That is me, as drawn by Suzy Becker, reading her amazing book One Good Egg that I got to blurb this year. Do you see how I’m smiling in the drawing while two random children jump on my furniture?  It’s because the book is so engaging that you would not even realize that your living room is being torn apart while your eyes are on the page.

I’m sort of serious about that.

I don’t know Suzy, but within a chapter or two, I was deeply invested in her story, especially her relationship with Lorene and their quest to create a child with their friend, Steve.  I even ended up bringing the book with me to a basketball game and putting on sound-cancelling headphones so I could continue to read without being interrupted.

It’s a wonderful memoir, filled with very familiar (if you’ve gone the route of assisted conception) moments as well as the unique ones that make Suzy’s story entirely her own.

*******

The twins asked for the iPad.  The ChickieNob was dressed entirely in black.  They looked very solemn.

“What are you doing?” I asked, handing over the device.

“We’re making a movie,” the ChickieNob intoned like mini, female Stanley Kubrick.

I am currently crunching on Lego pieces as I cross the living room.  They are making a movie about three Lego owls.  It is as weird as a bag of hair.  To make the movie, they need to take over all the space around my desk.  ALL the space.  And it has to be the space next to my desk.  No other space will do.  They cannot clean up ANYTHING after they use it.  The sets must remain set up across the living room floor while they hoot into my computer: serious, thoughtful hoots, like owls that have been awoken during the day and don’t quite know how they feel about blinking into the sunlight.

They have told me that they are going to have their world premiere on my blog.

Not that I can get to my blog since, did I mention, they have also taken over my computer to do this?

This is a lengthy explanation in case a strange movie about Lego owls appears on my blog soon.

*******

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:

• “Feeling Blessed at Work” (Happiness at the Core)
• “Lighter Grey: What infertility took from me… and what it gave” (Searching for Our Silver Lining)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Sweetest in the Gale has a post her mother’s hysterectomy.  They were stationed on the labour and delivery floor, where every time a baby is born, music plays over the loudspeaker.  On a day when she thought she would be there solely for her mother, she was forced to confront her infertility.  “Each note of the song and every little newborn wail felt like a knife going into my heart. Literally, my heart physically hurt. When will it be my turn? Will L and I ever get to experience the joy, love, and beauty given freely to all those new parents today?”  It’s a moving post.

The Great Big IF has a post about stepping back from treatments after spending a great deal of time researching donor gametes.  She writes: “I guess I just longed to set it aside and not actually be pursuing anything but living.  And in the midst of that living, I found myself relishing a freedom I hadn’t felt in a long while.”  And I love her thoughts on how infertility is about being in a state of always grieving.  It’s a beautiful post about shifting focus.

Lastly, It Is What It Is (Or Is It?) has a post about the stark reality of estrangement.  She begins the scenario: “Imagine that your parents and sister (and her family which include your two nephews) live within 4 miles of you and that you have, virtually, no relationship with them.”  I found myself holding my breath as I read and then gasping it out at the end of a paragraph.  It really is a gut punch just to read it, and I assume even more so to live it.

The roundup to the Roundup: One Good Egg.  Freakin’ weird movie by the twins.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between June 14th and June 21st) 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.

Level 70 of Candy Crush is the level that almost ended it all. Yes, I’m still playing the game. No, I don’t really want to talk about it.

Okay, I do want to talk about it. I want to talk about the hours I sat trying to get past level 70.  For those who haven’t reached it yet (those who are beyond it are probably laughing at me), it consists of two columns.  In the right column, there are two rows of chocolate being held back by four pieces of candy encased in licorice.  As long as you don’t break the licorice, the chocolate remains in place.  As soon as you break the licorice, you better be ready to make a lot of matches that smash the chocolate.

The best way to clear this level is to make a striped candy out of four vertical pieces of candy.  You then move this candy (without using it) so it lines up with one of the chocolate levels.  You then form a three-way match, and it blasts across both columns, smashing the chocolate out.  You do this twice, and then you can break the licorice and go to town.

The first few times I played it, it was difficult, but I knew what to do, so no problem.  I just need to make those striped candies.  I kept getting close, leaving maybe three squares of jelly unpopped.  By the second day of level 70, I was getting massively frustrated.  I felt like my inability to pass this level was commentary on my intelligence.  Wasn’t this similar to a freakin’ GRE question — one of those ones where you had to predict how many moves or yadda yadda yadda.  It’s been a long time since I’ve taken the GRE, but this felt similar to the type of intelligence measured by the GRE.

I could not predict where the candies would land or set up moves; about 70% of the time, it was a total crap shoot.  Maybe 30% of the time, I could see a move or two ahead.  But even then, things would happen that I hadn’t predicted.  A candy I wasn’t watching would drop into place, causing everything to cascade, messing up my perfect shot.

I was being bested by a freakin’ game.  A GAME.  A game that my eight-year-olds play.  I couldn’t do it, and I started to phone it in, listlessly making whatever combination came up because why bother?  Concentrating hard wasn’t working; maybe randomly selecting combinations would work just as well.  I used up 10 lives that way.

