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 January list is now closed.  The February list will open on 1/27.
  
• 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 January 2014 List

1. Stirrup Queens (twins, books, writing)
2. Waiting for Baby (third trimester, thyroid, PCOS)
3. Where the *Bleep* is Our Stork? (infertility, random acts of kindness, life)
4. Our Crazy Ever After (life, infertility, humor)
5. Breathe Gently (new-mum, IVF, PCOS)
6. Life of an Army Wife (army, donor eggs, donor embryo)
7. One Step at a Time (toddler after infertility)
8. The Empress and the Fool (ivf, dor, coping)
9. The 2 Week Wait (infertility, humor, motherhood)
10. Baby On Mind (embryo adoption, infertility, FET)
11. No Bun In This Oven (unexplained infertility, iui)
12. Stupid Broken Eggs (IVF, marriage, faith)
13. Stork Stalking (science behind infertility, surrogacy, pregnancy)
14. A Little Bit More (infertility, PCOS, TTC)
15. Family Of Three (TTC #2, PCOS, parenthood)
16. Improving Egg Quality (egg quality, pregnancy over 35, lifestyle interventions)
17. Comatised (love, life, happiness)
18. Just Another Infertility Blog (infertility, ivf and loss)
19. Ready Now to See it You Way (toddler, family, loss)
20. Amateur Nester (infertility, encouragement, faith)
21. Hope Love and Family (infertility, faith, ivf)
22. Sweet Dreams are Made of This (adoption, life, family)
23. Infertile Girl in a Fertile World (infertility challenges, treatment and coping)
24. Dragondreamer’s Lair (parenting, secondary infertility, crafts)
25. MirthandMotivation (lifestyle, inspiration, peace)
26. Positive Kismet (lifestyle, mind, spirit)
27. Recipes for Lemons (adoption, infertility, challenges)
28. Fruitful Furbishing (infertility, decor, low-amylose)
29. Creating a Family (blog infertility, adoption, parenting)
30. Meant to be Mommy (infertility, iui, endometriosis)
31. Missing Noah (tfmr, stillbirth, ttc)
32. Birds, Bees, and Medicine (infertility, IVF, family)
33. Reese’s Rants and Raves (parenting after loss)
34. I Can Do This (secondary infertility, immune issues)
35. The January list is now closed.  The February list will open on 1/27.

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 silver, the next month it will be green, 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.

The Wolvog came downstairs frustrated because his friends have stopped playing Hay Day, and apparently, that has made it difficult for him to get butter.  “I’ll download Hay Day,” I told him.  “If you run the farm and do the work, you can use my farm to get whatever supplies you need.”

So I downloaded the farm and decided to do the most basic things to get it up and going so the Wolvog could start scavenging from it when he woke up in the morning.  And… it will not surprise you to learn this… I fell in love.

First I fell in love with my chickens.  Then I fell in love with my crops.  Then I fell in love with the little bakery I set up and my brand new cow (I love this cow!).  I spent an extraordinary amount of time making everything neat and pretty (plus collecting my eggs, milking my cow, planting and harvesting my crops, and visiting some stranger’s farm where he sold me an axe).

The Wolvog is going to be so disappointed when I turn on him like Bilbo with the ring and hiss that the farm is my precious and he better not touch my butter if he knows what’s good for him.  He created a monster.

*******

So, what was your favourite thing you got for Christmas?  As someone Jewish, I feel the need to ask this.

*******

Mikhail Kalashnikov died.  I misread his name at first glance as Mikhail Baryshnikov.  Heart attack (plus excessive time on YouTube watching ballet footage to calm down).  After I recovered, I thought of one of my translation assignments in graduate school.  I was translating a series of short stories, and one of them contained the term Kalashnikov.  I didn’t know what this was, and I couldn’t find it in any dictionary.  But it seemed like the object of this man’s affection, so I assumed that Kalashnikov was a male Russian immigrant that he was making love to based on the usage of male verb forms.  And this is the story I wrote; one of an affair between the main character and Kalashnikov.

I gave the story to my professor.  He returned it to me and said, “Melissa, what do you think a Kalashnikov is?”

“What is it?  Don’t you mean who?”

“No, Melissa, I mean what.  Because it is very apparent to me that you have no clue that a Kalashnikov is a gun.”

Uh… no, I didn’t.

*******

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:

• “Can You Be Fired for Doing Fertility Treatments?” (Stirrup Queens) — thank you, Kimberly!
• “‘Rest’ Cycle Musings” (No Bun in This Oven)
• “Questions Without Answers” (Birds, Bees, and Medicine)
• “Tree” (Baptism by Fire)

Okay, now my choices this week.

