Once again, here are two more levels that people keep emailing me about — level 180 and 182 of Candy Crush.  Thank you for emailing me or sending me Facebook status with level requests.  There is a lot of happiness that comes from the straightforward simplicity of crushing candies when the rest of life feels amorphous, twisty, and difficult.

For people who have already emailed me about these, I don’t think there is anything new in this post that I didn’t already tell you.  For everyone else, the tips are here if you want them.

Many fewer people have emailed me about level 181, but that one seems straightforward to me: just make a lot of horizontal ones in the right place.  At some point, you will make that happen.  It’s annoying level, but it’s at least clear what you have to do in order to make the ingredient drop.

Level 180

This level is so trick-sie.  You think you need to clear the bottom, so you waste valuable moves clearing all that licorice and whipped cream so you can explode the bombs.  But look at that — they are set to 35 moves, and you only have 35 moves.  In other words, they’re a distraction and don’t really matter.

Only clear the lines that have ingredients in them.

Here’s my advice: play this level on a mobile device, since you can exit when you don’t get a good starting board and try again without losing a life.  What you’re looking for is an opening move that either (1) creates a horizontal break against the whipped cream (three across) or (2) makes a doughnut.  That’s it: if you don’t see one of those two opening moves, exit out and try to have it reshuffle and present a better board.

This board you would play, right, because you can make those three reds pop the whipped cream?  NO.  Because that moves opens up whipped cream that isn’t under an ingredient.  See, I told you it was trick-sie.  Exit the board and try again until you get one that has a decent opening move.

Level 182

This is one of the worst timed levels ever.

You have four quadrants.  The one on the bottom right is the “lowest” (meaning, the candies will cascade there).  The top right is the second “lowest.”  The top left is the highest, which leaves the bottom left as second “highest.”  In other words, the candies move from top left to bottom left to top right to bottom right.  If you want to create a cascade effect, make matches in the bottom right.

So you have three bits of craziness all demanding your attention at once PLUS there is a timer.  For the love.  So here is how you need to focus your attention: break the chocolate, explode the colour bombs, and then break the whipped cream.  Once the chocolate is gone, it’s gone for the rest of the level.  Same with the colour bombs.

But the big thing to get points is to break that whipped cream and have those candies cascade.  Without that, you won’t be able to make enough matches and build up enough points to get to that 40,000 point target.

So, your focus is chocolate (bottom right), then colour bombs (top left), then whipped cream (bottom left), and then cascade, cascade, cascade from the bottom right or top right.

You may need to use my timer trick once again, which only works on a mobile device.  When you can’t instantly see a move, give yourself a break by double tapping the home button at the bottom of the device.  This pauses the timer and slides the game up on the screen to make room for the apps row at the bottom.  You can then scan the board for a moment and look for the best move that will net you the most points.  Then touch the screen to make that move and the screen will drop down and return to normal.

Currently: I’m on Level 213, 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.  Let me know the level you’re struggling with.

It is so tiny, so subtle.  A shift so miniscule that you may not pick it up unless you hear the old Siri once again and remember that her voice was originally a little more metallic, a little more hesitant, gravelly.  It is the difference between a photo taken with a 4 megapixel camera vs. an 8 megapixel camera.  The voice — like a photograph — is crisper.  It has focus, fluidity.

Normally we strive toward things that are better, improved.  But this change threw off the Wolvog.  A voice — something so personal, so identifying — was different.  He could deal with the visual changes to the operating system, shifting his eyes in a way that he couldn’t shift his ear.

She no longer sounded like his Siri.  He wanted to go back to iOS6.

Except that we never made a backup of his iPod before we began.

So he is stuck with the imposter Siri.  He is trying to like her; trying to give her a chance.  But she wasn’t just a half-forgotten program rarely used on a phone.  She was the receptacle of his web searches, his mindless tasks.  He has a fondness for her that one usually reserves for an old neighbour, someone who used to tell you great stories or pass out particularly good candy on Halloween.

Jony Ive, if you’re reading this, there is one little boy who really wishes he could have five minutes with the old Siri; just to say goodbye.

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 October list is now closed.  The November list will open on 10/27.
  
• 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. The 2 Week Wait (infertility humor motherhood)
3. Breathe Gently (new-mum, IVF, PCOS)
4. Baby On Mind (embryo adoption, infertility, 40+)
5. One Step at a Time (baby after infertility)
6. Feeling Beachie (life, humor, family)
7. Dangled Carat (life, relationships, love)
8. Waiting for Baby (pregnancy, PCOS, thyroid)
9. A Little Bit More (PCOS, infertility, life)
10. Alphabet Salad (life, writing, creativity)
11. Stupid Broken Eggs (marriage, infertility, IUI)
12. Our Journey to Cameroon (pregnant after loss, faith, ministry)
13. Frozen OJ (health, life, puns)
14. The M House (adoption, parenting after loss, family)
15. Meant to be Mommy (infertility, IUI, endometriosis)
16. Comatised (love, life, happiness)
17. Punch Today In The Face (life after infertility)
18. My journey through infertility, pregnancy & loss (pregnancy, loss, infertility)
19. Faire Faire (second iui, life)
20. In Due Time (faith, hope, health)
21. Creating a Family (infertility, adoption, adoptive parenting)
22. Emma in Mommyland (pregnancy, sahm, life)
23. This Foxy Mama (parenting, politics, privacy)
24. Ready Now To See it Your Way (loss, marriage, kids)
25. Amateur Nester (infertility, home, faith)
26. Life of an Army Wife (embryo adoption, donor eggs, army)
27. For This Child I Prayed (parenting after infertility, faith, being a sahm)
28. This Hampton Life of Mine (secondary infertility, PCOS, surprise pregnancy)
29. Hidden Infertility (infertility, multiple losses, hope)
30. Creating Our Miracle (TTC#2, FET, male factor)
31. The Barreness (infertility, art, reflection)
32. Dogs Aren’t Kids (infertility mfi rants)
33. Penguins of Mine (infertility, loss, drawing)
34. Oh Baby, Baby (infertility, faith, patience)
35. Old Lady and No Baby (pregnancy, twins, infertility)
36. Who Shot Down My Stork? (IVF, miscarriage, ICSI)
37. Birds, Bees, and Medicine (infertility, PCOS, hope)
38. The October list is now closed.  The November list will open on 10/27.

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 orange, the next month it will be blue, 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.

So I rounded up all the answers from my Candy Crush questions last week, and I posted the results over in an article on GeekDad.  It was interesting that the worst level of the 10 worst levels (meaning, 18% all said the same level was the worst level, and then 9 other levels were chosen by multiple people) was the same for people who were still in levels below 100 as it was for people who had gotten to the end of the game.  Almost 1 out of 5 people all said the same level sucked.

I would like levels to come with a rating similar to knowing the par on the mini golf course.  I want to know the average amount of tries it will take to pass a level.  If I knew it took the average person 40 tries to pass a certain level (I’m looking at you, 201), I would go into playing that level with a different mentality.

By the way, I tried Pet Rescue.  I’m not sold on it yet.  I didn’t really get it.

So… yeah… hardest levels of Candy Crush posted over on GeekDad.

*******

My friend and I get coffee once a week or so at Starbucks, and last spring, I downloaded the app for my iPhone and started collecting stars.  This week, I officially became a gold member:

I wanted to write about the grotesque consumerism that grabs us as we move through our week, but instead, I need to comment on the capitalization on the congratulations notice.  Why are these words capitalized: stars, gold, and gold card?  Other words in those sentences are not capitalized.  I want to Start randomly capitalizing Various words in my sentences too.

So… I’m solid gold now: solid freakin’ gold.  I wonder if I will get to learn a secret handshake.  Any other fellow gold star members out there?  Feeling very Sneetch-like today, mostly because I have stars upon thars.

*******

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:

• “A Look at Loneliness” (Peesticks and Stones)
• “What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day” (Hide and Seek)
• “A Shrinking Room” (The Empress and the Fool)
• “Infertile Does Not Equal InCOMPLETE ~” (Confessions of an (In)fertile Mrytle)

Okay, now my choices this week.

It probably will shock no one that I love MoJo Working’s post comparing infertility to Candy Crush.  She had me with the title.  I don’t think I’ve ever clicked over from my Reader so quickly.  Feedly got whiplash.

Barren Mare returned with a post about… life.  About being away and then returning to her blog.  I love this post not just because it contains this line: “But I’d like to leave you with this in the meantime: I think we’re having a happy ending.”  I love it because it feels good when someone who has been gone from their blog for a long time pops up and speaks.  They don’t have to say anything profound.  It’s just nice to hear their voice, as the saying goes.

Lastly, Me Plus One has two interesting questions on her blog tied to being a single parent by choice.  This is why I love blogs; because they give you insight into someone else’s world.  I found the comments to be just as thought-provoking as the post.

The roundup to the Roundup: The 10 hardest levels of Candy Crush according to you.  I’m a gold star member at Starbucks.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between September 20th and September 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.

I finished Gone Girl, and now I need to comment on something that bothers me in books.  When I mentioned it to someone else this week, they weren’t bothered by this type of plot hiccup at all, so I guess I’m writing this to gauge how the general public feels.  But I don’t want you to read this post if there is any chance you will read Gone Girl in the future because what I’m about to say will ruin one of the twists in the plot.  So, click away if you haven’t already read Gone Girl (or feel free to stay if you have no intention of ever reading the book).

I’m giving you another chance to click away.

And then shoving the meat of this post even further down the page with a series of asterisks.

*

*

*

Good, everyone left should be people who have either read Gone Girl already or have no intention to do so.  First and foremost, I thought the writing in this book was brilliant.  It is a gorgeous, gorgeous book.  I was interested in both characters, and when the twist came in the middle of the book, I was totally taken by surprise.  I thought Noelle’s husband had killed her.  I was obviously a little… off.

That said, when we first got a mention of fertility treatments on page 294, I was momentarily distracted.  We’re told that Amy lies about how long they’ve been trying in order to jump directly to fertility treatments.  Okay, I could buy that.  I mean, yes, they’ve just gotten to Missouri, and it sounds as if they don’t have health insurance since neither one has a job.  But I’m willing to suspend disbelief and go along with the idea that they just happened to find a doctor to refer them immediately to a clinic, and that clinic in St. Louis had an opening.