And then, yesterday morning, I decided that I should walk away from the game because it was making me feel inadequate.  Other people had not only gotten past level 70, but they had gotten past all the other levels after that too.  They had probably sailed through level 70 in one try, whereas I had gone through over 50 lives.  I was at the point where I was thinking about rolling up my graduate degree and mailing it back to the university since I obviously didn’t deserve to keep it, and then deleting the app so I could release myself from Candy Crush’s tenacious grip.  But I had to wait for something, and while waiting, I played a round.

And passed.

When those words “sugar crush” came across the screen, I almost cried.  I wanted to take out an ad in our local newspaper and let all my neighbours know that I’m not a no-goodnik, unable to pass a double-digit Candy Crush level.  I passed level 70!  I am a productive member of society.  I can teach the twins third grade math.  I am SMART!

And then I remembered that this isn’t the Scripps Spelling Bee.  This is Candy Crush.  I have gotten myself this worked up over Candy Crush.

So I turned off my phone and returned to working.

[whispered: but secretly, I was smiling the whole day because I’m really really smart because I passed level 70 of Candy Crush!]

Okay, so in all of this discussion on posting images on Facebook (and Twitter, Instagram, your blog, etc) as well as tagging, people have raised a really interesting point: what do you do with group shots?

I’m counting many situations as “group shots.”  You have the traditional group shot: 5 people all consciously posing for the camera.  You have the candid shots taken at a party.  You have the pictures that catch someone in the background.  You have the team picture at the end of baseball season.  You have the picture you took at graduation that has other people sitting around the person you are trying to capture.  What do you do with all of these pictures?

What do you do when you want to post a picture on Facebook, but you have people in the image who definitely do not want to have their picture posted?  Who have clearly asked you NOT to post the image (as opposed to random strangers that you don’t know).  Whose feelings win out?

It’s a sticky situation.  On one hand, it feels a bit akin to making a vegetarian meal: meat-eaters can consume a vegetarian meal, even if they don’t enjoy it as much, whereas vegetarians cannot consume a meat-meal.  Therefore, it makes sense — if you want to be sensitive — to make a vegetarian meal so all can eat, and some will enjoy themselves more than others.  Meat eaters can always go home and have a huge hunk of steak.

In that analogy, those who want to post can always not post and still enjoy Facebook.  They can email out the picture to friends and family, or they can look at it at home.  But they can refrain from posting that picture while still posting other pictures that feature only people who are comfortable with their image online.  Whereas those who do not want their image posted can’t have their image posted and feel comfortable.  Therefore, it would be more sensitive to not post the image, and to either come up with another way to enjoy the image or realize that not all images need to be posted.  And then move along and post something else.

This, of course, assumes that you don’t want to do things such as crop people out of the image who don’t wish to be featured (sometimes not possible).  Or you don’t want to blur the other faces because you think it makes the picture look odd (it might).  Or you don’t have the capabilities to alter the image — for instance, you just snapped the picture on your phone and you want to upload it immediately vs. download it to the computer, Photoshop the picture, and then upload it to a site.  What I mean is that there are solutions if you have the photo software that circumvent this question.  But I guess I am talking about the times when you can’t or don’t want to alter the image.

So.

It’s easy to tell people to stop caring and just accept that our lives are going to go online, but I think that’s really poor advice.  People are allowed to have boundaries.  They’re allowed to express discomfort with certain situations and avoid those situations the best they can.  People have a right to privacy, and other people should respect their desire for privacy.  They don’t need to agree or understand or have the same boundaries, but they do need to respect the boundaries of others.  Unless they don’t mind if their own requests for privacy (or whatever matters to them) are dismissed.  Do we really want a world where we have a complete disregard for each other’s feelings?  I don’t think anyone would agree to that.  So what do we do?

It’s pretty much impossible to avoid having your picture snapped these days, so what do we do to meet the needs of those who are online-shy with the wants of those who are online-comfortable when it comes to group shots or people in the background?

Cross-posted, a bit, with BlogHer

It happens at least once a month that someone either starts a new, semi-anonymous blog OR they take their current blog password-protected or invite-only.  If you want to keep reading, you need to ask for the password or the invite or the url of the new space.  Which makes sense: if you posted it on your blog, it would defeat the point of keeping the information only available to a few.  But whenever it’s time to ask for a password or an invite or a url, I always pause and think:

Crap, should I ask?  What if their entire reason for doing this is to get away from me reading?  And then, here I am, making their life even more difficult by putting them on the spot and asking for the password.  Fuck.  I shouldn’t ask.  But what if I’m not the reason they’re taking their blog private?  Okay, I will ask.  No, I shouldn’t.  This is what I’ll do: I’ll ask, but I’ll also point out that I’m not offended if they don’t give it to me.  Because I’m not offended.  And because I’m probably the reason they had to go password-protected.

