So Earthandink had a post about tetrachromancy, and while there is no test you can take online to see if you are a tetrachromat, there IS a test you can take to check your colour acuity.

Did I take it?  Uh… yes, I did.

And it made me feel really good about myself.  Actually, let’s not mince words: it made me feel superior to the vast majority of the world, including those who have not yet taken the test and therefore may have perfect colour acuity, too.  Plus look at the timestamps on Earthandink’s comments.  It took me 7 minutes tops — though probably more like 5 — to rearrange all those colours with the rest of the time spent leaving those comments plus running around the living room screaming, “I am peeeeeeeeeerfect!”

The first thing I did after I got my score was go upstairs to ask Josh how it felt to be married to someone with perfect colour acuity.  Did it feel good?  Did it make him feel a little self-conscious when choosing paint colours?  (It should.)  Did he feel like telling people in the grocery store about his wife?  About her perfect colour acuity?  Because I certainly felt like telling people.

I mean, look, I’m telling all of you.  Hi, I’m Melissa.  I have perfect kerning abilities AND I have perfect colour acuity AND I cannot tie my shoelaces (I never mastered that) AND I was such a bad speller in fourth grade that I had to pick up my books and go down to a third grade class because there wasn’t a low enough spelling group to contain me in my own grade.  So… you know… the skillz are hit-or-miss.

So how did you do on the colour test?  Please make me feel good about myself.

P.S. After you take the test, don’t forget to go prep your #MicroblogMonday post for tomorrow…

My Queen’s Greatest Hits CD died.  I got this CD before I even had a CD player.  An ex-boyfriend from college gave it to me because he knew I loved Queen.  I pointed out that I had no way to play it.  (This was back in the good old days of the Walkman.)  He told me that one day I would own a CD player (a mind-blowing thought at the time) and have a way to listen to it.  He was right about that, and this CD outlived that relationship by a good 18 years.

I love this CD.  It’s one of those things I stress-listen to.  You know how there are books that you stress-read or foods that you stress-eat?  I stress-listen to Queen.

The first few loops of the disc sounded fine this week.  And then the CD started skipping.  And now it pretty much doesn’t play.  I am so sad about this.  Luckily I had uploaded the disc to iTunes, so I can make a new copy for the car or play it off the phone.  But still.  The original disc is toast.

Goodbye Queen disc.  You’ve served me well and brought me much enjoyment.

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We are about 1 week away from the Creme de la Creme list CLOSING.

The 2014 Creme de la Creme list is open for entries until December 15th.  No one will be added after December 15th.  Read the post to see how to be a part of the Creme de la Creme, which is open to every member of the ALI (adoption/loss/infertility) community.

Consider that your weekly reminder.

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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:

• “Of Mindfulness and Mourning” (Invincible Spring)
• “Support Infertility Bloggers by Shopping” (Amateur Nester)
• “Top Ten Reasons Why Gum Surgery is Easier Than Infertility” (Infertilityhonesty)
• “It’s Not Always Tea Parties and Colouring” (Waiting for Baby Bird)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Two Kids and Counting… Slowly has a post about online infertility communities, separating the outcome of trying from the need to speak with people who understand.  She writes, “I have found over the last two years that it is important to keep in contact with ladies who are still trying or who talk of how tough trying to conceive was when they were, often and without shame.  I don’t ever want to lose the community because I won’t ever forget the struggle no matter how it ends.”  It’s a great post about shared experience.

The Empress and the Fool, in the wait of her final cycle, writes about how hope makes her behave as if she gained no knowledge from the previous cycles.  The two week wait, that saucy minx, comes with the vague symptoms of early pregnancy and plenty of twinges (or not).  As she points out, what has happened has already happened even if she doesn’t know it yet: “we spend the entire second half of it speculating on an outcome that has already been definitively decided – to implant or not to implant.”  Sending lots of good thoughts for that final test.

Searching for Our Silver Lining has a thought-provoking post on how we bandy about the term “bitter.”  She explains, “There’s the classic labeling for someone who is intent on making everyone around them utterly miserable. But I’ve also learned that someone can accuse someone else of being ‘bitter’ as a way to distract from the self-loathing they may be feeling.”  “Bitter” is to infertility what “bitch” is to women: a word used to diminish another person.  Go over and read the whole post.

