Though I’ve had the occasional margarita since my college days, the word tequila usually makes me quite queasy (even Tequila Mockingbird’s blog title makes me throw up a little in my mouth–just the title, just the title) ever since an evening during my first week of college that culminated with high kicks on the sink in our co-ed bathroom and waking up in an impromptu (read: passed out) slumber party attended by a large portion of my dorm wing. Somewhat-first hangovers are a bitch.

But it’s a stupidity rite of passage. It doesn’t matter how self-destructive drinking several times your weight in tequila shots can appear to the rational mind. The rational mind says screw it in the face of adjusting to college life. I think most of us probably have a story like that when it comes to college–the poorly thought-out tequila bender that needed to happen but leaves us with a distaste for the drink for the rest of our life.

Pee sticks are my new tequila.

I went on a pee stick bender the first time I tried to conceive. Tested every day and even insisted that my full-flow period was simply late implantation bleeding. I obviously became smarter in the realm of partaking in pee stick sports, but they still hold the same queasiness when I see that box under the sink. Oh? Did I mention that I keep a box of FRED–not even the cheap internet sticks, but a box of the good stuff–next to my pantiliners under the sink? Like tequila in a margarita, I still pee on them from time to time. But the act always leaves a bad taste in my mouth. And the stick is always starkly white.

So, this month’s bar special is margaritas festooned with a pee stick instead of an umbrella. You name the flavour, but you do need to partake in the tequila regardless of the queasiness factor. It’s a rite of passage. And it’s imaginary. And it’s free. Imaginary, free, peer-pressured drinks should be consumed with gusto.

As always, it has been a little under a month since we met, bitched, cried, comforted, and caught up each other on our cycles and lives. Pull up a seat and I’ll pour you a drink. Let everyone know what is happening in your life. In fact, after you’ve caught us up on your own situation this month, make sure you add in your own freshman year alcohol-related tale. My only request is that if a story catches your eye, you follow it back to the person’s blog and start reading their posts. Give some love, give some support, or laugh with someone until your drink comes out of your nose.

I have a ton of assvice in my back pocket and as a virtual bartender, I will give it to you unless you specifically tell me that this is simply a vent and you do not want to receive anything more than a hug.

So if you have been a lurker for a while, sit down and tell us about yourself. Remember to provide a link or a way for people to continue reading your story (or if you don’t have a blog–gasp!–you can always leave an email address if you’re looking for advice or support. If not, people can leave messages for that person here in the comments section too). If you’re a regular at the bar, I’ll get out your engraved martini glass while you make yourself comfortable. And anyone new, welcome. I’m glad you found this virtual bar.

For those who have no clue what I’m talking about when I say that the bar is open, click here to catch up and then jump into the conversation.

Happy Drinking.

New List Today:

Did you somehow miss this interview with Ayelet Waldman conducted by the participants of the Barren Bitches Book Brigade? I’ll give you a hint…you’ll see it if you scroll down a post or two. Or you can click on the hyperlinked text. Wanted to make sure people didn’t miss her answers because they added a layer of depth to my reading of the book. And it’s pretty cool to hear a writer answer questions about her own work. And Ayelet Waldman rocks, in general. So…

But also, welcome to the sixth tour of the Barren Bitches Book Brigade–a book club from the comfort of your own living room. Grab a cup of coffee and start clicking away at the links below.

Just to explain, this book club is 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.

Book: Love and Other Impossible Pursuits
Author: Ayelet Waldman
Start Date: July 19th
Post Dates: September 17 and 18
(need an explanation of how a book tour works? Click here to go to a list of posts on the past book tours.)

Barren Bitches Book Brigade List (click on any of the links below to take you to a stop on this book tour. Jump from post to post to read a plethora of opinions and thoughts on Love and Other Impossible Pursuits. This list is the second of two groups).

Group B:

Stirrup Queens and Sperm Palace Jesters (Melissa)–my post is below or you can click on the hyperlinked blog name
Epi-blog (Jenna)
Child Bearing Hips (Cece)
Oscar Wants a Playmate (Jackie)
Our Dance With Infertility (Amy)
Sticky Bean (Kristen)
Fatty Pants (Fattypants)
Anne Imagination (Anne)
Fertilize Me (Farah)
That Was the Plan (Mrs. Planner)

Even if you haven’t read Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, you can still add your own thoughts on the blog tour or react to someone else’s critique.

Like the idea of being in a book club without leaving your living room? The next book for book tour #7 is Happiness Sold Separately by Lolly Winston. The author, Lolly Winston, will be reading along too for this tour and it will be possible to ask her questions about the book.

