I would like to take a chance to rewrite the Washington Post’s obituary for Robert Edwards from today to remove the judgment and instead leave the gratitude many of us feel about his work, as do most people who benefit from advances in science.  Washington Post, what you said was:

Robert G. Edwards, a British physiologist who won a Nobel Prize in 2010 for helping develop the controversial in vitro fertilization techniques that led to the birth of the first “test tube” baby in 1978 and revolutionized childbearing around the world, died April 10 at his home near Cambridge, England. He was 87.

What you should have said was

Robert G. Edwards, a British physiologist who won a Nobel Prize in 2010 for helping pioneer in vitro fertilization techniques that led to the birth of Louise Brown in 1978 and gave hope to both biologically and situationally infertile men and women around the world, died April 10 at his home near Cambridge, England. He was 87.

Just wanted to fix that.  Rest in peace, Dr. Edwards.

The discussion of shoes on-or-off in the house brought up an idea that was repeated again and again: sometimes when people ask others to remove their shoes upon entering the house, they provided them with slippers.  Some people mentioned that they leave slippers at houses they visit often, but more than one person mentioned the idea of having a basket of slippers for the taking.

This brought up my own bias: I hate wearing other people’s shoes.  Even for a few minutes.

I will gladly buy second-hand clothes without thought, but I would never buy second-hand shoes.  I don’t like going to the bowling alley and having to rent bowling shoes.  I don’t like it when someone tells me my shoes are so cute and could they try them on for a second. (The one exception is the ChickieNob — she always clomps around in my shoes and for whatever reason, it doesn’t bother me.)  I don’t like it when someone asks if they can borrow my shoes, nor do I ever want to borrow their shoes.  There is a scene in Measure of Love, where Rachel talks about wanting to borrow someone else’s shoes, and I cringed writing it.  I don’t care how uncomfortable my shoes are; I don’t like wearing someone else’s shoes.

I obviously know that the shoes I own have probably been tried on by others in the store before I bought them, and yet… I’m still weirded out by putting my foot into someone else’s shoes.  It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about bare skin inside a pair of high heels or socked feet going into sneakers — there is no level of barrier between myself and the shoe that would make me put them on without thinking about how much it bothers me to wear someone else’s shoes or slippers.

So I don’t think I could borrow slippers from a communal slipper basket.  It doesn’t bother me to walk around in just socks in someone’s house, but I wonder if it would be rude to decline the slippers (and remain in just socks) if the slippers are offered.

Am I the only person who has different feelings about second-hand clothes vs. second-hand shoes?  Where do you come down on wearing other people’s shoes (or slippers) or having someone else wear yours?

Truman, meet all my friends in the computer.  They are very important to me.

Everyone, meet Truman, our guinea pig.

We brought home Truman on Sunday.  We met him on Friday when we went to see the guinea pigs at the EPD.  I fell in love with the idea of getting a guinea pig on Friday, but I didn’t fall in love with either guinea pig that we met.  My eyes kept going to the hamsters, especially the ones that looked like Cozy, and then to the guinea pigs, that did not look like Cozy.  Cozy looked similar to an Abyssinian guinea pig even though he was actually a teddy bear hamster.  The teddy bear guinea pigs at the EPD looked like short haired teddy bear guinea pigs.

When we went back on Sunday, I kept waiting for that huge surge of all consuming love that happened the first time I met Cozy.  But it didn’t happen.  So I pulled Josh into another section of the store so we could be alone for a second and said, “I’m really scared because I’m not in love immediately.”  But he promised me that I would fall in love.  And that love would be no less intense and real when it came.  Still, I was — and still am — embarrassed and upset with myself for this reaction.  I was supposed to instantly have my heart melt.  But my heart felt swollen and raw.

Our first day at home was difficult.  He was okay being held but clearly anxious.  When he went into his cage, he stood, frozen.  Not eating, not drinking.  He wouldn’t relax and lie down in front of us.  I worried about him even though I knew that he was going through an adjustment period.  I told him about Cozy.  I admitted that seeing him made me miss Cozy, that maybe I hadn’t been ready for a new pet, but I had wanted to do something — anything — to stop the sadness I was feeling over the loss.  Things were hard for him too.  He was apart from his twin brother, away from familiar sounds and smells.  We would have taken his twin brother, but the EPD said they would have been separated anyway in a few weeks due to aggression.  She promised the ChickieNob that guinea pig twins are not like human twins.  But he was clearly sad, clearly out-of-sorts and confused.  And I was sad and out-of-sorts.  I loved him because we were both unsure, because we could still cuddle up inside that unsureness.  I asked him to be patient with me.  I told him I would be patient with him.

