I was going to blog about the recent Oprah episode on DI or the even more recent Tyra Banks episode that was the cause of the brouhaha last month. But I don’t know if it’s productive or a good use of my time. I’m not even sure the two hours of television I watched were a good use of my time. Someone in a comment said it best when they spoke about the medium of talk shows as the purveyor of solid information. I don’t expect to get philosophical statements from my happy meal at McDonalds and I don’t expect day time television to be able to present a realistic survey of the human experience. I think they go for unhappy over at peace, dynamic over realistic, and argumentative over flexible. So I got exactly as I expected from both places.

I’m now pretty comfortably settled into the new column at BlogHer. It’s a lovely little site and it feels a little bit like a blog version of The View, without Barbara Walters or Joy Behar, and with more discussion on…well, actually, everything I unearthed on the front page of BlogHer right now is View-worthy. So it’s a blog version of The View.

And maybe you like The View or you don’t like The View, but if you’re reading this blog, I’m assuming you like me (or, perhaps, you’re one of those people who read blogs that you don’t like) and this column is very much like this blog only over there instead of over here. To get over there, you can either click on the link that I leave in the top post of this blog on Thursdays or you can access it any other day of the week via the little icon on the right sidebar.

I thought I’d reprint this week’s column right here, sort of like a pusher giving you that first hit for free, so you can try it out. See if you like it. Put it on your calendar in Thursday each week with a little heart instead of the “o” in BlogHer. If you click over to the BlogHer site via my link, you’ll come to the exact same post. It’s sort of like my post, looking into a mirror. Doppelgangers. But I’m saving you that step and reposting it here. Like a pusher. And you can answer the question at the end over here too. Come on, you know you want to read more about infertility…

Perhaps this will reveal how outdated the magazines are at our house, but we’re making our way through some October issues of People magazine (in my world, Eddie Murphy has yet to get married therefore, he still has two weeks of wedded bliss ahead of him!), which is where it was reported that Halle Berry announced on Oprah that she saved 35 negative home pregnancy tests when she was trying to get pregnant.

Those who are not actively trying to conceive probably can’t imagine how one ends up with 35 urine soaked sticks inside a drawer, likening it to keeping a human head in the freezer. But I could easily see how it happens. You save the first negative stick because it’s the first month trying to conceive. You don’t really know why you save it, but you do because that first time feels momentous. You collect about 8 sticks during the first month because you begin peeing the second First Response Early Result (lovingly known as FRER) gives you the go-ahead on the direction sheet and some days, you pee more than once because you just happen to save up four hours worth of urine and there should be some good use for that much fluid intake and leg crossing.

The next month, it simply becomes a reflex because you saved the ones from the month before. This time, you go easy on the FRER, only peeing on two because you aren’t even sure if you ovulated. You notice a distinct lack of cervical fluid–fluid you have never been aware of prior to this point but are now obsessed with because you have already worked your way through Toni Weschler’s book, Taking Charge of Your Fertility. Not that you’re worried or anything.

The next month, you drop four pee sticks in the drawer. You have timed it well and your period is late–three days late. Snow white.

By the fourth month, the peeing-on-a-stick (often abbreviated POAS) record becomes spotty. Some months, one or two sticks are added to the drawer. Other months, your period comes before there is time to peel off the wrapper. Still others, you pee on one or two even though you know you have a beta scheduled for the next day.

Along the way, your husband finds your stash of urine-soaked sticks and he begs you, for the love of G-d, to get them out of the bathroom because it makes him throw up in his mouth to think about the fact that he is brushing his teeth just inches away from a pile of festering plastic soaked in bodily fluids.

You remind him that urine is sterile.

You google this fact later on to make sure it is true.

But you can’t throw them out because you have entered into such deep magical thinking about those pee sticks about how your positive will only come if you hold onto them indefinitely. So you keep adding them to the drawer, shifting them this way and that way to ensure that the drawer closes.

That’s how you end up with a drawer of 35 pee sticks.

Pee sticks have long been a topic of conversation in the infertility blogosphere. Weekly, people post pictures of their negative or positive sticks, ask for opinions on judging the darkness of the line, question the occurrence of evaporation lines on Dollar Store home pregnancy tests. A quick jaunt through my blogroll brought me to TheNewLifeofNancy and the test she took this week despite being on birth control pills for her upcoming IVF cycle.

See, my boob hurts. Not my boobs. My boob. My left one. Enough to go to the doctor (which, by the way, couldn’t find out the problem, so I have a boob ultrasound coming up). And what did she ask me? “Is there a chance of pregnancy?”. Uh, no. Then, I puked my guts out Saturday evening. Felt terrible all night. Okay on Sunday and then again on Monday. I had to take the day off I was puking so badly. Laid around like a slug. And what did like 4 people ask me? “Are you pregnant?” Every time someone asks me that, I want to punch them. No, I’m not pregnant. And even if I were, these would ~not~ be my early pregnancy symptoms. But yet I POAS.

