Whoa.

It’s been a long time since we’ve had a book club meeting.

There hasn’t been one since 2009, but I decided to resurrect the club for Lori’s book, The Open-Hearted Way to Open Adoption.  So to everyone who has participated in one of these in the past, welcome back.  And to everyone who is seeing this for the first time, read on.

This post serves as the master list for the 23rd tour of the Barren Bitches Book Brigade. What is the Barren Bitches Book Brigade? It’s a book club from the comfort of your own living room. The book club is conducted entirely online and open to anyone (male or female) in the infertility/pregnancy loss/assisted conception/adoption/parenting-after-infertility world (as well as any other related category I inadvertently left off the list). It is called a book tour because everyone reads the same book and then poses a question to the group. Participants choose a few questions to answer and then post their response on their blog. Readers can jump from blog to blog, commenting along the way. We read both fiction and non-fiction.

Anyone can jump aboard — it’s a book club where you can drop in and out as you wish and all in the community are welcome.

Book: The Open-Hearted Way to Open Adoption
Author: Lori Holden
Start Date: April 6
Question Due: May 5
Question List Sent Out: May 6
Post Date: May 9

(need an explanation of how a book tour works? Click here to go to a list of posts on the past book tours as well as information about future tours.)

About The Open-Hearted Way to Open Adoption: While this book will appeal the most to those either in the adoption process, parenting after adoption, or birth parents, there is actually some pretty solid parenting advice for anyone who is parenting or waiting to parent.  As it states on Amazon, “Prior to 1990, fewer than 5% of domestic infant adoptions were open. In 2012, 90% or more of adoption agencies are recommending open adoption. Yet these agencies do not often or adequately prepare either adopting parents or birth parents for the road ahead of them! The adult parties in open adoptions are left floundering.”  This book is a guide to navigating open adoption.

Barren Bitches Book Brigade

(The blogs below are participating on this current book tour. On May 9th, you’ll be able to jump from post to post to read a plethora of opinions and thoughts on The Open-Hearted Way to Open Adoption. I will keep adding to this list until 11 p.m. on May 5th. The list is currently open)

• Stirrup Queens
• Bereaved and Blessed
• CD1
• Life from Here
• Queen of the Slipstream
• Too Many Fish to Fry
• An Engineer Becomes a Mom
• Baby Smiling in Back Seat
• The Maybe Baby
• Stumbling Gracefully
• The Years Are Getting Shorter
• Birds and the Beas
• The Sound of Hope
• Today is the Day They Give Babies Away
• PoemFish
• Production, Not Reproduction
• Not on the list and want to join? Drop me an email at thetowncriers@gmail.com. You can add yourself up until 11 p.m. EST on May 5th.

How the book tour works:

(1) leave a comment or send me an email (thetowncriers@gmail.com) saying that you’re interested in participating. I need your blog name, blog url, and email address.

(2) read The Open-Hearted Way to Open Adoption by May 5th (or at least enough of it in order to ask a question to the group).

(3) create a single question that would kick off a discussion (in other words, any question that leads to more than a “yes” or “no” answer where someone can express their opinion) and mail it to me on May 5th (or any time beforehand). I will send you a reminder email close to the date. Click here to see sample questions from tour #4.

(4) on May 6th, I will send you a list of possible questions. Everyone will choose 3 questions off the list and answer them in a blog entry.

(5) on May 9th, people will begin to post their entry. I will post a linked list of all the people putting up their entry that day so people can go around and read the entries and comment (start a discussion back and forth in the comments section). Reading the entries and commenting on the posts is the best part of the tour–by the end of the week, you should have a comment from every participant (and maybe even a few new permanent blog readers).

Thank you for all of the kind words about Cozy Jackson.  My office feels very quiet without him.  At the risk of rushing things, maybe foolishly, we’re going to go to the pet store today to talk to the ethical pet dealer.  An EPD differs from a pet store in that it matches the right animal with the right person.  There are very few animals in the store — mostly only small mammals — and she can tell you how the animal was bred and its lineage.  She won’t sell you an animal if she doesn’t think it’s the right fit at the right moment.  I started the conversation with her on Thursday when I called to tell her about Cozy’s death.  I let her know that we were thinking about moving forward with another pet just so I could gather her thoughts.  She knows us, so I trust her.  She didn’t think it was a terrible idea, especially if the kids create a memory book for Cozy and process his death.  She’s open to the possibility.

We are only considering another hamster, a guinea pig, or a chinchilla.  We’ve obviously had a hamster so know what to expect with that.  I once had a guinea pig, so I know what to expect with that (and think it’s the best option for our house/family).  I’ve never even known someone who has a chinchilla, so if you have, I’d love to hear about your experience.  The Wolvog came up with the chinchilla idea, and I’m not against learning about a new animal.  But it would mean getting accustomed to a new animal.  There are other pets we’d like but we don’t have the space or means to take care of it, so we’re sticking with those three possibilities.