The next day was a little easier.  We talked and cuddled in the morning, and then I played him YouTube videos of other guinea pigs wheeking.  He immediately started wheeking back, calling to the guinea pigs on the screen.  And he finally came out of his corner and ate two bites of apple and a nibble of kale.  A few of his guinea pig pellets.  I’m sort of embarrassed to admit that I did this for an exceptionally long period of time; playing guinea pig videos on YouTube for him.

Later at night, we had a cuddle on the sofa with Josh, and as my hand went over his back, I realized that he was much softer than I thought at first.  He wasn’t smooth, like Cozy, but he had folds of soft fur that skated under my hand.  I started to fall in love; he started to trust.  And that’s where we are now.

His name is Truman after both Truman Capote and Harry S. Truman.  Josh likes American history, and we obvious love writers.  His middle name is Harper after both Harper Lee (good friends with Truman Capote!) and Bryce Harper of the Nationals.  So Truman Harper Ford.

We also gave him a Hebrew name (because how else will we know what to call him at his guinea pig Bar Mitzvah), Tomer.  Tomer means “date tree” in Hebrew, and he was one of our favourite characters on the old Israeli television show, Florentine.  One of our first dates was to watch six Florentine episodes in a row in this little theater.  The creator of the show, Eytan Fox, modeled Tomer after himself, and he was one of the first openly gay mainstream characters on Israeli television.  So we wanted to honour someone else’s creation, plus we loved his coming out scene — one of the best moments on television ever.

So that’s where we are.  Slowly coming together, two unsure and nervous beings.  But we’re very slowly, and very carefully, falling in love.

It’s here, it’s here, it’s here! You can finally learn what happened to Rachel Goldman after Life from Scratch ended. Today is the official release date for Measure of Love.

It has been so hard to know for the past year or so everything that happened to Rachel after that book ended. I’ve wanted to say stuff so many times, but I’m glad I waited because now you can see the story unfold for yourself. I promise that it ends with more closure than the first book, though… I have to admit… Apart at the Seams (coming in 2014) tells the same story from two other character’s points-of-view, and that will blow apart some of what you think you know in this book. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Enjoy Rachel, enjoy Arianna, enjoy Penelope and Sarah and Richard and Ethan. Enjoy a bunch of new characters you’ve never met before as well.

There will be a lot of fun things coming up, including a contest where YOU can get a character named after you (and your partner, if you wish) in Apart at the Seams. Yes, you will fictionalized and live on forever inside a book.

So go grab and read Measure of Love so you can have a chance to make that happen. And stay tuned for a lot of fun discussions, contests, and a brand spanking new online book club.  Let’s get this wedding started!

I went to the Green Day concert in DC on Thursday.  We bought the tickets a long time ago for a date in December, but the show was rescheduled for April.  And, of course, Cozy died the day before so I didn’t really feel like hauling myself an hour away through rush hour traffic.  But we did.  And I’m glad we went.

In order to find out when the concert would be rescheduled, I subscribed to the band’s news feed.  Sometimes I clicked over to read an article or two.  I liked to go into the comment section and see all the teenagers bemoaning that they couldn’t get tickets to the concert or their parents wouldn’t let them go.  I always had this overwhelming urge to write something like, “I’m an adult!  I’m an adult!  I get to go to the concert!  I bought tickets because I am an adult!!!”

But then I reminded myself that mature adults don’t taunt teenagers by pointing out that we have money and we can spend it on rock concerts.  We don’t have to ask permission.  Though… uh… we do have to ask for babysitting (thanks, mum and dad!).

There were obviously a lot of people there who were our age, but there were also roving bands of eleven-year-old boys trolling the hallway.  It made me feel very grey and very old.  They walked in packs, dressed in concert t-shirts or wearing all black.  I remembered being their age and going to rock concerts (though with my parents… where were their parents?), and I remembered being slightly older and going out to punk concerts (sorry, mum and dad, please don’t ground me, but I sometimes went downtown to shows without telling you).  Pushing and dancing in the mosh pit.  Crowd surfing and fearing that I’d be dropped.

