I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving if you celebrate it, and that you weren’t too annoyed by all the Thanksgiving posts and Facebook status updates and tweets if you don’t celebrate it.

*******

I learned this week that the thing I’m calling a speckled doughnut in Candy Crush is really a nonpareil (or, I’m told a “freckle” as it’s known in Australia).  Like a Sno-cap.  Those things you get in the movie theater.  Once the person told me that, it made perfect sense — more sense than a speckled doughnut, since it wasn’t clear how doughnuts fit in with the whole candy world.  But I have to admit that I can’t stop calling them speckled doughnuts, even now knowing their real name.  It doesn’t sound right to say, “combine a rainbow nonpareil with a striped candy.”  Right?

*******

The FDA told 23 and Me that they have to cease marketing their product as screening for genetic information, stating the reason as a lack of accuracy in test results.  It brought back my thoughts on the fact that 23 and Me (backed by Google) is amassing an incredible wealth of genetic information on participants.  But if it’s not accurate, what is its worth?  In terms of marketing, if companies collect incorrect information to market to us, how valuable is that information if it isn’t accurately enticing the right people with the right goods?  I think of things such as the containers of formula I received while going through treatments, companies believing I was pregnant when I clearly wasn’t.

It feels like the information companies attempt to collect and believe is meaningful keeps proving time and again how little we can know about people at a distance.

*******

The 2013 Creme de la Creme is trucking along.  There are currently 71 on the list and two weeks to go until the hard deadline (December 15!).  So, are you on the list yet?  Extra love to people who submit early!

*******

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:

• “Confession Time” (Fox in the Hen House)
• “Forty, Fat, Infertile and Falling Apart” (The 2 Week Wait)

Okay, now my choices this week.

MoJo Working admits that despite recent posts, there is a lot of happiness she is feeling with her current pregnancy.  That happiness doesn’t necessarily make it into posts since she writes for the catharsis, to process darker emotions.  I think it’s the way a lot of people use their online space; to process their fears or sadness.  It may skew our perception, but only if we forget that the need to write is what drives some blogging and not necessarily a perfect recording of the daily world.

MissConception debates whether or not to return to work after having a child, and tells her story of how the unexpected costs of building their family chose her path for her.  It’s not a decision all women or men get to make — to have a stay-at-home parent — and sometimes the sacrifices need to continue into parenthood.  It’s a good post that give a complicated and frank answer to what is sometimes an assumption.

It is What It is has a post on “what it’s all about.”  She begins: “It’s true that I always wanted to have two children. I’m not sure why that is or how the notion of how many kids one wants to have comes into focus, but that is how I thought it’d be.”  She lists off a series of moments that she describes as having a feeling of deja vu that is “not so much repeating something I may have lived before, but something I longed to live.”  It’s just a gorgeous post of captured moments.

Stupid Broken Eggs has a post about her dog, Swish.  And, oh my G-d, he is so cute.  Click over for pictures of pure love.

Dear Noah has a post about how family avoids speaking about her son; his death has become the elephant in the room.  She ends the post with this very powerful thought: “it physically hurts not to talk about him. Why I need others to talk about him. I just don’t know how to get there. And if the silence is this bad after only one month, how bad will it be at a year. 5 years. 18 years. Because I won’t forget. But I worry they will.”  The next time you wonder whether to say something to a grieving parent, speak up.  Even if it’s just to open the door and invite them to talk.

Lastly, Constant in the Darkness has a post on what she wished she had known about adoption before forming their family.  It is a wonderful post, exploring the complex relationship that exists between all the members of the triad.

The roundup to the Roundup: Hope you had a good Thanksgiving.  It’s not actually a speckled doughnut.  23 and Me and the FDA.  The 2013 Creme de la Creme opened: is your post on the list?  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between November 22nd and November 29th) 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.

So I’ve been struggling a bit with level 331, and I decided to open up Candy Crush on the computer to see if the board looked differently online.  Suddenly, I was invited into a Candy Crush Dreamworld (and no, this is not a hallucination.  Er… okay, maybe it is… so I took screenshots just in case).

Do you see that?  The owl in the top left corner?  So I clicked on it.

