I had pulled free from the sucking vortex of Candy Crush and had released myself from King.com’s evil grip.  I was no longer playing down my lives and then resetting the clock to get more chances to pop candy.  I was down to playing one or two tries per day, and then clicking away from the game when there were still unused lives at the ready.  And then I started going one day, two days, even three days in between rounds.  There was a point where over half a week went by without logging on.

Fine, I was playing a grotesque amount of Hay Day instead, but regardless, I was free of Candy Crush.

And then I got a little email.

The subject line was personalized (nice touch, King.com): “Melissa, your candy friends miss you!” and an image filled the majority of the text box:

The Yeti was personally requesting — no, demanding with an exclamation point to boot — that I crush that candy.  No one turns down a Yeti.  I mean, they’re huge.  They’re fierce.  They have a whole ride dedicated to them at Animal Kingdom in Disney World.

And lest I not understand that the Yeti is King.com’s Gríma Wormtongue, when you pan back in the message, you can see what goes over the image:

“You know what to do…”

Five simple words, but when I read them, I sat up a little straighter.  Yes, I did know what to do.  I wasn’t going to leave my friends; that man with the strangely long limbs or the squashed girl or the Yeti.  I was going to go back to the Soda Swamp and conquer level 413.

And I did.  I breezed through the next few levels to land on the absolutely ridiculous 417.  Which is where I am, my attention waning until the Yeti brings me back in his furry clutches.

I will never, ever be free.

The topic of Opinionator this week was stopping procrastination. (Or was it last week?  I don’t know, I was procrastinating reading it because who the hell wants to hear how someone else has stopped procrastinating when you know that very little works for you and you’ve tried everything including the no email diet, the devices upstairs diet, and the never-answering-the-phone diet.)

The essay is from a writer who finally learned how to tune out all the distractions and get down to the business of writing by working first thing in the morning.  He had a bunch of theories for why we’re so productive in the morning and why it isn’t a good idea to sit down to write at 3 pm.  He states that not only are we able to access that right brain creativity early in the morning but,

Conversely, the relentlessly negative voice that comes from your critical parent seems to be a left brain resident and doesn’t like to wake up too early. (And by the way, there is no faster way to bring that demonic harpy voice to consciousness than restless Internet activity. Once you start randomly interacting with anything on the Internet, the delightful relaxation of the right brain has better taste than to stick around.

He says “we” but he really means “he.”  People have a tendency to do that; state that people are more productive in the morning without taking into account that while there are people who are more productive in the morning, there are also people who are groggy in the morning and don’t really produce their best work until after the sun goes down.  For instance, my negative voice is loud and clear moments after I open my eyes.  I don’t even need to get out of bed before I begin berating myself.  And I get my best work done some time after 8 pm.

So I think that it’s great that this works for him.  And maybe it will work for you too.

Even though I am a HORRIBLE procrastinator (like an I-can’t-believe-how-much-time-you-waste-getting-started-or-keeping-going procrastinator.  I call it part of my “process”), I’ve never had trouble with the act of writing.  Carving out time: yes, on occasion.  Writer’s block: yes, again, on occasion.  But for the most part, writing for me is like cooking.  There are days I enjoy it more than others and days when I have more time for it than others, but for the most part, in the same way that I can force myself towards the counter and make something resembling a meal, I can force myself into the chair and sit in front of the computer and type.  It’s not all fabulous, but it doesn’t need to always be fabulous.  Sometimes writing just needs to be mind-nourishing.

But the point is that while this sounds lovely for him, I couldn’t possibly write first thing in the morning.  For one, I am a terrible sleeper.  I don’t sleep.  So waking up in the morning feels horrible.  Plus I wake up so many times during the night, I have no clue which one to count as my morning waking.  I mean, is it the one at 5:43 am when I stumble to the bathroom to pee?  Or the 6:26 am one that occurs right as I start to fall asleep again but I startle myself awake accidentally?  Or is it the 7:16 am one where Josh is shaking me gently and I’m calling him unspeakable things for rousing me?

This is how I work: I cannot write a single word until my inbox is clean.  It may pile up later in the day, and that is fine, but the writing process needs to begin with my email inbox neatened up.  Okay, wait, before that I have to do yoga.  And then I have to shower.  And have coffee, not exactly while I’m in the shower, but before I jump in and after I get out.  So yoga, coffee, shower, coffee, inbox.  And then to-do list.  I need a to-do list written out on a post-it note.

And then I can write.

But while I write, I need to harvest the crops on my Hay Day farm.  And I need to read a few posts in Feedly.  And I need to just click on this one interesting-looking link that my friend posted on Facebook.  And I need…

Whether or not I procrastinate, I seem to have the same ultimate productivity.  In other words, if I cut myself off from distractions, I tend to write 5 pages per day.  And if I allow myself to have unlimited distractions, I also tend to write 5 pages per day.  Which begs the question: why even try to remove the act of procrastination?  Especially when it often kicks off moments of creativity such as when I start writing a blog post like this one as I procrastinate from doing other work by finally reading Opinionator.