A read a great quote once by Aaron Elliott that summed up the difference between a Green Day concert and the smaller punk shows I used to attend, and it was spot-on:

I’d been to Green Day’s big concerts and seen the look of pure joy on the faces of their fans.  I’d felt it myself.  It made questions about major labels and punk taboos seem academic… The audiences left the concerts happy and relieved.  At the DIY shows I championed, the showgoers often departed looking more lonely and forlorn than when they’d arrived.  The contrast was impossible to dismiss.

I went in that night feeling down about Cozy.  Feeling down about being so old.  And then the music started and we danced for 2 1/2 hours without stop.  We screamed out the lyrics with the band until our voices were hoarse.  Josh wrapped his arms around me from behind, and I closed my eyes as we swayed to “Brutal Love.”  I remembered going to punk concerts with whomever I was dating at the time and feeling — as Elliott said — sort of lonely and forlorn even in the togetherness.  But this time, I was swaying with someone who belonged to me, and I belonged to him, and we were listening to a love song.  Albeit a love song that explores the greyness of love, that even good relationships have those brutal moments.  But that — to me — is more fitting than pretending that love is always this gooey, happy feeling.  So I didn’t mind that I wasn’t crowd surfing anymore like those kids below on the floor, because I was pretty damn happy to be swaying with my husband, knowing exactly where I belonged.

*******

I never really listened to Green Day in college.  I knew a few of their songs in the same way that I could tell you one or two Beyonce songs even though I don’t listen to Beyonce if I can help it.  But I didn’t own a Green Day album.  In college, I listened to Elvis Costello and They Might Be Giants exclusively.  I listened to one They Might Be Giants cassette every single day on my walk to and from campus for four years.  First day of freshman year, I popped Apollo 18 into the Walkman, and it remained there until I left college four years later.  I could judge how late I was running based on what verse was playing as I passed certain landmarks.  I listened to only Elvis Costello if I was at home.  I  had a little more variety there, rotating through a few different albums.

Sometimes, for nostalgia sake, I would return to my favourite high school music, which were mostly DC hardcore punk bands.  I listened to a variety of them because most bands tended to make one album and then break up and reform into a new band.  On Friday afternoons, we liked to lie on the sofa and close our eyes and have Ian Svenonius scream at us (mostly Nation of Ulysses, though sometimes Cupid Car Club).  Sometimes we branched out to Seattle bands like Bikini Kill or Nirvana (I kept this picture of Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love under my bed — there was no room on my wall — and I still carry a digital version on my iPhone because I like being reminded of that time).

But there was no room for Green Day.

Green Day continued to be popular while I was in graduate school, but in graduate school, I listened to a single cassette for all four years.  It was one cassette of Bob Dylan’s Biograph.  There are almost 215 minutes of music in the collection.  I owned 90 minutes of it.  45 minutes per side of the tape.  It went in a continual loop in the car.  People called my car the Bob Dylan car.  It was the only thing you listened to if you drove with me.

So no room for Green Day there.

You may have picked up that I pretty much only listen to one band at a time.  Or, more accurately, there is a dominant band that is usually the music playing, and then every once in a while, I will listened to another disc for a small amount of time.  For instance, I always listen to the Violent Femmes while I bake for Purim.  Or I’ll throw on the Chess soundtrack so I can continue the twins’ musical theater education.  But for the most part, I like to listen to one band, every day, for many years.

Back in January of 2011, while researching the band in order to create a character for a book that is still unfinished, I decided that we would switch to Green Day.  We have a bunch of discs, so we tend to rotate through various albums.  I like the familiarity of hearing the same voice, of hearing the same lyrics, of hearing the same guitar riffs.  We have a current pop music disc the kids play if other children are in the car, but the second they step out, we switch back to Green Day.  All day.  Every day.

It has lined up from time to time that I get to go see the band du jour during the time period when it is the band du jour. (Though I gave up a chance to see Bob Dylan in graduate school because it was raining.  Yes, I still regret this.)  And that’s what happened this time.  In a sea of listening to Green Day music, I went to the show and got to listen to more Green Day music.  They put on an amazing concert, always moving, jumping, screaming.  It was exactly what I needed in that moment.

Do you listen to a variety of music, or do you tend to rotate through the same bands over and over again in a single time period?