So I should have been more clear on yesterday’s #MicroblogMondays post. When I said where I am online, I meant where I post.  Let’s say that I start the week with 500 words to say on the Internet.  I’ll use about 300 of them here on Stirrup Queens.  I use about 150 of them on BlogHer.  And then I scatter the remaining 50 on Facebook, Twitter, Ello, etc.

If we were to look at what I’m actually doing online, you would see a grotesque amount of time given over to Hay Day.  Like take whatever you remember from my obsession with Candy Crush and dial it up to 11.  I wake up early to play that app.  It’s sick.  I miss out on 15 minutes of sleep so I can have time to virtually farm while I drink coffee.

Okay, so after Hay Day, you can find me on email or reading blogs when I’m not writing.

So how does all of that play into blog stats or Facebook friends or Twitter followers?  People tend to go where you are the most.  You know that if you want to hear what I have to say or see a picture I’m going to post, it’s going to be here.  No one would think to look for me over on Facebook.  I’m on there, but I’m certainly not updating there consistently.  Same goes for Twitter.  In both places, I tend to consume more than I produce; meaning, I read a lot but I don’t often post my own status updates.

It is hard to find the balance between being on social media accounts vs. being in your own space (your blog).  Sometimes people just prefer Facebook or Twitter, and they camp out on those sites, not really caring that people aren’t coming to their blog anymore.  But other times, I hear the frustration from people who have worked hard to build networks on those other sites because they were promised that it would drive traffic to their blog.  And it does.  But not if you’re camped out on those sites.  Because then people get the message that Facebook or Twitter or Pinterest or Google+ is where YOU want to communicate.  So they meet you in those spots and then don’t think to continue over to your blog.

It would be like meeting a friend for dinner, catching up through the meal, and THEN being surprised when you suggest a second meal back at your house but they turn you down.  Your friend is full.  They’ve already socialized with you.  Why would they want a second dinner?  (Except, of course, that sometimes a second dinner is delicious.)  The opposite scenario is walking through the restaurant, pausing at everyone’s table to say a few quick words, and then announcing that you’re holding a meal back at your place and leaving.  Some people will remain in the restaurant because that’s where they’re happy.  But people who want to hear what you have to say (or see what you’re serving) will come over to eat.

Did that make any sense?

I think the reason why I’ve never seen a rise or fall in blog traffic (everything has been pretty consistent for years) is because this is where you know you’ll find me.  Which isn’t to say that I won’t find you on those other sites.  I know some of you like Facebook or Twitter, so I visit you where YOU are.  But this is where I like to communicate, and this is where you will find the vast majority of my words.

If you miss your blog, I would join up with #MicroblogMonday next week. (Or hey, there is still time to do it this week.  I usually don’t close the list until late Tuesday afternoon to accommodate late stragglers.  There are a lot of people who microblog on Tuesdays.)  It’s a simple way to signal to people where you will consistently be on your blog every Monday.  You’ll be in your home; in your blog.  And once people know that, they will visit you there.  And you will meet new people who blog via that link up because I have met new people who blog via that link up, so I know that it is possible.  It has been one of the nicest weekly parties online.  It makes my whole week better to know I have dozens of posts to read before people scatter back to other social media sites.

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

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A friend was complaining about their drop in blog traffic over the years.  It made me think about how back in college (which was pre-cell phone), if people wanted to find me during non-class hours, I’d likely be at home, at the literary magazine office, at this one coffeehouse, at work, or at my art lab.  So you may have to jog around to five sites, but you’d find me in time.  Hint: start at the coffeehouse.

Today, if you want to find me online, the best place to check is my blog.  After that, BlogHer.  I’m sometimes on Facebook.  Sometimes on Twitter.  Sometimes on Ello.  Almost never anywhere else.  Let me know if you disagree, but I’m going to guess that if you wanted to check if I were alive, the first place you would look is if there was a new blog post here, correct?  As a result, my blog traffic has been fairly consistent.  It ebbs and flows with the seasonal shifts, but overall, it’s been pretty steady.

So think about it for a second: if I was coming to look for you online, where should I go first?  Where are you online, for the most part?

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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.

Do not read this post if you haven’t read the Harry Potter series.  It contains spoilers.

