So when Josh and I threw “Blurred Lines” off the CD, we were left without a song of summer.  Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky” was the obvious back-up song, but Josh and I couldn’t in good conscience buy it since it was obviously a celebration of drug use.

She’s up all night to get stoned
She’s up all night to get stoned
She’s up all night to get high
I’m up all night to get lucky

It was just as rape-y as “Blurred Lines.” This man wanted to make sure the nameless woman’s drug-addled mind was incapable of sound thought, and then he would have sex with her  Apparently that’s what “getting lucky” means to kids today.

As disturbing as this was, Josh and I still found ourselves singing this around the kitchen after the twins went to bed.

Image: Kitzero Router via Flickr

With all the brouhaha over Miley Cyrus’s performance at the VMAs, I couldn’t believe that NO ONE WAS TALKING ABOUT DAFT PUNK’S DRUG-INFUSED ODE TO NON-CONSENSUAL SEX.  Yes, she rubbed her crotch on stage, but Daft Punk was providing G-d-knows-what pharmaceuticals to some poor woman so he could take advantage of her.  And that, THAT, was a contender for the song of summer?  Daft Punk was just a sexualized Cheech and Chong with robot heads, and NO ONE wants to think about a sexualized Cheech and Chong with their cannabis-studded beards, even if all that facial hair is underneath a metallic mask.

In order to write a scathing post about our double standard when it comes to male vs. female gyrators (does anyone actually sing anymore, or are all musical artists now twerkers first and vocalists second?), I Googled the Daft Punk lyrics so I could ream them out about their love of passing girls quaaludes.

Oh.

We’re up all night to the sun
We’re up all night to get some
We’re up all night for good fun
We’re up all night to get lucky

That’s not really about drug use at all.

So, uh, sorry, Daft Punk.  As you were.

I am sort of proud of myself that I’ve moved into the realm of actually knowing enough about Candy Crush that I can pass along advice.  As of a few weeks ago, I was begging for strategies from all of you.  So since I’ve just passed and been asked how I passed these levels, I thought I’d throw it up here in case you need help passing level 165 or 167 of Candy Crush.

Level 165:

The hard thing here is collecting enough blue ones.  Everything else will pretty much happen naturally as you match the blue ones.  So ignore all other tasks and focus on blues.  If you can get a speckled doughnut and combine it with a blue, great.  If you can get a speckled doughnut and combine it with a striped of any colour so most of the board gets changed, great.  And if you can get a speckled doughnut and clear a dominant colour off the board so more blues fall onto the board, great too.

That said, the order in which to worry about things is bombs first, chocolate second, blues third.  In other words, take care of those bombs because you only get a few moves to do so.  Don’t let the chocolate build up on top or no new candies will fall onto the board.  So take care of those two things minimally and then concentrate on blues.  That’s your focus: bombs, chocolate, then blues.

It took me a lot of tries to get a board where enough blues fell onto the board in the first place.  Sometimes there is nothing you can do with this board because 99 blues don’t show up in the first place.

Level 167:

The first time I played this board, the first move made a speckled doughnut.  “Easy board!” I thought in my head.  LIKE A FOOL.

Here’s the thing: the chocolate won’t start until you break those four pieces that are in front of the four chocolate machines.  So take your time and clear most of the center first.

Next, if you can, clear one side at a time.  Once you’ve popped the jelly, it doesn’t matter if chocolate grows back over the space.  You will still win even if you have chocolate on the board, just as long as that chocolate isn’t covering unpopped jelly.  So clear one side entirely (if you can keep the other side closed off), and then pretty much ignore it while you do the other side.  The hardest jellies to pop are the ones in front of each machine.  The easiest jellies to pop are the middle three rows that run down the center of the board.

So for this board, your strategy is clear the middle, and then tackle each side, one at a time.  If you can get a speckled doughnut and a striped, you’ll clear a lot of jelly at once.  Or a striped/wrapped combo.

What do you do if a horizontal striped candy opened up both sides of the board at the same time?  Then you have an issue of chocolate coming from two directions.  In that case, zigzag back and forth, doing a move on the left side and then a move on the right to keep the chocolate at bay and the jellies popping.

Currently: I’m on Level 181, 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.

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 September list is now closed.  The October list will open on 9/27.
  
• 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. Invincible Spring (recurrent loss, IVF, life)
3. The 2 Week Wait (infertility motherhood humor)
4. One Step at a Time (baby after infertility)
5. Stupid Broken Eggs (infertility, faith, marriage )
6. Dangled Carat (relationships, dating, marriage)
7. Feeling Beachie (life, humor, cats)
8. Comatised (love, life, happiness)
9. Our New Normal with Z (adoption, family, life)
10. Inconception (child-free for now)
11. Breathe Gently (new-mum, IVF, PCOS)
12. Reading Each Page (parenting after infertility)
13. Waiting for Baby (pregnancy, PCOS, thyroid)
14. Airplanes From Heaven (stillbirth, faith, living children)
15. BattleFish (parenting after infertility)
16. My journey through infertility, pregnancy & loss (infertility, loss, pregnancy)
17. Where the Bleep Is Our Stork (ttc, pcos, truth)
18. Baby On Mind (embryo adoption, infertility, 40+)
19. Penguins of mine (infertility, loss, drawing)
20. Old Lady and No Baby (pregnant with twins, egg donor)
21. How I Spend My Dash (twins, parenting, life)
22. A Little Bit More (infertility, life, pcos)
23. Life of an Army Wife (donor gametes, army, crafting)
24. InfertilityLand Is Not Like Disneyland (infertility, loss, progress)
25. Mama Asterisk (adoption, balancing life)
26. In Due Time (faith, hope, health)
27. Faire Faire (iui, life, etc.)
28. Just Another Infertility Blog (early pregnancy after infertility and loss)
29. Hobbit-ish Thoughts & Ramblings (diabetes, books, parenting after IF/RPL)
30. Emma in Mommyland (SAHM, toddler, pregnancy)
31. Creating a Family (infertility, adoption, adoptive parenting)
32. My Journey to Motherhood (uterine malformation, UU, life)
33. Our Journey to Cameroon (ministry, faith, pregnant after loss)
34. Gypsy Mama (IUI, adoption, life)
35. Ask An Infertile (infertility, pregnancy loss, ttc)
36. Ready Now To See it Your Way (miscarriage,marriage, kids)
37. Dogs Aren’t Kids (infertility mfi rants)
38. Two Adults, One Child (secondary infertility, parenting, running)
39. In Quest of a Binky Moongee (TTC, IVF, faith)
40. Sensitive Ginger (infertility, hippie stuff)
41. ImagesByCW (photography, fine art, travel)
42. Work is for Suckers (IUI, loss, books)
43. Dragondreamer’s Lair (parenting, crafts/DIY, secondary infertility)
44. Life in the White House (triplets, life, creating)
45. Sweet Dreams are Made of This (waiting to adopt)
46. Stepping Stones (step-parenting, newly pregnant)
47. Recurrent Loss and Moving Forward (surrogacy, grieving, loss of fertility)
48. Baby Makin’ (PCOS, TTC baby #1)
49. Wistfulgirl’s World (fostering, adoption, life)
50. Poemfish (adoption, parenting, personal growth crap)
51. The September list is now closed.  The October list will open on 9/27.

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 orange, 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.

I took the kids to the beach by myself this summer.  We go without Josh sometimes, but always with a friend.  But this summer, the kids wanted to go alone, just the three of us.

When we talked about it and the trip was weeks away, it seemed completely do-able.  Easy, in fact.  But the night before we were set to leave, my stomach was in knots.  I would be hours away from home, without a back-up adult for almost 200 miles.

But we had made our mix CDs, purchased potato chips, brought up the sand toys.

We packed up the car and started driving.

*******

The first thing we did when we got to the beach was rent bicycles. Actually, the first thing we did was request a different room since the sliding door wouldn’t lock.  But the second thing we did was rent bicycles.

I almost hadn’t packed our bike helmets since we’ve never taken them biking at the beach.  They only learned how to ride a two-wheeler a few months ago.  And taking them biking alone for the first time?  That just seemed like craziness.  And yet I heard myself asking them after we got settled in our new room whether they wanted to go for a bike ride.

So we walked over to the bike rental place and got three bikes.  In order to get to the bike path, we needed to walk several meters alongside the road.  Again, my stomach was in knots wondering what the hell I was getting myself into.  But then we were on the bike path, wobbling along.  I rode in the back, the ChickieNob rode in the middle, and the Wolvog rode in front.

