On Friday afternoon, my eyes started watering while we were reading Harry Potter.

(A side note: my kids and I are going to have the widest asses in the world because my go-to activity is always to sit and read.  I’ve been thinking about this, the ass spreadage, that my kids will have to deal with down the road.  And how they’ll tell the therapist: “we wanted to run around and play, but my mother always suggested we read.  Sure, we covered a lot of literature, but now look at my butt cheeks.”)

Back to my story and question.

We were reading Harry Potter and my eyes were leaking, which was sort of good because we were at the part where the kids all discovered the truth about Neville’s parents in the hospital.  When Neville puts the bubblegum wrapper in his pocket?  GUTS ME.  So my eyes were watering.  By nighttime, I was sniffling, sneezing, coughing, aching, stuffy-headed, and feverish, so I swigged some Nyquil and went to bed at the unheard-of hour of 9 pm.  That’s how you know that I was ill.

I woke up on Saturday morning not much better, though once my headache started to subside and I had been upright for a while with everything draining, life became liveable.  Still, we cancelled our trip to see family so as to not get them sick.  Plus, it was likely that the twins would now become sick this week from being in close proximity to me while I was ill.  They were already in the sniffling stages when they awoke.  So it made sense to not run them ragged.  But there was this underlying feeling that if I could travel with tissues, we should just get on the road.

Every time I get sick, I try to figure out where I was two or three days earlier, the average incubation period for a cold.  In this case, the culprit seemed to be either art school or the used bookstore.  I can’t really avoid art school, so I decided to blame the used copy of Mockingjay that I picked up so I could stop reading the e-book version.  It was clearly teaming with cold germs.  Though the more likely scenario is that someone sent their kid sick to the art school because they didn’t want to miss out on one of the paid classes since there are no refunds.

I get it.  I’ve gone into public spaces less than well before.  I’ve sent my kids to school when they were fever-free but had a bit of a runny nose.  I mean, yes, we all want people to stay at home when they’re ill and not infect the rest of us, but the reality is that some people have a runny nose through half of winter.  And it would be equally detrimental to stay home, nursing every cough.  Again, one time I had a cough that lasted a good month.  I can’t see not venturing out into public for a full month.  Except by going out around people, we pass these germs to one another so that everyone gets to write a blog post about the crappy, nameless person who made them ill.

When you get sick, do you stay home?  Or if you feel like you can power through, do you go out into the world, sneezing and coughing and carrying tissues?

It started out with a #793 error on Gmail.  I tried to write someone back, and Gmail kept telling me that my message wasn’t sent due to an error.  “Not an error on my part,” I whispered at my computer.  And then I stroked Gmail’s head and begged it to get better.  Please Gmail, I’ll bring you cough drops.  Not even those cheapass ones you get in the supermarket.  I’ll bring you the expensive kind from the organic market.  What?  You prefer the cheapass ones?  I’ll get you those.  Just please be well, Gmail.

Then I went onto Twitter because isn’t that what we all do the moment Gmail stops working?  We go onto Twitter and we check with everyone else.  Are you having trouble with email?  I’m having trouble with email.  Everyone weigh in if you’re having trouble with email.  Can you access Blogger?  Is it only email?  Okay, it seems to only be email.  Are you getting a #793 error?  Oh… what?  You got a #718 error?  Do you have any clue what any of this means?  I really hope I can access my email soon.  I’m just so relieved we have Twitter so we can check with everyone else in the world that Gmail isn’t working.

And then I keep going back onto Gmail, hoping the problem has miraculously healed itself.  But it hasn’t.  So I open a blog post because what can I do?  I can’t do work.

And I look at the clock.

Please, get better Gmail.  I really love you.  I probably don’t say that enough, and maybe that’s why you’re so sick; because you’re heartsick low self-esteem when really, you should feel buoyed by the hysteria on Twitter right now.  People really really really miss you.  Please, get well Gmail.

The ChickieNob asked me a question I couldn’t answer, so I pass it along to you.  Who is this?

It’s a playing card from her Good and Evil Harry Potter set.  I’ve seen all the movies six dozen times, but I am completely blanking on ever seeing this actor in any film.  And beyond that, that he’s an important enough character to be included in the deck.  I mean, poor Justin Finch-Fletchley doesn’t have a card, and that boy was petrified by a basilisk.  But this guy is the three of hearts?