Trucking on to someone currently in an IVF cycle, I read Tobacco Brunette’s disappearing and reappearing positive.

I snack on my food, read the NYTimes, and periodically (often) stealthily remove the pee stick from my purse to glance at the nearly invisible, but still very much there line. After about an hour, I pluck my new friend from my bag to find the slightly positive HPT has become negative. I mean, it is white as snow in the place I’d sworn I’d seen a positive sign all day. I panicked, but then thought, “It’s just the light in here. The sun is shifting in the sky. It’ll be there when you leave.” Ted called me to be picked up not long after the line disappeared and I headed outside, where I held the stick up the sun and STILL there was nothing there. No second line…AT. ALL…I’d pee again when I got home. And I did. This time instead of using the test that indicates success with a blue plus sign, I switched things up a little and used First Response, which tells you you’re knocked up with two pretty pink lines. I got a second line. It’s not visible from a distance of more than 2 feet, but can be seen with the naked eye. In fact I can see it right now in my bedroom with just the light of the computer and a small reading lamp. I wish my camera was working so I could show you it’s here and then if it disappears again, you can all assure me I’m not crazy. So, two lines for now.

A beta of 192 confirmed the truth of the pee sticks for her days later. Lastly, This, That, and the Mother Thing had a post this week about a month in the life of an infertile woman, which, of course, contained many lines devoted to pee sticks.

Wake up and pee on a stick with no expectation of success, which, ironically, in the past meant a real possibility of success but now mean
s you are not freakin’ pregnant. Despite all reason, stare at the FRER HPT in 3 different light settings to see if the faintest of faint lines is detectable. Occasionally, tear the test apart to see if the line you see is “real” or an evaporation line. Decide after tearing the test apart that’s as white as the driven snow, that it’s perfectly acceptable to not feel guilty over a big fat glass of wine. Continue to whine, also.

My own stash? Not nearly as impressive as Ms. Berry’s. But a little surprise for any house guest who cares to poke around our bathroom drawers.

So, are you a toss or save sort of girl?

Live blogging from the Oscars. By which I mean that I’m cutting-and-pasting some of the Lost and Found for tomorrow and watching the Oscars in bed. Which is not really live blogging from the Oscars. Since…you know…they’re in LA and I’m in D.C.

I know, I know, I know I am more sensitive (and Ms. Prufrock had a great post on this about our sensitivity, and she is totally right), but was anyone else bothered by Jon Stewart’s joke about Jessica Alba, Cate Blanchett, and Nicole Kidman’s pregnancies? And the baby goes to…Angelina Jolie. Just me? It was just me, right?

I know this is going to reveal how slow I can be to process things sometimes, but as we were watching the opening episode of Brothers & Sisters for the 11th time (baruch ha’shem for the DVD versions of television shows. What else was there to do during the strike?), I drawled as Tom Skerritt fell into the water, “I bet he takes the dishes out of the sink before he pees in it.” Which brought me to the realization that Tom Skerritt and Sally Field played a married couple before this in Steel Magnolias.

I know–not as quick as the other kids. I’m the one who always needs the joke explained too.

I love watching Brothers & Sisters. I refer to it as “watching my family.” Which in no way is meant to disrespect my actual family especially my own brothers and sisters, Hansel and Gretel, whom I love with an intensity to make the Walkers look like they’re in a Eugene O’Neill play.

I am beyond excited that people are answering the call for Clickers. I’m going to redo that page this weekend and if you’ve sent me an email, you’ll get information soon. For anyone else who wants to be a Clicker, this is the blurb I put in the Lost and Found yesterday:

Have you been looking for a rock star-like position that will bring you plenty of work AND plenty of love? Consider becoming a Clicker for the Lost and Found. What does it entail? Simply clicking down a set section of the blogroll once or twice a week and sending in any news that you find along the way. Don’t worry, don’t worry, I’ll send you an email on what to look for. You’re reading blogs anyway, why not have people send you eternal love when they discover that you are the person who brought them tons of support? Email me (thetowncriers@gmail.com) if interested; I can’t draw you in Microsoft Paint right now, but I am redoing the Clicker page this weekend to reflect the current Clickers and new Clickers too.

So, if you were just begging for a project that will suck up at least an hour of time each week, here’s a great opportunity. Of course, even if a Clicker exists for a category, you can always send in your own announcements. This is just to ensure that no one who needs support gets left behind. If you’re already an active Clicker, I’ll add you to the email list in case you want to switch categories or add another.

And the blogging questions keep coming.

