I went to the world’s coolest science fair yesterday.  I know what you’re thinking: trifold boards, model volcanos, and lethargic-looking mice being used in questionable projects — science fairs aren’t “cool.”  Uh, this one was.  It was at the White House, with 100% more President Obama, Bill Nye the Science Guy, and Bobak Ferdowsi, NASA’s “Mohawk guy” from the Mars Rover project.

I wrote about it in greater detail over at Blogher yesterday when I got home — and pretty please go over there and look at the cool projects including a prosthetic leg made out of recycled bicycles and a “seeing” cane fashioned out of sensors and an Arduino.  One of my favourite projects didn’t make it into the post due to space, but it was Anne Merrill’s earthworm project, creating a natural method for suppressing soil-borne pathogens.  I know, I’m a little surprised at how much I liked it considering how much I dislike worms.  But it was fun talking to someone who could get that excited about soil.  The girl lit up talking about her buckets of worms.  She was funny and charming.  You can tell from a five minute talk that this is someone who is going to go far in life.

It made me wistful.

Isn’t it all about me?  It was the last time I checked.

So I’m now in my final week of my thirties.

I had a Scandinavian literature professor in college who spoke about the large bursts of reflection that came at the end of each century — the literary fin de siècle that gave rise to ideas such as Modernism.  The end of a century is usually a time of great unrest while looking toward a rebirth, and that energy propels the culture into new art forms and schools of thought.

But what sort of rebirth will come in my forties?  Age veers sharply from time periods in that regard.  From what I’ve heard, your forties are a settling in; finding comfort in your own skin and enjoying the fruits of your labours.  That doesn’t sound like rebirth at all.  But you see all these smart high school kids, at the cusp of doing something amazing, and you can’t help but feel a little wistful if you’re as self-centered as I am.  Maybe I wouldn’t have been so jealous if the event hadn’t occurred in the last week of being thirty.  But it did.  So I walked through there, both grooving on their energy and excitement and brilliance, and feeling a little wistful that I’m out of high school, out of college, with all of those exciting moments behind me.

It’s a rewriting of history.  I would never want to be in high school again.  I would never want to apply to college or try to figure out what I want to be or find someone to marry.  When I was young, I longed to be older and settled.  And now I am older and settled, and I long to be young.

Or maybe I just long to be the sort of kid who could invent a prosthetic limb while still below the age of twenty.

Well, that ship sailed.

So a very cool science fair, and a last time going to the White House as a thirty-year-old.

Indulge me in a few more fin de siècle thoughts this week.  I promise to have them all out of my system by next Tuesday.

A few weeks ago, Josh and I got a date night and went to see the Unknown Known about Donald Rumsfeld.  I know, we’re just two crazy kids in love and grooving on political documentaries.  After the date… which took place in the day and not really the night… we were walking downtown and passed a Potomac Video advertising a going out of business sale.

My first job was at a video store.  It was the most glamourous, wonderous place in the world.  I remember when the first video store opened in town.  We got a VCR, a very high-tech invention, and my friends and I could rent movies and watch them.  It took about a year for a movie to come out on video, therefore, we still watched movies in the theater as many times as possible in order to hold us over until we could rent the movies to watch at home.  Movies cost $3 per day.

When it came time to get a job, I had to get special permission from the school stating that I could handle a job and my classes because I was below that sixteen-year-old threshold for holding a job.  I took my paperwork to the new video store in town — the first one had since closed, and this new one was tucked back in a very busy shopping plaza — and applied for a job.  I felt impossibly grown-up.  The owner hired me at minimum wage with free video rentals to boot.  I could take out up to three movies at a time, and keep them out for a whole week.

I loved that video store even though, as the newest employee, it was my job to put on the rubber gloves and clean out the after-hours drop box in the morning.  Why rubber gloves?  Because people jizzed through the opening onto the videos.  And we rented a lot of porn, so even if someone didn’t jizz through the slot the night before, it was still a good idea to wear rubber gloves because… well… it was porn.

That’s just one of the many glamourous details I can tell you about life at the video store.

But really, I loved that job and worked there until I left for college.  I loved being able to take out movies for a week.  I loved keeping track of the holds list, and calling people to tell them that their movie was now in the store.  I loved shelving boxes.  I loved choosing the movie to put on the store’s television.  I loved our regular customers, especially the quirky ones.  I loved helping people choose a movie to watch.