The Details: Tour #7 will start September 19th. Participants will read Happiness Sold Separately by Lolly Winston. On Wednesday, October 24th everyone will send one question based on the book (to get a sense of questions, click here to see the questions sent for book tour #2) to thetowncriers@gmail.com. I will compile the questions into lists that will be emailed out to you on October 25th. Everyone will choose 3 questions from the list and answer them on their own blog on October 29th or 30th (we will break up into two smaller groups and you can choose which day works best for you when the date gets closer). Each day of the tour, I’ll also post a master list and people can jump from blog to blog, reading and commenting on the book tour.

If you would like to sign up to participate in book tour #7, leave a comment below or send me an email at thetowncriers@gmail.com. I need the title and a link to your blog as well as an email address where you’d like the two or three book club emails sent. If a spouse wants to participate too and he/she doesn’t have their own blog, have them set up a blog solely for book tours (as we did with the Annex) and send me a link to that blog. And if you’re a reader without a blog, now is a great time to set up a space for yourself on Blogger. People will be able to find brand-spanking-new blogs because they will be on the book tour’s participant list. Want to participate but live overseas and want to order many books at once in order to save on shipping? The next few tours are always listed on my side bar under the book icon. Happy reading.

And speaking of which…the time is coming soon to choose the next few books. Start thinking about future choices and I’ll post a running list soon so people can put it to a vote.

Intrigued by the idea of a book tour and want to read more about Love and Other Impossible Pursuits? Hop along to more stops on the Barren Bitches Book Tour by visiting the master list in the post above. Want to come along for the next tour? Sign up begins today for tour #7 (Happiness Sold Separately by Lolly Winston) and all are welcome to join along (see the post above to sign up). All you need is a book and blog.

As much as I ultimately ended up loving Love and Other Impossible Pursuits as well as the grieving Emilia, it was a difficult book to start at first. How does one willingly dive head-first into a tale of loss? Not to mention the tension between the ex-wife and the narrator; the uncomfortable exchanges with her stepson, William; and the all-encompassing grief that is weighing down not only her marriage but her entire web of existence from half-siblings to parents to friends? In the end, I read the book for the same reason Emilia reads stepparenting books. Not for answers per se, but for the company. And Emilia is good company for the duration of the read.

Emilia often describes the intense physical and emotional connection between she and Jack. She often refers to him as her bashert. But after the loss of Isabel, and Emilia’s spiral into solitary despair, that connection is damaged. This alteration is noted by Emilia when Jack declines her first offer of physical intimacy since their daughter’s death. She becomes “terrified that I have become like Carolyn, cold to sex, unmoved by my husband, uninterested in the passion that once meant everything to me.” What sort of relationship do you have with your significant other? Do you feel he/she is your bashert? What effect has IF/loss had on your emotional and/or physical relationship?

I had many fears that infertility would be the end of us. If it wasn’t my own anger and sadness pushing him away, it was a fear that he would leave me for someone who could get pregnant naturally and carry to term. It was a pretty small-minded view of our marriage, but I was panicked and weepy so…

I think the fact that together we not only got through a first round of treatments, premature birth, and new parenthood, but we’re willing to enter into treatments again is a testament to the strength of our marriage. Infertility is brutal. The ups and downs, the constant disappointment or grief, the internalized anger. The externalized anger. Even the strongest marriage can crumble when you’re going through that. I’m thankful that we balance each other. That he makes me calm and I speed him along towards goals. That he helps me put things in perspective and I help him see the big picture. We’re a good team.

Emilia has a difficult time relating to other women who have had losses in pregnancy, usually because she sees her situation as different and worse than those women who have had miscarriages. She is particularly hard on her friend Mindy. Do you feel like this attitude was justified on her part? Are mothers of SIDS victims much different and worse off than mothers of miscarriages? Or can we all belong to the same support group?

I’m always wary of those who create a hierarchy of pain. It makes me wonder if they’re dealing with their own grief if they’re focusing outwardly on everyone else’s grief. Plus, I think I’ve firmly established my own feelings on inclusivity vs. exclusivity (and what can be more exclusive than telling someone in emotional pain that their emotional pain isn’t bad enough to garner your support. See ya–go weep in your own Cheerios).

I think it would have been interesting to have Emilia come face-to-face with a mother who had her child murdered and the body never found and another who lost her five-year-old to cancer. Truly, when you start creating a hierarchy, what is the top of the pyramid?

Beyond that–I’m not sure what is accomplished by exclusionary support. It didn’t solve Emilia’s grief and like the stepparenting books that she found long after the fact, she could have perhaps found comfort or received words that changed her outlook from one of the women for whom she felt disgust. Grief is grief and while I think it’s helpful to separate out reasons for grief–loss of a child from loss of a pregnancy from loss of a spouse–in order to focus the support, I don’t think it’s helpful to start pointing fingers and saying, “that’s not as bad as what happened to me.”