I am fairly circumspect and often sit on posts for a few hours to make sure I feel good about the whole thing because I constantly think about the people who could find it. For all I know, they are reading this blog right now. I truly don’t know who reads and who doesn’t.

But what about the people who I do know read this blog or will read this blog? What about writing about Josh? Is it my place to tell his stories? Especially the ones that don’t feature me? Or the ChickieNob and Wolvog? I have always felt squeamish when writing about them, not because I’m embarrassed of them or even because I’m sensitive and thoughtful. I feel squeamish because I’m never sure what is my story to tell. The unicorn wedding–was it my story or the ChickieNob’s story? And if I don’t tell it, will it ever be told because I’m sure she will not remember in detail her days as the toddler rabbinate. Should stories be lost simply because the other person was too young to write them down?

Or will she be pissed off as all get-out later on to find out that I told that story to the good people of the Internet without her expressed permission?

I sometimes write about people who read this blog–I’m talking about friends and family members, not other bloggers; I obviously do that frequently–and I wonder how they’ll feel when they turn on the computer to read what I’ve written and see a piece of their life on the screen. I try to always give a person a heads up before I write about them and sometimes have been denied permission and I respect that. But my neighbour, for instance, was written about in an anonymous manner but how would he feel if he opened up that post and saw how I processed his words? Were they my words to tell since the story was more his than mine? Was it wrong of me to tell his story (as it relates to me)? Was it okay because I protected his identity?

I’ve really struggled with this idea of whose story is it since I started the blog. Not just in writing about Josh and the twins, but in even recounting stories from the past that feature other people. Because I can’t go backwards and contact each one and ask them how they feel about me telling a story. But I often think how I would feel if the same story ended up on their blog. And how I would feel reading about my own life in that manner. I am not speaking about a negative post; simply the retelling of a story that involves more than yourself.

But, on that front, what about the negative posts? Is it wrong to write something negative about another person–vent about your RE or your partner–if they might read it one day? How do you navigate this fact about blogging–in order to write about yourself, you need to write about others as well. And in the end, how do you decide whose story it is to tell? What rules do you use if any?

There are a slew of questions buried in that long list, though I think these three bolded questions at the end sort of sum up the whole idea. So discuss, though first, here are some wonderful things I read this week.

Jennifer at Our Little Penguin wrote a post called “Seth’s Beautiful Belongings” about giving her son’s things to her SIL. A deep love for her SIL and her SIL’s needs is what moved her to part with Seth’s belongings. She followed it up with a second post about the actual exchange and ended it with this heartfelt thought: “Later, after she left, I was amazed at how great I felt. Sure, I was sad. But that sadness is because I don’t have my son, not because his things aren’t in his room. And this morning when I woke up I knew in my heart that I had made the right decision. His things have made a HUGE difference in my SIL’s (and her baby’s) life. Before I left the hospital after our baby had died I told my husband that something good has to come from our sons death. That this horrible tragedy can’t be just that and nothing else. So, on our son’s 3 month anniversary, he was able to make a difference.” I can’t begin to imagine how difficult it would be to part with these items but I thought these both were beautiful posts.

Eshururu had a post called “Spinning” where she explained the concept of time within international adoption. She writes: “Adoption is a strange process. Not a bad strange, but just unlike anything I will most likely ever experience. It is a suspended happiness. A true grass is greener situation where we will be happier when we add to our family. Don’t misunderstand me, we do live everyday to the fullest and really are appreciating this stage of our family, but for the past 5 years we have existed on a precarious slope teetering between the extremes of emotions and anticipating living…Adoption makes you feel like you are spinning your wheels constantly. You crank through one part only to realize there are many huge hills ahead.” I thought the post was so well-written; that she perfectly conveyed this experience of waiting.

Sluggish Butterfly made me want to redo the garden this summer with her post, “Seed Order.” Through the post she explained what she is planting this year and the process of growing your own food. She ends with a bittersweet thought: “In this, at least, I am a fountain of fertility.” What can I say? I’m a sucker for posts about plants.

Lastly, Creating Motherhood had a post called “Something Good.” She was going over the people who were in two pictures on the wall with her grandmother (it’s worth the click over simply to see the two gorgeous pict
ures) and her grandmother couldn’t recognize her. Calliope writes: “I smiled and pretended like she made a funny and then said that the girl in the photo was me and what was my name? Again. Stumped. No idea what my name was. And I know that this disease robs so so much, but I kind of like my name and I am utterly saddened that it might be gone for her. Just like grapes. She has no idea what a grape is either.” It was such a sad, small moment and it moved me beyond belief.

And that is the roundup, my dears. Return to my blogging question of the week and think, think, think. And then answer. Oh, and if you want to be a Clicker, drop me an email.