No, really, who is he?

By the way, this set is the worst idea ever.  We’re only on book five, so the cards are a bit of a spoiler.  And anyway, the whole point of the series is that all of us have these good and bad impulses, and it’s up to us to decide which way we’re going to go.  And that it’s never too late to do the right thing.  I’m looking at you, Narcissa.  To mark them as good or evil flattens out dynamic, complicated characters.

So… right.  Anyway, who is this guy?  I’m guessing someone at the Ministry?  Or in the Order?

*******

Finally started Mockingjay.  Unlike the other two books, this one hasn’t grown on me yet.  It may be because the setting is so dreary.  Whereas in the other two books, the setting added interest to the plotline.  I’m sticking with it to the end, but I’m not devouring it like I did the first two.

I’ve heard that kids hate Mockingjay and adults appreciate Mockingjay because while it isn’t the satisfyingly happy ending we crave, it’s the more realistic ending.  Trying to figure out where I’ll fall on the likey/no likey spectrum.

*******

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:

• “Anger” (The Adventures of Chicken and Ham)
• “How far along were you? IT DOESN’T MATTER. (And neither does a BFP.)” (The Unexpected Journey)
• “Narrative therapy and neuroscience: Blogging and the storying of infertility” (The Unexpected Journey)
• “Mother” (The Empress and the Fool)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Only Nuts in May could make life going ass-over-teakettle sound both amusing and horrifying at the same time.  As they wait to start their FET, her hormones mess with her mind in a way that only hormones can.  Sending her good thoughts on her FET as well as a tongue lashing to Cute Ute to stash its vile personality as they embark on the cycle.

River Runs Dry has a post about marathon training that could soooooo easily be a stand-in for cycling in general.  How that failed cycle can throw off your confidence, make you second guess your next decisions.  She writes, “Because the fact is, running a marathon is an exercise in happiness AND pain. It hurts and you ache and you wonder why you’re doing it in the first place. Distance running is about how you get through discomfort to find a place of contentment.”  Could we not say the same thing about assisted family building?  Love the honesty of this post.  She needs to know we are cheering her on.

I didn’t see the movie but The Road Less Travelled made me wish I had seen Inside Llewyn Davis in her post tying the film into living child-free after infertility and loss.  She writes: “I know a little something about loss & grief, about not achieving your dreams. I know that my story doesn’t exactly shout success and hope, at least in conventional story terms and triumph-over-infertility narratives. But that doesn’t mean that I consider myself a loser, someone whose life is ‘shrinking, hope diminishing, aspiration dissolving… ghosts and disappointment… not meeting the challenge of life’.”  Wonderful post.

Lastly, It is What It is (or is it) has an eye-opening post about searching for her birth-father, which is really about finding herself.  I especially love the insight she gives with: “It is really hard to explain the juxtaposition between how badly I want to know who he is/what his life story is and how paralyzed I feel to actually do the searching.”  It’s a beautiful post that captures that strong need to know something.

The roundup to the Roundup: Who is that on the card?  In the middle of Mockingjay.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between January 17th and January 24th) 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.

The summer between my sophomore and junior year, I went to Norway, running away from a friendship that was unraveling.  This woman had been my touchstone since we were children, and I didn’t know how to be myself without her.  So I ran away and spent about three weeks in Oslo.

But it turns out that when you run away, you bring your troubles mentally with you.  And sometimes they sound louder the further away you get from home.

I was a hot mess while in Oslo, unable to sleep, unable to get around very well because I spoke about three words of Norwegian, and none of them were useful.  I bought a lot of yarn and sat in Vigeland Park crocheting to have something to do.  I was miserable.

On the first day, before my friend left to go on the camping trip I skived off, he made me a potato dish using potatoes he bought on our walk home from a woman selling them on the side of the road.  For the rest of the trip, I made this same dish over and over again, purchasing dirt-covered potatoes from the same woman’s stand.

We’ve seen Frozen now more times than I should probably admit (and I just got news yesterday that they’re coming out with a sing-along version on January 31st.  Not sure if we’re getting it at our theater but I suppose I should call).  The second Arendelle popped up on the screen, I knew it was modeled on the Oslo fjord and the castle was Akershus Slott.  I lugged out my photo albums from Norway and the ChickieNob melted seeing that there was a tangible Arendelle that she could visit.

