Weekend Housekeeping
I posted two things and didn’t want them lost in the shuffle of posts so I’m linking to them here as well. They both have to do about adoption–and it’s sort of strange how these two separate things intersected on the same topic on the same day.
The next book tour is kicking off. We’re reading The Mistress’s Daughter by AM Homes and the book club is open to anyone who wants to join along. The author will also be available for questions/comments along the tour. It is a very book; brief, but packs a punch. As I say on the post, it is A.M. Homes’ memoir about her reunion with the mother who placed her for adoption many years earlier and the father who is absent even when present is truly a look at nature vs. nurture–where do our bloodlines end and environment begin? At the heart of the story is the topic of adoption, but the book becomes so much more–what does it mean to be related, how do we become like our parents, what does it mean to be a family? I hope you’ll join along if you like book clubs.
The other thing is a call for interviews, specifically about adoption. I am prepping for this chapter right now and collecting interviews so I can begin writing it by the end of March. I’m grateful for any help you can give me with this.
On a completely non-adoption related note, all I want to eat right now are French Fries with Old Bay and vegetarian gravy. How to get Josh to run to the food store for me so I can loll about with a good book and Old Bay?
March 9, 2008 Comments Off on Weekend Housekeeping
Your Pseudonym in Print–Part Three
This is really more of a call for interviews. I’ve been barreling through the last few chapters–mostly because they were short but also because gathering 60+ points of view for each one helps tremendously. So thank you to everyone who has participated so far. As you know, I am just about the most anal and file-loving woman in the world and I’ve been keeping a spreadsheet so people will be able to find their quotes later on. After the final edit, I’ll post it with the pseudonym and the chapter for each quote. And then, separately, a list of participating blogs. Because that’s pretty cool to look at too.
So this call for interviews is for people within the adoption community. My book is an infertility/loss/adoption book, but it is definitely written with the adoptive parent in mind. Therefore, the interviews are solely for those who have adopted or are currently adopting, though it would be wonderful for you to gather ideas from children or birthparents (if possible) as well. In other words, I primarily want the thoughts of adoptive parents, but if they have the ability to connect with other members in their personal triad, I would love to hear their thoughts on your answers. If that makes any sense.
It’s a sensitive chapter and I wish I could give voice to everyone in the triad, but I also know that it is a single chapter in a larger book and I could never do the chapter justice if I don’t narrow the focus. I apologize to anyone who feels left-out.
If you’d be open to answering a few questions (or more than a few…) via email about your experience and contributing to this section of the book, I’d be eternally grateful. If you’d spread word via your own blog or on bulletin boards for this call for interviews, I’d be grateful as well. You can contact me by leaving a comment with a way to get back to you (for instance, if we’ve emailed before, I have your email address) or email me directly.
March 9, 2008 Comments Off on Your Pseudonym in Print–Part Three
Marching with the Barren Bitches Book Brigade–Tour Eleven
Here is the master list for the eleventh tour of the Barren Bitches Book Brigade. What is the Barren Bitches Book Brigade? It’s a book club from the comfort of your own living room. The book club is conducted entirely online and open to anyone (male or female) in the infertility/pregnancy loss/assisted conception/adoption/parenting-after-infertility world (as well as any other related category I inadvertently left off the list). It is called a book tour because everyone reads the same book and then poses a question to the group. Participants choose a few questions to answer and then post their response on their blog. Readers can jump from blog to blog, commenting along the way. We read both fiction and non-fiction.
Anyone can jump aboard–it’s a book club where you can drop in and out as you wish and all in the community are welcome.
Book: The Mistress’s Daughter*
Author: AM Homes
Start Date: March 6
Question Due: April 9
Question List Sent Out: April 10
Post Dates: April 14–16
(need an explanation of how a book tour works? Click here to go to a list of posts on the past book tours as well as information about future tours.)
*with author participation!
Description of The Mistress’s Daughter: A.M. Homes’ memoir about her reunion with the mother who placed her for adoption many years earlier and the father who is absent even when present is truly a look at nature vs. nurture–where do our bloodlines end and environment begin? At the heart of the story is the topic of adoption, but the book becomes so much more–what does it mean to be related, how do we become like our parents, what does it mean to be a family? I ended up reading the book in maybe two sittings. It’s short, but packs a punch.
Barren Bitches Book Brigade List (The blogs below are participating on this current book tour. On April 14, you’ll be able to jump from post to post to read a plethora of opinions and thoughts on The Mistress’s Daughter. I will keep adding to this list until 11 p.m. on April 9. The list is currently open)
Stirrup Queens and Sperm Palace Jesters
The Annex
Journey to Baby – Uncertain Yet Hopeful
The Road Less Travelled
Twisted Ovaries
The Dunn Family
Weebles Wobblog
Candy’s Land
Sell Crazy Someplace Else
Fertility Notes
I Won’t Fear Love
Desperately Seeking Baby
Test Tube Babies
All Things Deb
Life After Infertility and Loss
Finally It Could Be
Baby, Borneo, or Bust
Not on the list and want to join? Drop me an email at thetowncriers@gmail.com. You can add yourself up until 11 p.m. on April 9.