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Hope I have sent the meat of this post far enough down the page so people can click away.

Dumbledore died Wednesday night.  Well yes, he died years ago, but he died in the twins’ world on Wednesday night.

Before he died, maybe a chapter ahead of time, the ChickieNob saw where things were heading and she started sobbing.  I read the chapter aloud with her face firmly planted against my side, her nose breathing my arm.  Josh held the Wolvog.

Right before the moment occurred, my voice slowed down to clue them in that something terrible was about to take place, and the ChickieNob had me pause.  The four of us teetered together on the literary edge.  She didn’t want to go on because she knew she was in the last moment of having this character alive.  The last moment where all the other characters were blissfully ignorant of what was about to go down.  If we didn’t keep reading, Dumbledore could be alive forever.  Harry could be happy forever.  (Well, as happy as he was in that moment which wasn’t very happy at all because he feared that the Felix Felicis had worn off Hermione, Ron, and Ginny.)

At the same time, she didn’t want to stop reading because she needed to know.

It was awful to watch them process it.

I’m sure it hurt Rowling to kill him.  It certainly hurt a lot for us to let him go.

Of course, this brings full circle the lie I told the ChickieNob back when the boy ruined the book for her in first grade.  She understands (I think) why I lied.  We finally told the Wolvog the story — he didn’t know that she was protecting him from that knowledge all this time — and he admitted that the same thing happened to him: another child told him that Dumbledore died, and he kept that information from his sister.  It was a very sweet moment to learn how they protected each other’s literary experiences.

After the ChickieNob left the room, the Wolvog confided that he heard the conversation back in first grade.  That he had sat on the steps and eavesdropped.  He had been carrying that with him for years.

So all has been released.

After a good cry, it felt as if it had rained inside the book.  As if the air had cleared.

Onward.

Happy Halloween!  I am going as the TARDIS tonight.  I was going to go as a Ravenclaw and wear my new robes, but I haven’t gotten them hemmed. (It has an unusual shape to the bottom seam, and I need to take it to a professional rather than hemming at home.) Not a problem wearing them around the house, as I am wont to do, but I didn’t want to get them dirty outside.  I was making a TARDIS shirt for Josh (and ended up making two for the twins and another for my Dad), so I made a fifth one for myself.  Simple Halloween costume that can be worn year-round.  And yes, I will wear it year-round.  Every day is casual Friday at my workplace.

We are passing out Hershey Kisses tonight.  It seemed like the most practical candy to distribute because if we have leftovers — and we usually have leftovers — I can use them in baking.  See, I’m always think-y.

What is your costume tonight?  And what candy are you passing out?

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I should probably keep posting reminders through December about the Creme de la Creme.  So… here’s your reminder!

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:

• “Good in the Middle of Difficult” (Three Geminis and a Sagittarius)
• “Lonely Onlies (Part One)” (Res Cogitatae)
• “Lonely Onlies (Part Two)” (Res Cogitatae)
• “Lonely Onlies (Part Three)” (Res Cogitatae)
• “Amanda Bynes, Robin Williams, and the Spectacle of Mental Illness” (Let’s Queer Things Up!)
• “Floating” (Inconceivable)
• “They Are Not Here” (Infertilityhonesty)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Bio Girl got an odd phone call from her mail order pharmacy about the Lupron she didn’t order that brought out old feelings.  She recounts the year being caught between the insurance company and the medication provider which ultimately led to her hysterectomy.  So this call came waaaaaaaaaay too late to be helpful, and only served to stir up frustrated feelings about the health care system.  A powerful post.

Res Cogitatae is on a roll (see above).  She has a post about her final transfer after 6 1/2 years.  This is the moment that quieted me: “I went into the room and the nurse left me there for a few minutes after telling me to ‘lie down and get comfortable’.  You can’t get comfortable in that room.  So I stared at the ceiling and told myself (again) that this was the last time I would have to stare at that ceiling.”  It’s a huge moment, that final transfer, and it made me hold my breath for her.

The Maybe Baby(Babies) is asking for advice on a conundrum: an unliked coworker lost his unborn child, and while she knows she is in a unique position to offer comfort having lost her twin daughters, their prior relationship colours the current moment.  Should she step forward to comfort when she knows he doesn’t like her?  Does any of that matter when someone is in mourning?  Give her advice on what you would do.

