversation with the main idea placed out by the writer and all of the responses provided by the reader. Why do you blog–to record the story, to get the words out of your heart? And do you feel emotionally healthier right now than you did before you started blogging or do you feel that blogging can be detrimental to your emotional health overall?

Found poetry is a literary term for “rearrangement of words, phrases and sometimes whole passages that are taken from other sources and reframed as poetry by changes in spacing and/or lines (and consequently meaning), or by altering the text by additions and/or deletions. The resulting poem can be defined as “treated” (changed in a profound and systematic manner) or “untreated” (conserving virtually the same order, syntax and meaning as in the original).”

In other words, taking the mundane and making it art. Finding bits of beauty in the commonplace. Turning a palm pilot manual into a work of poetry.

It is also the name of a series of posts that I’ll put up from time to time when I find interesting things related to infertility, adoption, donor gametes, child-free, and loss. Sometimes others have passed along the information, others I found on my own. Whenever I have a critical mass, I’ll post them. By interesting I mean that it’s just to put it out there and pass along information. It’s up to you to form your own opinions and do your own research.

Who am I kidding? I just wanted a more formal space to discuss the Brothers & Sisters IVF-and-now-suddenly-adoption storyline…

And I am totally grooving on Show and Tell. I love that we’re going to do this every week. So look around the house or your town this week and think about something you want to show the class…

Books

Perspectives Press, which is solely a publisher of infertility and adoption books, put out a new version of their popular book, Adopting after Infertility. The new book is called Adopting: Sound Choices, Strong Families. It is a long book–509 pages including resources–and definitely worth the read if you’re considering adoption or already well-ensconced in the process.

The book talks about the logistics of adoption, but it also addresses the emotional side of the process–from thinking about whether adoption is the right path for you to years down the road after you’ve built your family. I like that the author, Patricia Johnston, comes from a space of understanding that adoption isn’t right for every person and helps you to work through your emotions to know if it is right for you. I think once you begin from a space of openness like that all that follows is equally helpful and respectful.

This book is perfect if you’re seeking answers and if you’re open-minded to hearing about different ideas in adoption. Personally, I am seeking answers and am open to gleaning advice anywhere I can take it, therefore, I thought this book was extremely helpful. I’d recommend it to anyone starting the process or anyone who is emotionally bumping into walls in the process. It is a strong, solid book–well-written and very thorough. You may not agree with every bit of advice, but for me, the mark of a good book is one where I walk away having underlined a few things. And my handwriting dots the margins throughout the whole book.

Websites

Last year, during a Peggy Orenstein reading, I met a woman while I was waiting to get my book signed. She contacted me recently and told me about a project she is doing through work which spoke so enormously to one aspect of the IF blogosphere–the idea of being an e-patient. The tagline of the site is “because health professionals can’t do it alone” and that is sort of a huge reason for blogs–we share information, pass along what we’re doing or how we were diagnosed, weigh in with our own opinions on someone’s question. It becomes one more aspect of treatment and it enables a person to feel more in control of the process.

Part of our email conversation is up on the website but I think one of the most interesting questions she posed was “The term ‘e-patient’ describes individuals who are equipped, enabled, empowered and engaged in their health and health care decisions. And naturally the e also stands for electronic. Would you identify as an e-patient?”

How would you answer?

This is my 800th post so it seems fitting to kick off something with this. Show and Tell was getting smothered in the Roundup and it wasn’t easy to click down the comments and find who was doing it. And I’ve loved the posts that have already gone up. So, since the Roundup is already too long for words, I am officially moving Show and Tell to Sunday. Put up your post at any point in the weekend and link to it in the comments section on Sunday when I put up the new post so everyone can find each other. If you’ve had writer’s block, here is the perfect antidote–you can have a built-in post every single week. And we can sometimes declare a theme and announce it in the Roundup so people can prepare in time. So…Sundays. Show and Tell Sundays. Posted this week a day early since I had already posted about it in the Roundup yesterday and things were getting too confusing.