River Runs Dry has a post about seeing thestrals.  Once she learned about the messiness of life, the non-Pinterest perfect worlds we inhabit, she couldn’t stop seeing the loss and the sadness and the disappointment and the frustration that lurk amid all the normal everyday moments.  It is a sensation many have expressed in this community; about suddenly seeing infertility or loss when you never noticed it pre-diagnosis.  But she says it in an incredibly perfect way.

Life as a Dad to Donor Insemination Kids has a post about parenting DI kids after divorce.  I especially love the realization from his son: “We talked for a few minutes about how life can be complicated. Not sure how we came to referring to Donor, Dad, and StepDad but he recognized that no matter how many folks are out there always will be only one Dad.”  It leaves room for a lot of people to play a role in your child’s life, with no single person detracting from the role of any other person.

Lastly, So Close has a post that she published now even though she wrote it a while back.  It starts with a deeply honest and moving thought, “And then there is my secret, dark fear.  That this is all I, we, deserve.  Because I struggled so hard to have children, that having children with challenges is what I deserve.  That ‘normal’* children are reserved for people who conceive easily and without help.  ‘Normal’ families get to have “normal” children. People like me, families like mine, should just be happy with what we are and just shut up.”  Though she knows this isn’t the case, and she waited to hit publish until she had time to process her child’s diagnosis, I’m glad she still sent the thoughts out there in case they resonate with someone else and make them feel less alone.

The roundup to the Roundup: I have a farm on Hay Day, and it’s miiiiiiiine.  What did you get for Christmas?  What Kalashnikov means.  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 20th and December 27th) 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.

Okay, enough Candy Crush.  Slate had an interesting/scary article that quietly slipped on by in the mad rush of Christmas.  Facebook has been noting all those times when we start writing a status update or comment and then change our mind and delete before posting.  In other words, every single keystroke is being logged by Facebook at all times.  The ones you post.  The ones you erase.  And the ones you delete because you thought better of hitting publish.

Gulp.

The Slate article points out that this is true for lots of sites.  Google, for instance.  It keeps hitting save every few keystrokes so you don’t lose your work.  Except there’s a point to it on Gmail.  There’s a draft folder, and we’re relieved to learn that our words aren’t lost when there’s a computer glitch.  But there doesn’t seem to be a point to saving our keystrokes on Facebook… except to benefit Facebook.  There isn’t a draft folder for half-finished comments or status updates, for instance.

But more, those self-deleted, non-posted musings aren’t totally private.  They write,

It turns out that the things you explicitly choose not to share aren’t entirely private. Facebook calls these unposted thoughts “self-censorship,” and insights into how it collects these nonposts can be found in a recent paper written by two Facebookers … It reveals a lot about how Facebook monitors our unshared thoughts and what it thinks about them.

And the post goes on to point out the true discomfort in all of this:

While it may be uncomfortable that the NSA has access to our private communications, the agency is are monitoring things we have actually put online. Facebook, on the other hand, is analyzing thoughts that we have intentionally chosen not to share … the FBI needs a warrant but Facebook can proceed without permission from anyone.

As someone who preaches circumspection, this news is a little disturbing.  I like that people self-censor.  I like it when people think before they post.  I like it when they change their mind and don’t subject me to something that they have doubts about.  Self-censoring is a wonderful human instinct that goes along with moderation and thoughtfulness.  People should listen more often to that little niggling feeling in their stomach, the one that makes them wonder if posting is a good idea.

In a world that moves quickly, it’s difficult to always process things before speaking/posting, so I admire someone who catches themselves before they spill the contents of their brain on the Internet.  I always ask the kids to pause before posting, asking themselves if the words could bite them in the ass at a later date, do they have the potential to be misunderstood, or are the words productive.

Turns out, if they type them on Facebook, that circumspection doesn’t matter the moment they touch fingertips to keyboard.

What do you think of the fact that Facebook monitors what we don’t post as well as what we post?

Your last present for Christmas is an answer for why Candy Crush is addictive.  Because if you are anything like me and you play it before bed, you fall asleep thinking up boards.  You dream about combining two speckled doughnuts.  If you have a ten minute wait somewhere, rather than grab a book, you convince yourself that it’s not worth your time and open a round of Candy Crush instead.

Someone has studied this behaviour.

And she has determined that what we’re addicted to is momentum.

