Looking for a distraction? Gearing up to cycle, in the middle of the two week wait, or just need to get your mind off of infertility? Click on the lists below in order to read the suggestions of other stirrup queens and sperm palace jesters. Have something to add to a list? Go ahead and leave a comment on the appropriate list. Every so often, I move information from the comments section into the main body of the post.

These are songs that make you feel good. They are the antithesis of infertility or loss. Use them to create the ultimate throw open the windows and drive around feeling good mix CD. The songs you play to feel empowered before an appointment or when you’re waiting for news. The songs you play to distract yourself or get yourself out of a sad place. This is music that gets you in a good mood. The ones that make your heart burst a little as you’re singing along. And it’s a pretty eclectic mix… This list has been compiled by bloggers in the IF/pg loss blogosphere. Feel free to add to the list via the comments section. In time, I will move comments onto the list.

It turns out the unnamed mint bar taken from the pantry (#2 on my list) is called a Peppermint Crisp by Nestle. Which is to say that the only way I am going to sink my teeth into this delectable treat is to have more non-Americans sign up for the candy exchange. Lots of New Hampshireites and Marylanders and Californians. But where are the South African bloggers? The Australians or the British? Damn you Canadians, over the border, we need more of you. We need your candy. You should want ours as well. The candy exchange is an on-going, ever-rolling project of sugary, fat-laden love. Come sign up and eat candy. Or at least send me Peppermint Crisps!

I am compiling a list of songs. Songs that make you feel good. That DO NOT remind you of infertility or loss. That are the antithesis of infertility or loss. They may, inadvertently, be tied to your journey because they were playing at a certain time. But the songs I want are the ultimate throw open the windows and drive around feeling good mix CD. The songs you play to feel empowered. I will kick it off with Pink’s “Get the Party Started.” I will also add the St. Elmo’s Fire theme (thank you, Serenity!), “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor, “Here Comes the Sun” by the Beatles, and “Break My Stride” by Matthew Wilder. You favourite songs to get you in a good mood. The ones that make your heart burst a little as you’re singing along. Run with that and add to the list via the comments section or an email. And yes, another icon for the sidebar is forthcoming. A record perhaps instead of a CD, showing our age.

I am beyond moved that Julie passed me the blogroll torch and I hope to make her proud. Reading that post was sort of like finding out that the Queen was coming to dinner with ten minutes notice. I figuratively ran around like a chicken with her head cut off through the blogroll fretting–but there are double entries, there are blogs to be moved, there are not enough clickers! And then I set out the good china (which, by the way, my sister was right. We should have never registered for it. We still haven’t used it because we can’t decide whether it should be meat or dairy–little wink to all my Jewy Kosher Jews out there) and smoothed the napkins and said, “welcome, your majesty.” And I did one of those low curtsies…figuratively, of course.

Which is just a long way of saying, welcome if you’re here for the first time.

• If you want to be added to the blogroll, just send me an email at thetowncriers@gmail.com.
• Helps me out tremendously if you pick your own category.
• You can move around to a new category at any point (just send me an email again).
• Would love it if you put a link to the blogroll back on your own blog so more people (in other words, new bloggers) find it as they read your blog.
• The sidebar on my blog is usually a few days more up-to-date than the blogroll post (I add first to the sidebar and then cut-and-paste the list every few days into the post) so you will show up on the sidebar first.
• Since lots of requests are coming in, I probably won’t be able to email back to let you know when it’s up, so check the sidebar. I’m a crazy multi-tasker who gets very little sleep so it’s usually up within a day or so.

Why that required bullet points? I don’t know… And if you didn’t know about Lost and Found, please go over there too. Whoring up the community building, but this is a great chance to reach out to other bloggers either in celebration or comfort. You really don’t need to be alone in this suckhole.

It is time to rock the vote. Head over to Weebles Wobblog to read all of the limerick entries and vote on your favourite. How can you go wrong with a poem that manages to rhyme scabies with babies?

And now, blogs a plenty, blogs galore.

Aspiring Baker has a fantastic post this week about choosing the perfect sperm donor. It’s about how we talk ourselves into ideas, how all of our decisions are fraught with what ifs. How not only does the criteria we use to cast our comfort zone change over time, but how we change it to fit what we have in front of us. Where we need to find comfort. It is not only a fascinating subject, but this post is so incredibly well-written that I ended up going through it several times, marveling over the small changes from word to word.

