I have a cold.  I refuse to take any cold medicine because it would interfere with having my eyes drip incessantly which I think adds to the visual package when I limp dramatically into a room and moan, “I’m sick…”  I like to remind the kids that I’m sick no fewer than eight times every half hour.  I would do it more often, but I don’t want to be annoying.  I like to remind Josh that I’m sick every time we communicate by text so he has a long string of written reminders of my illness.

And now I’m telling all of you so you will pity me.

I am sick.

*******

The BBC had a very interesting report on discrepancies in IVF success rates based on race.  The article states:

Overall, 35% of ethnic minority women successfully conceived and gave birth after IVF compared with 44% of white women treated at the clinic between 2006 and 2011.  This was despite all the women appearing to have favourable chances of having a baby, based on factors such as the quality of their egg reserves.

That 35% statistic is an average.  Middle Eastern women have the lowest odds (21.4%) and South East Asian women have a slightly better rate of live birth (38%).

There isn’t a clear-cut reason given for the difference in success rates, and the rates seem to be an average per cycle vs. overall success after more than one cycle.  But even without answers or a plan forward, I thought it was worth pointing out.

*******

The 2013 Creme de la Creme is trucking along.  There are currently 61 on the list with over a month 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:

• “Adoption Retrospective: Show Me Despair and Uncertainty” (Portrait of an Adoption)
• “One More Chapter” (Stirrup Queens) — thank you, Lori!
• “I Don’t Know What to Do with My Hands” (A Single Journey)
• “Remembering” (The Barreness)
• “According to the Internet, I Am Lazy…” (Stephanie Snowe)
• “You Are Not Weak” (Grow Baby Grow)
• “Get Over It” (The Koob Triplets)

Okay, now my choices this week.

A Good Mother has a wonderful post about pausing to take everything in, even during the terrible moments in life.  It’s a piece of advice we hear often in regards to happy occasions: weddings, graduations.  Take a moment to step back and soak it all in.  But it’s important to always take those moments: during the awful times and the mundane times and yes, the good times too.  It’s one of those posts that we need every once in a while to serve as a reminder.  Have you paused today?

A Woman My Age has a post about Buddhist chanting and why she does it.  After rolling through the everyday stressors — big and small — she comes down to the heart of why she chants: “And so…. this is why I chant.  Not for deliverance from life’s problems or a magical solution, but for insight for a better way to lead my heart and life.”  I love this post.

Nuts in May is queen of the title.  She is so skilled at framing the post through the title, this time “Not Enough Tea in All the World” before launching into a litany of why she is posting infrequently.  And it contains such beautiful little nuggets as “Fuck 2013. Fuck it exceedingly.”

Lastly, Magpie Musing takes us on riff of leaves, from those of absence to the ones falling from the trees.  She moves from HR to books — both the ones she’s reading, the ones she asking you to donate, and the ones that are free for the taking.  It’s a nice spiral on a theme.

The roundup to the Roundup: Did I mention that I’m sick?  IVF success rate discrepancies.  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 1st and November 8th) 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.

Image: IntelFreePress via Flickr

We have a law in Maryland: no hand-held cell phones in cars and no texting while driving.  I would personally love a simple no-cell-phones-in-cars law full stop.  No checking to see who called you while you’re at the traffic light, or just downloading your email quickly and scanning it to see if so-and-so wrote.  If it were up to me, I would even ban speaker phone conversations in cars (because yes, a conversation over the phone is different from having a conversation with someone who is in the car).  We have a personal rule of no cell phones in cars, and we ask that everyone who drives our kids refrains from using their phone while our kids are in their car.  But at the very least, I would love drivers to follow that bare minimum of the law: no hand-held cell phones and no texting while driving.

SO WHY DO I PASS PEOPLE DOING BOTH THESE THINGS DAILY?

I understand people are busy.  I understand that sometimes people want to multitask in the car and take care of two things at once, such as returning a call.  I know there are people who would never get a chance to speak to X, Y, and their friend, Z, if not for calling them during their commute.  I get that people are waiting for information, I get that people have kids somewhere and they’re worried that someone is trying to reach them because there is an emergency, I get that people are curious.

But even with all that, I would ask you to stop using your phone in the car.  Because no matter how well you think you balance it, you probably don’t.  Because all those people who drive around distractedly, who rear-end other people by accident, who merge poorly, who switch lanes without signaling, who sit there reading a text message after the light has changed instead of going — all those people — they think they can drive and use a phone at the same time too.  And clearly, they cannot.

