When we got engaged, we bought a wedding planner and Josh wrote on the first page: “Mommy, what was it like to live above ground?”  See, we were soooooo funny when we were in our twenties.  We liked to joke that by the time our kids were interested in looking at our wedding planner, we would be living in an underground bunker because the earth would be uninhabitable.

That doesn’t seem to funny anymore.

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Every morning when I go to wake up the kids, I peek out the window even though I know there hasn’t been snow in the forecast.  Why do I do this?  Wishful thinking?  Disbelief?

I am a lifelong Marylander.  We are owed snow days; it is our birthright.  It is the promise our state makes to all residents: we will get snow AND we will be incapable of clearing said snow from roads.  The tradeoff is the snow day.  We get to stay home and not do anything in exchange for putting up with the fact that Maryland cannot obtain sufficient numbers of snow plows.

I like this system.

But this year, we haven’t gotten any snow days.  Yes, there is snow in the forecast for Monday night, and people are running around, shrieking, because we could get anything from one inch to 400 feet of snow.  But the Capital Weather Gang has gently reminded us like a patient, cardigan-wearing grandpa not to get ourselves too worked up.  There is more of a chance for things to go wrong with this storm than for things to go right.

Sometimes you get a gut feeling on things: I just don’t think we’re going to see a school-cancelling amount of snow.

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I am aware that there are plenty of people on earth who have never experienced snow in the same way that I am aware that there are plenty of people who have chosen not to live on either coast and therefore going to the ocean is a big deal or doesn’t happen at all.

But that’s not the choice we made.  We made the choice to (1) live in a place that goes through all four seasons, (2) live within close proximity to the ocean, (3) live in a place that may get a little soupy in summer but is overall not too hot and not too cold.

The thing about global warming is that it’s entirely possible that some places will never see snow again.  I’ve thought about ocean levels rising and flooding.  I’ve thought about species dying out due to climate change.  But I’ve never given a lot of thought to the idea of year after year without snow.  While I know there are plenty of other people who live that way, it isn’t our norm.  It’s unfathomable that we will have to travel to experience snow, something that used to fall down all around our house.

It makes me sad, first, but it also gives me the energy to fight the good fight and support the work of environmental groups to address global warming.  Emissions are NOT going to take away my Maryland-snow-incompetence days, not if I can help it.

Josh and I came to the realization this week that we have a shared hatred of wrapping things.  It’s Purim this weekend, so we had to wrap all of our mishloach manot baskets.  This activity takes about five to six hours; longer if I don’t do some pre-wrapping stuff like put all the chocolates in boxes.

We did this last night, and we both dreaded it all week.  I asked the kids in the morning if they wanted to help me for a few hours after school, and when I left the room, I heard Josh tell them, “The more you help, the less I have to do.”  (Spoiler alert: They didn’t want to help.)  Josh and I had a phone call midway through the day where we both whined about how much we hate wrapping things.  And then later we dragged our asses to the bleached-down kitchen and wrapped for many many many mind-numbing hours.

I don’t know why wrapping annoys us as much as it does.  I would rather wash an endless supply of dishes than wrap stuff.  I would rather clean toilets than wrap stuff.  I would rather listen to Josh’s music than wrap stuff.  That last one was a hard one, but yeah, I think I would rather listen to Josh’s music than cut cellophane.

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We got Yayoi Kusama tickets!  Hopefully I’ll have some pictures/stories about long lines to throw up next week.

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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:

• “‘Emotional Labour’ and Childless Women” (The Road Less Travelled)
• “Competitiveness in Fertility and Adoption” (My Path to Mommyhood)

Okay, now my choices this week.

The Empress and the Fool has a beautiful post to her two unborn daughters, a pregnancy coming after a long road of infertility and loss.  I’ll admit it: I cried reading it.  It’s not only a beautiful letter, but I read it knowing the history shared on the blog.  Plus this: “Your father and I will be behind you for all the broken bones and broken hearts to remind you: yes you can! The future is female.”

In Quest of a Binky Moongee has a post about her grandmother’s death.  Infertility robs us of the big things, but sometimes it is the small things that are the most hurtful splinters in our hearts.  Her surrogate is finally pregnant after so many years of family building, and she explains, “If we had been able to get pregnant earlier, then my grandma would have had a chance to meet our child(ren) or to have the joy of knowing their existence.  This lost opportunity highlights how unfair this journey could be.”  Go over and give her a hug.

So Dear and Yet So Far is back with an update post.  She explains: “Way back before we started trying to conceive, when one of my nieces or nephews was little, a toddler, no more that a year or 18 months, they looked around and found  who they were looking for: ‘Mommy!’ they exclaimed. Mommy! and my uterus ached and my chest clenched. I felt it. I wanted it. I knew.”  It is a beautiful piece about looking at Plan B or C; about life after it goes off-track and a new course has to be set.

Lastly, Different Shores has a post about Sarah Silverman and the study that said people feel moral outrage towards those who don’t have children.  She writes, “Why can’t our culture just respect the fact that some people can’t have children and some people just don’t want children, for whatever reason? Not to mention the people that shouldn’t have children.”  It’s an excellent question; one that ties into a larger umbrella question: Why do people care about things that other people do when those things don’t affect them?

The roundup to the Roundup: We hate wrapping things.  Seeing Yayoi Kusama’s exhibit.  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 March 3rd and 10th) 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.

This post is about a game that contains references to baby loss.  Click away if you’re not in a good mental space for that right now.

That opening gives you the warning I wish I had when I sat down to play a game over the weekend.  I’m not going to name the game because this really isn’t about the game, and my point isn’t to shame the writers.  My reaction was my reaction due to my life experiences.

I chose the game because it was listed as a horror mystery.  Love horror, sort of fond of mystery, so it seemed like a good fit.  The game came with a warning that it wasn’t suitable for children due to the nature of the content.  Excellent — I am so grateful when people give you a heads up about their work.

I was about a minute into the game when I discovered that I was playing as an unborn fetus:

“Never been born?  You mean that I’m dead?”

“I’m sorry, but the answer is yes …  You have never lived a single day.  You died while you were still in your mother’s womb.”

“And how did I die?”

“I don’t know, and in any case, I couldn’t tell you.  Maybe an accident, or maybe your mother just didn’t have enough courage to let you come to life.  I don’t know.”

“Oh, don’t be a fool, please.  He knows what happened to you, girl.  We both know.  But we can’t tell.”

The point of the game is to go to earth and figure out how you died.

Once I was getting my beta number and my hCG was under 10 mlU/ml.  I wrote down the number even though the nurse had already moved on to information for my next cycle.  I remember scrunching down inside of myself and then scrunching down literally onto the floor because my body had a sudden need to get as low and small as possible to hold down everything welling up inside of me.

That’s how I felt sitting at the kitchen table, reading the words in the game.

I stopped the game to read a review — was it abortion, loss, or murder?  It was murder, of course.  I read a little more, using a walk-through because my heart wasn’t into the game.  And then I finally closed it around the midway point.  There was nothing wrong with the game itself — it was a horror/mystery as promised.  But there was nothing in the voice that rang true to my experience with loss, and playing as an unborn fetus felt cheap.  It was the sort of set-up only someone who had never lost a baby would use as a plot device.

This isn’t really a debate about whether or not you should write about something if you don’t have personal experience.  I am a firm believer that people should write the story they want to write with the characters they want to bring to life.  If they do it well, people will respond.  If they do it poorly, well, people will respond, too.

But this is why we need games from women who have experienced loss; to counterbalance this poorly executed version.  I continued playing this game because I wanted to see my experience come to life in a game; my experience reflected back at me.  I didn’t find it, in the same way that billions of people don’t find their own experience in books or movies or games.  It’s rare to find that verisimilitude when it doesn’t come from first-hand knowledge though I believe it can be created from very careful research.

I am grateful when infertile writers write infertility into their books.  I am not quite as grateful when non-infertile writers drop infertility into their books as a plot device, especially when they only grab a cursory level of knowledge on the topic before writing.  Replace “infertile” with any culture, race, gender, etc, and the same feeling holds.