And it asked if I wanted to enter the Dreamworld.  Did I?  HELLS YEAH!  I’ve learned nothing from reading Alice in Wonderland, and if Candy Crush offered me a little cake or a vial of questionable liquid, I would ingest it in a heartbeat.  Give me entrance to a wonderland of dreamy candy, and I am inside in a New York minute.

So the Dreamworld is a beautiful space where all the boards are like the ones when you’re just starting out Candy Crush.  And you cry because they feel so good to play after you’ve been banging your head against the wall with level 331.

Look at that sweet board!  You only have to score 2500 to pass.  What the hell is up with that?  And you get 15 moves.  And each match makes that little blue thing under the owl light up until he flies up and the screen says MOON STRUCK!

At that point, most of the colours fade off the board, making it (for a limited time) very easy to make special matches.  And then you cry with happiness as the points stack up because everything is popping and exploding and sliding around.  And it’s beautiful, it’s beautiful, it’s beautiful.

And then you take a bunch of screenshots because you can’t believe this exists.  I am so tired.  I have to be dreaming, right?  I’m dream blogging.

If you click on the owl, you get transported back to the normal board.  I went back and forth a few times to make sure I could still enter the Dreamworld.  It is the loveliest place I’ve been all day.

A prize wheel ALSO popped up on the computer.  I spun it and got one of those hand things that look like a Mickey Mouse glove, which I have no clue how to use.  So I let that be.  But you get to spin the wheel every single day.  You better believe I’ll be spinning.

Thank you, Candy Crush, you just made my Thanksgiving.

Is anyone else seeing the Dreamworld while they’re online?  Will it disappear if I log out?

P.S. How do you use the Mickey Mouse hand?  It switches two candies?

Update:

It’s still there!  It’s still there!  I thought I’d wake up in the morning and it would be gone.  I took a picture of the prize wheel too.  It shows up at the very bottom of the map screen. (You can see it in the background in the picture below.)  When you click on it, this screen opens:

So you click “Stop Wheel” and it starts to spin…

And then it lands on one of the prizes.  Today I got the jellyfish.  Not sure how one releases the jellyfish to use them during a game.  But I have them.

This is going to become my morning joy: spinning the prize wheel and shouting, “Big money!  Big money!  Show me the big money!”

Oooooh, I just love Candy Crush.

Update again:

Just played through level 10 (where a dotted line appears on the Dreamworld map), but all that happened was that the episode was complete.  No new prizes popped up.  Still a lot of fun, and it was nice to tear through levels instead of remaining on the same one day after day after day.  Plus, keeping the owl balanced is harder than you think.  We had him tip off his perch once when we combined a speckled doughnut and a regular candy.  But I’m really loving the Dreamworld.  Please don’t disappear, little Dreamworld, don’t disappear.

I had the brilliant idea to pick up the kids from school and get sufganiyot.  You know, get in the holiday spirit.  It’s just not that exciting a holiday unless you really really really love candles.  Like 44 of them.  Do you know what kills a healthy love of candles?  Living for three years in the shadow of the Yankee Candle Factory.  But I digress.

We drove to the bakery and got in the long line.  That was our first mistake.  What we should have done upon seeing the line is turn around and go home.  But we didn’t.  We got in line and waited for a half hour to reach the counter.  THEN we were told it would be a 40 minute wait for the doughnuts.  Wow… 40 minutes for fried dough?  That’s a little steep.  But we had already waited a half hour to learn that so it felt a bit in-for-a-penny-in-for-a-pound.  So we placed our order and sat down at a table.  The woman working the counter kindly gave us two doughnuts from our order, and we devoured them (but not before I managed to squirt a big blob of raspberry jam on my jeans).

Oh, and did I forget to mention that it had been pyjama day at school, so the twins were sitting in this bakery in their pyjamas?  Classy.

I started reading from Harry Potter to the twins, and after a while, I realized that I had read two chapters.  Two long chapters.  I had been there for over an hour.  So I asked the frazzled woman about my order and she told me it would be soon.  Another 15 minutes passed and I asked another employee about my order.  At this point, the original woman came by to tell me that they couldn’t actually fill the order I already paid for.  Would I be willing to accept a cheaper flavour despite having paid for the premium flavour?  Sure, why don’t you give me a flavour we don’t really want and we’ll be on our way.