It’s sad to see Potomac Video closing.  Video stores are a pretty recent invention, all things considered.  Potomac Video, for instance, only has been around since 1981.  That’s nothing in the economic continuum.  A thirty year lifespan for a type of business?  I don’t mean for a single business: I mean, video stores have only been around since the late 70s.  (The first video store opened in 1977.)  And now they are pretty much gone.  Poof.  Goodbye video stores.

It’s easy to understand their demise.  An automated box can do the same job as a free-standing store.  Moreover, most people stream movies directly onto their television, or buy a cheap copy on iTunes.  Why rent a movie for $3 if you can have it indefinitely for $7?  I know we’ve been guilty of adding to the demise of the local video store.

Standing in Potomac Video, staring at the carnage as vulture-like customers descended on the business, picking the shelves clean of movies, made me wonder how I would feel if I was standing in the last bookstore.  I didn’t really browse very much at video stores, so the act of renting from a Red Box is similar — for me — to going into the video store and grabbing the movie I want.  But I am a hardcore bookstore browser.  I am a walk-by-every-shelf sort of person.  I pick up a bunch of books and then sit down and read the first few pages to make sure I like the voice before purchasing.  It would gut me if bookstores ceased to exist.

Oh my G-d… what if bookstores are next?

It fits in the sense that first there was the disappearance of the large, chain video stores.  The Erols Video and the Blockbuster.  And now there is finally the quiet cough of the independent video stores as they shutter their businesses.  We’ve already seen the demise of large, chain bookstores like Borders.  Will there be a point in the future when even the small, independent bookstores close their door for a final time?

I’m turning 40, and video stores don’t really exist anymore.  It’s crazy to think how different the storefronts will look twenty years from now; that our generation has lived through the birth and death of video stores within our lifetime.

Reassure me: are bookstores going to go the way of the video store?  Is there any chance for a video store revival in the future?

Welcome back to IComLeavWe. It stands for International Comment Leaving Week, but if you say it aloud, doesn’t it sounds like “I come; [but] leave [as a] we”? And that’s sort of the point. Blogging is a conversation and comments should be honoured and encouraged. I like to say that comments are the new hug–a way of saying hello, giving comfort, leaving congratulations. Here is the vital information, pure and simple (a more detailed set of rules follows below the list):

• The list opens the 1st of every month. It remains open until the 21st. You can add yourself at any point. The list is open to everyone in the blogosphere–blog writers and/or blog readers.
• Add yourself to the list by filling out this form after adding the icon below: The June list is now closed.  The July list will open on 6/27.
• Click here to cut-and-paste this bit of code to add to your sidebar (if you have the old code from another month, remove it and replace it with this one). You need to add the icon or a link to the current list on your blog (see below) and will not be added until it’s up.
• Commenting kicks off every month on the 21st. Please mark it somewhere (calendar, post-it note taped to your computer…), though I will be sending out an email reminder on the 20th. Commenting week runs from the 21st to the 28th. Every day, leave 5 comments and return 1 comment for a total of 6 comments. You are highly encouraged to choose the blogs you comment on from the participants list below, but this is not required.
• I will send a second email on the 28th to remind you to remove the icon from your blog.
• Read below if you want to find out about Iron Commenters.
• The commenting ends on the 28th. We catch our breath and the whole thing starts again the next month on the 1st. Drop in and out according to what is happening in your life between the 21st and the 28th.