How the book tour works:
(1) leave a comment or send me an email (thetowncriers@gmail.com) saying that you’re interested in participating. I need your blog name, blog url, and email address.
(2) read The Mistress’s Daughter by April 9 (or at least enough of it in order to ask a question to the group).
(3) create a single question that would kick off a discussion (in other words, any question that leads to more than a “yes” or “no” answer where someone can express their opinion) and mail it to me on April 9 (or any time beforehand). I will send you a reminder email close to the date. Click here to see sample questions from tour #4.
(4) the author, AM Homes, is open to answering any questions and reading along. Please send me any questions you have for her by April 9.
(5) on April 10th, I will send you a list of possible questions. Everyone will choose 3 questions off the list and answer them in a blog entry. You will find out if you are posting on April 14, 15, or 16 (you can choose).
(6) on April 14, people will begin to post their entry. Each day, I will post a linked list of all the people putting up their entry that day so people can go around and read the entries and comment (start a discussion back and forth in the comments section). Reading the entries and commenting on the posts is the best part of the tour–by the end of the week, you should have a comment from every participant (and maybe even a few new permanent blog readers).
March 9, 2008 Comments Off on Marching with the Barren Bitches Book Brigade–Tour Eleven
Friday Blog Roundup
I’ve been noticing doppelganger bloggers as I click down the blogroll. I mean, the fact that I get them from my blogroll means that we have infertility in common. But Liza is my location doppelganger (D.C., western Massachusetts, and Madison–how scarily similar. Am I Liza? Is she me?). Isn’t It Pretty to Think So is my situation doppelganger (kosher, vegetarian mother-of-twins). Lindsay and Lori are my personality twins (you have to smush them together a bit). And can I pretend that Bea is my accent twin since I really really really covet her cool voice over my Maryland accent?
So who are your doppelgangers on the Internet–a single person or composite-wise?
I’m currently in the Purim zone. The first day of Adar is tomorrow, which is the month (we have a different calendar in Judaism) that holds Purim. This year was actually a leap-month year. Whereas there is a single day added every 4 years in the Gregorian calendar, in the Hebrew calendar, we have a leap month. An extra copy of Adar is placed after Shvat and the Slim Shady, real Adar (won’t the real Adar please stand up please stand up please stand up) falls after the leap month. Today is the last day of the imitatin’ Adar, therefore, Slim Shady Adar begins tomorrow.
But my Purim energy kicked in the moment the dirt was thrown on Tu B’shvat. There were costumes to plan and a Purim theme to choose and gifts to buy and mishloach manot to prepare. And the mishloach manot are the crown jewel in our Purim celebration because I can’t sew worth shit. But I can bake and do sugar art and make candy. So this year, we are going with a combination of original recipes (a dark coffee and brown sugar toffee as well as my original Hamantaschen recipe) and tweaked recipes (chocolate caramels with sea salt) and barely-a-recipe (white chocolate covered pretzels) . There is a coffee blend and enormous homemade chocolate chip cookies and toys and gifts specific to the person.
I will share some of these recipes with you over the month of Adar because, frankly, Adar rocks (seriously, how can you not love a holiday which has heavy drinking built into it?). But I also threw an extra mishloach manot basket onto the list between the one I make for the postal workers of my town (this is a tradition stemming from the time I took over a section of the post office to mail my baskets and gave them the leftovers–now I make them their own basket and in return, they have me fill my boxes at home and bring them prepared to the post office) and my grandmother. And that one, I will somehow get to one of you guys–and I wish I had the butter to send one to everyone on the blogroll–though the means for that are upcoming next week.
So yes, more about Purim, more about candy making, and hopefully, a mishloach manot basket in your home (inspired by MLO’s blogoversary gift which I won and I’ve wanted to pay forward).
Lori at Weebles Wobblog is holding another Limerick contest so I present my entry:
Follistim and Menopur grow them
Lupron and Ganirelix slow them
Count them and measure
Treat each as a treasure
Follicles–can’t see them or hold them
Okay, so I needed to perhaps simplify the drug applications to get it to fit, but still, I think I should win points for working Menopur and Ganirelix into a Limerick, nu?
Added: I forgot my link (part of the poem rules) so I went back in and added it. Why Bea? Because she is the creator of the best injection website in the world: the IVF Shoot ‘Em Up.