What is your biggest time waster during the day?  And do you think procrastinating with that time waster is actually detrimental to your work?

I’m going to say it: I get agitated when people post those infographics or studies that breakdown the job of stay-at-home mother and assign it a salary.  According to the latest figures, Salary.com places the average stay-at-home mother at $113,568.  They even allow you to calculate your own personal salary, adding in how much time you spend being your own housekeeper, cook, and daycare center teacher.

Except.

You know, whether or not you’re responsible for another living human, you do the vast majority of the jobs on that list simply to keep yourself alive and not living in squalor.  The fact that you do extra — such as grilling 4 chicken breasts instead of 1 — and your kids benefit too is beside the point.  Beyond that, I find the concept of assigning an enormous salary to a parent to be offensive because if we look at it closely, the child becomes the employer in this scenario since I am doing these tasks for them, and therefore, they are my boss.  And seriously, my kids are not my boss.  And I can’t be fired.  So… no.

Image: 401(K)2013 via Flickr

I looked at Salary.com’s list for creating my personal paycheck and broke down the tasks into three categories — do it anyway, do it only for the kids, or do it but definitely not like a professional who deserves to be paid.

Do It Anyway

• Housekeeper (I’m the one who doesn’t want to live in a messy house.  Based on all the toys they leave in the living room, they could care less)
• Cook (Last time I checked, I needed to eat too)
• Facilities Manager (I don’t really think I do this job in addition to these other jobs.  Right?  It’s just as another description of these other tasks.  Sorry, Salary.com, you can’t get double paid for the same work)
• Computer Operator (I have to get online too)
• Janitor (How is this different from housekeeper?)
• Laundry Machine Operator (Got to wash my own, so I might as well throw the twins’ clothes in as well)
• Bookkeeper (Seriously, balancing my checkbook does not make me a bookkeeper, but fine)
• Administrative Assistant (If I didn’t keep the calendar, I would miss out on my own appointments)
• Groundskeeper (If that’s what we’re calling mowing a tiny patch of grass, then sure, I’m a groundskeeper sometimes)

Do It Only For the Kids

• Daycare Center Teacher (I deserve buckets of money for my homework help.  Seriously)
• Van Driver (Van driver sounds a bit perverted.  I’m more like a sedan driver as I schlep them to their various activities)

Maybe Do It But Not Like a Professional

• Psychologist (Do I listen to their school woes?  Yes.  But it’s a slap in the face of psychologists to believe I can do their job just because I sat on a bed and listened to the longest tale ever of can-you-believe-she-said-that? while surrounded by stuffed animals)
• Chief Executive Officer (My understanding of CEOs is that they’re paid the big bucks because everything is riding on their head.  They also have a board.  I don’t need to manage a staff or board just because I’m one of the heads of this house.  Why should I be paid like a CEO?)
• Staff Nurse (Should I really be paid a salary to slap on a Band-aid?  I mean, isn’t that a little offensive to nurses who risk their health and go through years of schooling to do their job?)
• Event Planner (I hardly think calling the pool to set up a birthday party counts as the same thing as an event planner)
• Nutritionist (Giving an orange as a snack doesn’t make me a nutritionist.  It makes me a human who doesn’t want scurvy)
• Logistics Analyst (Really?  I deserve a salary for ordering a movie from Amazon?)
• Interior Designer (Putting the cushions back on the sofa after they’ve been co-opted for an American Girl Doll hospital doesn’t make me an interior designer)
• Plumber (Yes, I’ve unclogged a toilet.  No, that doesn’t make me a plumber)
• General Maintenance Worker (Again, I’ve screwed in a light bulb.  That doesn’t make me a maintenance worker)

So there are exactly two things I do on that list that I do solely for the kids and a few more that I may do, but not like an actual professional who holds those titles.  And the rest were going to be done anyway whether or not I had kids.  And no one calls it your job if you don’t have kids.  They call it managing your personal life.

Listen, I am technically a SAHM (or really a WAHM, but who’s counting?) and I have a deep respect for the amount of work it takes to be at home with kids day-in-and-day-out.  It takes a certain type of brain and a certain type of stamina to find it enjoyable.  It’s the same type of brain and stamina that is drawn towards being a teacher, another job that not everyone would find a good fit.  So, yes, I enjoy very much being a SAHM because it fits my personality.

And I hope to G-d that my kids appreciate how fucking good they have it with a parent who is always at the ready to sit with them for hours while they do their homework and bake homemade cookies and drive them to the ends of the earth (or, at the very least, the ends of the county).  I’m certainly aware of how much I benefited growing up with a stay-at-home parent. (Thank you, mum!)  And I was equally fine when that parent became a work-outside-the-home parent. (Thank you, mum!)