She passed me a box and it was… someone else’s order.  So I waited again to return the box with someone else’s order, and finally got mine.  With the jam leaking out of the doughnuts, all over the box.

And now, an hour and a half later, I took my pyjama-clad children back to the car and decided to eat one of the doughnuts on the ride home because I had skipped lunch, not realizing how long the sufganiyot errand would take.  And the doughnuts were raw inside.  Oozy, undercooked dough mixing with the jam.  I sat in traffic and cursed the holiday.

I’ve never been a fan of Chanukkah.  It’s just not my holiday.  It lacks the gravity of Rosh HaShanah or Pesach.  It lacks the fun of Purim or Succot.  It just sort of is; and people try to turn it into something its not.  It’s not the Jewish Christmas.

I’ve been trying to get into the spirit of Chanukkah because of the way it intersects with Thanksgiving this year, mostly because Thanksgiving is a closer holiday to Chanukkah in terms of message.  As I said in that post,

So this is what Chanukkah is about: it’s a somewhat insignificant holiday meant to commemorate the time that King Antiochus instated laws not allowing Jews to practice their religion and the Macabees fought back. It’s a story about guerrilla warfare and a revolution. About not waiting for G-d to intercede on your behalf, but fighting back against injustice. It is about a time when life sucked hardcore for the Jews and instead of putting down their heads and crying, they rolled up their sleeves and restored the Temple.

In other words, it’s a pretty cool holiday on its own, but where gifts and sweetness have a place in a birthday celebration for Christ, presents and candy don’t really commemorate a war. Jews don’t celebrate war victories — recognizing that death is a large part of war — so this holiday is more about relief than outright joy. It would make more sense to use Chanukkah to go into the community and right a few wrongs. Or do a habitat for humanity-like project to fix up a home in need of repair. See, it’s not really a holiday that can be celebrated like Christmas.

…

Chanukkah is a holiday about fighting assimilation, so it’s sort of weird that a holiday about fighting assimilation has become assimilated in order to be more like the majority holiday close on the calendar. Jews should be proud of the holiday — it’s essentially a story of thanksgiving — and pump up the parts that matter: family, friends, and fried foods.

So I’m trying to remember to give thanks since it’s what I said back in 2008 too:

Personally, I look at the holiday as a kind of Thanksgiving. It is that period of peace that comes at the end of a struggle where you’re simply thankful for what you have. Just as Succot is a harvest holiday where thanks is given for the crops, Chanukkah can be a time of thankfulness — marked by community service, family meals, and enjoying what you already have rather than thinking about getting more.

Right… so… Thanksgiving.  Chanukkah.  A good attitude about an under-loved holiday.  Is that wrong?  To under-love a holiday that did nothing wrong except fall too close on the calendar to Christmas?  Poor Chanukkah.  If it had been set in February, you would have never noticed it.

So happy Chanukkah, everyone.  May your sufganiyot be cooked through and may you always get gimel in dreidel. (Yes, I messed this up the first time around.  That is how long it has been since I’ve played dreidel.)

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 December list is now closed.  The January list will open on 12/27.
  
• 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.

1. Stirrup Queens (twins, books, writing)
2. Baking & Babies (baking, parenting after infertility)
3. Stupid Broken Eggs (IVF, faith, infertility )
4. Breathe Gently (New-mum, IVF, PCOS)
5. Waiting for Baby (pregnancy, PCOS, thyroid)
6. The 2 Week Wait (infertility humor motherhood)
7. Family Of Three (parenting after infertility)
8. Dear Noah (loss, tfmr, grief)
9. Constant in the Darkness (open adoption, parenting, relationships)
10. Genuine Greavu (infertility, faith, IVF)
11. Amateur Nester (infertility, faith, life)
12. Feeling Beachie (life, humor, family)
13. No Bun In This Oven (ttc, infertility, iui)
14. One Step at a Time (baby after infertility)
15. Birds, Bees, and Medicine (infertility, PCOS, family)
16. Comatised (love, life, happiness)
17. Hope, Love and Family (infertility, faith, endometriosis)
18. A Little Bit More (PCOS, TTC, life)
19. Our Journey to a Family of Four (twins after infertility)
20. Life of an Army Wife (army wife, donor eggs, donor embryo)
21. Dreaming of Dimples (IVF, inspiration, infertility)
22. The Road From There To Here (infertility and miscarriage, faith, health issues)
23. In Quest of a Binky Moongee (faith, IVF, TTC)
24. In Due Time (faith, hope, waiting)
25. The Icing on Our Cake (infertility, IVF, life)
26. Penguins of mine (infertility, loss, drawing)
27. Creating a Family (infertility, adoption, parenting)
28. For This Child I Prayed (parenting after infertility, faith)
29. I Can Do This (immune factors, losses)
30. The Noona Musings (infertile, student, life)
31. MissConception (parenting and pregnancy, loss, PCOS)
32. The Buggy List (miscarrage, new motherhood, humor)
33. Baby On Mind (embryo adoption, infertility, 40+)
34. Ready Now To See it Your Way (loss, marriage, kids)
35. Adopt To Change (adoption, infertility, hope )
36. The December list is now closed.  The January list will open on 12/27.