I really wouldn’t be offended if someone turned me down for the password (and hopefully they wouldn’t be offended by my asking), and the intention of this post isn’t to make anyone feel like crap for going password-protected or invite-only.  You have to do what you have to do.  I’m just explaining what goes on in my head; wondering if I fit into the category of people who should keep reading.

This is a phenomena unique to the online world.  I mean, someone wouldn’t say at the pool, as they’re standing there amongst close friends and acquaintances, “I’m having a party this weekend.  Just ask if you want to come along.”  The close friends would obviously assume they would make the cut.  But the acquaintances would be standing there thinking, “well, I’d sure love to go to a party, and I’ve always enjoyed talking to you when we’ve bumped into each other at the pool.  But I’m not really party-worthy, right?  Should I ask?  Should I not?  I probably shouldn’t ask.  But wait, everyone else is asking.  I’ll just ask and she can always say no if she doesn’t want me there.”

See, it’s pretty awkward.

I’m being facetious — a bit — because asking for a password or blog invite is a low-stakes question, and the blog writer is easily avoidable in your day-to-day life if they turn you down (vs. the person at your pool that you would still need to see daily when you’re doggie-paddling in the swim lanes).  But asking for a password or invite always makes me reflect on my end of the blogging contract.  Have I read often enough, commented often enough, let the writer know I appreciate their words?

And if I haven’t, should I ask for the password or invite, promising myself to do better?  Or should I admit that password-protected or private blogs have an extra level of pain-in-the-assy-ness that one needs to get through so I better really really really want to read along if they’re unlocking that door?  A new, semi-anonymous blog url is one thing — you can enter that in your reader.

But an invite-only blog means that you have to remember to check it.*  And a password-protected post means you need to memorize a password.  This isn’t a big deal if you only read one or two password-protected blogs, but if you read a dozen and they don’t update daily so you spend half your morning searching your old emails for the password because you can’t remember it, it can be a very big deal.  Those are the times when you wonder if you should ask; will you really do better now that reading has gotten that much harder.

To all the password-protected and invite-only blogs I read: thank you for including me.  I’m glad I asked.

Am I the only one who feels awkward about asking?

* My favourite thing is when people send out an email whenever they update with a link to the post.  It’s the best work-around to the fact that you can’t have the blog in your reader.  As a reader, I never miss a post that way.

Thus begins the summer.  My mostly companions (I’ve Eloised them) are doing their work while I am doing mine.  I wake up and write for two hours.  They wake up and eat breakfast slowly, having a conversation that definitely does not sound as if it’s conducted in English.  Then they do the Summer Daily, our school routine that I put together for the summer months.  It consists of a bunch of educational activities:

• One lesson in their Summer Bridge books.
• Self-checking their Summer Bridge books and circling what they got wrong so we can go over those things later.
• Checking Wonderopolis (we have it as an app) and writing about the Wonder of the Day in their wonder notebook.
• Read alone for 30 minutes.
• Work on any writing group work.*
• Wolvog: 20 minutes of guitar practice; ChickieNob: 20 minutes of drawing exercises.

Then, we all call ourselves productive and mentally write off the rest of the day.

By which I mean that we reach the pool-frappuccino-Candy Crush part of our day.

A few weeks ago, we put together a list of trips and activities that we’d like to do this summer.  The trips are mostly day trips; maybe one or two overnights.  We went on one of those Let’s Visit Maryland sites and then spent an hour going, “holy crap, I didn’t know there was a guitar factory around here!” or “holy crap, I didn’t know you could go looking for sharks’ teeth there!”  We’re thinking of doing one day trip per week.

Our activities range from thing we do often — visit the Science Center — to things we’ve never done — white water rafting, with a lot of house-bound activities thrown in for good measure because I’m not driving every day: a physics set we got as a birthday gift, Lego challenges, and Minecraft.  We’ll go swimming in the Potomac River or the Shenandoah.  We’ll visit the farm and pick fruit and vegetables and then turn them into dinner. (Who am I kidding?  The Wolvog is certainly happy to pick and he’s certainly happy to cook, but there is NO chance that the fruits are going into his mouth unless aliens abduct him and replace his personality with an entirely new one.)  We’ll go to the movies and the playground; geocache; rock climb; work on our family tree project; and go on a chocolate factory tour.  We’ll do art activities and read aloud books at Starbucks.  We’ll paint pottery and go to a Children’s Museum.  We will bike and go to the beach and freak ourselves out with a ghost tour.  They will have a shitload of playdates.  We will watch a lot of baseball.  We will eat a lot of ice cream and have cake nights with our friends.

We will hang out.

While doing shit.

I can’t call them my best friends because friend connotes a level of intimacy of thought that flows both ways.  And ours doesn’t in the truest sense of the word.  I expect them to share their inner most being with me.  But I do not ruin their 8-year-old minds with my Chekhovian view of the world.

But they ARE my mostly companions, and the people I most love spending time with.

* The twins are also in a peer writing group that meets weekly where they learn everything from fiction to essay writing.  So there is sometimes leftover work that doesn’t get accomplished there that they work on at home.