I want to start this off by stating the obvious: everyone is entitled to approach and disseminate information about their infertility in a way that works for them.  Some people speak about infertility early and often, and some people only mention it after the birth.

There are benefits and drawbacks to telling people before you know how things will turn out, just as there are benefits and drawbacks to only mentioning infertility after the fact.  You’ll get a lot of support, but people will constantly bring it up.  It becomes your Story, with a capital S.  And yes, infertility is front and center in your brain when you’re trying to build your family and can’t; it’s the sort of thing that makes itself very difficult to forget about since it is happening in your body.  But that doesn’t mean you want it brought up all the time.

So I understand why people don’t bring it up until they also have news to share.

I’m grateful when celebrities step forward and talk about their struggle with infertility, using their platform to help bring information to the general public.  I am equally annoyed when the media runs stories about how so-and-so is sharing their struggle so people finally understand how hard to it can be to experience infertility.

(Excuse me, media, don’t you think that your prior negative spin on infertility coverage is part of the reason the general public believes what they believe?  If they’re not getting their information from personal experience, they are getting their information from the media.)

But part of me knows that if a celebrity is opening up about infertility (vs. having the media speculate on their fertility), chances are, they are currently pregnant and simply not announcing yet.  The announcement comes a month or two later, with a little bump and a due date a few months away.

I am happy for them — and to reiterate, I am grateful that they shared that not every family is formed easily — but the timing cements that wrongly-held belief that there are just so many options out there and one will work for you.  Yes, there are a lot of options, and yes, hopefully one will work.  But it’s not a given, and believing so belies just how hard it is — emotionally, physically, and financially — to undergo fertility treatments.   I am so grateful they exist, but they are not easy.

The baby surrounded by IVF needles picture hits a little closer to reality.

It’s a blameless situation, yet it spreads a message through the general public.  You announce your infertility, you have closure to your infertility, you move on to parenthood.  That is their story; there is no other way to tell it because that is how it happened for them.  Or, the only other way to tell it is to tell it based on someone else’s timeline, which isn’t fair.  Yet clearly timing matters.

That truncated story of infertility to pregnancy becomes the story in the general public’s mind when they aren’t given a multitude of stories to follow.

I am grateful for celebrities who announce their infertility at all, just as I’m grateful for non-celebrities who speak about their infertility.  Every story matters.

But I wish there were more people who began their story in medias res; in the heart of the unknown.  I wish the media would follow their story, not to wring the tragedy out of it, but to serve as a realistic portrait — like that baby surrounded by needles — of the marathon of ups and downs the average patient experiences.  That for the vast majority, there isn’t a neat solution waiting for them when they enter the clinic, but instead a series of tries — some successful, some not — that they hold their breath through month after month.

Maybe their story would end with pregnancy and birth, or adoption, or surrogacy, or living child-free.  But the point is that just like the person experience infertility, we wouldn’t know until we know.

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

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This weekend we went to a second Harry Potter festival.  This time the weather cooperated, so we got to wear our Ravenclaw robes.  This festival was a lot more crowded.  You’ve never seen so many wizards in one place.

We lucked out that our visit to Philadelphia coincided with the Rosenbach Museum in Center City displaying the original copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland for the 150th anniversary of the book.  It’s the handwritten copy that Dodgson presented Alice Liddell when she asked him to write down the story, complete with the original, pre-Tenniel illustrations.

You could only take a non-flash photo from 2 meters away

It was very special that we got to see the book the day before St. Frideswide’s Day, who is the patron saint of Oxford and her story (and the church in Oxford connected to her) are entwined in the story of the book.  We celebrate St. Frideswide’s Day every year with scones and tea, which we’ll have after the kids come home from school.

What is the most amazing thing you’ve seen this week?

P.S. I wrote about St. Frideswide before this with the Alice tour of Oxford.

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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 posts.

Thank you to everyone who weighed in with stories or sympathy about losing my Saturday morning routine.  It felt really weird to wake up yesterday and… not play.

But that’s okay because I am replacing the game with a bunch of games.  Instead of putting all of my eggs in a one-game basket, I’m spreading out my gaming energy in a few different places while I drink my coffee.

First and foremost, I’m playing Loot and Legends.  I love Loot and Legends.  I am particularly attached to my wizard, Bathilda.  Sometimes the kids watch me play, and the ChickieNob will shriek, “protect Bathilda!” when her hit points drop.

In the same vein, when Land Fit for Heroes launches in a few days, I’m checking out that gamebook because it has a multi-player mode.  I don’t totally get how multiple people will share a game, but I’m all for finding out.