Driving a car is a difficult task.  It is an enormous responsibility.  You take everyone else’s life in your hands when you get behind that wheel.

Please show care for the other people in this world and put aside the phone for the moments when you’re in the car.  Check it once you’ve parked, or pull over to the side of the road and call someone back.  Use those minute in between to focus on the road so we can all get from Point A to Point B.

You are an adult, and I can’t tell you what to do; only what I wish.  And I really wish that everyone would put down their phone the entire time they’re behind the wheel.

I’m sure there will be someone who will suck in their breath (or whatever the equivalent is to priming their fingers) and tell me about why they must use their cell phone in the car.  How I absolutely do not get how vital it is that they use their cell phone while driving.  That they’re only sending a quick text at a red light.  I don’t know how to respond to that, except to sum up this entire post with a single word: please.

This question is part of the GRAB(ook) Club, an online book club open to anyone and everyone.  It contains more than a few spoilers for Gone Girl, so read at your own peril.  No, really, stop reading this post if you plan on reading Gone Girl.

I’ve already written on how I feel about the infertility and treatment protocol plot points.  (For the record, though I’m picking at this book, I really did enjoy it.  The writing is brilliant, the characters well-drawn, the pacing perfect.)

But there’s another discrepancy I found while reading the book: Amy didn’t always act like Amy.

I mean, she acted Amy-ish, but she departed from herself in an enormous way, and I don’t have a good explanation for why.

We’re told that she punished Hilary Handy for some pretty mild transgressions.  She forgot to wait for her after English (twice).  Forgot she was allergic to strawberries (also twice).  So Amy plotted to make her look like a stalker and succeeded in the most brilliant way.

Then we’re told that she punished Tommy O’Hara just a few years before Nick and Amy got together.  After three months of casual dating, he starts to pull away and see other people.  Amy finds out and she pins a rape on him.  Again, an intricate plot that is put into effect pretty much instantaneously.

And then she punishes Nick for his affair with Andie.  It takes her a year to plot it — the year leading up to their 5-year anniversary.  So from year 4 to year 5 of marriage, Amy plots.

Not really acting like Amy.

It’s two-fold: one, Amy is someone who likes immediate gratification.  She executes those other plans fairly quickly — in under a month for at least one of them.  Maybe two months for the other.  And with framing Nick, she is jumping out of her skin to find out what happens after the plan goes into effect.  This is not someone who is detached and calm; she is anxious to see him punished.  So she waits a year?  I mean, yes, obviously waiting a year makes for a more intricate plan, but would Amy — the Amy we know in the book — really wait a year to punish someone?  She wouldn’t rush things along a bit?  She’d keep sleeping next to him, never goaded to speed things along, every time he comes home smelling like Andie?

Fine, I could see a really good plan that takes a long time to set up being intriguing for Amy.  She’s also fenced in by the date of their anniversary if she wants to use that as part of the plan.   But we find out that she punishes Hilary for some very small transgressions: not waiting after class.  I’m willing to accept that in the high school years that could be a big deal.  But with Tommy, she’s an adult.  It’s under two years before she meets Nick.  She punishes Tommy for going out on a date with another girl after they’ve been casually dating for three months.  A huge punishment — rape charges.

But she waits until Nick has an affair, overlooking all the other transgressions that came before that point: being remote, being critical, being thoughtless, being cruel.  Not being the man she thinks she deserves.  Moving her away from New York without allowing her to be part of the discussion.  He pisses her off for years we’re told in the second half of the book.

Why doesn’t she punish him sooner?

Why does she wait for the affair to punish him?

Are we to believe that she loves Nick so much that she’s willing to overlook all those other things that would have pushed her over the edge if it had been another person?  If she is a psychopath, would she understand love in the first place?

In this tiny way, she ceases to act like Amy, something humans do all the time.  We regularly do things “out of character,” hence why humans are unpredictable.  So it wasn’t a deal breaker for me in the book, but I found myself distracted through the second half of the book, wondering why it took her so long to turn on Nick.  Why she acted out of character this one time when it came to doling out the punishments.

What did you think?  Did that seem out of character to you?  Why do you think she waited to punish Nick?

After you answer my question, please click over to read the rest of the book club questions for Gone Girl.  You can get your own copy of Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn at bookstores including Amazon.

This is a post for the GRAB(ook) Club. Like the idea of a book club where you don’t have to leave your living room? Then read more about the GRAB(ook) Club which holds the book discussion on blogs, a Facebook group, and a GoodReads group.