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 silver, 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.

[Melissa clinks on her glass in order to get everyone’s attention and then begins to speak.]

Welcome back everyone.  I am so glad that you’re here at the fifth annual virtual ALI Thanksgiving meal – an online meal that is a yearly tradition before we scatter to our respective actual Thanksgiving tables.  Is it held during American Thanksgiving week instead of Canadian or another country’s thankfulness celebration?  Yes, and I apologize for that, but at least I didn’t hold it on American Thanksgiving so hopefully everyone will feel comfortable participating regardless of where you live.

[Polite laughter from the non-American contingency while they secretly think about how Americans flood the Internet with Thanksgiving posts this week and it’s freakin’ annoying.]

The Thanksgiving myth is that people who had nothing more in common than simple humanness stopped looking at each other’s differences on this day in history and sat down at the table together for a meal.  It’s a meal about survival; about going into the winter knowing the odds are stacked against you and still pausing for a moment to think about the here and now.

And truly, what better myth to describe our own virtual Thanksgiving table, where donor gamete bloggers are sitting next to those living child-free after infertility, and the adoption bloggers are seated next to those starting their first IUI.  We have nothing more in common than our humanness and a desire to build our families.  Some have crossed the river and are standing on the opposite bank with the families they struggled to build.  Others are still wading in the water.  Some are left on the original bank, not able yet to move ahead or deciding to stay out of the water.  And some have walked away from the river and are at the ocean instead.  We are straight or gay, old or young, men or women.  And yet, we place aside our differences – wait, not place aside: we learn from our differences, we utilize our differences – to create community.  We all have the means to support one another.  It is as simple as a word, a kind gesture.

I would like to start off the festivities by making a toast: to thankfulness.

I say this every year, and I’ll say it again: I will always be incredibly grateful to this online community, a community that has grown to more than 3000 people currently, not to mention those who have slipped away from our community over the years.  It is difficult to put into words how it feels to know that there are people around the world connected to you emotionally.  You are tied to their story and they are tied to yours and together, those threads intertwine to make a web strong enough to hold all of us who walk over it.  It’s not a spider web meant to ensnare; it’s more the netting below the trapeze, there to catch you and cushion your landing in case you fall.

I asked all of you to bring a dish to this multi-culti potluck meal – there is no need to stick to traditional Thanksgiving fare when you have such a diverse table spanning the entire globe.  Please share with everyone at the table what you brought and why.

This year, I’m bringing my cranberry-orange sauce, mostly because that is what I’m bringing to my physical Thanksgiving meal.  It’s tart.  It’s sweet.  It’s a little bit like life.  So I’m placing my bowl of cranberry sauce on the table.  Feel free to dive into the main dishes or nosh on the appetizers or skip all the healthy stuff and head straight for dessert.  There are no rules here. 

So what did you bring and what do you want to say to the community?

And please, start eating as everyone is introducing their dish.  We don’t want the food to get cold and there are so many of us at this table.  Thank you so much for coming, and I’m going to carry the warmth of this meal with me for the rest of this week.  In fact, I just might print out this post and the comments below and carry it with me in my pocket to my actual Thanksgiving meal to have all of you there and feel free to do the same if you need the fortification or simply want the company of a few thousand bloggers at your table.