Otherwise known as everything you didn’t know you’d ever want to know about Blogger Bingo. Welcome to the information page for Blogger Bingo, a game created by Mel from Stirrup Queens (um…this blog). I actually created the game in August of 2009, but I backdated this post in order to have a permanent place to answer questions about the project.

You have probably landed here because you’ve seen the icon on a person’s blog. In order to jump to the current open game, please click here.

I’ll begin by explaining the general rules for how the game is played. Underneath that, I’ll answer further questions.

1. Sign up to participate. If you are not on the list, you will not be eligible to win. You will need to provide a blog name, blog url (yes, you need to be a blogger to participate), the number for the card (this will make sense when you are looking at the open post for the current round) which you wish to use, and an email to use to contact you if I have questions. The categories on all the cards are the same though the order varies. When the game is open, this space is linked to the sign up form. Sign up usually takes place for a few days and closes when the game begins.
2. Place the provided code on your blog and keep it up until the end of the game. It will help connect people to the project and show other bloggers who are participating that you are on the list. You will be sent a reminder to remove it when a winner has been named. You will not be added to the list until the code is in place.
3. Starting on a preset date, I will pull one card each day. The card will be listed in the top, permanent post on my blog (the one that contains a link to the current issue of the LFCA). I know, tricky isn’t it? You will need to keep on top of things in order to have the best chance of winning because the card will be erased after 24 hours and a new one pulled.
4. In addition to pulling a card, I will also list a date. The post you are looking for comes before, after or during that date (more below).
5. Read blogs that are contained in the participant list to look for a post that matches the card of the day. For example, if I pull the card that says, “a post that made you sad before August 15, 2009,” you will look for a post prior to August 15th that made you sad on any of the blogs on the participant list. You may not list a post from your own blog; it needs to come from another person. The current participant list is always listed on the main post for the current round.
6. Leave a comment on that post (even if it is an old post) and then keep track of the url of that post at home (bookmark it somewhere). When you call Bingo, you will need to turn in the posts you used to “mark your space.” Please leave a comment that shows that you read the post. Just writing, “nice post!” does not count as a comment.
7. Once you have found a post on a person’s blog, you cannot use that blog again. In other words, if you use a post from my blog as your “a post that made me sad” you cannot use another post from my blog the next day when a new card is drawn.
8. When you get five in a row, email me with the word “Bingo!” in the subject line. In order to win you will need to provide the five blog posts that fit the cards drawn as well as prove that you left comments on those posts (and have the comments be left on different days–not clumped together timestamp-wise after realizing you have Bingo).
9. The first person who emails me with a winning card is the winner. The winner will be listed at the top of my blog in the space that normally holds the daily category.
10. If all goes well, I will do this game again soon after we have a winner.

Though my virtual bar is always open and I’m ready with a drink and a sympathetic ear, every month, we run a virtual drunkfest where you are welcome to come drink imaginary drinks at the open bar (which only accepts imaginary currency) and hiccup out the story of what is going on in your life. It’s a way for people to get to know you and your blog as well as a way for you to find people with a similar story. Because what screams community more than an open bar?

If you just found the bar, you can click below to jump to any of the past drinkfests and read the stories of other bar patrons. Welcome–we hope you find the conversations comforting, the music rockin’, and, of course, the drinks ever-flowing.

ALI: yes, I coined the term ALI which stands for (a)doption, (l)oss, (i)nfertility because I wanted a term that went well with the award post I was cooking up.  And this term has come to stand for the inclusiveness of our community and experience (from this entry).

Almost-father: a man who longs to be a parent and is actively trying to have a first child or an additional child (from this entry).

Almost-mother: a woman who longs to be a parent and is actively trying to have a first child or an additional child (from this entry).

Awkward Parenting Moments (APM): the verbal dance of trying to explain paths to parenthood or pregnancy loss to a child (from this entry).

Babedar: a child’s ability to smell out the infertile woman in the room and attach themselves to said woman (from this entry).

Barren Von Stirrup Shtup: any form of assisted reproduction that involves stirrups and someone examining your hoohaa. Also the name of our film company (from this entry).

Bermuda Triangle of Infertility: the trifecta that can drown even the strongest swimmer of an infertility patient–the financial, physical, and emotional corners of infertility (from this entry).

Beta Babies: children conceived through fertility treatment. In other words, their parents know their first and second beta numbers (from this entry).

Blilt: a “blog quilt” comprised of squares containing a single word or phrase as a response to a central question. Each word is connected back to the author’s blog in order to help readers find a like-minded individual though the blilt stands as a testament to a range of emotional responses to a single situation (from this entry)

Co-Payment Cost Babies (CPCBs): children conceived without assistance (from this entry).

Comfort Achievability: the ability of an outsider to comfort a person inside a situation (from this entry).

Commentathon: a massive commenting contest that spreads love across the blogosphere (from this entry)

Creme de la Creme: a new way to do awards–rather than honour one or two blogs, have everyone submit their personal favourite from the year and compile them into one delicious list. I will compile this list every year. Check back in December 2007 for more details–here is the 2006 list (from this entry).

Emoblopedarian: the emotional blog encyclopedia librarian. In other words, the keeper of the emoblopedia (from this entry).

