Updated at the Bottom

The sofa in our basement is called the asscracker.  It’s a sectional, but we’ve put together unrelated sections, which means that there is a strange metal bar that runs down one of the grooves between cushions.  People who do not know about our affectionate nickname for the sofa have plopped down on said metal bar and gotten a sore bum.  Hence the name, asscracker.

We inherited asscracker because… well… this is a long story.  You may want to get a cup of coffee.  And we should probably begin with ugly couch.

Ugly couch is a different sofa: one that does not harm people’s bums insomuch as it harms people’s eyes and sense of taste.  It’s ugly; a hideous tan, the colour of dried urine.  We didn’t realize how ugly this sofa was when we purchased it early in our relationship.  All we knew was that it fulfilled our two requirements: (1) hid a sofa bed for guests and (2) was the most inexpensive piece of furniture in the store.

Over the years, as we sat on other people’s sofas, we wished that we had made a different choice.  We weren’t really using the sofa bed feature, and while it was a decently-made piece of furniture, it likely had been sold at such a low price because no one else wanted a sofa the colour of a urine stain.

When we moved into our current house, we made ourselves a little grownup promise.  We were adults now, and we were going to take our hard-earned money to the store and splurge on a new sofa.  The current sofa — ugly couch — would be moved into the basement’s rumpus room.

But then we moved into the house and the movers could not get ugly couch down the stairs.  They tried for a long time to turn it in various directions, but they couldn’t make it past a turn in the stairs.  Ugly couch was left in our living room.  It didn’t make sense to buy a nice, new sofa for the rumpus room.  My parents donated asscracker, which had been in storage.  We took three unconnected pieces because I liked them the most and I didn’t know about the metal bar until they had gotten rid of the other sections.

So that’s how we ended up with two piece of furniture that we don’t like for the last fifteen or so years.

A perfect storm of a bathroom renovation (which makes you look critically at everything else in your house) and a lot of articles about minimalism has made me think that it’s time to say goodbye to ugly couch.  We could get a simple IKEA sofa for the basement — something with a bed so guests could use it despite the fact that no one has used the sofa bed in the living room in the past twelve years.  And we could get the sofa of our dreams for the living room.  I don’t actually have a sofa of my dreams, but you know what I mean: something that is not ugly couch.

But here’s the thing: the ugly couch sparks as much joy as it sucks away.  It’s a sofa with a story: how we ended up with ugly couch and not the couch-not-taken (yes, there was a third couch I left out of this story) was part of our first fight as a couple.  That couch has known us from the very beginning of our engagement.  When we first got it, we used to take trips to our living room and sleep (or, really not sleep because it was so uncomfortable) on the sofa bed for a change of pace.  The sofa features heavily in early baby pictures, when we’d prop up the twins and pretend they could sit up on their own.

So first I need to talk a sibling into taking custody of ugly couch.  I need to have visitation rights and be able to go back to ugly couch and bask in its tan-ness.  I need to sleep on its uncomfortable sofa bed and say, “sofa beds really are an excellent idea.”  If that can happen, I can let my sofa-that-sparks-joy live somewhere else.  If not, I don’t know, it passes the Konmari test so I’m at an impasse.

Asscracker, on the other hand… totally fine getting rid of that one in a hot second.

Update:

The twins read this post and informed me that the proper name of the sofa is “Assbreaker.”  They wanted this corrected.  So I’m correcting it.

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

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Chaffetz said this week that people will need to choose between getting a new iPhone and health care.  Let’s set aside for a moment that the cost of the two items are not comparable; that health care is a lot more expensive than a phone.  Instead, let’s talk about the fact that we’ve set up a culture where having a phone is as important as having health care.

If you do not have a phone (landline or mobile), it is hard to get a job.  Hard to get a home. Hard to enroll in school.  Many years ago, Josh’s boss wanted him to get a blackberry.  She paid for his cell service because she admitted that it was such a huge ask.  On the other hand, every job I’ve held in the last 5 year has expected me to have a mobile device and to use said mobile device for video meetings and text messages.  It isn’t a question of “do you have…?” but “what is your number?”

We’ve built a mobile expectation into our work culture in the same way that employers expect employees to have access to transportation to get to work on time and an appropriate wardrobe for the work space.

Think for a moment: could you do your job or live your life without a mobile device?

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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.

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.