Rather than clean my front hallway, which desperately needs a good organization, I instead cleaned the sidebar and read A.M. Homes The Mistress’s Daughter (we may want to read this for a future book club–it’s fantastic so far). How did I clean the sidebar? Well, I combined many categories under a single icon–a party hat labeled Happy Lists and Community Projects. So if you are looking for the Creme de la Creme or the Blilt projects or any of the 1000 lists we seem to be continually compiling, click on the icon and it will take you to a linked menu page. Be forewarned if you haven’t read things like the Creme de la Creme or Friday Blog Roundup Extravaganza yet, you will be reading for hours…

Two, due to interest expressed in the last post, I have set up a candy exchange. This will be ongoing, forever and ever, with a stream of candy running through your whole lifetime if you so choose. The idea works in much the same way as JJ’s Braces Bunch (join that too!), except you will be sending/sent candy instead of snail mail. You can drop in and out as your liking. Once you fill out the form, you never need to fill it out again (unless information changes). To get your first match, see the candy exchange post for directions. Let the candy eating begin (can you imagine how much nicer a BFN binge will be with chocolates from another country?).

Three, thanks to Celeste’s suggestion, I have set up a cafepress store that I am still playing with in terms of products and images offered. There is a link to it in the sidebar or you can click over and see it here: Stirrup Queen’s Store. I don’t know what I’m going to do with the money gained from the store except place it back in the community. Once there is actually money to use, I may open it up to the community or I may go with an idea that has been percolating all summer. There will probably be products added from time to time including a Lost and Found t-shirt and music from the movies. So I welcome your ideas and comments and, of course, sales.

Lastly, this is my paltry limerick for Lori’s Limerick Contest. It is not too late to join (entries are due on the 5th). I’m afraid I’m just not much of a poet…

There has been a lot of interest in a candy exchange due to that last post and I don’t think it has to be a single exchange at one point in time. I think it can be handled in the same way as the braces bunch as an ongoing exchange. I don’t need candy once. I need an ongoing stream of candy.

The candy exchange is open to any blogger in the infertility/pregnancy loss/assisted conception/adoption/pregnant or parenting after infertility, loss, or adoption community. I’ll also take readers if people are familiar with them in the community. It’s simply a matter of trust since personal information will need to be shared during the exchange. This project is always open and you can join/drop out at any time.

Here is how it works:

• Cut-and-paste the form below in a Word document.
• Fill in the information.
• Paste the form into the body on an email and send it to thetowncriers@gmail.com. Emails with attachments generally go into my spam folder and I never see them. If you want me to get your email, don’t use an attachment–place the form in the body of the email.
• I will match you with another blogger–either overseas or in your country.
• I will send each blogger the other’s information.
• There is a $10 goal (with an $8–12 range) on purchasing candy.
• You will send a package to one another and report when you get the package so I can check off the exchange as complete. It would be nice if you blogged about it.
• Once an exchange is complete, you can request your next match.

Your address (or a work address) will obviously be given to the other person in order to receive the package. I will not pass along information to anyone who is not paired with you for an exchange. Once you complete one exchange with your partner, you can decide whether you want to do additional exchanges with the same person (you can arrange this between yourselves) or with a new person (tell me and I’ll match you again–you don’t need to fill out the form again unless you have different information).

Directions: Cut-and-paste the form below in a Word document. Fill in the information. Paste the form into the body on an email and send it to thetowncriers@gmail.com. Emails with attachments generally go into my spam folder and I never see them. If you want me to get your email, don’t use an attachment–place the form in the body of the email.

Name:

Name and URL of blog:

Email address:

Address where candy will be sent (including any special instructions for labeling):

If you are able to get candy from locations other than your hometown (for instance, if you travel often, living near a border, or know you are taking a trip this year), please give a list of other places where you can obtain candy for the exchange:

Would you prefer candy from your home country or candy from outside your country (you can also list a country if you’re particularly interested in being matched with a blogger from a certain country. Please note that if there isn’t a blogger from that country and that is the only exchange you want to do, you may have to wait until someone signs up from that country):

Food allergies or aversions:

Favourite flavours:

Favourite types of candy (eg. licorice, chocolate, jawbreakers):

Candies I’ve heard about/remember from overseas (also put location):

Candies I’ve always wanted to try:

Candies I would be sad to receive:

Any other important information:

Once you are finished, send it to thetowncriers@gmail.com with the word “candy” in the subject line. Once I have a critical mass, I will begin sending out the exchanges.

Prior to our elementary school closing down in third grade, we walked to school on a path through the woods. Because this was the late 70s/early 80s where child killers hid behind trees or rolled around in unmarked vans (as opposed to hunting down people via the Internet or luring them away with cell phones) and because my mother had scared the bejebuzz out of me that a child killer would be waiting for ME behind one of these emaciated trees in the woods to offer me treats laced with cyanide, my friend and sister would “hide” behind the slender trunks that hid precisely three inches of their body and say to me over and over again, “hey, little girl, you want some candy, candy, candy?”