Lastly, We Say IVF They Say FIV has a post about Facebook reminding her of an acquaintance’s birthday who has since died.  Again, the awkward situation brings up a host of feelings since this acquaintance took her life two months earlier.  While no amount of friends reaching out can undo the effects of mental illness, she wonders about a person who was connected to 254 people, and how she had no clue what was happening internally when the external looked like a happy place.

The roundup to the Roundup: What are you going as for Halloween, and which candy are you passing out?  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 October 24th and 31st) 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 usually like Slate’s Dear Prudence column.  I like advice columns in general, and I like Prudie specifically because she usually doesn’t coddle or mince words.  She gets to the point quickly, and that’s how I like my advice from strangers.

By covering each situation quickly, she can get through multiple situations in the same column.  Two days ago, I was reading about a girl who doesn’t think she is pretty enough for her boyfriend and a big-breasted woman who wanted to go bra-free, when I came to a conundrum that hit a little closer to home (not that I don’t have big breasts, but I don’t want to go bra-free): a sister who is requesting funding for IVF.

Namely, her sister asked the family for funding in lieu of baby shower gifts in the future, and some of the family members had concerns.  The woman asked Prudie if she should tell her sister the family’s concerns.

And Prudie answered:

Of course people have concerns when they get a mass email requesting money to help fund someone else’s personal activities—such as, I’ve got my own needs to take care of, and this is out of line. Your sister’s request was presumptuous and very unlikely to come close to funding what would likely be multiple procedures. What people would spend on a few onesies is not going to cover IVF. You should direct your sister to Resolve, the support group for people dealing with infertility. They have a Web page about getting loans for IVF, and that’s the way your sister should go.

There was so much wrong with Prudie’s answer.

One, family building isn’t a personal activity.  Running a marathon is a personal activity.  Writing a book is a personal activity.  But family building is actually a group activity because the person produced becomes part of the… wait for it… family.  In other words, they become another member of this social system which was created for the sole purpose to collectively share resources and provide mutual protection and comfort.  Humans invented this concept of family, and families need members to be replenished in order to keep existing.  This doesn’t mean that every member needs to reproduce — that would cause the family to explosively grow and need to fragment out into smaller groups.  But it does mean that family building ceases to be a “personal activity,” as Prudie labels it.

Requesting money is not “out of line.”  It’s just a request.  The sister isn’t holding the family hostage or threatening to leave the family if she doesn’t get her money.  She is merely stating her need and asking the family to step forward to help.  Again, we created this system of family for precisely THIS type of situation: someone has a need and other people come forward to fill it.  This is the way all animal groups work.  And while we’ve expanded where we draw comfort, joining into communities that are beyond the family, the core group that the vast majority of people turn to first and foremost is family.  So, no, not “out of line,” Prudie.  Nor is it “presumptuous.”

I agree that it’s unlikely that small donations will add up to enough money for multiple IVF tries, but IVF loans through fertility clinics (which are the plans listed by Resolve) is not a great idea.  In fact, SLATE (yes, Prudie, your publication) had an article about fertility financing just a few years back pointing out the problems with these loans.  Resolve has a note on their site that they don’t endorse any of these programs; they list them for the benefit of users without comment.  Better to recommend a book such as Budgeting for Infertility, which covers the financial side of infertility, and allow the sister to come up with additional ways to fund her treatments.

Here’s what Prudie could have said:

A: You’re obviously close, so yes, voice the concerns of family members in a non-judgmental manner.  Your sister may not have thought through all the possibilities in her request, and alerting her to questions could help her chart the best route through infertility.  As you know, treatments are very expensive.  A book such as Budgeting for Infertility would be a good starting point to helping your sister think outside the box in funding IVF.  All that aside, it sounds like your sister trusts family and wants to perpetuate the family by producing more members, the sort of people who will be taught to turn around and help out the next generation.  So congratulations to your family for remaining so close in a time when families are increasingly splintered.  And good for you for wanting your sister to succeed rather than making the “lack of funding speak for itself” which is what my totally thoughtless alter-ego would have said.

You know, something like that.