I’m not saying that stay-at-home mothers shouldn’t be appreciated BY THEIR KIDS (and given Hallmark cards in May as a show of gratitude.  Come on, wouldn’t that be sweet, a whole holiday in May set up to honour mothers?  Oh… wait…), and there are certainly special needs parents who do real hands-on nursing, homeschoolers who put in a six-hour school day at the kitchen table, and spirited kids who force their parents to spend more than a little time giving counsel.  But when the vast majority of that work was going to be done anyway, I’m not sure we can quantify a SAHM’s salary.  It’s just called… housework.  And that exists whether you have children or not.

I would say that this was my two cents, but I’m underpaid, so I sort of need those pennies.

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 February list is now closed.  The March list will open on 2/27.
  
• 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 February 2014 List

1. Stirrup Queens (twins, books, writing)
2. Comatised (love, life, survival)
3. Breathe Gently (new-mum, IVF, PCOS)
4. The 2 Week Wait (infertility ttc humor)
5. Waiting for Baby (new mom, PCOS, weight loss)
6. In Due Time (waiting, faith, hope)
7. Birds, Bees, and Medicine (ivf, pcos, hope)
8. No Bun In This Oven (IUI, IVF, adoption)
9. Stupid Broken Eggs (IVF, faith, marriage)
10. Donating Hope (donor gametes, pregnancy, faith)
11. Amateur Nester (infertility, faith, encouragement )
12. Baby On Mind (embryo adoption, infertility, 40+)
13. elizabeth obih-frank (lifestyle, inspiration, haiku)
14. Hope Love and Family (infertility, faith, ivf)
15. Life of an Army Wife (donor eggs, donor embryo, army)
16. waiting for baby bird (faith, hope, infertility)
17. R. Sativus (writing, infidelity, parenting)
18. Family Of Three (parenting after infertility, PCOS, secondary infertility)
19. The Sea of TTC (ttc, infertility, testing)
20. Creating a Family (infertility, adoption, parenting)
21. Improving Egg Quality (egg quality research)
22. It’s Just a Box of Rain (parenting after IF, open domestic adoption)
23. A little blog about the big infertility (TTC after RPL,endometriosis, PCOS)
24. The Quest for a Tiny Human (infertility, ttc #1, furbabies)
25. A Little Bit More (ttc, pcos, life)
26. Sweet Dreams are Made of This (adoption, faith, family)
27. Losing Chiara (babyloss, grief, parenting after loss)
28. The February list is now closed.  The March list will open on 2/27.

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 purple, the next month it will be red, 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.

Lest you think the case of Marlise Muñoz, the pregnant woman who was kept on life support against her family’s wishes, has nothing to do with infertility, think again.  CNN’s opening to their report shines a beam of light on what was really at play here, and it wasn’t the best interests of the mother:

A wrenching court fight — about who is alive, who is dead and how the presence of a fetus changes the equation — came to an end Sunday when a brain-dead, pregnant Texas woman was taken off a ventilator.

I’ve been reading about this court case with horror because any of us could be Marlise Muñoz.  An otherwise healthy woman, 14 weeks pregnant, 33 years old, collapses in her kitchen.  She is declared brain dead, but the hospital keeps her alive for two months for the sake of her unborn child.  As the LA Times reports, “The hospital says it is compelled to do so by the Texas Advance Directives Act, which says in part: ‘A person may not withdraw or withhold life-sustaining treatment under this subchapter from a pregnant patient’.”

In other words, even brain-dead, a woman in Texas can be forced to continue to gestate a fetus.

Of course, she isn’t alive to protest this treatment of her body.

Reproductive health laws have far-reaching effects: the most visible one being abortion, but the backdoor one being fertility treatments.  Instead of outlawing abortion outright, which would be illegal, tiny steps are taken to bring certain states closer and closer to that edge of outlawing abortion.  Along the way, they make restrictions that impact fertility treatments, impact embryo storage, and paint procedures with a wide brush that doesn’t take into account various situations.

If you don’t stand up to fight for all reproductive rights — even the ones that will personally never affect you since you’ve already decided what you’re willing to do on a personal level — you can’t be upset down the road when freedoms you DO want are taken away.  If you want a say over what happens to your embryos/fetuses and your body (and you want to extend that courtesy of decision making to the bodies of your daughters or sisters or mothers or friends or neighbours), you need to think hard about stories like Marlise Muñoz.  Because while the law didn’t sound that unreasonable on paper, it certainly looked unreasonable in practice.  And the only thing that changed Muñoz’s situation is that her fetus was deemed nonviable.

I said it before: “Legal wranglings are not a pu-pu platter where you can say hands-off my embryos and making decisions for me about their creation and storage but then leave women who want to choose whether or not they carry a child back on the plate.  Either your government’s hands are in your uterus or they’re not.”  I’m taking the whole meal; I will do anything to protect your rights when it comes to your body and the body of your unborn child and not give that decision-making to a state government that doesn’t need to live out the consequences of its laws on the personal level.  There are things I can believe with my heart on a personal level that I don’t need to create laws that impact other people in order to have that belief be true for me.

My heart is heavy for the Muñoz family.  I wish them a lot of comfort as they grieve the loss.