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.

Yes, another one.  Skip it if you don’t play Candy Crush.  If you do, you understand the frustration Level 350 and Level 356 bring.  I have a very specific way for winning both of these levels.

Both are awful.  For me, until I figured out how to do it, 356 was actually worse.  Read on if you’re also stuck.

Level 350 of Candy Crush

I had heard awful things about this level.  It seemed a place where everyone got stuck, so I went into it knowing that I would likely be stuck there too for a bit.  It probably helped to anticipate that it was going to be awful.  I liked having the knowledge that it was going to suck, and it was going to suck hard.

This is a board that you will want to play from a device that will allow you to exit without wasting a life because there is only one type of board worth playing, and that is one where an opening move breaks three pieces of whipped cream, like the board above.  I know what you’re thinking: before reading that last sentence, you would have made a striped with those four red in a row, but you’d be wrong.  You actually want to break downward, ignoring all else.

Drill down, drill down through that whipped cream, and only focus on that whipped cream, preferably the middle of it.  If you get too close to the edge, you’ll set off the bombs.  And you’re not ready for that yet.  Don’t set off speckled doughnuts if you can help it.  Only use stripes or bombs if they clear whipped cream and nothing else.  Think of yourself as a worker ant with one task: clear the whipped cream.  Everything else is a distraction meant to mess you up.

The only time you want to use a striped/wrap combo is AFTER you’ve cleared most of the whipped cream and you can use it very low down on the board.  Same with a striped/doughnut combo.  Play it before you’ve cleared that whipped cream, and you’ve created a bomb nightmare.  Play it after you’ve cleared the whipped cream, and you can pop a lot of the jelly at the top of the board.

Get it?  Don’t get distracted.  Just focus on the whipped cream.

The reality is that once you clear the whipped cream, you’ll leave a big chunk of the board open and will likely make a lot of combos.  So break that whipped cream as your sole focus, and you’ll clear the board with combos after most of the whipped cream is gone.

Good luck!

Level 356 of Candy Crush

The first few times I played this board, I only made one striped combo.  Most rounds ended without making any.  Then I was teaching Hour of Code (see, I do erudite things too) and I realized that I was going about this wrong.  I had to think about this board as I would rethreading a drawstring that has gotten pulled out of a sweatshirt hood.  You don’t focus on trying to move the string insomuch as you try to move something else (like a ballpoint pen) through that drawstring area.

So it helps to know how the candies move.  The ones in the top left only fall in the top left.  The ones in the bottom left move the ones in its own quadrant and the one above.  The top right quadrant moves the candies in the two quadrants on the left, and the bottom right quadrant is rock bottom.  That quadrant is the least helpful place to have a striped candy.  I’ll explain that in a moment.  But the board reads like a two-column article.  You get to the bottom of the left column and your eye goes to the top right and starts to read down again.  Same with the candies.

When you make a striped candy, let’s say, in that far right row in the top right quadrant (with the orange ones), you will now want to make your next striped candy in either that row (far right, any quadrant) or the one right next to it (second from right row, any quadrant).  Let’s pretend you made one in the second-from-the-right row in the bottom left quadrant.  What you’d want to do to pull it toward your other striped candy is to make any matches in that SAME ROW (second-from-the-right) in either of the right quadrants.  Because that will gently pull it — like a drawstring — toward the one that is already in the top right quadrant.

Did that make sense?  Essentially every row moves as one with others in the same placement regardless of quadrant.  So if you make a match in the far left row on the bottom right quadrant, it will affect every left row.  But only every left row (unless it inadvertently makes a match along the way).  So, back to that striped orange candy you made in the top right quadrant.  When you did that, you also made a vertical three-way match with the yellow ones in the second-from-the-right row, correct?  That is going to move all the other candies in the second-to-right row that are above it.  So it will move that green one down and it will also move the yellow-blue-green-yellow-yellow-blue-yellow-orange (read that going downward) in the second-from-the-right row in the two left quadrants.

Got it?

Be prepared that striped ones will accidentally be detonated before you can use them.  And that’s okay.  Because you’ll make a bunch of them.  And you’ll work slowly and patiently to slide candies through like you’re rethreading a drawstring.  Don’t stress too much about the bombs; they usually get taken out as they travel down the board.  Only deal with them if they’re about to go off.  And yes, you can also bring down candies that will match that bomb and get rid of it using this same method.

A hint: it is easiest if you can make the striped candies on the left side because then you can gently tug things down on the right side.  They don’t have to travel as far on the left.

Also, look for places where you have two of one colour (let’s say, red), one of another colour (blue), and then another red.  Make a match in another quadrant to gently pull down another red in that blue row.  That will form a stripe for you.  If nothing else, make a match in the bottom right quadrant because it will mix up all the quadrants for you and give you a new chance to create a stripe.