All of that said, I think Emilia’s words come from a place of anger. There have been so many times that I’ve painted myself in a figurative corner due to a level of anger that opens the door for emphatic statements that I don’t necessarily mean in my rational mind. I’d like to believe that the Emilia of ten years from now would look back on those words and say, “I was so angry back then” rather than, “it’s true! I still believe that to this day.”

We all have had someone in our lives like William who innocently says the wrong thing more often then we would like. How has your infertility experience helped you respond better to those “innocent yet wrong” comments/questions?

When these things are said, they’re painful. And they get under the skin. And it’s hard to smile and reeducate. But I think we have to forgive the questions that are asked not to force an opinion (“can you tell me more about IVF?” vs. “do you really think IVF is safe?”). And my feeling is everyone gets a put-your-foot-in-it-for-free card. Once you use it once and I’ve commented on the thoughtlessness, I expect all future interactions to be a bit more circumspect. And I do get cranky when the same crappy comments are repeated a second time.

But what do you do with a child? You know that he’s not trying to be cruel and you know that he doesn’t have the life skills to be more thoughtful and circumspect. But still…damn…I don’t think I would have handled myself well in those situations.

The Barren Bitches Book Brigade has suddenly become as tangled and thematic as a ride on It’s a Small World. Our second online interview took place a few months ago with Peggy Orenstein when we read her book, Waiting for Daisy. Our third online interview features a writer who popped up in Waiting for Daisy during a Yom Kippur scene–the very same holiday coming up this weekend on the Jewish calendar. Allow me to introduce you to the divine and daring Ayelet Waldman.

If you’re looking for more coincidences, Ayelet is a blogger herself–first of the now-defunct Bad Mother and later a columnist for Salon. She is an ardent feminist, interested in women’s health issues. She is a former lawyer and a current writer of not only Love and Other Impossible Pursuits and Daughter’s Keeper, but the popular Mommy-Track Mysteries. She is outspoken and confident–she speaks her mind and says what many of us think privately. She is, in my opinion, the human embodiment of that old strange description: “a breath of fresh air.”

For the sixth tour of the Barren Bitches Book Brigade, we read her recent novel, Love and Other Impossible Pursuits. Emilia’s life is coming apart after the death of her infant daughter. Her grief consumes her work and marriage. Simultaneously, she is step-parenting the precious and precocious William, who always seems to say the wrong thing at the wrong time. Throw in a furious ex-wife, a couple of well-intentioned friends, and a mother who is rekindling a relationship with her own ex-husband and Emilia’s life seems like it is on the verge of imploding. An intense novel with achingly beautiful moments, Waldman hits it out of the park with Emilia’s loss and rebirth.

Like Waldman herself, Emilia is smart and sassy–she speaks her mind and has definite opinions. You may not always agree with the character. She may make you frustrated beyond belief. But if you’re open to the experience, she will also make you think. She will make you ask yourself hard questions–not to change your mind to match her own, but to strengthen your own internal arguments.

Participants in the book tours can ask the author their questions as they read. I sent along this list of questions to Ayelet and she got back to me in an extremely impressive hour-and-a-half. How much do I love this woman? A very public thank you to Ayelet for reading along with the book club, commenting on our posts, and answering our questions:

You have been the subject of controversy due to your openness about taboo subjects such as suicide and abortion on your blog, “Bad Mommy.” How has this affected you and how you write? Do you ever feel you should censor yourself or do you feel honesty is the best policy?

Michael, my husband, describes writing as the process of making a golem out of clay. You create this creature, and then you write the word “life” on its forehead and it comes alive. Now, when the Jews made the golem, they did it to save themselves. And the golem did that to a certain extent. But when you bring a golem to life, he is alive. He does what he wants. Maybe he saves you, and maybe he turns on you. Writing is like that. If you’re not in danger, then you aren’t doing it well. If you’re not in danger, then your golem is dead on the page.

Was writing this book therapeutic for you in some way? As I read the book, I wondered if you, the author, were grieving a significant loss, adjusting to being a stepparent, or working out some dynamics in your family of origin. It seemed as if you were to close with your characters, that I wondered if in some way, you also sensed that figurative closeness with them.

I don’t have the step-parenting issues, although my mom was, like Emilia’s, a step-mother. But I did lose a pregnancy in the second trimester. I’ve written about that on Salon, too. That experience was so profoundly miserable, I grieved for so long and so hard, that I had to write about it. I wrote about it again and again. I wrote a short story about a mother haunted by the ghost of her dead baby. I wrote Love. I wrote essays. It was only when I wrote it out enough that I felt like I could move on.

