Updated at the Bottom

I read an article tonight on the history of manned space flight as well as an upcoming adventure to colonize Mars called the Mars One project.  It’s a one-way ticket to outer space.  Maybe it won’t make a lot of sense, but the article made me massively sad.

I’m sure there are others who read the article with excitement, that thought that even if you’re not going, it will be cool to follow along from home as they send back news.  And others who maybe applied to be one of the people on the flight.  But I felt like crying as I thought about these people, unable to ever reach home again, to be near anything or anyone familiar.  I felt panicked when I was in Norway and had to wait a few days to catch a flight back to the US.  I can’t imagine being in a situation where regardless of money or ingenuity or desire, you would never be able to be on earth again.  Not even a specific place on earth or with specific people on earth.  I mean never be on earth again.  Period.

It would be like having to be conscious of being dead.  Like mindfully being dead for months or years.

There was a Battlestar Galactica episode — the Resurrection Ship — that got under my skin moreso than any other, and it was when Apollo ejected into space, and he was just free-floating; knowing that the air was leaking from his flight suit.  That image terrified me.  I know there are worse ways to go than getting to die in a sea of stars.  But I still thinking about that moment; when he knows that he is going to die and yet he isn’t dead.  He is young and healthy, and moments earlier, he thought he had years to live.  Then through an event, a twist of fate, he is suddenly in the last minutes of his life, conscious that he is living the last minutes of his life.

We do it all the time.  We explore knowing the risks.  We travel and climb and swim knowing we may never come back.  Some of us will get a chance to say a long goodbye, and some of us will die quite suddenly.  It happens every day.

And yet the thought of this Mars trip makes me feel very quiet anyway.

Updated:

I was talking about Mars One with the twins this morning, and of course, the conversation turned inevitably to the Challenger and the Columbia.  I can’t believe that after this many years, I still cry when talking about the Challenger and how we found out that the astronauts were gone.

Tying into this idea of life on Mars is the recent report that NASA had an inkling that Columbia’s return to earth may be problematic.  We were talking about which option was most “humane,” humane being an operative word since different people would respond differently to each option.  They could have warned them that reentry was impossible and they would die in the explosion.  They could allow them to circle in space until air ran out, killing them without the explosion.  Or they could not tell them at all and hope for the best, knowing that they would die in a place of happy anticipation of going home, a mission accomplished, without dread?

Would you want to know?  Would you want to mentally prepare?  You obviously know the risks going into space, but the existence of risks doesn’t necessarily mean the acceptance of risks.  Can the human mind really accept that or is it always pointed towards hope?

Every so often, I get an overwhelming urge to purge all clutter from the house.  The piles of papers get sorted, the plastic trinkets from goody bags get tossed, and unused kitchen equipment gets donated.  If I don’t have this urge, it is impossible for me to declutter.  I talk myself into keeping everything.  I tell myself that if I throw out a baby item, it will be like admitting to the universe that it has won.  So I keep all the baby clothes and toys, neatly labeling them and filling the storage room, as if they’re a promise to myself.  I can’t let them go.

But when the urge comes, I can clean unemotionally.  Or, at the very least, I can clean unemotionally in the moment, and then cry later after the kids have gone to sleep, when I am cuddling on the sofa with Truman, waiting for Josh to come home.

I decided that yesterday would be the start of one of those purges even though it’s a completely inopportune time for me, work-wise.  Who cares.  I don’t need to sleep.  I convinced the twins that we’d start with their toys.

“No mercy,” I told them.

All toys that we loved and wanted to save for a future child or pass along to a niece or nephew got placed on the sofa.  All toys that we wanted to donate got placed next to my desk.  And all other toys were placed back on a shelf or in a bin.  They sorted unemotionally.  We were able to place two enormous boxes in the storage room, neatly labeled.  Two bags of items — almost all unopened — were packed up to be donated tomorrow.  And two enormous black trash bags were filled with salvageable items.  Four toy bins were completely empty.