Last night, I went to the Vice President’s residence for an event.  It was my first time going to the Observatory, despite having lived here most of my entire life.  I knew the general vicinity of the residence; that you could see it from the end of Reno Road.  But I decided to take River Road for no other reason except that it was the way I used to get into the city when I cut school.

Not that I EVER cut school, kids.

It had been a very long time since I had driven down Wisconsin, and I felt this need to say hello to the buildings as I passed them.  The Dancing Crab, with the sign outside that used to say, “we have crabs!” to which Matt would always reply, “I do too, but I don’t advertise it.”  And the old site for the Outer Circle where I saw My Own Private Idaho six times.  Closed down Maggie’s Pizza, which never carded.  Closed down Jandara where we ate dinner the last night the twins were in the NICU.  Cafe Ole and the Sidwell campus where we’d go to dances during high school.  Cactus Cantina, my break-up restaurant where I asked everyone to take me if they ever had bad news so only one place would be ruined for me in the city.  The Cathedral, where we’d go to catch fireflies in the garden at night; where my cousin once whispered to me as I sat down on a bench, there’s a corpse inside of there; this building is filled with corpses.

The route between my childhood home and Georgetown is mentally strewn with corpses; closed businesses, receptacles of past conversations.

*******

After waiting in a long security line to park the car (and after asking the guard not to judge my trunk since I had dissected a child’s car seat earlier in the day), I got in another line to go through physical security with the other 50 or so guests.  I could hear crickets outside, and I was trying very hard not to hear the crickets outside.  There was also piped in music entertaining us as we stood along the fence.

“This is just like Disney World,” I commented to the man standing behind me, who agreed.  “It’s like we’re waiting for a ride, and they’re entertaining us during the wait so it doesn’t feel quite so long.  The Vice President is classy to pipe in music.”

And then I realized that there was a five-piece band playing us in as we entered.

I ended up walking through the rooms, looking at the pictures, and talking with random people while we waited for the Bidens to enter.  When they did, they both spoke for about 20 minutes about breast cancer.  The Vice President’s speech was incredibly moving.  I didn’t think I would get so choked up, but there I was, starting to cry when he spoke about how close we were to a cure — not just to eradicate breast cancer, but all cancers.  When he talked about the importance of caregivers using the collective term “us” to illustrate how one person’s cancer affects all the people who care for and about that person.  He talked about men with breast cancer.  And he kicked the whole speech off by making the point that he got in trouble the first time he brought up breast cancer on the House floor; not because people were horrified by the disease itself but by the fact that he used the term “breast.”  Really, he’s an incredible speaker, and I wasn’t the only one who ended up wiping her eyes.

Dr. Biden spoke after him, pointing out various people at the party and their personal stories.  I missed part of what she was saying because there was a little girl standing near the platform in the center of the room, and the Vice President crossed behind his wife to sit down on the edge of the stage and encouraged the little girl to sit down next to him.  She was trying her best to look serious and be proper, but he was whispering things to her and being silly.  The whole thing was happening at my knees since I was standing next to the stage, and it was really cute.

The Vice President is really one of the warmest, unfussy, smartest people I’ve met in Washington.  He’s like that guy you get into a conversation with at Starbucks while you’re waiting for your drink; totally approachable and accessible.  Unpretentious.  He’d make a wonderful president.  And Dr. Biden came across as a bit more intense; very very smart.

Afterward, we got in a line and everyone had a moment with the Vice President and Dr. Biden, and then they put their arms around each person and took a picture.   If I had known I was going to be in a picture, I probably would have worn something else. I sort of felt like their child between them, and that we were taking our Christmas picture.  Not that I’ve ever taken a Christmas picture since I’ve never sent a Christmas card.  But it felt like a Christmas moment…

I’ll post it when they mail it to me.

And then there was more eating and drinking, but I went home so I could see the kids before they fell asleep and have my Special K.  As I walked outside, back into that cricket-y night, the bells from the Cathedral were ringing across the street.

I drove back past all those landmarks again, muscle memory making me turn onto Brandywine so I could loop back to River Road again.  I drove home without music; the car perfectly quiet except for the hum of the engine, the whisper of the road underneath my tires.

*******

The message of the evening is still playing in my head: we are so close.  He pointed to an older child who was there with her mother and said that she would probably live to see the day where all cancers were eradicated.  That what seems like a fantasy to the older generations would be a reality for these younger ones.  Isn’t that an incredible idea?  A world without cancer?  I want to believe that it’s true and do anything I can do to help that become a reality.