Mama Bean Parenting has a gorgeous post (thank you, Ellen!) about rolling the dice when she closes her eyes, never knowing if she’ll be thinking about the present that never was or the past that was.  A long time ago, she had a very different understanding of pregnancy: “Once upon a time, when childbirth was only TV shows and rose-tinted stories, this dream was mine to craft. I could look forward with an open mind and a hopeful heart about the exciting possibilities of My Turn.  Not anymore.”  Go read this very powerful post about her un-children.

Lastly, At Least I Still Have Humour realizes she can never say “guess what” again.  You’ll have to click over to read the situation (and it will be very very familiar… as anyone who has people around them waiting for news can attest), and also to congratulate her on a job well done with the competition.

The roundup to the Roundup: Goodbye Queen CD.  Your friendly Creme de la Creme reminder.  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 November 28th and December 5th) 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.

I read the Newsweek article on twins this week.  Of course I did.  I have twins due to fertility treatments.  Amy Klein is usually a smart writer, and I’m always interested in the rehashing of the single-embryo-transfer meets non-insurance-coverage debate.  It isn’t financially feasible to go with single embryo transfers when there is no insurance coverage, though it also isn’t financially feasible to pay the health costs for premature multiples.  Because of the lack of insurance coverage, we are asked to make impossible choices with our medical team.  Every cycle is literally a gamble, and you just hope that you put your money on the right roulette number.

Still, medical science has gotten better and single embryo transfers are now less risky than they were 10 years ago.  That is the point of the article: that we need to look at the facts in front of us and make choices based on science now vs. using methods that made sense years ago but no longer apply.

The only thing that bothered me about the article were the quotes from doctors that implied the decision to transfer more than one embryo rests solely with the patient.  It’s not that they absolve themselves fully from the situation, but each doctor has a quote that places the blame for negative medical decisions with the patient.  People are hedging their bets.  Parents are making “conscious decision that would cause health risks for their kids.”

Even the description of the article points a finger:

“Fertility doctors want to curtail multiple births, but that’s a tough sell for women desperate to be mothers.”

Fertility doctors are the good guys.  Desperate, hysterical women are the culprit.

Which begs the question: who is in charge?  I’m under the impression that doctors are in charge of my medical treatment.  I can shop around to find a doctor willing to do my bidding, but ultimately, they are the ones making the decision about my care.  Certainly, when things go well, they are perfectly willing to accept the accolades for their high SART scores.  Those scores, for instance, are assigned to the work of doctors, not the choices of their patients.

But when things go wrong — because a twin pregnancy technically counts as “things going wrong” if the goal is one baby — all blame rests with the patient.  It’s a situation we see repeated by the media and the general public and doctors alike.

Yes, Nadya Suleman’s doctor lost his medical license.  But who was blamed for reckless behaviour in that situation?  Was it the doctor or Suleman?  I’d argue that it was Suleman.  And yes, that is an extreme example, but this article reflect that ideology.

When it goes well, we thank the doctor.  And when it goes poorly, we blame the woman.

It is important to be an informed patient so you know the questions to ask and the information to provide, but I don’t have a medical degree.  When I go to a fertility clinic, I am expecting the doctor to lead me to a best course of treatment.  If that treatment conflicts with what I thought would be the suggested course of treatment, I’d ask for an explanation.  But beyond that, I am paying a doctor for his or her expertise.  Not just to be a warm set of hands feeling my cervix.

I think we need to be careful about assigning blame in general.  Humans are way too trigger happy when it comes to raining bullets of words down on individuals.  How many times do political pundits blame President Obama for situations outside the reach of the presidency?  How many times do we blame individual teachers for the failure of students, or parents for their offspring?  We like to behave as if all situations pop up in a vacuum without any external factors affecting the outcome.

So I’m not recommending that we assign blame to the proper individual, but more that we stop assigning blame.  Period.  That we look at all the factors that go into making a decision and work on fixing individual pieces.  In other words, make things work better vs. snarling fault.