Emoblopedia: an emotional blog encyclopedia that archives thought-provoking entries. Sort of like the creme de la creme list, but instead of simply being a long list of great entries from a single year, it is organized both by larger umbrella topics such as “treatments” or “adoption” as well as by smaller subcategories such as “deciding to proceed with IVF” or “meeting child for the first time.” An emoblopedia is an archive of the emotional journey–a series of posts that a person can read when they feel alone and want their emotions confirmed (from this entry).

Golden Gamonkey: a type of cookie. I imagine a gamonkey to be a “dreamlike visitor like the werefox out of Chabon’s Summerland that takes you on this amazing adventure and makes you see infertility (or whatever your struggle may be in the moment) in an entirely new light (from this entry).

Great Cake Day: a virtual party where all participants take a photograph of a cake they consumed and post it on the same day. The party happens as people jump from blog to blog via the master list (from the entry).

Hoohaahooterus: my collective name for all my sexual organs as well as hormone levels (since I needed a simple term to convey my pu-pu platter of conception woes as well as how they all work together to create the perfect machine of infertility) (from this entry).

Human Harbour: those friends or people who bring you comfort simply by seeing them or being with them. If there was a movie version of Melissa in Wonderland, the human harbours would be the people who stepped out at the end of the film to wave me back to the real world while I bid them a teary goodbye and told them how much they helped me along the way (from this entry).

Human-nequin: the people in the background of your life that give it depth and colour (from this entry).

I Can’t Believe the Fucking Timing (ICBFT, and pronounced ick-ba-fat): I think the phrase says all you need to know (from this entry).

Infertile Christmas: the way I like to pretend that I’m pregnant from Thanksgiving until December 25th (from this entry).

Lady-When-Waiting: your right-hand lady through infertility (from this entry).

Land of If: this freakin’ Land of Infertility (from this entry).

Laydar: that sixth sense stirrup queens have for
figuring out when someone else is a stirrup queen before they say anything. That familiar feeling of knowing that for both women, a good lay brings nothing your way (from this entry).

Location Casualties: those places that you never want to go back to because all they do is remind you of what you don’t have or (if you currently are parenting) what you went through to get to your current place (from this entry).

Mailbox Narcolepsy: that overwhelming desire to go to sleep when you consider not only future decisions but mundane, daily choices (from this entry).

Mullies: Mommy bullies–the women who try to one-up you on the playground over everything from conception to sleep training (from this entry).

Not-yet baby/child: the child an almost-mother or almost-father is trying to conceive and carry or adopt. The child they are waiting to arrive (from this entry).

Post Beta Cry (PBC): that moment where your heart breaks after you get the negative beta call from the sympathetic nurse (from this entry).

Potentially Heartbreaking for the Listener (PHL): my term for any happy news that may be heard and processed through a lens of grief (from this entry).

Says-Things-Amazingly-Right (STAR): the person who always knows the right thing to say at the right time (from this entry).

Secret Hope Stories (SHS): those urban legend-like stories that we know are true: that there are women who go through 9 IVF cycles and suddenly become pregnant naturally while they’re waiting for cycle 10. And we secretly wonder if we will ever get an ending like that (from this entry).

Secret Ode Days: anonymous one-paragraph odes from one blogger to another (from this entry).

Sliding Scale of Happiness: my instant and unconscious calculations of how happy I can be over your pregnancy news (from this entry).

Sperm Palace: the andrology rooms at the fertility clinic (from this entry).

Sperm Palace Jester: a man experiencing an inability to procreate (either directly due to male factor infertility or indirectly through his partner) (from this entry).

Stirrup Queen: a woman experiencing an inability to procreate or carry to term (either directly due to female factor infertility or indirectly through her partner) (from this entry).

Stirrup Queen’s Let’s-Giddy-Up-And-Get-You-Knocked-Up-or-Mothering Fund: what I’m going to do with all the millions I plan to make in this lifetime (from this entry).

Terraversary: terrible anniversaries such as a miscarriage date or an unfulfilled due date (from this entry).

Truman Capote (TC): my period (from this entry).

Uterninus’s Law: the force that thwarts all conception efforts on the part of infertile men and women in direct correlation to how badly they need the cycle to work. Any attempt to circumvent Uterninus’s Law by pretending to “not care” about a cycle is detected and squashed in turn (from this entry).

Vagacamera: the transvaginal ultrasound. The dildo cam. The cooter cam. I just felt the world needed another word (from this entry).

Virtual Lushary: my name for my fictional, infertility-themed bar (from this entry).

You-just-suffered-a-terrible-loss-and-I-don’t-know-what-to-say-so-
I’ll-pretend-that-I-don’t-see-you (or a YJSATLAIDKWTSSIPTIDSY): a move some fertile women do when they see a woman they know has recently lost a child (from this entry).

The blogroll is now housed here: https://www.stirrup-queens.com/a-whole-lot-of-blogging-brought-to-you-sorted-and-filed/.  Please update your links as this post will disappear soon.

Once upon a time, the blogroll was entirely contained in this space. And then it passed 1800 blogs, so I broke down the blogroll into smaller categories. The blogroll is sort of like a house, where this post (the table of contents) is the foyer and all the sections below are separate rooms. The blueprint below is interactive and you can click on any room in the picture to go directly to that space in the future, though please keep reading if this is your first time visiting the blogroll.