It was time for Operation Lego.

At six o’clock, I made them dinner and pointed out a flaw in the new-and-not-so-improved world of Lego.  When I was a child, we simply had Lego blocks.  They were in an enormous tub.  We took them out and built cities.  We played with said cities.  Then we disassembled said cities and broke up the blocks so we could begin anew next time.

Now they have Lego sets.  You buy a Knights Bus Lego set and a Ewoks in the Forest Lego set and a race car Lego set.  You make these Lego creations according to the instructions that come with the set.  Then you play with them once, set them gently back in the box, and never touch them again because they’re a lot more fragile than the blocks we played with as a kid due to the oddly shaped pieces adding to the realism.  The Deathstar crumbles if you touch it too much.  Hagrid’s Hut has been known to split into chunks if Hagrid gets too rowdy.

So they build Lego sets and then they rot in a storage box.

I told them that I wanted to take apart all the sets, saving the instructions.  The sets could always be rebuilt — think of them as 3D puzzles in that manner — but in the meantime, we could use all those blocks to make new things.  A few more nudges about how great it will be to have Legos to play with again, and they decided to go along with this idea despite their anxiety in undoing all their hard work.

“We can divided them up in one of two ways,” I told them.  “Either we can group all the red ones together, the orange ones together, the yellow ones together.  Or we can divide them up by size: all the tiny squares together, all the four dot squares together.”

“Let’s go by colour.  That will be easier,” the Wolvog said.

Oh?  Will it?

So we started by dumping out projects and breaking them into bits.  Most contained one colour, but almost all were oddly shaped.  Very quickly into the sorting, I realized that we didn’t have the standard blocks necessary for making buildings.  You can’t make a house out of Aragog’s legs, you know?  Beyond that, we had 16 pink blocks… were we really going to start a new bag for 16 pink blocks?  But if we’re not, where do they go?  With the reds?  That bag is sort of overstuffed already.  With the oranges?  Well that looks atrocious.  Do the light greens go with the dark greens in one bag called “Greens” or do they each need a separate sack?

On our third hour of breaking apart and sorting (we don’t actually have that many Legos; we’re just really really slow plus we took a break to have s’mores — why?  I have no clue), I looked up at them and said, “Why did I think we had to sort these?  Why didn’t we just pour them all together into this bin?”

“You know how there are those record books?” the ChickieNob said, pulling apart two blocks.  “This should be entered in there as the worst idea ever.”

But we were so close to the end.  So we dumped the big pieces into their correct bag, and I swept up the rest into a bag that we were calling “weirdos” for the pieces that didn’t seem to be any discernible colour at all.  I told them we’d deal with the weirdos later.

I kept them up an hour after their bedtime for this.

And now I’ve ensured they’ll never ever play with the Legos because can you imagine resorting them every single time you play with them?  Mind-numbing.

But touching all those blocks made me remember how much I loved playing with them.  How much I loved building cities.

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 May list is now closed.  The June list will open on 5/27.
  