These games move from easy boards that you pop through like Doritos and hard boards, which make you feel smart when you finally pass them.  Easy – hard – easy – hard; never a predictable pattern so you write off the last board as an easy one, but a gentle dip and rise that makes you feel good and carries you from board to board.

Stephanie Michele writes,

This is the scientific formula for human momentum. Set a goal and then organize and leverage smaller actions along the path that are aligned to that goal. Celebrate each milestone easy and hard making sure to space out the hard ones to avoid discouragement. Discouragement murders momentum and blinds us from seeing and celebrating progress.

So it’s all just vanity.  We feel smart, so we keep playing.  It’s linked to Facebook so our friends see our progress.  I always assumed that it was meant to not only give us a group of people from whom to collect tickets or trade advice (or, more cynically, to give King.com more access to new players), but to have us feel less alone while we play in our respective houses.  Because video games are sort of lonely. But maybe it was meant to bring out our sense of competition, to have our friends notice and stroke our ego.

But, for me, it’s more than that.  It’s more than just momentum.

I’m aware that Doritos are engineered to make me want more empty calories.  They not only taste good, but they plug into some part of my brain that convinces me that it would be a sound idea to finish the whole bag despite rationally knowing that it is too much food before I take the first bite.  And there is something about this game that taps into my brain, turning off the constant buzz.  When I’m playing, I’m not worrying.  I’m not thinking about what needs to get done or my worst fears.  I’m just crushing virtual candies.  It’s the same release that comes from throwing plates against a wall, without the clean up.   I don’t need the music; I can silence the game and get the same effect.  But those moments when I’m crushing candies are the calmest moments of my day.  They are the only moments when I’m not fretting.  Or if I am fretting, I’m not fretting about real stuff.  I’m worrying about creeping chocolate.  There needs to be something said for an activity that is a massage for my brain.

So yes, I play a lot of the ‘Crush.  And I probably couldn’t turn it off if I tried.  I talk about deleting it at various milestones, but I don’t think I’ll stop until I hit that figurative wall and find a level that I absolutely can’t pass.  And even then, I could see myself going backwards and playing the first levels again for old time sake.  Because it feels good.

So… I hope you’ve had a relaxing day.  And if you haven’t had a relaxing day, sit down next to me and tell me about while I crush some candies.  I promise I can listen at the same time.

The next one of my Christmas gifts to you is an update on the hardest level of Candy Crush as crowdsourced by tons of players.  I never closed that original poll, and people kept answering. (Feel free to leave your answer there if you wish.  Maybe I’ll revisit this again in a few months.)  In fact, hundreds of people kept answering.  So I figured it was worth a relook if new answers skewed the results.

Why is it important to know the hardest level?  Because then you can anticipate, plan ahead, and hoard boosters from the prize wheel.  Why the hell would you spend a lollipop hammer on level 31 if you know that in two boards, you’re going to have to clear a lot of jelly?  It also helps, when you’re stuck, to know other people got stuck in the same place too.

So, to review, when I first wrote the post, the hardest level was 65.  The other nine most dreaded levels were: 33, 70, 79, 97, 125, 147, 165, 252, and 410.

The least favourite level has changed over time to become level 33.  It ousted 65 from the most hated spot.  In fact, level 33 earned 24% of the vote.  Whereas only 13% of the people answered that they disliked level 65.  Also added to that original list are multiple votes for  levels 23, 29, and 30.

There is the problem that more people have encountered those lower levels vs. the higher levels, and therefore, while they may really dislike 33, they have no clue that 350 is going to suck hardcore.  So the results definitely skew towards those first 200 levels.   There was also a tendency to dislike recent boards.  In other words, a lot of people who reported hating 97 were either still on 97 or were below 100.

Still, there’s more to be learned if we look at types of boards.  30% of people hate bring down the ingredients boards.  Only 22% of you hate clear the jelly.  And 30% hate timed levels.  I should add to that more options, some of which I didn’t even know about when I wrote that poll: the cannons, the chocolate machines, licorice, the 5-break whipped cream, and bombs bombs bombs bombs bombs bombs.

Okay, so start pre-dreading levels 23, 29, 30, 33, 65, 70, 79, 97, 125, 147, 165, 252, and 410.  And if you’re past them, breathe a huge sigh of relief.

What has been your hardest board?  Or tell us about a recent difficult board where you got stuck.

You can open another gift under the figurative tree in another few hours…  Which is just my way of saying another post will go up.  Hope you are having a wonderful Christmas.