To repeat:

Do you remember Show and Tell from elementary school? You agonized each week what to bring to show the class and then ended up grabbing a random He-Man character as you were running for the school bus (“um…this is She-Ra. And she’s a friend or something of He-Man. And she comes with this little plastic snake.”).

If you didn’t have Show and Tell at your school, it was pretty simple: you brought in an object and got up in front of the class and spoke about it for a minute. Then, if you had a nice teacher as I had, the teacher encouraged you to let it be passed around the classroom. Everyone examined your object and then it made its way back to you. And you were the kindergarten equivalent to the Rock-Star-Bat-Mitzvah girl that day.

I’m kicking it old school and reinstating weekly Show and Tell starting…now.

Here’s how it works.

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.

Extra points if you take us down memory lane, teach us something new, or make me cry. 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 will post a new Show and Tell post every Sunday. You can make your Show and Tell post a separate post or include it as a small section of a larger post. Oh, and then the point is that you click through all of your classmates and see what they are showing this week.

So, classmates, let’s begin.

Since books are a huge part of my life, I thought I would begin by showing you my favourite book of all time: The Phantom Tollbooth.

The first time I read it, I was in first grade and I brought the school library’s copy to class as a Show and Tell object. I loved this book so much that I always refused to read the last page because I thought that if I didn’t read it, the book didn’t end. I am terrible with endings.

I think I loved it so much not because I wanted to be like Milo, risking life and limb to save the princesses (okay, so not really life and limb, but the Terrible Trivium was pretty damn scary), but I loved the idea of a world where a random gift could pop up one day in your bedroom. I used to wrap gifts for myself in the morning and will myself to forget about them so I could be surprised in the afternoon. It didn’t really work.

This is the book that made me want to be a writer.

What are you showing today?

1. Spuddy Buddy
2. Kir’s Corner
3. Busted Babymaker
4. Serenity Now!
5. Waiting for My Turn
6. Life From Here
7. The Sweet Life
8. Imagine Alyzabeth An
9. Life After Infertility and Loss
10. Bloorb This!
11. There’s Hope
12. The Therapist is In
13. Living with the Cards I was Dealt
14. Quiet Sanctuary
15. Weebles Wobblog
16. Fumbling Towards Eggstacy
17. Infertility on the Brain
18. Baby, Borneo, or Bust
19. Surrendering
20. The Only Constant is Change
21. In Search of Biscuit 2.0
22. Dreams Come True…Sometimes

I’m Missy No Mates today.

I wrote about this on Jendeis’s blog but thought it was worth printing here too. I have no problem with posts that vent about a situation or even a group. My problem is with posts that are written about a single person, usually linked to their blog or easily searchable, that are the written version of speaking loudly about someone when you’re in the same room. Your intention may not be for them to overhear you, but it’s such a strong possibility that your words will reach them. I used the one I found about myself as an example because frankly, it bothered me. No one wants to read that others find them annoying. But the examples I was speaking about were much larger than calling someone annoying.

In my mind, there is a huge difference between venting your spleen at a group of people (“IFers with children annoy me”) and a single person (“Melissa annoys me with her damn kumbaya-ness”). In one, the anger is directed at the situation and in the other, it is directed at a single person.

The only danger in some of the generalized “I hate it when…” posts is that sometimes people get what they ask for. I read once in the comment section of a blog that a certain blogger didn’t like it when those who had children commented on her blog. I made a mental note of this and haven’t commented on her blog again. I then received an email where she asked me if I had stopped reading–she was confused why I had stopped commenting. I told her what I had read and she responded, “oh, but I wasn’t talking about you. I like it when you comment.” But I belong to that “with children” group. So…it’s a mixed message. And that’s sort of the problem with blanket statements.

A massive, public thank you to those who embraced my kumbaya-ness and sang along with me today: Bleu, Tracy, Jendeis, and Kir. It means more than you know and certainly more than I can put into words.