And the answer is yes.

I am a horder of candy. I not only like to eat it, but I like to own it. I like knowing I have candy at my beck and call. Currently, I have a box of 100 calorie M & M packs on my desk and an unopened box of snowcaps in the kitchen. And it makes me happy.

I am a relatively picky eater. I don’t like foods that are white–why? I don’t know. But I can’t walk by mayonnaise at the store and I can’t try most cheeses. But a white piece of candy? No problem. Ordering the garden roll at the sushi restaurant last night was comment-worthy for the table (Melissa trying something new?), but I have a secret inner strength when it comes to trying candy, even when said candy is comprised of thousands of sticky flax seeds.

Tal Ben Shahar made me list out things that made me happy last night and candy was high on the list. I like packaging and the aesthetics of the treat. I like smell and taste. The crackle of a Kit Kat or the pop of an Elite bar with pop rocks embedded in the chocolate. And as I said before, simply holding it. I like the feel of candy. I like just knowing it’s in my bag even if I have no plans to eat it.

Another blogger (and I’m sorry, I can’t remember who) once ran a candy exchange where people sent their favourite treats from their country to someone living overseas. The British got to eat M & Ms and we got their Smarties. I would love to do that if anyone is interested. I not only like to receive candy, but I like to make it and buy it too and give it to other people.

But to make me happy this morning, I am making a list of my favourite candies, past and present. This list is subject to change as you also list your favourite candies and I have a “oh! I forgot about that!” moment.

1. M & Ms
2. Unnamed Mint Bar Taken From Pantry–I think it was made by Nestles Rowntree, but whenever I babysat for a certain family, I would always take one of these candy bars they had sent over from South Africa (just for the record, I took it with permission). It was a bright green mint wafer that cracked and snapped when you bit into it and the whole thing was covered in chocolate. Does anyone have any idea what I’m talking about?
3. Elite Bar with Pop Rocks
4. Chocolate-covered orange peels
5. See’s Toffee-ettes
6. Peppermint bark
7. Necco wafers
8. Dynamints
9. Cadbury Dairy Milk
10. Stick-o-Pep Lifesavers

As I say at the start of my new blogroll list, perhaps I am dumber than a napkin, but I never understood how one efficiently created a blogroll list that others could link to and use from their own blog. And then I figured it out so without further ado:

Since the kids were born, we’ve been pushing our broad-minded, free loving agenda down their throats with (gasp!) books that celebrate all forms of family building as well as all cultures. Not only can they recite the ingredients for Bee Bim Bop but we’ve poisoned their minds with the environmental propaganda of the Lorax. We’re molding our kids in our sustainable-Judaism-with-a-sprinkling-of-Quaker-philosophy image. Farm work? Bread baking? Why don’t we just dress them in Commie red and call it a day?

At least according to an article in Galleycat this week. Our children’s favourite book has come under fire and is apparently, according to the ALA, the most challenged book of 2006. It’s unsurprising that it is one of our family favourites considering our nauseating levels of inclusivity and our tendency to poison our children with not only acceptance but celebration of all people. Josh emailed me the Galleycat story with a horrified “Save Tango!” Save Tango indeed–and keep him all to ourselves if people out there can’t appreciate a fantastic book with gorgeous pictures that celebrates a family coming together (though it’s nice to see that And Tango Makes Three has bumped Catcher in the Rye from its semi-constant spot on the ALA’s list).

We are Tango lovers. Plain and simple. We have a small chick stuffed animal that looks like Tango and my son holds her while I read the book, squeezing her tummy to produce a static-y chirping sound when Tango bursts from her egg (though I’ll admit this only to you–even though the real Tango is a girl and I just used female pronouns, for some reason, we refer to Tango as male in our house). We have spoken about taking a trip to the Central Park Zoo to see Roy and Silo (thank you, penguins, for all looking alike so we can point to any two random penguins and claim we have found our pair–though I heard rumours through a friend that Roy and Silo split up. I think she’s just talking trash). It’s sort of sad that other children will miss out on this story–especially when it drives home the idea of how much some parents want their children.

And on that front, we have an excellent new book that we’ve been reading a lot as of late. We got a copy of Carolina Nadel’s Mommy, Was Your Tummy Big? which also comes in a donor insemination version called Daddy, Was Mommy’s Tummy Big? You can read the book online by going to Carolina Nadel’s website and clicking “next” after each page (look to the right of the picture). It explains donor egg to children and my thought was to allow the twins to write their own review. But so far, all I could get from them was this thoughtful critique: