It has gotten veeeeeery quiet in the blogosphere as people get ready for Christmas.  The blog post reading is thin.

For the first time ever, we’re not volunteering on Christmas.  We’ve declared it a day of Nothingness: no commitments, no running around, no getting dressed, no stress.  We’re going to sleep in and then lounge about in our pyjamas watching movies and reading books.  Okay, fine, and play Candy Crush.  I’ve been looking forward to this all month.

But it’s very odd to not celebrate Christmas and yet have to navigate Christmas regardless since it’s everywhere you turn.  For instance, nothing being open.  That doesn’t phase me on Thanksgiving because I’m ensconced in hanging out with family at Thanksgiving.  But on Christmas, we sit there, twiddling our thumbs and saying things like, “we could… well… no… we probably couldn’t because I bet it’s closed… maybe… no… that’s probably closed too…”

So we’ll plan ahead, stocking up on milk and bread as if it’s a snow storm.  And then we’ll settle down inside the house.

So… what are you doing for Christmas?

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I have a question for all iTunes users.  I suddenly have over 6 GB of “other.”  This has been since updating to iOS7.  I’ve deleted my Safari cache, deleted old text messages… what else can I do?  Have you ever had this happen and how did you reduce the size of the “other” column on the phone?

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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:

• “Dam. Open Adoption is Hard” (Lavender Luz)
• “Then. Now. Always.” (Mrs. Spit Still Spouting Off)
• “Adjusting to a New Sound: The Voices of Childless & Childfree Women” (TheNotMom.com)
• “The View Through the Windshield” (A Crack in Everything)
• “Fertility Privilege, Part One” (Schrodinger’s Catbox)
• “Fertility Privilege, Part Two” (Schrodinger’s Catbox)
• “A Change in DH Helps a Change in Me” (An Unexpected Trip)

Okay, now my choices this week.

The Bickerstaff Blog has a post digging down to the roots of the argument between working and stay-at-home parents; namely, “There is no rank or betterness to one way or the other, yet because of the judgement and strong opinions of others, we always feel the need to defend what we do.”  I really loved the post because it spoke more to our personalities than to benefits or detriments to either situation.

Not an IF blog, but definitely worth a read through an IF lens.  Sassymonkey has a post about situations where words fail us.  It begins with her admitting: “I’ve had a difficult year with words.”  And it continues with the question of what happens when writers can’t find words beyond the overused “I’m sorry” when they hear bad news.  “Shouldn’t I know something better, something less cliched? Something more meaningful? You rail against your lack of mastery of language because there’s got to be something better to say.”  I especially love the thought she comes to in the end.

I held my breath through a post about loss on Inconceivable!  Intuition tells her something is wrong with the pregnancy, and a visit to the doctor confirms a lack of heartbeat.  It is a heartbreaking post; a gut-wrenching post.  And just as the fall from the jungle gym took her breath away, she took my breath away with her retelling of the death.  Sending a hug to her.

Lastly, Stumbling Gracefully writes about the happily ever after… and what comes next.  After achieving the family she wished for, she wonders about setting a new life goal.  She writes, “I wonder, what does one do with her life when has everything she ever hoped for? What do you work for when it’s all been achieved?”  She sets patience as her goal for 2014.  It’s really a lovely post.

The roundup to the Roundup: What are you doing for Christmas?  How do you reduce the “other” column on the iPhone?  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between December 13th and December 20th) 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.

Earlier this week, I was in the back of a craft store, purchasing yarn to teach the ChickieNob crocheting when I got an email (well, an email that led to a phone call) asking if I wanted to come down to the White House the next day to be the officially pooler for the press.  For some meetings, such as ones in a small space like the Oval Office, they send in one or two people from the press to take notes that are sent out to everyone else in the press pool.  So that’s what I was going to be: the person who went in, took notes, and wrote the report that went out to everyone else.

Kids, this is where I tell you that my copious note taking once again paid off.  This is actually the second time in my life that I have been an official note taker.

Back in college, I was also an official note taker.  We had a program where if you thought you were an exceptional note taker, you could turn in your notes for consideration, and be chosen to be the note taker for your classes.  Our notes were then collected at the end of class and copied to be used by anyone with special needs or learning differences who were also taking the class.  I thought that I just might be that person, that person with neat notes and an impeccable attendance record.  So I applied to be an official note taker and was chosen by the university.  So if you went to Wisconsin in the 90s and we happened to be in the same class and you happened to be a special needs student, you had MY notes.

Sometimes, I would make a little doodle at the top; a little cartoon just to say “hey, wasn’t this class fun?  Don’t you also love to talk about Shakespeare?”

I was told by one person that I was her favourite of all her note takers because my notes were easy to read and use.  I secretly hoped that she kept my notes after the class was over.

So I was a note taker there for four years.

Fast forward 17 years.  Pretty much no one has asked for my notes in almost two decades.  I’m not going to lie; it was a little bit of a letdown after my sweet time in college being an official note taker.  Which is why when the White House asked me to be the pooler for the press, I rescheduled my dental appointment and asked my parents to help get the kids from school.  I’ve been waiting for this moment for 17 years; to once again be asked to step up to the plate and provide notes for others.  Thank you, White House, for noticing my copious note taking.

So I got to go to the Oval Office for a rare appearance of the President and First Lady holding a joint meeting with eight mothers about the Affordable Care Act.

It is pretty amazing to be inside the Oval Office.  To be standing next to the President’s desk, listening to him talk about our health.  Pretty please read my post about the meeting over on BlogHer because my article came from my notes.  And because I am a very vocal supporter of the Affordable Care Act.  How could I not be?  Its point is to not only ensure that people who need health care right now have adequate coverage, but it gives ALL of us a safety net.  None of us know what we’ll encounter healthwise in our future.  Please sign up for insurance under the new plan if you don’t already have insurance.

After the meeting, I went back to the press briefing room to type up my notes, wishing I had that special paper official note takers used to college to mark our notes as the official set of notes.  Apparently it is unhelpful though to write your notes on carbon paper since they need to go out to all these media outlets simultaneously.  So I typed them on the iPad, and then Tony took a picture of me at the podium before I headed home because I had actually left my hair down for the entire duration of my work day.  This is as rare an occurrence as the President and First Lady holding a meeting in the Oval Office together.

I would like it stated, for the record, that I was so serious about doing a good job as note taker that I did not play one round of Candy Crush from the press briefing room.  I could have because I had a short wait when I got there.  But I didn’t.  Because I’m an adult, and every once in a while, I show some restraint.

So that was my Wednesday.

After blowing your mind with the idea that there are married women without children yesterday, I’d like to dial it back by talking about a settlement that happened this week in regards to a woman who was fired for doing fertility treatments and subsequently getting pregnant.  It wasn’t what I expected to encounter via the EEOC.  I clicked on the headline because it was about pregnancy.  I didn’t realize it was also going to be about infertility.

To tell or not to tell your employer that you’re having trouble with family building?

We opted for disclosure because (1) my boss seemed understanding and (2) I was a teacher and the daily monitoring impacted my first period class.  She shifted my schedule so first period was my planning period.  On days when I had to go in for monitoring, I just stayed late and did my planning after school.  She made fertility treatments possible; I’m not sure how I would have managed otherwise considering the amount of time I would have needed to take off from work in order to make treatments possible cycle after cycle.

I’ve heard more than one story of a teacher getting fired for doing IVF, but in those cases, it was because the act (IVF) conflicted with the religious ideology of the workplace (Catholic school).  What about those of us who work at a secular institution?  Can we be fired for missing out on work time?

The short answer — according to this EEOC statement — is no.

A female retail buyer in Honolulu informed the company that she began treatments for infertility in 2011. Upon disclosure of her disability, a company official allegedly made offensive comments about her intentions and became even less receptive upon disclosure of her pregnancy later that same year.  The buyer was disciplined after disclosing her need for fertility treatments, and then discharged when she disclosed her travel restrictions due to her pregnancy. Such alleged conduct violates the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, as amended by the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA), and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

Later in the statement, it provides a concrete quote by Timothy Riera, the director of her local EEOC’s office:

“Federal law protects workers who are discriminated against due to their infertility, a covered disability.  Workers who undergo fertility treatments should be treated like any other employee with a disability – with equal and careful consideration of reasonable accommodation requests.”

Of course, reasonable accommodation leaves a lot open to interpretation.  But isn’t missing work or trying to navigate work while infertile one of the most stressful things about the financial side of infertility?  The lack of flexibility in the workplace foments the stress already present with family building.  Think about how many people would do a BETTER job at work if they didn’t have to waste energy with the tension of trying to secretly balance treatments and work, but instead had employers work directly with employees to help them perform well while addressing a medical situation.  This, of course, is not just true for infertility.  It’s true for every medical situation that impacts work time.

Telling my employer could have gone otherwise.  If she was a less understanding woman, telling her could have bitten me in the ass.  Because, sure, it’s all well and good to have laws in place, and there is always the option to pursue legal consequences if you are fired like the woman above, but all of that takes money and energy.  I think we all know that people are unfairly fired all the time.  It was a lucky break that I had years to build up my reputation at the school BEFORE I had to use that good will for treatments.  It was a lucky break that my boss was an understanding woman.

Technically adoption should be covered as well — right? — though I’m not certain since this case only covers fertility treatments.

Are you (or have you been) open with your employer about family building?

I don’t want to freak you out, but did you know that there are women — like human women — who are either infertile or choosing not to have children?  I know this is probably going to come as a shock, and I’ll give you a moment to collect yourself.  Please don’t go running through the wall, creating a you-shaped hole in the plaster.  There’s no need to panic, really.  Because… you know… 7 billion person world population to limited resources and all that.

The LA Times reported last week that more married US women are not having children.  The subtitle for the article is “Among married American women, having no children is still rare, but it has become less so as ideas about why to marry have changed.”

You need to get six paragraphs down until you get to any mention of what role infertility may play in the trend: “Federal statistics on older women suggest some found themselves unable to have children, while others chose not to have them.”

It only suggests it.  That 7.3 million statistic, or 12.5% of the childbearing-age population maybe has something to do with the number of childless married women rising from 4.5% in 1988 to 6% in 2010.

The rest of the article points at changing views on marriage as the reason for the increase.  And that’s certainly a possibility.  After all, advances in fertility treatments and perfecting the ones that existed in 1988 should have an affect on that number, even if the rate of infertility has increased over those two-plus decades.  But I can’t help but feel that infertility plays a larger role than the single sentence in this article suggests.  Suggests.  See, there’s that word again.  It’s a word that forgives all sins.  You can sort of say anything, throw in “suggests” and no one is accountable.

All sarcasm aside, I wish there were mentions in these articles that living child-free after infertility is a viable (and perhaps more common-than-reported) option to resolving infertility, and it has little to do with how much the person wants to parent and more to do with how the person needs to process or deal with their infertility.  I’d love a study that reports reasons for not continuing on with family building: the depression and anxiety that can accompany treatments, a lack of desire to pursue a particular path, the financial concerns, the inability to find a doctor to treat the infertility, rejection from adoption programs.  There are dozens of reasons for why a person opts to resolve their infertility via living child-free.  I would love a big, juicy, LA Times article following hundreds of women who resolve without living children, trying to discern the many reasons why they are part of that 6% statistic.

Since there is sort of nothing crappier than being an invisible reality inside a visible number.

I know a lot of people like Secret Santas.  They must because they often suggest doing this type of gift exchange.  But one of the joys of working from home is that I haven’t been asked to take part in a Secret Santa gift exchange it many many years.

Which is a good thing.

Because I really dislike them.  My friend and I were just commiserating via email about this.

Image: Wes Bryant via Flickr

The first one I participated in perfectly illustrates exactly why I dislike them.  I was on a trip with a bunch of people I had never met before, and before we left to travel, someone suggested a Secret Santa gift exchange.  Actually, it was a Gamad v’Anak gift exchange — that’s what we call it in Hebrew.  It means “Elves and Giants;” like those little elves that sneak into the cobbler’s shop and finish the shoes sort of elves (not the Legolas kind).  You’re supposed to be kind to the person for the duration of the activity in addition to buying them things.  So it’s a little bit like Secret Santa on steroids.

Anyway, the point is that I was given the name of a person that I had never met before and was told to buy them gifts.

My understanding of gifts is that you purchase something for the other person that they would either want or need.  Gift giving shows how well you know a person that you would choose an item that fits them well.  Sometimes you miss with a gift, but the person at least understands why the gift was purchased; the thought process behind the item.

The gifts I received that trip were edible items that I could not eat (due to certain ingredients) and a pair of dangling earrings that I could not wear (due to the fact that I don’t have my ears pierced).  I still have the earrings.  I still don’t know what to do with them.  There is no one I know that fit this earring style that also wears earrings.  But I don’t want to throw them out because that feels odd too — someone gave them to me as a gift.  They’ve remained in a jewelry box as clutter for 25 years.

Yes, I know I need to just toss them.  But that’s not the point.

I also didn’t know what to buy my person because I didn’t know her at all.  Does she like jewelry?  How the hell should I know?  And if she’s a jewelry person, what sort of jewelry?  I personally wear rings and necklaces and nothing else.  Buy me a pin or bracelet and it will never be worn.  How do I know what this woman’s feelings are on wrist adornment?  Do I buy her something edible?  Chocolate seems like a safe bet.  But what if she’s allergic to chocolate?  Or hates chocolate?  What if her mother was killed in a Nestlé chocolate factory and now I’m buying her Nestlé’s chocolate?  What if I ruin her day with my gift?

Gift cards are a safer bet since it allows the person to choose what they want (though I’ve also received gift cards for places I would never shop or eat, and they go unused — what a waste), though they seem to be anathema as an exchange gift.  Thank you for the teacher — absolutely.  As a Secret Santa gift, it seems like some people don’t mind receiving them and others cry out that they don’t “count” because they’re so impersonal.  You can’t unwrap it and immediately enjoy it as you would a cranberry-scented candle*.  You open it up and your gift is something in the future.  Down the road.  An amorphous gift that you’ll pick out when you drive to the store.  See, not quite the same thing.

I am not a fan of Secret Santas because it combines my fear of waste with my generalized anxiety about relationships.  On the waste end, I hate money wasted, hate receiving or giving clutter, and generally feel that most Secret Santa gifts become something the person neither wants nor needs.  On the anxiety end, I am often worried that I’m not doing “enough” within my relationships, that my actions aren’t speaking as loud as my words, and that my gift will make the person think that I don’t really know them.

Secret Santa gifts are almost always a letdown, and I don’t want to be the one who caused someone else’s letdown.  They’re even worse when someone around you receives something they actually are happy with but your gift is terrible.

I’m aware that this is just me.  I would rather receive no gift than a gift because someone feels they need to buy me a gift.  And I’d like a gift card to a bookstore over most tangible items because I like to choose my own books and they’re really the only thing I always know I want.

I guess I would like to hear how other people feel about this sort of gift exchange and why they like (or don’t like) it.  Have you ever gotten a really great Secret Santa gift?  What was it?

Lest I sound like a Grinch, I would totally be down for a candy cane-inspired snack party.  Or a really cool ornament showcase.  Or a let’s-string-Christmas-lights-together party.  Or a Love Actually watch-a-thon.  Just not Secret Santas.  Or Gamads.  Or Anaks.

* A side note: I lived for two years near the Yankee Candle factory.  I could leave my front door, sniff the air, and know what type of candle they were making in that moment.  A stench of fake apple hung over our town all fall, followed by a vomit-inducing amount of spice in the air in November, and please-put-me-out-of-my-misery vanilla in the winter months.  I will never ever burn a scented candle in my house because it reminds me of the days when my whole world was a scented candle from which there was no escape except to bury my face in the dirty laundry basket.  So… perhaps my whole fear of Secret Santas is someone giving me a scented candle.