The June 2014 List

1. Stirrup Queens (twins, books, writing)
2. My Camo Kids (military, life, parenting)
3. Climbing the Pomegranate Tree (FET, #3, life)
4. My Journey to Motherhood (infertility, mfi, hope)
5. Constant in the Darkness (adoptive mama, open adoption)
6. Breathe Gently (IVF x 2, PCOS, toddler-mum)
7. Baby On Mind (embryo adoption, infertility, 40+)
8. Lil Family Blog (motherhood, disability, family life)
9. Life of an Army Wife (army, donor gametes, pregnancy)
10. Comatised (love, life, survival)
11. Recovering Beauty (love, life, recovery)
12. Stellar (adventures, life, love)
13. Everything Christine (adventures, life, love)
14. Amateur Nester (infertility, faith, encouragement)
15. Styler Chick Magazine (fashion, beauty, lifestyle)
16. Get Lifted (inspiration)
17. Everyday Gyaan (happiness, authenticity, books)
18. Fair Trade Living (fair trade recipes)
19. Life’s Little Bump (IVF, faith, miscarriage)
20. Your Marketing University (marketing, business, entrepreneurs)
21. Mydhiliram’s blog (recipes,hindu temples, crochet)
22. Muddy Boots and Diamonds (postpartum, children, life)
23. My Antidepressant Life (thriving with bipolar)
24. Hopeful Luna (infertility, nutrition, i.v.f.)
25. In Due Time (loss, grief, faith)
26. Creating a Family (blog infertility, adoption, parenting)
27. Haisla’s Adventures in Endoland (infertility, endometriosis, life)
28. Creativity Arise! (fashion, travel, lifestyle)
29. Just Another Infertility Blog (infertility, ivf, life)
30. The Spectacled Bean (thinking, laughing, photographing)
31. MissConception (parenting after loss, TTC#2, PCOS)
32. The Quest for a Tiny Human (IVF, infertility, fur babies)
33. Ready Now To See It Your Way (fertility, family, life)
34. The Other Side of the Equation (life, love, teaching)
35. JCH4DCU (secondary infertility, stillborn baby, hopeful)
36. A Little Bit More (TTC, infertility, life)
37. The June list is now closed.  The July list will open on 6/27.
    

Q: What if I miss a day?

A: Catch up the next day by doubling your comments–12 comments instead of 6.

Q: What if I have two blogs? Can I sign up twice, listing both blogs?

A: Yes, but you also need to double your comments. If you have two blogs listed, you should be leaving 12 comments per day.

Q: What is an Iron Commenter?

A: Not for the faint-of-heart. People who wish to be an Iron Commenter and be entered on the Iron Commenter honour roll need to leave a comment on every blog on the participants list (exceptions are blogs that require you to have a special log-in, such as some LiveJournal accounts or other similar situations). You can spread out this commenting any way you wish over the whole week, but the final comment needs to be left by midnight on the 28th (EST). Reaching Iron Commenter status is done on an honour system. Please email me if you earn Iron Commenter status so I can add you to the wall of honour.

Q: Why do I have to add that bit of code to my sidebar?

A: The code is the latest icon (the icon changes colour every month so you know that you’re on the right list). This month, the icon is red, the next month it will be blue, etc. The reason is two-fold: (1) it enables more people to find out about IComLeavWe and (2) it gives you easy access to the current list once the commenting week actually begins and better ensures that you’ll use it. Too many times, people sign up and forget to actually do IComLeavWe and this icon gives you a daily reminder (with the dates on it) every time you open your own blog. The icon is linked back to the current list. On the 28th, remove the icon from your blog. A new one will be created for the next month.

Q: It’s the 23rd and I just saw this for the first time on my friend’s blog! I want to join the list–why can’t I?

A: Because IComLeavWe happens every month, once the list is closed, it’s closed. If you’re finding out about this on the 23rd, you can’t join the current month. But leave yourself a note to check back in a week on the 1st and you can sign up for the next month.

Q: You said the list closes on the 21st. Well, it’s still the 21st where I am. Why aren’t you moving my information onto the list?

A: All dates and times are U.S. Eastern Standard Time (UTC/GMT -5 hours). The list closes around 11 p.m. EST on the 21st.

Q: What if no one comments on my blog and I have no comments to return?

A: Well, that really doesn’t happen for the most part, but in that case, simply choose another blog and add an additional comment. The goal is to hit 6 comments daily as a minimum. Going over that is fantastic and encouraged.

Q: Mel, my question wasn’t covered at all. What do I do?

A: Email me; I’m quite friendly. It helps to place “IComLeavWe” in the subject line. You could also check this post which contains the history of IComLeavWe and see if you can glean anything there.

Looking for the comment section? It has been closed on this post. Use the form in the directions to add yourself to the list.

I woke up to the news of the California shooting.  I had hit snooze six times, taking me up to almost an hour past when I wanted to get up and start baking, so I rolled over and looked at my phone to force myself to wake up.  CNN News Report:

Drive-by shootings in Southern California on Friday night left seven people dead, CNN affiliate KEYT reported today, citing Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown.

Brown said the suspected gunman was among the seven people killed in the incident, which occurred in Isla Vista. He said seven others suffered “gunshot wounds or traumatic injuries.” One of those victims is said to have “life-threatening injuries. The sheriff reported nine different crime scenes.