We Need Diverse Books isn’t just a slogan; it’s a fact.  People need to see their world come to life because reading and relating to characters and story is one way we process or understand complex emotions.

The other side of this is that the writers gave a content warning in regards to age.  They knew that this wasn’t an appropriate game for a ten-year-old.  But they didn’t know that this wasn’t an appropriate game for an infertile woman.  They couldn’t, and I’m not blaming them for being clueless about this fact.  I’m only pointing out how little they knew about loss when they decided to drop loss into their game as a plot device.  The same holds true for any emotionally-charged topic — from rape to race relations.  If you don’t know enough to know how it could emotionally affect another person, it probably isn’t being used well in the story.

I felt sad the rest of the night, and I woke up in the morning still feeling sad as I started my day.  The game brought up all the feelings and memories from our chemical pregnancies, but gave me none of the catharsis of processing that loss since pregnancy loss was only brought up for the sake of the story.  It was there to serve the plot; not the reader.

And that’s just it: Plots don’t have feelings.  Readers/players do.  Never mix that up.

Many years ago, there was an advice column where a person needed to buy a new bed.  The question asker was single, and all she currently needed was a twin bed.  But she reasoned that if she got a partner, she would want a queen-sized mattress.  So was it better to spend the money and get the queen bed and be done with it, or buy the twin bed she needed in the moment, which made her feel as if she was resigning herself to being eternally single?

The advice columnist told her to get the twin bed.  It was the bed she needed in this moment — that she could afford in this moment — and she should only make decisions based on what was happening in this moment.  There were billions of what ifs people could use to make purchases, but none were a smart way of making spending decisions.  The columnist promised that if life changed in a few months and she was moving in with someone, they could pool their resources and buy a queen bed and make the twin bed the guest bed.  The right bed would be purchased at the right time.

Personally, I would have splurged on the queen bed.  I hate shopping, and I would have wanted to get it over with once vs. risking having to go to the store twice.

But I digress.

I was thinking about the column because in Curtis Sittenfeld’s American Wife, the main character decides she will buy a house if she’s still unmarried at thirty.  She writes, “Although I told no one, keeping this idea in the back of my mind provided reassurance; it made my life seem less like something I was waiting for and more like something I was planning” (p. 95).

I think everyone reading this understands why that thought resonated with me.  When you’re going through infertility, it feels like life is something you’re waiting for, not planning.  So you look for those places where you can make declarations, you can wrest back some control, you can be the one in the driver’s seat (even if you can’t drive where you really want to go).

I love that she looked for houses.  It’s such a small thing, shifting her focus, but it made me care so deeply about the character.

Because we looked for houses when we couldn’t have a child.  We looked for houses when we were going through treatments.  I think about that when I sit in this space, having no clue whether or not we would ever reach those other goals so going for the one that was within our control.

I guess that’s why I always wanted the question asker in that advice column to buy the queen-sized bed.  She can’t control whether she gets married, but she can control the size of her bed.  I guess I just liked the idea of a person getting the bed their heart really wanted because of what it represented to her.  The idea of taking a break from the waiting game and stretching out across a delicious new mattress.

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

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It isn’t surprising to read that you can’t exist on one food alone (though potatoes apparently would keep you alive the longest), but did you know that you’re hardwired to eat a varied diet?  The BBC article states:

Humans have built-in mechanisms to avoid just such a situation (probably because it eventually leads to malnutrition) – specifically, a phenomenon called sensory-specific satiety: The more you eat of one thing, the less you can stomach it.

But I love eating the same thing.  Back in graduate school, I ate the same thing for every meal.  It was a roasted vegetable and tofu sandwich on a bagel.  I ate three of them every day for years.  I would still be eating at the sandwich if everyone else in this house would agree to consume it, too.  But the meal varies from night to night because I have to cook dinner for everyone else.  (Though breakfast and lunch are always the same for me.)

There is no possible way I could ever get bored of Special K.  No way that I could ever get sick of cucumbers.

What is the one food you think you could eat over and over again, sensory-specific satiety be damned?

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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.