First of all, I really enjoyed the book. At the same time, I really had to fight the urge to dislike Emilia through a lot of it. What is your take on Emilia? If she were a real person, would she be in your inner circle of friends?

I love Emilia. I love her sass, I identify with her self-loathing and self-pity. I think the fact that she’s funny makes up for a myriad of flaws. At the same time, I can understand why people sometimes don’t like her. Hell, people don’t like ME and I think I’m pretty great.

I’d love to know how you came up with the idea for this story. What was the first spark? Your depiction of grieving a child and avoiding mothers with babies rings so true, I’d be interested to know how you acquired such a delicate touch of a subject which is very difficult to portray well.

I knew I wanted to write about a dead baby. And the story arrived in my head like a gift from somewhere outside my brain. I wrote the first draft in two weeks at a writer’s colony. I wrote so fast that I wore the fingerprints off my fingertips. It was the most incredible experience of my life. Flow, baby. It’s all about flow.

Emilia deals with the concept of bashert in this novel. Your love for your husband is well known. Do you feel like you and Michael are bashert?

Yes, I do. We were meant to be together — or at least we are so well-matched and in love that we might as well have been. But you know what? None of that matters. Life is HARD, marriage is harder and bashert only gets you through so much. You have to work at it. We work on our relationship and our family every day.

Since your husband is also a writer, do you find that it is easier (since he understands the ups and downs of a writing life) or more difficult to have the same career? How did you balance writing and children in those early days of babyhood?

I’d never have written if it weren’t for him. I was a very contented lawyer. He gave me the idea. I think it’s easy for us. I don’t try to compete — hell, he’s one of the greatest living writers. How could I ever hope to compete? We support each other. We love one another’s work. We’re each other’s best critique and best reader.

Look below if you’re here for the Barren Bitches Book Brigade and want to find the master list for Group A. Stay tuned tomorrow for the master list to Group B.

Welcome to the sixth tour of the Barren Bitches Book Brigade–a book club from the comfort of your own living room. Grab a cup of coffee and start clicking away at the links below.

Just to explain, this book club is 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.

Book: Love and Other Impossible Pursuits
Author: Ayelet Waldman
Start Date: July 19th
Post Dates: September 17 and 18
(need an explanation of how a book tour works? Click here to go to a list of posts on the past book tours.)

Barren Bitches Book Brigade List (click on any of the links below to take you to a stop on this book tour. Jump from post to post to read a plethora of opinions and thoughts on Love and Other Impossible Pursuits. We’ve broken down the current tour into two groups. A new list will be posted tomorrow).

Group A:

The Annex (Josh)
Twisted Ovaries (Vanessa)
Kicking You From the Inside (Kate)
Southern Infertility (Samantha)
All Things Deb (Deb)
Beaten But Not Bowed (Drowned Girl)
Still Passing Open Windows (Carlynn)
Weebles Wobblog (Lori)
Waiting for …? (Amy)

Even if you haven’t read Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, you can still add your own thoughts on the blog tour or react to someone else’s critique.

Like the idea of being in a book club without leaving your living room? The next book for book tour #7 is Happiness Sold Separately by Lolly Winston. The author, Lolly Winston, will be reading along too for this tour and it will be possible to ask her questions about the book.

The Details: Tour #7 will start September 19th. Participants will read Happiness Sold Separately by Lolly Winston. On Wednesday, October 24th everyone will send one question based on the book (to get a sense of questions, click here to see the questions sent for book tour #2) to thetowncriers@gmail.com. I will compile the questions into lists that will be emailed out to you on October 25th. Everyone will choose 3 questions from the list and answer them on their own blog on October 29th or 30th (we will break up into two smaller groups and you can choose which day works best for you when the date gets closer). Each day of the tour, I’ll also post a master list and people can jump from blog to blog, reading and commenting on the book tour.

If you would like to sign up to participate in book tour #7, leave a comment below or send me an email at thetowncriers@gmail.com. I need the title and a link to your blog as well as an email address where you’d like the two or three book club emails sent. If a spouse wants to participate too and he/she doesn’t have their own blog, have them set up a blog solely for book tours (as we did with the Annex) and send me a link to that blog. And if you’re a reader without a blog, now is a great time to set up a space for yourself on Blogger. People will be able to find brand-spanking-new blogs because they will be on the book tour’s participant list. Want to participate but live overseas and want to order many books at once in order to save on shipping? The next few tours are always listed on my side bar under the book icon. Happy reading.

And speaking of which…the time is coming soon to choose the next few books. Start thinking about future choices and I’ll post a running list soon so people can put it to a vote.