• 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. Where the bleep is our stork (ttc #1, pcos, infertility)
3. One step at a time (baby after infertility)
4. Feeling Beachie (life, humor, family)
5. Unconceivably Blessed (infertility, TTC, life)
6. Thought Provoking Moments (IVF, loss & pregnancy, life lessons)
7. Life of an Army Wife (donor eggs, army wife)
8. The 2 Week Wait (infertility, humor, ttc)
9. When is it my turn? (iui unexplained hopeful)
10. Our Little Family (infertility, diet, life)
11. It Is What It Is (Or Is It?) (adult adoptee, parenting 2 thru ART, infertility)
12. Waiting for Baby (adoption, IUI, PCOS)
13. Who Shot Down My Stork? (iui, unexplained IF, humor)
14. Breathe Gently (new-mum, IVF, PCOS)
15. Two Adults, One Child (loss, family, moving on)
16. Team Harries Beats Infertility (faith, acupuncture, holistic)
17. Baby On Mind (embryo adoption, infertility, 40+)
18. From Gutter to Stars (infertility, adoption, therapist)
19. My journey through infertility, pregnancy & loss (infertility, loss, grief)
20. On Fecund Thought (miscarriage, grief, mindfulness)
21. Always My 3 Boys (neonatal loss parenting )
22. A Little Blog About the Big Infertility (RPL, infertility, feeling lost)
23. Just A Box of Rain (parenting post-IF, adoption,balance)
24. Ready For My Bundle (pregnant/parenting after ivf, family, smc)
25. In My Garden Grow (IVF, infertility, loss)
26. The Egg Timer Is About To Ring (infertility, older mom, ttc)
27. Waiting, Wishing, Hoping (pregnancy, infertility, parenting)
28. Riding the Roller Coaster- Trying for our Together Baby (secondary infertility, loss, depression)
29. Creating a Family (infertility, adoption, adoptive parenting)
30. Dragondreamer’s Lair (parenting, secondary infertility, crafts)
31. The Great Big IF (egg donor, parenting, IVF)
32. How I Spend My Dash (twins, parenting, life)
33. Punch Today In The Face (pcos, preg after loss, 3rd due in june)
34. Beloved burnt toast (IVF, loss, hope)
35. Rainbow Making 101 (twins, IVF, miscarriage)
36. Comatised (love, life, cancer)
37. Infertile Chemist (infertility, IUI, chemistry)
38. Our Journey Through This Lovely Life (ttc iui adventures)
39. Life is Simple, It’s Just Not Easy (twins, after IF, life)
40. Frozen OJ (endo, health, embryo donation)
41. Our journey to fill the nest (infertility, relationships, IVF)
42. Baby Baby…Please! (trying to conceive)
43. A Life of Choice (divorce, life, infertile)
44. My Journey to Motherhood (break, photography, love)
45. One uponce a time, things were a little wonky (infertility, life, treatments)
46. Recipes for Lemons (ivf, newly pregnant, loss)
47. Mommy Loves Martinis (twins, humor, two-mommy family)
48. An Engineer Becomes a Mom (adoption, infertility, rants)
49. The Barreness (art, infertility, reflection)
50. Jenn & Tommy: Life’s A Bitch (decisions, infertility, marriage)
51. Sweet Dreams are Made of This (adoption, life)
52. The Write Mama (advocate for IVF coverage, motherhood, life)
53. From IF to When (infertility, adoption, family)
54. Hobbit-ish Thoughts & Ramblings (parenting after IF/RPL, diabetes, life)
55. Mine to Command (IUI, DYI, sports)
56. Old Lady and No Baby (fet, donor eggs, softball)
57. Wonder Woman’s Infertility: The Infertility Battle of Two Non-Superheroes (god feelings reactions)
58. InDueTime (life, infertility, loss)
59. The May list is now closed.  The June list will open on 5/27

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 yellow, the next month it will be purple, 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.

Thursday was Take Your Child to Work day.  Since my workplace is also known by another moniker — our living room — I don’t take the kids to work.  It’s always a weird day at school because half the kids are absent.

I first tried to convince them that when the remaining students went around the room telling the teacher their parents’ professions, they should tell their classmates that I’m a circus clown and their father is a famous ice sculptor.

“I’m not doing that,” the ChickieNob informed me.

“Then tell them that I invented grass.  They’ll know what grass is.  It’s on all their lawns.”

“I’m not doing that either.  I’m just going to tell them that you’re a writer.”

“What about telling them that I’m a spy for the Spy Museum.  I spy on other museums and tell them what programs they’re running.”

“No,” the Wolvog told me.

They’re no fun at all.

*******

It has been three years since our last Secret Ode Day, and there has been a request to resurrect this project.  For those who know exactly what I’m talking about, skip directly to the form.  For those who need to understand what Secret Ode Day is, you can read about the history of the Secret Ode Day.  In a nutshell:

Well, basically, the idea behind Secret Ode Days comes from this neighbour growing up whose parents had a floating family holiday where they decorated this tree outside the house with lollipops in the middle of the night and part of the day was to invite all the kids in the neighbourhood to harvest them.  You never knew when the day would happen, so every child woke up each morning and ran to the window to see if the tree was decorated.  And the lollipops were that much better because they were unexpected.

A Secret Ode Day follows the same idea: odes are collected and compiled and posted here on a day when you least expect it.  And then you get to see an anonymously written note about how wonderful you or your blog is when you wake up one morning.

People simply don’t tell other people nice things nearly enough. We save our best words to say when the person can’t hear–I’m not just talking about after the person is gone, but how we tell good stories about others or think kind thoughts about another person, and they never know. Therefore, here is a chance to anonymously let a fellow blogger in the community hear how much their words and actions mean to you.

Click over and read how to participate if you haven’t done this before.  And then get writing.

*******

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:

• “Life, and It’s Prices” (No Kidding in NZ)
• “Delayed Gratification is Overrated” (No Kidding in NZ)
• “She Likes to Let Them Go” (A Half Baked Life)
• “Some Things Still Make Me Sad About Infertility” (The Lucky Life)

Okay, now my choices this week.

I collected up 21 NIAW posts as of Thursday night, and I wanted to highlight all 21 here in case you missed them, pulling in a brief quote from each one.  Please read, comment, and social media the hell out of these posts to get the word out there.

1. An Unwanted Path: “When you’re coughing up $500 a month, or $3k for one cycle, it’s impossible for it not to get in your face. It’s such a gamble, and I am not the gambling type.”
2. Inconceivable!: “Infertility always involves a certain amount of stripping down for those diagnosed.  I hope for a day though where public understanding of infertility is so normal that there is no more shame.”
3. One Step at a Time: “And I think that’s what is also cool about blogging – we can inspire each other. If I can get through years of infertility and come out the other end with a beautiful baby like Nicky – well, then, there’s hope.”
4. My Cheap Version of Therapy: “1 in 8. That is how many couples will struggle with infertility. For every person I share my story with, I bring a voice to this “silent” disease, and I feel a little bit stronger and heal a little bit more.”
5. From IF to When: “Instead, three months later, I sobbed in a doctor’s office as I heard the word ‘infertile’ for the very first time. I was 23 years old.”
6. Searching for Our Silver Lining: “Through writing about all the failed treatments, our miscarriages, the uncertainty and the myriad of emotions, Grey and I both have been able to not only heal, but also find the strength to continue on our quest to expand our family.”
7. Bereaved and Blessed: “You are not a real mom until you have two kids. Who says that? Especially to a person who is struggling to have another child! Sadly I know someone who did and they said it to me.”
8. Shutterbug Wife: “I heard stories from women that had miscarried. Ones that have been trying for 5+ years. One woman went through TEN IUI’s with no success. Women that have their miracle baby but never forgot the pain of infertility.”
9. Not When, But IF: “These activities normalized my experience, they let me know I was most certainly not alone in my feelings of pain and powerlessness.”
10. Battlefish: “Just because I have my little one, it doesn’t mean I am not infertile any more, nor that I don’t think about it, often. In fact, I am still very much aware of my infertility, especially when I think about wanting another child.”
11. The Adventures of an Infertile Myrtle: “My husband, J and I are embarking upon our seventh year as a couple with infertility.”
12. Beyond the Parentheses: “Infertility has so many tunnels leading off the initial shit-pit.”
13. The Loveliest Way: “I cried alone often in those early days, dreading each month’s cycle that would remind me that I couldn’t do such a natural human thing, heartbroken over the baby I couldn’t have.”
14. Mommyhood After Fertility Frustration: “Now it’s my turn to help those who are still struggling. And more importantly to let them know they are not alone. By doing all of this I’m also doing my part to educate the general public.”
15. Brownies and Onion Dip: “I might not currently be trying to conceive, but I still struggle with pregnancy announcements from fertile myrtles, even though I’m happy for them.”
16. Silent Sorority: “It’s easy to become desensitized to causes, to no longer see the badges, banners, ribbons, stickers and Facebook covers. After a while they all blur together.”
17. The Great Big IF: “I can think of very few things in this world more isolating than being infertile in a fertile world. It’s an incredibly lonely place to be.”
18. From Wine to Whine: “When you are in your lower 30′s you just kind of assume you can get pregnant. You both seem healthy and I had cycles that could have been in a textbook (seriously that is what the RE said to us). But then life is unfair.”
19. Our Misconception: “By breaking the silence we have found support through the IF community, comfort by learning of others who share similar situations, and strength by reading success stories of those that have kicked infertility’s butt.”
20. Stupid Stork: “Whether or not I wake up in the mood for it, infertility is a part of my life Every. Single. Day.  Even at my most distracted, Hope and Sadness will both wriggle their way into my mind if only for a fleeting second.”
21. Wonderfully Ordinary: “One of the things that I wish had been different for me in my infertility journey was support.  I wish I had reached out for support when we were in the thick of it.”
22. Are You Kidding Me?: “If you have a hard time making a child, the last thing anyone should do is make you feel badly about feeding that child if you have the good fortune to get it here.”