We have a situation: IVF protocols are still leading to multiple births, and multiple births are not the best outcome for mothers or children.  So how can we fix this without assigning blame?  Which cog in this wheel isn’t engaging the other teeth in order to make things turn smoothly?  What needs to change so we can get a better outcome?

That’s the article I’d like to read.  Not ones that paint fertility doctors like clueless Little Red Riding Hoods skipping through the woods to Grandma’s house, just wanting to deliver the muffins.  While those desperate women, those big bad wolves, lurk behind the trees, ready to jump out and demand transfers of multiple embryos.

Image: DJ Ghost via Flickr

The ChickieNob and I love naming things.  I have one of those 10,001 Baby Name books that I use for naming characters, and we like to go through it together, pointing out our favourite names.  I keep a running list of favourite names in the front of my notebook just in case we’re away from the book and quickly need to name something.  We like naming things so much that sometimes we rename things: our nicknames have nicknames.

Since we have exhausted all the inanimate objects in our house, we are now turning to your house.  We’d like to name your Elf on a Shelf.

We don’t want an elf; we just want to name one.

Or two.  Or twenty.  We’ll name as many as you like.  If your elf already has a name or you also don’t want an elf in your house, never fear.  We’re also happy to name teapots, toothbrushes, or various stuffed animals.  We’re not picky.

We get that Elf on a Shelf is a treasured family tradition, and we get that most people would like to name their own elf, thank you very much.  But what about our naming needs?  We have deep, overwhelming naming needs and nothing to bestow with a moniker at the moment.

The last thing we got to name was the littleBits arduino that we got.  We named it Aviato after the company on Silicon Valley.  It was sort of a rushed job; a quick naming just because we wanted to start programming it.  I don’t want you to think that we’ll do a similar job naming your elf.  We’ll take our time.  Really think hard.

It’s just that since the arduino, we’re in a dry spell.  I mean, yes, we can rename our dreidels once again, but it’s not the same thing as naming your elf (or other items).

Just answer the following questions in our information-gathering quiz below in the comment section.  After all, we don’t want to name your elf Ethel and then discover that Ethel will be residing in a very modern-looking living room.  Or name your elf Edward and then discover that you’re Team Jacob.  After you answer the questions, we will think long and hard about the best name for your elf and email it to you.  In the case of non-elves, maybe leave a link to a picture so we can see what we’re working with.  We’d hate to give your teapot the name Alma and find out that it totally looks like a Tiffany, you know?

1. Would you rather go to the beach, a museum, hiking in the woods, or a loud party?

2. Describe the ideal paint colour for your living room.  Is it the colour that is currently on your walls or your dream colour?

3. You walk into an ice cream store that has every flavour ever made.  What flavour do you order?

4. Do you have pictures of family on the walls, photographs of places, or no art whatsoever?

5. Tell us your favourite book.  Or one of your favourite books.

6. Do you like classic or creative names?

7. Movie or television character you’d most like to be stuck next to on a long flight.

8. Is the elf (or object) male, female, or gender-neutral?  (We’re only giving you three options due to space, so please be more specific with gender if you need another category.)

Update: The ChickieNob looked at the comments and emails and told Josh, “I have a gazillion things to name!” (Three cheers to hyperbole!)  Unfortunately, she also had a lot of math homework (which she should probably do if she thinks gazillion is a real number). It was Common Core math which meant that a good ten minutes were spent trying to figure out this new way to do multiplication, which feels as if it was made-up in a fever dream.  She has this under control and is just finishing up all those mandatory things (such as math homework) before she starts the naming process.  So keep those naming requests coming.

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

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I have a Mallen Streak — a two-inch shock of white in the front of my hair a la Rogue in X-Men.  (Or the Bride of Frankenstein, though Rogue sounds a bit cooler.)  I don’t love it, but I don’t know what I want to do with it so for the time being, I’m leaving it.

What I do love is that it has a name.  That we have a word for a strange clump of white hair that inexplicably forms (Mallen Streak) or the space between two letters (kern) or giving someone a loving look (belgard).  For every word that doesn’t exist though we wish it did, there are thousands upon thousands of cool words that have fallen into disuse.

So teach us a cool word or your favourite word, even if you think it may be a common one that everyone knows.  Sometimes we just need to hear it again to remember to use it.

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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.