We did a five mile loop (after I had fixed the ChickieNob’s skirt from becoming completely grey as it hung over the dirty back wheel of the bike; brilliant!) and then rode back to the hotel for a swim before dinner.  We had done it: bicycled this long distance (at least, it is for two new bike riders) all alone.

*******

That evening, we got two bits of bad news.  The first came right before dinner, and it made me feel ill.  I ended up pulling over the car before we went into the restaurant to eat and telling the twins what had happened.  We were all alone; this was something I would have talked about with Josh.  But Josh wasn’t there, so I told the twins instead.  While they didn’t have any brilliant advice, they listened, and sometimes that is all you need.

The second piece of bad news came later in the evening, right before bed.  There is nothing that reinforces that idea of aloneness that comes from receiving bad news while the rest of the world seems to be blissfully trucking along around you than being physically apart from anyone you know.  We were emotionally an island, the only three people around who understood.  And we were physically an island, the only three people each other knew for miles.  Oh, and we were actually on an island, just to drive the metaphor home.

*******

We decided to go for another bike ride the next morning.  The woman who works there told us about a secluded beach that Josh and I had never heard of in all our years of going there.  “Let’s try to find it,” I told the kids.

“No thanks,” said the ChickieNob, uninterested in riding a half mile down an unknown path.  It was one thing to bike where I had been before even if it was new to her.  It was another for all three of us to leave the figurative and literal well-worn path.

But suddenly it felt imperative that we see this beach, that we all take the chance with the road.  So we made the right and started riding all alone down a sandy road.  And at the end, we ditched the bikes and climbed the dune and found ourselves on an almost empty beach — only five or so people on the enormous stretch of sand.

This was now going to be our beach.

Back on the bike path, the Wolvog took a terrible spill off the bike when his wheel hit the edge of the road.  I watched him tumble off and then the ChickieNob swerve to try to miss his outstretched arm.  For one terrifying second, I couldn’t tell how badly he had been hurt, but her wheel hadn’t clipped his skin or passed over bone.  He stood up and told me he had to stop shaking before he could ride again.

The worst happened.  I mean, hadn’t that been my fear the day before, the reason I was so nervous to take them biking?  One of the kids had fallen off their bike and gotten hurt and I was all alone with them with no help in sight.  It all came down to me.  And yet here we were, dealing with it.  The worst happened and there was nothing to do except catch our collective breath and tend to our wounds and then get back on the bike.

Riding back, we paused to stare at a jellyfish in the water off the bridge.  I named it Herman, and we watched him slowly squinch his way across the water, like a disembodied lung breathing.

“When I was little,” I told the twins, “I believed that if I spat in the water at the end of summer, I would have good luck for the year.”  I have no idea why I believed that my drool hitting a body of water would change my fate, but we decided that I would donate my saliva to the channel in order to counteract yesterday’s the bad news just in case.

*******

We went to the beach and came up against my second fear: taking the kids in the water by myself.  I am not tall enough to stand where we can ride waves.  I am not strong enough to hold two kids while treading water.  And they are not confident enough in the ocean to jump waves without me.

I could have told them that it was too dangerous to try at all, but we devised a system where one child stayed on the sand where I could see them at all times.  The other child came in the water with me.  And every two or three waves, we’d look back to check on the child on the sand.

We swam out past the break and bobbed up and down in the water.  Every so often, my foot would come down on the hard smooth shell of a horseshoe crab, and I would inwardly shudder.  If Josh had been there, he would have been the one to take them in the water.  But here I was, all alone, and I had to suck it up and bob in the waves for an hour at a time, even if it meant my feet sometimes landing on sea life.

When we got off the beach, we got a third bit of bad news, and I almost started laughing despite the terribleness because it was just too ridiculous; for everything to implode while I was all alone with the kids, miles from home.  After I got them showered, I went out to the balcony and called Josh — sometimes you need to process things with an adult — so I could have a long cry.  And then I moved the kids on to dinner and play time because what else can you do when you are alone except keep moving forward?

*******

All summer, the ChickieNob had wanted to conquer a particularly enormous climbing activity at the beach, one in which she didn’t have the strength to actually attempt on her own (as is, she only met the weight minimum by two pounds).  But I convinced the park employee to let me go up with her despite being terrified of heights and purchased us two tickets.  I was the only adult on the climbing attraction. (To be completely honest, the other kids on the wall scattered to watch from down below once we started to attempt this.  There was something a bit disconcerting about a grown woman grunting her way up 30 feet.)  I was terrified I wouldn’t actually be able to get to the top, and the ChickieNob was certain she wouldn’t be able to get to the top.

I refused to look down or at anything that wasn’t the ChickieNob so I missed the view from the top.  Because yes, we got to the top.  And we came down triumphant.  Alone, neither of us could have reached the summit.  Back on firm ground, I held her while we rocked with relief and whispered that we’d do the same thing this year.  Neither of us would have to get through all the bad situations alone that had just gotten dumped in our laps.  We’d have each other’s backs and get through the year one nauseatingly dizzy step at a time.

Absolutely a perfect moment.

*******

The next day, we realized that we hadn’t seen any wild horses yet this trip.  As we drove over the bridge, I told myself that if we saw horses, it meant that everything would be okay.  And if we didn’t see horses, it would be a sign from the universe that nothing that we were worrying about would work out.

We really really needed to see horses.

As we drove down a stretch of road, we pulled over to scan the woods.  And there, in a clearing by a clump of trees, stood a pack of seven brown-and-white horses.  Seven horses — isn’t that a lucky number?  The Wolvog couldn’t see them at first, so I made him contort his body halfway into the front seat so he could see out my window.  The only way it would come true is if we all saw them; so we all saw them.

When we got to the beach, we went to jump waves, but the ocean was ten times rougher than it had been the day before.  We were being knocked around and swallowing a lot of water, so we decided to get out after ten minutes.

After we got back on the sand, we realized that we had set up our blanket next to a horseshoe crab.  He must have been washed in with the morning tide and couldn’t get back into the ocean.  We asked a passing lifeguard if there was anything we could do for the crab, but he picked it up and told us that he had died a few hours earlier.

“Things get washed up on the beach every day.  If you had come here this morning, there was an enormous shark that got beached.  Had to get it off the sand at five in the morning.”

Wait.  What?  Enormous shark?

“There are sharks?” I asked.  “Like this close to the edge?”

“Lady, this isn’t a swimming pool.  You share the ocean with all those animals.  You get what you get.”

Fine, I wasn’t saying that the sharks couldn’t be there too.  I just wanted the sharks to be somewhere far away.  The ocean is a big place; why did we all need to swim together?

He pointed to a place where the waves were breaking a second time a few meters off shore from the first break and told us that it was a trough in the ocean where sharks and skates fed.  Did they ever bother humans?  Not often.  But if we didn’t like the idea of swimming that close to fish, we shouldn’t go in the water because even though we had never seen so much as a dorsal fin, the water around us was teaming with more than the occasional horseshoe crab underfoot.

After he walked away, I looked at the twins and said that there was only one thing to do now.  We had to go in the water so we didn’t let our fear of the sea life build between trips to the beach.  So we held hands and ran into the water, swimming to the first break.  We bobbed up and down for ten minutes again, being knocked over by huge waves, and decided that we had proved our point.  No one else was in the water since the waves were so rough, and while we wanted to prove that we were brave enough to swim near fish, we were not stupid enough to swim when no one was swimming.

Every once in a while, aloneness is a sign.

*******

We went to the ice cream store one more time before we headed home.  After we threw out our empty cups and wiped our mouths and said goodbye to the ice cream store staff, we got in the car and sat in the parking lot for a minute while I rested my head on the steering wheel and cried.

It is so hard to enter aloneness, but it is so hard to leave it too.  To come back to the rest of the world and leave your island.  For those three days, it was just us against the world, and we could shut out everything happening back at home.  Pretend it wasn’t happening.  We could curl up in bed together and watch Hotel Transylvania, and talk about things I believed when I was little, and play pinball.  I could lie on the sand and read the Hunger Games and play catch with the Wolvog and search for seashells.  We could stay up until late and eat potato chips right before dinner and tell the hotel staff not to bother making our beds because we were just going to mess them up again anyway.

We put back on our Beatles mix for the ride home, starting with “Here Comes the Sun.”  We drove back over the causeway, the light glinting off the water to make the salt marshes turn a brilliant green, a colour that seemed so hopeful that it looked unnatural.  But we believed in it, since we were looking for signs from the universe.

We believed in that greenness.

And we drove home.

…It’s up to you to provide it.