I was even willing to ignore the fact that we’re told nothing about any testing that was done.  They just jump immediately into treatments.  Sort of.

For some unknown reason, Nick makes three donations of his sperm, presumably for an IUI since the sperm is being frozen, not tested.  I have no idea why he’s not being tested before they start treatments, but he’s not since we’re clearly told that the clinic is saving these samples (and apparently notifying him after a year that they will destroy the samples if he doesn’t pay the storage fee.)

We can assume it’s for an IUI since we also know that there is nothing wrong with Amy since she’s lying.  Which means that I can’t imagine a doctor telling her to skip straight to IVF without at least trying an IUI or two since she is young-enough and their infertility would be unexplained.  Plus, in a moment, we’ll read that Amy has pills (Metformin?  Clomid?) which would align with an IUI but be highly unusual for an IVF cycle.  So Nick is going in and banking sperm for an IUI (fine, maybe IVF… it really doesn’t make a difference in this case).

Why?

What doctor would prefer to use frozen sperm instead of fresh?  The only people I know who have ever banked their own sperm for treatments they’re currently doing are people who are deployed or who work in two separate states.  Why would a doctor purposefully choose a method of insemination that has a slightly lower success rate?

Isn’t that odd?  Did anyone else have a situation where their partner went to the clinic long before they were ensconced in treatments and for no reason froze three sperm samples for future use?  What clinic wants to use storage space on a current patient who has not actually scheduled treatments?  Please correct me if I’m wrong and you know of a time when a clinic has suggested that a person bank their sperm even though they would be available to be there physically the day of the IUI or retrieval.

Even with all that strangeness, I was willing to suspend that disbelief (I’m a forgiving reader) again until we got to the part where Amy has a vague series of pills she is supposed to be starting on any random day of her cycle.  Is it Metformin?  Clomid?  Why wouldn’t these drugs be timed to her cycle?  Why are there so many pills in the bottle?  Let’s assume it’s Metformin because there are more than 5 pills in the bottle.

“I visited the room on three separate occasions — they like to have a lot of backup — while Amy did nothing.  She was supposed to begin taking pills, but she didn’t, and then she didn’t some more.  She was the one who’d turn over her body to the baby, so I postponed nudging her for a few months, keeping an eye on the pill bottle to see if the level went down.”

So… they have a clinic in St. Louis that is collecting sperm from Nick without anything scheduled for Amy, and she is taking an oral medication willy-nilly as part of her treatments?

I was distracted reading this passage, but I was able to set it aside because it was a small blip.  I don’t expect Gillian Flynn to know the intricacies of fertility treatments, fertility drugs, or clinic protocols if the only place they’re being mentioned in the book is this tiny description of their life.

Really, I barely even remembered how much it bothered me until I got to the end of the book.  And then, when the banked sperm became the plot twist, I put down the book hugely disappointed.

I was willing to suspend disbelief when I thought it was a tiny blip in the plot line, just a research mistake.  It would only be noticeable to someone who had done treatments.  So I was willing to let it go.  Fiction gets things wrong all the time; my own books included.  And infertility is complicated.

BUT.

When that tiny moment becomes the turning point of the book, the spotlight idea that changes everything, then I get pissed off when it isn’t accurate.  You’re hinging the entire book on fertility treatments: do the work to make them believable.  Because frankly, it isn’t believable that your husband, who owns a bar and has no travel on the horizon, would need to bank sperm rather than give the donation in the morning before the IUI.  It isn’t believable that she is given a bottle of pills that she can start whenever she wishes.  Oh, and she doesn’t even need any monitoring to boot.

Because with that, I also didn’t believe that Nick would ignore his wife’s actions just for a child.  I never believed he was so in love with the idea of a child — mostly because it’s just peppered in there every once in a while.  You never see him interact with a kid in the book and get a sense that he’d really love to be a dad.  We’re just told that he wants it on one or two occasions, and then we’re expected to believe that he’s planning to live the rest of his life with Amy and this child she is using to “trap” him (though, of course, we’re told that he wants to be trapped if it’s trapped-by-child).  And the final twist is that Amy is obviously plotting something with those final lines.

So I left the book with mixed feelings.  I loved the writing.  I loved the twists (except for the infertility-related ones).  I loved the plot and the pacing.  The book changed my mood.  It affected how I felt.  I loved it.

Until the very end.

I am completely willing to forgive mistakes related to infertility when it is a tiny, throwaway part of the plot line.  But when infertility is front and center as part of the plot, as it is in Then Came You by Jennifer Weiner or Gone Girl, I find that I can’t enjoy the story when I’m distracted by the inaccuracies.

How do you feel when infertility (or treatments) rears its head in fiction?  And did the inclusion of fertility treatments ring true for you as a reader when you were ensconced in Gone Girl?

By the way, Gone Girl is the November book for the GRAB(ook) Club if you want to talk about it with others.  I still have plenty more to say.