Chicklet at Blurb This has three of the funniest faux pregnancy announcements ever. The one I particularly loved and am planning on having Josh send out one day if I ever get knocked up: “Sunday morning my wife’s and my lives were forever changed when she shat in the delivery room in front of me. Oh yea, and we had a kid. But seriously dudes, she shat! On the table!“

Nancy at The Life of Nancy has an interesting post about primary vs. secondary infertility. I think it is cool to hear how she views the same situation from two separate vantage points having gone through primary and now secondary IF. Her main thesis is to not draw comparisons–they are two separate but equal beasts with their own inherent problems. I think my favourite part was an analogy that comes at the end: “For ttc#2(+)-ers, hearing ‘well, at least you already have a child’ hurts just as much as a ttc#1-er hearing ‘Well, at least you can have nice things instead of children’. We want that child, whether it’s #1 or #3, so telling us anything regarding not getting that child hurts like hell.”

Lastly, DD. Dearest DD and her Vaseline. I loved this post. I loved it because it made me turn to Josh and ask him to read it too. She describes what her blog does for her–what it means to her. And what the comments and readers mean to her. As I read it, the best analogy I could come up with to explain this situation is that final scene in the made-for-tv version of Alice in Wonderland (the one with the absolutely divine Carol Channing) where Alice has to say goodbye to all of the animals and chess pieces and she’s so sad. They’re the only ones who understand where she has been. She’ll leave Wonderland and return home and she’ll try to explain everything to her sister. But her sister will never get it because she wasn’t there. It’s not that Alice wants to spend the rest of her life in Wonderland
, but she wouldn’t mind bringing a few of those creatures into the next place she lives, not just because she misses them, but because they understand a piece of her that no one else does.

DD is our Alice. She is deep in the rabbit hole and she needs the connections with fellow bloggers to get out: “Unfortunately even though you don’t need to ‘listen’ to me blahblahblah woe is me blah boohoo, I desperately need you and your supportive emails and comments. I feel like a complete putz having to put my hat in my hand and admit to you that I can’t seem to function normally without hearing from you occasionally.” At the same time, connecting with fellow bloggers; reading their posts about appointments she isn’t able to get or referrals that are not in her mailbox, is an impossibility at times too. Yet she knows that by not reading and by not commenting, she can’t ask for the same support in return. She doesn’t feel like she can morph into a Mommy Blogger because that doesn’t feel natural either. And she can’t stay within infertility because it’s too painful. But her blog is so important to her.

And so I turn back to Julie at A Little Pregnant. Namely, her post on “staying for the bofrags.” It is the evolution of a blog that never strays from the original reason for its inception–that search for definition. Julie as infertile, as pregnant, as a mother, as infertile, and now, as she promises, herself as a daughter. It is all variations on the same theme, all interconnected. And I hope that is the route that DD takes (please, for the love, only you could name a post “Vaseline”–where would I be without your words?). The evolution of DD. From supermodel to international spy to… I mean, from mother to infertile to wherever she goes from here. It is all variations on the same heart.

Wait! You were going to click away. No–you have homework to do. Leave your favourite song. Name and singer/band preferably so I can create the greatest and longest mix CD of all the time.

Updated at bottom:

Not to kick off the first week of the first Happiness Challenge with a downer of a post, but…I don’t know–perhaps by giving the issue words it takes away some of its power? Allows happiness and sunlight and butterflies to come swooping through, enveloping my whole world in a Broadway musical of a day? One where I am wearing mustard yellow pants?

I’m talking about flimsiness.

I want my happiness to have the tenacity of a South American dictator, only folding to an overpowering military coup. South American dictators ignore the groans of the commoners and South American Dictatorship Happiness ignores those small disappointments that don’t really matter in the long run (um…did I just imply that the groans of the commoners don’t matter?). I’m not talking about health crises or loss. Those small disappointments are the things that make you believe that you are having a shitty day: the fight with your friend, the setbacks at work, the phone calls never returned, the ideas that were snubbed.

Until you have stability in your happiness, those small disappointments have a way of blowing the house down. And when you have actual disappoints that pass over into the tragedy zone–failed IVF cycles, pregnancy loss, inability to continue treatments–it feels like you’re trying to erect a house in the middle of a hurricane. It’s going to get blown over. At the end of the day, is happiness a material that can withstand a storm of emotions?

How to circumvent? I’m not really sure. I’m really struggling with this as I read this book. I’ll have a day where I’ll feel a certain sense of peace and I’ll think to myself that I’m on the right road. I’m letting go of my stranglehold on control and I’m enjoying being here in this moment rather than always thinking about what will happen next. I am not worrying about things outside my control. Okay, I really am, but I’m trying to talk myself into not making those things the focus of my day. I can bring myself to unprecedented anxiety levels if I allow myself to run with some ideas. I can cry now or I can cry now AND later. And I am choosing to be happy until that point in which I am not.

And at the same time, shitty words from a friend or a remembrance of how things often go wrong bring down the small pieces of house I’ve managed to erect. Tal Ben Shahar quotes a famous study in the book from Seligman about learned helplessness. You probably have heard of this study if you’ve ever taken a psychology 101 course. Three groups of dogs are all given shocks. The first group can turn off the mechanism delivering the shocks by touching a panel. The second group are given shocks repeatedly and there is nothing they can do about it. The third group receives no shocks. Later on, the three groups are put into small boxes where they can easily escape. They receive shocks again. The first and the third groups jump out to stop the pain. The second group resign themselves to the shocks and remained in the box, unable to imagine that they have any power.

Infertile women often fall into that second group of dogs. We’re beta bitches; dogs tied to the results of a blood test or a long awaited referral.

After so many cycles of not receiving that elusive positive, after so many treatments that end with a negative, after so many losses, we don’t enter with enough hope. Sure, we say we have hope and part of us does have hope because we know of too many stories where something unexpectedly works. But why is it that even after we receive that elusive second line, we rarely let go and feel complete blissful elation? We know too much, certainly. But I think it’s also a bit of learned helplessness. We know that with our given track record, there is a good chance that it will all go to shit. So we allow ourselves to focus on that anxiety and focus on that sadness. And we skip over the few moments of happiness we could have grabbed before it went to shit. Or, even worse, we miss out on feeling happiness when it actually is the real deal.

I know I’m guilty of this. I was still hiding my one successful pregnancy until I was five months along. I never believed it would work out. And even having had it work out once, I still carry pessimism. It feels like you’re protecting your heart by focusing on what could happen. You’re steeling yourself for that flood.

But loss or failure? When the worst comes, whatever form it takes? It’s like a tsunami. There is nothing you can do to prepare except build your house inland. And even then, it can be taken by an earthquake. It can be taken by a tornado. There is no amount of prep work that can get you through life without experiencing any pain. Just because you cried beforehand doesn’t mean that you won’t cry again when it actually occurs.

We’re so scared to celebrate. We’re so scared to buy things or tell people or have that shower or make plans. But disassembling a crib will not be the action that takes you down if the worst were to occur. That worst moment will take you down even if you never purchased a single baby item. Even if you hadn’t dreamed up a name.

And if you have done those things and enjoyed them as you did them, you will at least have that. You will at least have those happy moments even though you also have the sad ones. You can’t do anything to keep the sad moments at bay, but to also keep the happy ones at bay due to fear or a belief that it will protect you in the future? It is much easier to write than to put into practice. And it’s not that I’ve had much success with this mindset. I am guilty of mourning before there is a reason to mourn. But I’m trying to put into words what I want to do–even if I haven’t had success yet.

How do you shore up happiness? You grab as much as you can take. You don’t hold off until the storm clears to start building. You need a house now. These are the conditions you’re dealt. You can either gather as many bricks as possible and use them as you build your house, even knowing that your hard work may come toppling down with the next gust of wind. Or you can sit there and watch other people build. You won’t have the frustration of having your hard work dismantled. But you also won’t have the house in the end.

Maybe this is just an extension of the thought that it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. Is it better to have been happy and lost that happiness than to never feel that peace at all?

Now get building, will you? You are being pelted and knocked around and your heart is lodged by all of this rain. But maybe you can get a few walls up. And maybe seeing them will help you to remember that you can do it–you can build it–even if they are knocked down and you’re set back from time to time.

Update:

A clarification. Or more thoughts. If I ever do get pregnant, I don’t think I’ll stare at that line and say, “knowledge be damned! I am bringing home a baby in nine months.” I don’t think I’ll race to create a registry or start washing and folding onesies. My fear is in my constant premourning. I think I spend so much time being upset before something happens, holding the happy moments at bay because I think it will make sad moments easier, that I miss out on having both the happiness and the sadness. I simply only have the sadness.

It is possible to have a happy pregnancy that is not a giddy, ignorant pregnancy. We all know too much. Even if it is not our own history, we know the histories of other stirrup queens. We know what could happen. It’s all your point of reference. Someone who has never had a pregnancy loss doesn’t think much about pregnancy loss any more than someone who has never been assaulted think
s about violence as they’re walking down a calm street. Your point of reference can do one of two things. It can prepare your mind for the possibility. Or it can frighten your mind into immobility.

Thinking through both the comments and today’s post on Serenity Now (who is living and breathing this right now), I wrote: “I think what I wrote yesterday is this idea that I mourn before anything bad happens. It makes me miss out on good moments. And it doesn’t make loss any easier. Not having to talk about it because you didn’t tell anyone, of course that’s easier than having people constantly ask about a m/c. But holding happiness at bay with the belief that it will make sadness easier later on? I think sadness will still be terrible later on. Albeit having missed out on the joy too.

I was reading an A.M. Homes book last night and there was a fantastic line: “does bracing oneself against something offer any protection?”

All of this is to say that you need to do what you need to do to get through this. If you were looking for permission to feel joy, I think it’s a good thing. I think it’s a healthy thing. I think there’s a difference between eating a diet only of candy and then being shocked by the consequences and eating a balanced diet with some cake thrown in too, even though you know later on as you stare at the scale and feel unhappy about your weight that you wouldn’t have wanted to forgo the cake and live a cakeless life. If that analogy makes any sense whatsoever.“

I am in love with my new pyjama bottoms. They are mustard coloured with two white stripes down the leg and covered with micro fleece inside. They are $15 of love. They are manufactured love that wrap around my legs and silently tell me, “I’ve got your back. I’m here to make you comfortable.” I would wear them everywhere if it wouldn’t be gross to never change my clothes.

I love my pants.

Last night, I wore them to bed and woke up several times due to nightmares. Each time, I felt that soft fabric around my legs and remembered that they are mustard yellow (have I mentioned that they’re mustard yellow?) and I immediately felt a sense of peace. As if the nightmares were mere gnats buzzing around my head for a moment but my pyjama bottoms were the real deal, the meat and bones, the thing that mattered as opposed to the inconsequential.

I woke up so happy this morning in my mustard yellow pants and spent several minutes making plans that involved my pants. Lounging about in them all day. Going back to the store to purchase three more pairs of mustard yellow sweats. Baking in my yellow pants. Going food shopping in my yellow pants (pyjama bottoms to the local Giant? Well, if it makes me happy).

Which is why I thought when I sat down to read Nina Garcia’s fashion book, The Little Black Book of Style, that the words would probably be lost on someone like me. I am a creature of jeans and cargo pants. I don’t always match. I’ve never worn a belt. Sometimes Josh needs to remind me why flip flops don’t belong with a formal dress.

And then I read the author’s note: “this is not a book of rules. It is a book on style. I am not going to tell you when to wear white pants or when not to wear sandals. Instead, I am going to help you build your style confidence.” This book will “decide what image you want to convey to the world.”

The image of me in mustard yellow sweatpants.

I liked this book a lot because the message was to be yourself and not wish you were someone else. I will never be taller, have smaller boobs, or a flatter stomach barring surgery, surgery, and a little more surgery. But I can learn to work my assets and not be stressed with what I don’t have. And I can ignore that little mention on page 5 that “sweatsuits just won’t do” (have you seen my mustard yellow pants, Nina Garcia?).

I like her sensible advice: edit your wardrobe to remove anything you’re not wearing (we’ve been talking about doing this for a while) or doesn’t look good on you. She provides a list of must-haves in the sense that they are the bones to build a fashion style (basic black dress or jeans). How to “buy with drama” which creates a space for my love affair with orange. And a fantastic motto: “fashion is expensive. Style is not.”

She provides places to look for style ideas including movies, music, and cultures. How to dress in certain situations (first date vs. meeting future inlaws for the first time). I really enjoyed the interviews with different designers–how they came up with famous ideas like the wrap dress (Von Furstenberg) or how to buy panties (Elle Macpherson) or ideas for brides (Vera Wang). But my favourite part of the book came at the end when she went through the characteristics of each era and all I could think of was “future Halloween costumes.” And then there was this internal pause. Where is the girl who used to wear saris for fun? The one who owned the perfect pair of black swingy pants? The one who dressed for style and not just for colour?

I don’t know…I’m thinking of adding a new goal for the winter. A Happiness Challenge for myself where I choose one day a week to put on something fantastic. A break from the jeans and cargo pants and mustard-coloured sweat pants.

Even the most intense love affairs need an inch of breathing space in order to fan the fire. Maybe a day away from my yellow pants is just the thing I need in order to keep the love affair hot and heavy through the winter.