So hopefully we’ll have a new addition to the family soon.  No new pet will ever replace the Cozy-sized hole in my heart, but my hands need to hold something.  I have a lot of love to bestow on a pet.

*******

We went to a concert last night.  On the way, we listened to the band on CD.  While we were there, we listened to the band live.  Then we got in the car and drove home, back to listening to the band on CD.

When you’re going to a concert, do you listen to the same band on the way there and back?

*******

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:

• “Gifts” (Stumbling Gracefully)
• “My Thoughts on North Dakota’s Abortion Ban” (Yet Another Bitter Infertile)
• “Why Do We Pretend Away Infertility” (Silent Sorority)
• “What the Body Remembers” (Invincible Spring)

Okay, now my choices this week.

I loved Mrs. Spit’s post about the gratitude that has influenced her own decisions years down the road.  A small gesture from another person after her son died becomes an explanation for why she takes the time to tell people how she appreciates them.  I especially loved this line: “It was such a simple, such a small gesture. I think that she doesn’t remember it any longer, it was so natural for her and yet it meant so very much to me.”  That idea that even things we don’t remember could still have repercussions (in a good way) for someone else.

Miss Conception has a post about breaking her promise to herself that she would never put up a Baby on Board sign.  I love how she takes us through her reasoning, and it drives home the fact that we often make promises to ourselves without knowing how we’ll feel when we’re in the actual situation.  Perhaps it’s a manifesto for fewer cases of “I will never” and more understanding that sometimes the things that annoy us are someone else’s comfort.

Lastly, These Are The Things I’m Made Of has a beautiful post about the things she is missing with the loss of her son.  It’s a montage of all the probable moments, the summation of love.  She writes, “Taking you to the park by our house. Pushing your stroller as the redbuds pop and the forsythia tickles my nose. Counting daffodils.  The woman with a baby down the street who was supposed to be my friend. I pass her house every day. I’ve never met her.”  For me, it seemed like the perfect exercise of still connecting with someone who is gone.

The roundup to the Roundup: Maybe getting a new pet.  Do you listen to the band on the way to the concert?  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between March 29th and April 5th) 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.

At the risk of sounding like a complete nutjob over a hamster, I need to tell this story.  To mark the end of Cozy’s life.

About three weeks ago, Cozy started biting me.  Little nips, but they were out of character.  I made up explanations.  Once he had been chewing on my sweater and I said that he must have mistook skin for material.  Another time I wondered if I had the scent of food on my hands.  I came up with a plethora of reasons, it’s just that none were why he was biting me.

On Tuesday night, we had a little cuddle and chat, and I remarked that he hadn’t nipped me once.  He had relaxed in the crook of my arm, and I ran my fingers over him, imagining that is what a hamster mother would do for her young to make him feel safe and protected; she would groom him.  As his mother, albeit one without hamster skills, I approximated.

The next morning, I started working beside him as I always do, and I noticed that he was sleeping at a strange angle.  He was holding his head up as he slept, something he never did.  So I went over every few minutes to check that he was breathing, that there was nothing else unusual happening.  And there wasn’t until noon when he stood up and wobbled over a few inches and began walking in a tight circle, over and over again as if he were chasing his tail.  He had wood shavings on his face and he wasn’t brushing them off, and two of them were stuck to his eyes, which were bulging out strangely.

I picked him up and he allowed me to brush the shavings from his eyes… and he didn’t blink.  He didn’t even nudge my hand away.  So I set him down and called the woman who sold him to us, an ethical pet dealer whose family has been selling small mammals for years.  She’s somewhat of a DC institution.  She loves animals intensely, so she is who I always call when I’m worried.  Every other time, she’s given me an explanation for my worry.  But this time, she gave me the name of a veterinarian a few towns away who could take good care of Cozy.

So I gently packed him in his pet carrier and put him in the car, keeping up a running stream of conversation with him as I drove to the vet.  I cried the whole ride over, telling him about the grapes I’d pick up on the way home.  That he may need eye drops which suck, but we’d have a cuddle afterward.  He just didn’t look right.  He wasn’t blinking.  He was hunched over, quiet.

The vet had been about to leave, but she waited for me.  I was embarrassed to be crying that hard in her examination room; I literally couldn’t get words out.  She told me that he had a pituitary tumour.  That hamsters, like humans, tend to show issues with their brain in a very acute, very sudden way.  In the wild, he would be eaten if he showed weakness.  So he pretended to be okay until he couldn’t pretend anymore.  She pointed out the way he was pretending to eat, his jaw not really working anymore, and said that he was still pretending for predators that he was fine.  But he really wasn’t fine.  She told me that he was in a lot of pain and the kindest thing I could do would be to euthanize him.

I didn’t know how to say okay.