She wants to talk about Norway a lot, and at first it made me feel sad to remember how I felt on that trip.  I was so small.  So empty.  Depleted.  I had no confidence.

And then Josh reminded me of a totally ridiculous moment I had told him about from that trip, when my friend’s fiance’s mother had us over for dinner and she served frozen bagels.  They had just started importing crappy Lenders bagels, and she bought some for me because I’m Jewish and she thought I might want a Jewish food.  It was fairly mortifying but sweet, and she had no clue what to do with the bagels.  But she kept saying, “so, you like these bagels?  Because you’re Jewish?  This is Jewish food?”

And now we can’t stop saying to each other, “so, you eat bagels?”

Last night, I made that potato dish for the ChickieNob.  It had been almost twenty years since I last made it.  I told her that it was definitely something that would have been served at Elsa’s coronation ceremony, so we had a Frozen dinner with pea soup (sans pork) and potato pancakes.

It made her night.  And it reclaimed Scandinavia for me.

To make the pancakes, just peel and grate a few small, white potatoes into a mixing bowl and sprinkle with salt.  Melt a 1/2 tbsp of butter in a big pan, moving it around to coat the surface.  Scoop in all the grated potato and sprinkle again with a little salt, flattening it into a pancake to fill the pan with the back of a spatula.  After about 5 minutes of cooking on medium heat, spread another 1/2 tbsp of butter on the top of the pancake.  Flip it upside down so the recently buttered side is against the pan.  Let it cook another 5 minutes until golden and serve.

Pair it with pea soup and you have a Frozen meal you can convince even a nine-year-old that they served at Elsa’s coronation.

She ate every last bite.

We’re on our second snow day in a row.  Yesterday I did a deep clean of the house with the kids, and we made muffins, went sledding, and read Harry Potter.  I got all of the laundry done.  I spent every moment I wasn’t in the snow in my pyjamas, as did the kids.

I love snow days.

But I hate actual snow.

Image: Chelsea Gomez via Flickr

I don’t like the cold.  Every winter, I thank the powers of the universe for pairing me with a man who has never asked me to go skiing.  I don’t. like. skiing.  Before you say anything, I will tell you that I gave skiing a try.  Like a few tries.  Like more than a few tries.  But I couldn’t see the point of paying to go up a hill only to come down a hill.  If the point is to get to the bottom, I would like to just cut out the minutes in between and stay at the bottom.  I stopped skiing at some point in high school and have never had a desire to return to the slopes.

Sometimes I say that I want to go snow tubing, but I forget that means going out in the snow.  And I don’t like the snow.  I really don’t think I can stress that enough.  Me and snow?  Not friends.

I don’t like cold climates, though I lived in Madison for four years.  I would never willingly choose to go somewhere cold.  I mean, there are people I love who live somewhere cold, so I go and visit them in their cold home states. (Or in the case of one friend, she sends me all the way up to Canada!  Windsor-freakin’-Canada!)  But while I love going to places that get cold during their warmer months, such as visiting the aforementioned Canada in summertime (it’s divine!), I would never choose to go on a vacation to someplace snowy in the winter.  When people tell me that they can’t wait because they just booked tickets for a ski vacation, I smile wanly and tell them that sounds fabulous.  But really, that’s my version of hell.  Hell isn’t hot.  Hell is like Hoth.

I wear sweaters through the summer.  Through the DC summer.  Swampy, too-hot-to-breathe-according-to-some-people DC; I don’t think I’ve ever left the house without a sweater in tow in the summer months.  I wear jeans to the pool.  There are two pictures of me on the beach from two separate trips this summer; both wearing heavy sweatshirts over my t-shirt.

Did I mention I hate snow?

But there is nothing I love more than a snow day.  Watching the snow falling outside.  Not being able to go anywhere.  Making sure all the flashlights have batteries.  Wearing sweatpants and heavy socks and slippers.  I love watching snow within a heated space with a panel of glass between myself and the substance.  I mean, yes, for the sake of the kids, I will take them sledding and even take a few rides down the hill, cursing the snow as it seeps into my jeans.  But after fifteen minutes, I’m done with snow and ready to go back inside.

Where it is cozy.

And there’s no homework.  And no early wake-time.  And no driving to activities.  There’s just… sigh.  Good books and hot chocolate.