And that’s how it’s done.  I passed it in two tries when I changed the way I was thinking about playing this board to my rethreading method.

Currently: I’m on Level 361, and I’m happy to go backwards and explain how I did any board before that. Sometimes it was stupid luck but other times, there was actual thought involved (here are the other advice posts I’ve written). Let me know the level you’re struggling with.

So I’ve been running Hour of Code in the twins’ school (which, for me, is more like 12 hours of code as each class shuffles through), and on Wednesday, I ate lunch at their table in the cafeteria.  I was already there when their class came in and paused, staring at me.

“Oh hey,” I told a random girl who sat down near me.  “I’m Melissa.  I’m repeating third grade.”

She looked at the twins for explanation, but they just shrugged.  One of their friends squinted at me.  “No, you’re not.  You must be here for something else.”

“Nope,” I told him, cheerfully.  “Here to repeat third grade.  Didn’t do it that well the first time around and only realized that this week.  So, here I am.  Ready to do it all over again.”

And the best part was that for the next twenty minutes, they politely included me as one of their own, explaining what I would be doing now that I was an official third grader.  I will apparently learn all about a bird that can make a sound like a chainsaw, a few useful phrases in Spanish, and how to play the recorder.

Bring it on!

*******

A long time ago, I did a sugar art demonstration in a nursery school.  Years later, I was in the grocery store one morning, and there was a group of kids there on a field trip from a local elementary school, and as I passed them in the produce section, I heard a boy say, “that is the woman with all the sugar!”  It was a kid who had seen my demonstration in nursery school!

Lesson learned: Sugar makes an impression.

So the amusing, parallel part to leading Hour of Code is that as I return to the school day after day and I lead the workshop, I can hear kids talking about me: “that’s the woman who has all the electronics!”  To be fair, I am schleping around a big bag filled with a computer, littleBits, thumb drives, math books, and a tablet with a stylus.

But it made me feel cool, like the Pied Piper of Circuits.

*******

This is it, your last chance.  The 2013 Creme de la Creme closes to submissions on December 15th at night.  Anything that comes is after 11 pm ET will not be on the list… ever.  As in, this is it.  If you want to be part of the Creme de la Creme for 2013, submit now.  On Sunday, the list will be finalized, and it will go up on January 1st.

*******

I always feel like I need to mention that it’s Friday the 13th when the Roundup falls on Friday the 13th.  As I wrote last time this occurred:

Though I’m usually fairly anxious around certain dates, allowing my imagination to run towards grotesquely disturbing scenarios, I’ve never had big feelings concerning Friday the 13th.  Even if I live … like … 2 miles from Camp Crystal Lake and I totally know someone who knows someone who is the cousin of the counselor who decapitated Mrs. Voorhees.

It’s one of those dates that I feel like I should have big feelings about.  If I’m not worried, then I must be a fool.

You know how girls pinched each other’s arms with a Cootie Shot to ward off boy germs?  Mentioning that it’s Friday the 13th feels like a horror Cootie Shot.

Do you care about Friday the 13th or are you not superstitious about the date?

*******

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:

• “The Dread of Advent” (Through the Ardennes)
• “Christmas.  It’s Coming.  Again” (By the Brooke)
• “The Best I Can” (For My Sweet Boy, Jonah)
• “Courage for the Present” (Work is for Suckers)
• “I am not a loosey goosey come-what-may kind of lady” (I’m Polycystic Inside)
• “I Don’t Know Your Story” (A Sky for Blue)
• “20 Ways” (Where the *Bleep* is Our Stork?)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Anabegins has a post about shaking up her life.  Believe me, she could have been describing my life when she writes, “I’m no good at change. I get stuck in a rut and start to really like my rut, and get all cozy and comfortable with my rut, and suddenly its like ‘my beloved rut, don’t leave me!!’ You get the point.”  Oh, yes, I do.  Which is why I’m impressed with all the changes she hopes to make.  As she says, she put it online so she feels accountable.  Seems like a good time of year to do your own post about what you’d like to change in 2014.

My Lady of the Lantern has a post about waiting (or not?) for your period.   It’s clever, but it’s also veeeeeeeeery familiar; those phantom pregnancy signs.  (Is it?  Or isn’t it?) And the fact that your period always seems to show on the least opportune day.

Lastly, From IF to When has a post about understanding someone infertile.  She tackles common misconceptions, addressing both the myth and the reality.  Infertile people don’t hate those who conceive easily, nor do we want to avoid kids at all costs.  It’s a great post that you may want to leave open on someone’s computer screen by “accident.”  Just sayin’…

The roundup to the Roundup: I’m a third grader!  Or the lady who has all the electronics.  The 2013 Creme de la Creme is closing.  It’s Friday the 13th.  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 6th and December 13th) 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.