Rememberella had a post about being dumped by a friend this week. She pointed out a book she had read about how female friendships don’t have a protocol for ending them. We simply avoid–we stop returning phone calls or emails; we stop getting together. And then the other person doesn’t know if something is wrong or if everything is right but life is too busy. Which makes a strong argument for why we should have closure. She wrote: “I composed a very neat, very gentle and not-at-all-pissed-off email to her. And I basically said all that – about the book and whatnot – and apologised for being confrontational and last-strawish and said that I hoped that wasn’t what was going on. And she returned my emails. No answer. No nothing. Just the old Mailer Daemon flashing pixels of rejection at me in my work inbox.” And this post broke my heart.
Not Imitation Cheese had a post called “Food for Thought” where she asked why people bring food to new parents. Or, more accurately, why we don’t extend the thought to cover other situations: “Why do we (you can pick what the “we” means – I guess I’m assuming that “we” = church ladies) only cook meals for new moms? I mean I was sick for more than a month when I started taking metformin and all of my friends knew it. All of my friends that I cooked meals for when they had their new babies knew that I was sick every single day for MORE THAN A MONTH and it occurred to exactly 1 of them to offer to cook a meal for Husband and me. I’ve had THREE MISCARRIAGES and no one has offered to cook a meal for us. Does this mean that I need new friends? Or that they are just not very thoughtful? Or does it mean that “we” only cook meals for new moms and funerals out of obligation rather than out of a true desire to perform a service for a friend?” It is a good question because I don’t think the meals are truly about the help. Even with premature twins on heart monitors, I still could pull together something to eat. It’s about the message you send with the food–that you care, that you recognize the person is going through something difficult. Go over and jump into the conversation.
The Shifty Shadow had a brief post called “Red, White (But No Pink)” and the only words it needs as an introduction is that you will cry reading it.
Fortune Cookie Follies had a post explaining why adoption is harder than ART for her. Though people rarely understand infertility, concepts such as needles are more accessible to those not enduring IVF. She wrote: “With adoption, this capacity to put themselves in your shoes is a bit different. What little empathy and or sympathy I was getting for enduring ART went away . . . only to be replaced by excit
ement…It really threw me. People were no longer sorry for us they were excited for us. Trouble is, from where I stand there is nothing tangible to be excited about. There are still no guarantees. My arms are still empty and my heart still aches. But now, my aching heart has to face excited faces instead of sympathetic ones . . . and my look of exhaustion and my lack of giddy joy really seems to puzzle them.” I think what really struck me in this post is the contrast of the reality of the writer vs the hope of the other person. For every person who sings, “but adoption is a guarantee!” I would pass along how much Beagle’s heart still aches even if she is on a new path.
Isn’t It Pretty to Think So (my doppelganger!) had a post about loss. The post begins about losing a receipt and turns out to be about so much more. She writes: “So where was it? My heart started racing. I felt queasy. My frustration level was rising. I was so angry with myself, that I worked myself up to a full blown anxiety attack. For the rest of the day, every time I thought about it, I would get sick to my stomach. The skirt only cost $6.50, so what was the problem? I’ve thrown away more money than that before. And then I realized…I am so sick of losing things.” I just loved this small thought. And my heart broke a little reading it.
Lastly, Working on It had a post about Hobo Signs made me cry in light of everything else today. Especially this last thought: “It’s so generous, this blog stuff. It’s like hobo signs – without knowing who’s following behind, we’re leaving something we hope will help. And we’re listening to the ones who were here before us. Dang, I love it.” Thank you for writing this.
So here is the roundup for the roundup (have you forgotten the first half by now?): Who is your Internet doppelganger(s)? Purim gift contest coming soon. Lori’s Limerick throwdown. And, not to be forgotten, many good wishes for a relaxing weekend.
March 7, 2008 Comments Off on Friday Blog Roundup
For Natalie and Den
It is this grey day where I am, one of those days where it rains intermittently–just a few drops each time–and is cold and damp. Colours seem to be washed away as well.
Natalie lost her little boy yesterday at 36 weeks. It seems a little unbelievable. You hear the news and you can’t quite process it. Especially in light of all of the late term loss and neonatal death that has rocked our community as of late.
Back in high school, three students in my class died in quick succession–all three in unrelated incidents; all three gone quite suddenly. When the first one died, the school arranged to have a grief counselor on campus and left it up to the students to process on their own terms. After the second one died, the school administrators seemed a bit floored as to what to do next. It was already May. We were supposed to be leaving school for summer in a few weeks. When the third boy died, they brought my class together for an assembly and the principal got on stage and just looked at us and simply said, “please.” As if by asking politely, we could avoid everything that happened. It is such an honest human response to wish there was some way to control the universe.
I wish we could control the universe.
Alison from Uncomplicate Me created a candle image for those who wish to put it on their blog. I’m so sorry, Natalie and Den.
I will post the Roundup later. Right now, I am taking time to create the equivalent to a moment of silence.
March 7, 2008 Comments Off on For Natalie and Den
