The title of the article: “Imagine a World Where Men Stressed About their Sperm as Much as Women Stress About Their Eggs.”

I love this article because the hypothetical man at the beginning of the article lives his life much as I did in the very beginning of wondering if there was something wrong with me when we were trying to conceive. (Once we got to the actual diagnosis, eating the right foods felt more like arranging deck chairs on the Titanic.) And for this line: “Not only is John not real, the world I have just described does not exist.” In other words, while many (not all) women do a version of all the things listed at the beginning of the article, men do not.

Because, as the article points out, even though sperm are half the equation:

There is still no cohesive medical specialty devoted solely to men’s reproductive health, no recommendations that men have their reproductive organs examined regularly, no public health campaigns about the male biological clock, and no government labels warning men about the toxic effects of alcohol and drugs on sperm.

Go read the whole thing.

I have always been terrible with compartmentalization, and I chalked it up to the fact that everything was happening in my body. But maybe it’s also because I’ve been taught to pay attention to every twinge because the I have been taught to think about my body—from doctors to politicians to random stranger with opinions in the grocery store—nonstop. Until now when my body can no longer create a baby. Actually, scratch that. They’re going to keep regulating my body, even now. Because that’s what has always been done.

As I say every month, I’m shamelessly stealing this idea from Jessica Lahey. She has a recurring monthly date where she reviews all the books she read that month. Book reviews are important for authors, and I want to get better about doing this.

So. I’m going to review them here and also online, but I’m going to do it a little differently. I’m only going to review the stuff I really liked. I don’t see a reason to spend my time writing about something I didn’t love; it’s just using up more of my energy. So only positive reviews.

These are the books I liked (or mostly liked) from August.

Blue Ticket (Sophie Mackintosh): You may have noticed that I’m a tad obsessed with this book. It’s not just the best book I read in August—it’s up there within the top tier of books I’ve ever read. Very high praise. Like Handmaid’s Tale, I could see myself reading this one again and again. I have her other book on my TBR pile, and she has earned an eternal free pass—regardless of what future books are about, I’ll give them a chance because I love her writing that much.

How to Be an Antiracist (Ibram X Kendi): Kendi is really good at distilling racism into easy to remember statements, which is important if you are carrying with you the desire to do better every single day. Sometimes I wish he’d unpack his examples a little more—he relies heavily on superlatives to describe people who are important to understanding his story—but it is a straightforward, important read and a good place to dive in if you want to understand your place in a larger system.

Seven Lies (Elizabeth Kay): This was such an engaging thriller—totally creepy—and I couldn’t wait to get back to it every night and read the next lie. It has a great framing, too—you don’t realize it until you’re close to the end, and then the whole book comes together. Very well done.

Rodham (Curtis Sittenfeld): I went back and forth on whether to include this book. Here’s the thing, there were parts I really enjoyed, especially early in the book. And I may have felt differently about this book if I read it when we weren’t in the middle of an election season. It turned me off to the real and fictional Bill and fictional Hillary Clinton (real Hillary managed to remain beloved in my heart because I held the book at arm’s length). Trump is always a turnoff everywhere, and his inclusion ruined parts of the book for me. I decided to include it as a book in this list because the last line made me sob.

Camp (Lev Rosen): This was such a sweet book that would have meant so much to me if I had read it as a teen. It made me miss camp, even though I definitely don’t miss that stage of trying to figure yourself out. It’s about a camp for LGBTQ+ teens, and how the narrator changes himself to attract his crush. Did I mention it’s so sweet? It was a joy to spend time with this book with all of the crap in this world.

The Lion’s Den (Katherine St. John): This is one of those books that I liked and liked and liked and then I LOVED. I didn’t see the end coming at all, which made it such a delicious twist. Like you think you understand where things are going, and then you realize that you knew nothing and the story was so brilliantly put together that if this book were a casino, the dealer would definitely win. And you wouldn’t mind because you’d be so impressed.

What did you read last month?

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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This is a very weird site. And you will likely get addicted to watching these videos.

The premise is that you are an astronaut, floating above earth, looking down at these moments. The site pulls in unwatched videos: “These videos come from YouTube. They were uploaded in the last week and have titles like DSC 1234 and IMG 4321. They have almost zero previous views. They are unnamed, unedited, and unseen (by anyone but you).”

Literally unseen. I tested a few, clicking in the top left corner to go to YouTube, and most had one view.

Go enjoy. (P.S. The site states: “The video switches periodically. Click the button below the video to prevent the video from switching.” In case you want to watch the whole video.)

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.

Last thought from Blue Ticket because we’ll soon get into spoiler-land. And, I promise, zero spoilers in these posts. But if you read the book and want to talk about it, I have plenty of other thoughts about the end.

On page 273, she reflects on two women she saw—one white ticket, one blue ticket—and the impulse to have a child when you can’t.

I wondered about the old woman in the bed and breakfast, and the woman I had seen at the swimming pool, serene in her childlessness the way you could be serene in your motherliness. They were a chorus, asking me, what do you even want it for? … To pathologize desire into flat compulsion reduces the possibilities of it. Which is not to say that I had not felt compulsion. But perhaps I was learning the difference, finally, between that and conviction … Call it kindness, finally, shown toward myself.

I love that. I love embracing a desire to reach for parenthood, even when it’s hard, as conviction rather than compulsion. As a kindness I’m showing myself by being true to what is in my heart.

I think so many times, our decisions are questioned. Decisions that are trying to help us reach what other people can do easily, and they’re weighted with judgment: we’re hysterical, obsessed, single-minded, jealous… compulsive. But we’re not. Or, as she says, that reduces the story to someone else’s judgment. We’re filled with conviction—whether we reach parenthood or not. Whether we reach it is not the point. The true story is how hard we work to be kind to ourselves.

It’s September 11th. It’s so easy for dates to get lost on the calendar right now when every week feels the same. But I noticed the date and remembered in time. Next year will mark 20 years, right? Time feels so strange right now.

I forgot and then remembered that Rosh Hashanah is coming up in a week or so. Clearly it was in the back of my mind because we’ve taken steps to make sure we have everything in place to attend Zoom services at our shul. But I forgot in the sense that we plotted out the next two weeks of meals, Josh did the food shopping, and then I remembered that we should have planned a meal. We originally had calzones scheduled for that night. We bumped them by a day to make a brisket.

In some ways, Zoom Rosh Hashanah is easier than Zoom Pesach. Remember Pesach? Back in the spring? When I thought it was silly that I had purchased the matzah so early. Surely the stay-at-home orders would be lifted by Pesach. And it’s now the seventh month. And we’re still at home. With zero dreams that Rosh Hashanah will look different.

Which means we can release those old expectations and instead make sure that we’re plotting out something new vs. something second-best.

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Stop procrastinating. Go make your backups. Don’t have regrets.

Seriously. Stop what you’re doing for a moment. It will take you fifteen minutes, tops. But you will have peace of mind for days and days. It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments in order to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

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And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week. In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “The Vultures Are Already Flying Above Us” (The Next 15000 Days)

Okay, now my choices this week.

By the Brooke has a post about choices after loss. She explains: “I think most working moms feel some level of mama-guilt, but in my experience, babyloss working moms get a double dose.” She takes the time to explain her thought process—not because it’s owned to the question asker but because she acknowledges that hearing someone’s story can help someone else make a decision.

FinallyMyLinesNow has a post marking the day she lost hope. They’re moving forward with the planned IVF cycles, and she’s doing everything she can to make them successful, but they didn’t have embryos for PGS. My heart sank for her when I read: “I know that adding PGS, while necessary due to the cerclage, realistically lowers our odds even further. Today though, was the first time I felt in my soul that we really have no chance. It was the first time I felt convinced that this is just the proverbial fool’s errand.” The post ends with a hug from her daughter, exactly what she needed in the moment.

Finally, The Road Less Travelled points out how COVID-19 has added to the sting of first-day-of-school reminders. Instead of social media being a week or two of first-day-of-school pictures, it was preceded this year by weeks and weeks of discussion about how school would look, etc. She unpacks how things unfolded in a few bullets (among other small thoughts), and it seems like a good reminder for all other difficult times, such as Christmas, Easter, or Mother’s Day. She writes, “The constant buzz-buzz-buzz is hard to ignore, and adds yet another layer to an already difficult time of year for those of us who are living without the children we wanted.”

The roundup to the Roundup: September 11th and Rosh Hashanah. Your weekly backup nudge. And lots of great posts to read. So what did you find this week? Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between September 4 – 11) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week? Read the original open thread post here.