The KEYT report said “witnesses described seeing a black BMW speeding through the streets, spraying bullets at people and various targets.”

The news made me feel physically ill. Unsafe. Even though we live far away from California. When something like this happens, no distance feels far enough away to be able to say that it could never happen here. It has happened here.

I spent the morning bleaching the house, trying to restore order to my space if I couldn’t restore order to the rest of the world.  A person should be able to make it from point A to point B safely.  A person should be able to go to work or school or a movie theater or a political rally and walk out of said workplace, school, movie theater, or political rally and back into their boring, everyday lives.

Later in the day, I looked at my phone again.  Another CNN alert.  I could see the first few words, and I thought that it was a new alert about the California shooting, lowering the body count.  Maybe they had gotten it wrong.  CNN News Report:

Three people were killed and another was seriously injured in a shooting today at the Jewish Museum of Belgium in Brussels, Interior Minister Joelle Milquet told CNN affiliate Bel RTL.

Milquet said a person arrived by car, entered the museum and quickly opened fire before leaving.

Two separate incidents, over five thousand miles apart.  Three thousand miles in one direction, another three thousand miles in the other direction, standing in the middle and feeling as if the world is tottering like a spun top, about to fall on its side.

It pauses you.  It pauses your body and your brain in the face of such unfathomable loss.  There are all the things we can’t control for: cancer, heart attacks, accidents.  When you see so many people lose their lives to another person’s violence, it pauses you.

My heart is with the families of those now gone.

We’ve had a pair of bunnies living in our backyard for a while.  I noticed the first one about a year ago, right after Cozy died.  And then another one showed up this spring.  We’ve seen the two of them hopping through the neighbourhood, but they keep returning to hang out under a bush in the backyard.

This week, I noticed a new bunny, a tiny one about five inches long.  It was wobbling around, trying to hop.  I went outside and left him some carrots. (I’m against feeding wild animals UNLESS you are going to be crazy enough to keep feeding them indefinitely, and I am that sort of poor thinker.)

He ignored them for a bit, but I saw him creep up to them while I was doing yoga and start chowing down.

Pure love.  I hope he stays.

*******

Last weekend, we went to a wedding in Boston.  On our way home, we swung off the highway to stop in Tarrytown.  The twins had just read Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great, and they wanted to see Mouse Ellis’s house where Washington Irving once slept.  We wove our way through the town, musing on locations where Sheila Tubman may have walked, and finally found ourselves on a winding road, traveling to Sunnyside.

Or, more accurately, the locked gates of Sunnyside.  It isn’t open on Mondays.

A lot of the town doesn’t seem to be open on Mondays.

So it’s now on our to-do list: hot vacation in Tarrytown.  I want to do the cemetery tour at night and freak ourselves out reading about the Headless Horseman while in Sleepy Hollow.  I love literary vacations.

*******

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:

• “Battle in My Brain” (On a Baby Quest)
• “How Infertility Has Changed Me in a Positive Way” (Battlefish)
• “Mother’s Day Conversation” (Weathering Storms)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Searching for Our Silver Lining has a post about milestones, starting with her twins but then extending that to the milestones we are anxious to hit as adults, or how hitting milestones too early can affect us as well.  She writes, “In a strange way, infertility has prepared us for the unknowns that come with parenthood. Sure, we knew it would be hard and there was no way to predict how, but the one thing we learned is how to survive moments of uncertainty and hardship. To find joy when it would be tempted to focus solely on the negative.”  Gorgeous, right?

Edenland made me smile with a post about teaching kids how to write.  She writes, “We all wondered aloud, where DO ideas actually come from? I said maybe all the ideas were floating around in the air and they just had to reach out and grab one.”  She manages to capture the wonder, the open-to-possibilities, the excitement of being a kid with a story.  Sometimes, as adults with stories, we need to remember how it felt to be a kid with a story: content just to tell it and not thinking so hard on how it is received and recognized.

Lastly, Bereaved and Blessed writes frankly about mental illness.  I love this post, walking you through the questions you may have about her diagnosis while admitting she shared a lot of these questions too.  It is a must-read post for… everyone.  Everyone who has been diagnosed or who knows someone diagnosed or who just wants to better understand what life is like with mental illness.

The roundup to the Roundup: The new bunny in our yard.  Love a good literary vacation.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between May 16th and May 23nd) 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.