I called Josh, I spoke to the vet again and again.  I wanted to be the sort of responsible person who would put an animal out of its misery, but I selfishly wanted him alive; would take him alive and not really himself than not alive at all.  But she gently got me to a place where I could say goodbye to him.  So I picked him up and nuzzled him to my cheek and told him how loved he was.  And when I was ready, her assistant took him from me and brought him to another room.  The vet admitted that she would probably cry doing it, that it never got easier.

And then I drove home.  The vet had decorated his box with hearts and his name.  I kept talking to him, even though I knew he couldn’t hear me because I didn’t know how to not talk to him.  I’ve been talking to him for two straight years, all day every day.  I talk out plotline with him and I talk about the twins and I talk about how cute he is.

And you all know what he is.  He’s my stand-in.  He’s my receptacle.  He’s where I’ve poured all the love I thought I would be pouring into another human being.

I got home and sat in the living room, but he wasn’t there.  And I walked in and out of the room, always looking for him in the corner, but he wasn’t there.  And this huge emptiness swallowed me, and I wanted to run out to the pet store and immediately bring home another pet.  The idea of being alone in the house felt unbearable.

I picked up the kids from school, but didn’t tell them that anything was wrong until we walked in the house.  “We need to talk about something,” I told them.  “Could you wash up and meet me upstairs?”  I didn’t want to tell them near his cage, but the ChickieNob ran straight into the living room and started screaming, “where is Cozy?”  So we all climbed into the glider and rocked and cried.  And I told them the story of the end of the end.  His nips had been his way of telling me that he was in pain.  It was the one thing I never guessed.

I told them that I needed another pet immediately, maybe before they were ready, and that this new pet wouldn’t be a replacement — Cozy could not be replaced — but I needed to put my love somewhere.  And talking about pets helped all three of us to stop crying, and we looked up various animals on my phone.  Part of me felt sick for moving on so quickly.  And part of me knew that I had to hold something this weekend or my heart was going to explode.

We worked on their science fair project, and then went out to dinner because I didn’t have it in me to cook.  After dinner, we ran into the food store for a moment, and that is where I said aloud, “I want a baby” as I pulled out a cart.  I heard myself say it, and then I continued on, “I want a baby animal.  A little baby animal.”

I loved Cozy on his own, as my furry confidant, as my sweet moosie, as our first family pet.  But I loved Cozy because he was home with me during the day, and he would cuddle whenever I wanted, and because he was tiny, and because he was simple.  As long as I gave him a steady stream of blueberries, he loved me hardcore.  He would never get bigger, never move away from.  I loved him because it was easy: I went to an ethical animal dealer and she gave me a beautiful hamster, and that was it.  There were no injections, no procedures, no blood draws.  There were no failures.  It was easy to love him because he was so easy.  And I just needed that.

It doesn’t matter how small you are; you can still be deeply loved.

The worst part about loving something or someone is that every life ends.  I had to put Cozy Jackson to sleep while the twins were at school.  Sobbed the whole way to the vet because I sensed what was wrong wasn’t fixable.  Cried the whole time there.  Cried the whole ride home.

Backtracking in our “do you do this” discussion (or, as I now affectionately call this string of posts in my head DYDT), I may not decorate at all, but my house is very clean. (Josh likes to follow after me and my bleach bottle chanting clean, clean, clean three times.)  I don’t like people tracking dirt into the house, so we’ve always asked people to take off their shoes when they come inside.

Actually, it wasn’t always like that.  In our old apartment, we wore our shoes inside, and after a while, mud and such got tracked onto the carpet.  And when we moved into this house and got all new carpets, I decided that we would never wear shoes inside again.  So we take them off at the door, and then walk around in our socks (or sometimes, slippers).  Our floors are very clean (return to the first paragraph where I wrote about my ever-present bleach bottle), so my socks never look dingy from doing this, which is what other people mentioned during the DYDT when we talked about socks on or off in bed.

We ask that everyone take off their shoes in the house.  There are times when a kid puts on his shoes because he’s about to leave, and then doubles back into the carpeted living room for something he forgot — and that sort of thing never bothers me.  But in general, we ask that everyone remove their shoes when they’re walking around inside.  Almost no one has complained about this.  Actually, a few have.  Or they comment on it enough to let me know that they think it’s odd.  But for the most part, people recognize that there are whole cultures out there that request all people entering the house remove their shoes, and they comply.

I like the way shoes-off keeps the carpets neat.  Back when the twins were crawling, it made me feel as if less dirt was being tracked onto the floor where they were putting their hands.  Shoes on the tiled floors doesn’t bother me, but I like them off when people are stepping onto carpets.  Perhaps it’s because dirt remains on the surface with a tiled floor, but it falls between the pile on a carpet.  I may have watched too many carpet cleaning commercials in the ’80s.

The only people exempt from the shoes-off rule are workpeople.  I’m too shy to ask them to take off their shoes, and they’re usually going in and out of the house to get tools from their trucks.  I vacuum well after they leave — when we had our windows replaced over the course of 4 days, I vacuumed after each work day — but I never ask them to take off their shoes while they’re here.

Do you have a shoes on or off home?