The roundup to the Roundup: The kids won’t play my reindeer games.  Secret Ode Days are coming!  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between April 19th and April 26th) 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.

In Measure of Love, Rachel has this thought about her blog while she’s out to dinner with Jared:

And maybe that is it. Maybe it isn’t really real until I write about it on my blog. My online space crystallizes my life, clarifies events, records what has happened. It is my memoir in real time; I am constantly making decisions about what to include, what to gloss over, what I should tell for prosperity, and what I will most likely regret putting in print.

With memoir writing, you have the benefit of retrospect.  You know which moments stuck with you, influenced an event, remained in your memory.  And you also know which feelings were fleeting feelings of little consequence in the big picture even if they felt enormous at the time. Because you have the benefit of time, you can weave a cohesive story.  You know where to lead the reader; you are in charge.

But with a blog, the reader and the writer are stumbling along together at the same time.  We’re holding each other’s arm and tentatively stepping through the story, unsure of how it will unfold.  The writer can’t confidently lead the reader because the writer doesn’t know where their story is going, they have no clue what will be important down the road.  And therein lies the problem: readers don’t want to waste time — we want the marrow, the finished dish, the protein that will help us understand the other person while we understand ourselves.  We can get that with a book because we know the writer has plucked out the best parts of the story for our entertainment and elucidation.  But with a blog, it’s hit or miss.  You may read a lot of posts that end up being tiny moments trapped in glass that don’t really connect to the greater story at all.

You see the dilemma.

So how does Rachel — or me, or you — get around this problem?  How do we blog, writing our memoirs in real time?  How do we know what to write down and what to let float into the ether?  What to post and what to leave in the draft folder?  How do we wrap our minds around the way we interact with one another and use that understanding to build that story in real time?  How do we look objectively at a moment and think, “that is worth writing about” or “I can let this moment pass unrecorded with words?”

My answer is toward the end of the book (hint: it’s in the second blog post).  But what’s your answer?

Thinking through the past few months, which posts would you definitely put in a reflective memoir down the road and which events — now with a little time between then and now — would be eliminated from the final draft of your memoir?  Moreover, how do you choose what to blog about and what to let pass from your mind in terms of what you deem important?

Like this idea?  There’s a lot more where that came from in Measure of Love.   I promise you; just read the book.  You can pick up your own copy anywhere they sell books including Amazon and Barnes and Noble.