Next, I am working my way through the IF Comp games.  I plan to vote this year, so I want to play as many games as possible before the November 15th deadline.  I’m also playing Scroll Thief.  I have a huge backlog of interactive fiction to get through.

I am playing the Sherlock game (though I wish I could reset it because I botched the first round), Solitaire, and all of the old Activision and Atari games in the app.

So I have stuff to play.  It’s different, but it’s good.

What games are you playing these days, online or off?

Side note: tomorrow is #MicroblogMonday.  Get writing!

A few weeks ago, I won the crown on Battlefish’s blog, which is fitting since… you know… Stirrup Queens.  Queens.  Crown.  Get it?

Anyway, we hatched a plan for the crown.

I love this plan.

Somewhere over in Finland, there is a woman who is finishing her last round of chemo.  And she is going to get the crown.  But she’s not getting it from me and JustHeather.  She’s getting it from Thomas, as a very early (like 5 months early?) Random Act of Kindness.

Every year, there is a Random Act of Kindness Day in the spring:

March 9th Random Act of Kindness Day for Thomas was an AMAZING success in 2015! In honour of Thomas’ 10th birthday, more than 11,000 people pledged to change the world one act of kindness at a time on March 9th in his memory – and they did! We hope just as many people will join us again on March 9, 2016.

Kindness is something that should practiced every day, of course, but we’re asking people to be a little extra kind on March 9th. You don’t have to be anywhere specific or do anything specific – just look for ways to be kind wherever you are in whatever way you can.

So… in a small way… it’s sort of from all of us.  To this random woman.  Who has no clue that she’s going to get this big wallop of love.  I love our community.

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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:

• “She Wants You” (Heart Cries)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Pages, Stages, and Rages has a rallying cry, comparing gun violence in America to our very own Hunger Games.  She talks about the comparative passivity and points out, “Since the horrific massacre at Sandy Hook elementary school there has been 142 school shootings.  That’s one per week.”  Not about infertility, but it is about sustaining life.

Lavender Luz has a post from the perspective of a birth mother speaking about open adoption and things she wished she had done differently in her own situation.  It’s an interesting read; obviously personal to her own life, but there is advice to discover, too.  It sort of makes you look back on all difficult relationships and wonder what you would have done differently with the knowledge you have now.

Lastly, PALS has a post called “Permission to Parent” about parenting after loss.  She writes, “I do see the irony in the fact that I gave myself permission to grieve, but I’m not so forgiving in allowing for imperfect parenting on my part. Or even the idea that these challenges and struggles are simply a part of the parenting process, regardless of what it took to get to that point.”  It’s about being grateful and realistic.

The roundup to the Roundup: The surprise crown.  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 October 9th and October 16th) 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.

UPDATE AT BOTTOM!

I have a song that is driving me crazy.  So far my Facebook feed is stumped.  I am going to give you about a dozen clues, and you are going to help me figure this out.

I heard it on a top 40 station, though it probably wasn’t a top 40 song.  Meaning, I’ve been perusing hit song lists, and nothing feels familiar.  But I get the feeling the song is from this summer, or maybe last spring.

It is a female artist.  She sort of has a scratchy voice.  It sounds like she is singing the song lying down; like she doesn’t have enough energy to sit up.

It is a veeeeeery slow song.  What kicked it off tonight was hearing the song “Say Something” and at first I thought it was MY song, but then a man started singing.  My singer sounds like Alessia Cara crossed with Ellie Goulding singing with complete ennui.  Sort of like a Lana Del Rey.  Sort of… dirge-y.  Or a Florence and the Machine.  Or even an Adele.  Except probably none of those people because I’ve been clicking on their songs all night and haven’t found it.

I can only remember one line from it, and I’m not even remembering it correctly, except that I know it has something where the person is saying “the first” and then rephrases “the second” (or the third…).  Sort of like a vocal strikethrough.  So she’s singing about how she doesn’t get something right the first time, the second or the third time…

Help?

Update:

THE SONG HAS BEEN FOUND!  This is it: Love is Real Try Again by Miranda Dodson.  Christina found it, and she is my favourite favourite favourite person in the world because I had just about given up.  And it has the line I remember: “Why can’t I get it right on the first second time or the third wasted life.”  I can’t even explain the relief I am feeling right now.  Off to buy the song.

Oh my G-d, and it’s about infertility and pregnancy loss.  Yes?  Or am I reading too much into the lyrics?