Updated at the Bottom

The ChickieNob’s favourite band is the Beastie Boys.  Before you judge my parenting skills, we have edited versions of the songs and videos for her to enjoy.  She calls the band, “My Boys” as in, “Mommy, can I use your iPod so I can see my boys?”  I’m not sure how or when she found them — maybe two or three years old? — but she has loved them for a long time.  Because I was upstairs and not overseeing the art project, the ChickieNob decorated her paper turkey for the class Thanksgiving celebration in pictures of the band.  Her paper Beastie Boys turkey next to all the other children’s birds adorned with beads, feathers, and stickers.

And now Adam Yauch has died, and I’m going to have to pick her up from school and tell her.

Unlike Steve Jobs, I could not tell her.  There most likely won’t be magazine covers to explain or news stories to overhear.  I had no choice but to tell the Wolvog about Steve Jobs because he was going to hear it somewhere and I wanted him to hear it from his parents.  Whereas it now becomes a choice: do I tell the ChickieNob that one of her boys is gone?  Or do I let her keep listening to the music, knowing full well that we would have never taken her to a concert anyway due to its uneditable quality?  I’m wavering between realism and fantasy since I have that luxury this time.

I’m leaning heavily towards fantasy for no good reason other than the fact that she is my little girl and this is her favourite band.

My heart goes out to his wife and child.

Update:

I told her.  After school.  We went into her room and sat on her bed, and it was like watching an intense summer storm.  At first she howled, tears streaming down her face, and then she tried to ask questions, but she couldn’t catch her breath.  And finally she went through a long list of the bands that everyone else in the house liked that she did not like as much as the Beastie boys.  She cried for Adrock and Mike D.  And she cried for MCA’s daughter.  And then she told me that she didn’t want to see their videos or listen to their music or have anyone talk about them tonight.  And right now, we are in the calm after the storm.

I had to go into the storage room this week to get our microscope because Christy gave me this really cool science project to try; extracting DNA from strawberries. (And it worked, it really worked!)  We bought this microscope in 2002 to examine my saliva for ferning.  I was in that time period before you actually get to the RE, but the appointment has been made, and you’re trying things such as green tea and Robitussin and spitting on slides.  I packed it up in 2003 and put it in the basement.

So I went down to get it from the basement and inside the box was my unopened Lego Harry Potter sorting hat set.  It has since been discontinued, but I bought two of them back in 2001, one that I left unopened and the other that I kept on my desk.  I liked to use it as an ice breaker when a student had to meet with me because, let’s say, they plagiarized their paper.  Before we spoke, I would have them spin it and see which house they were sorted into and then say something like, “huh… you got Ravenclaw… that’s really interesting because plagiarizing is a pretty bone-head move, and I think Rowena Ravenclaw would be pretty horrified with you right now.”

Oh sorting hat.

The thing is, I don’t know where the opened sorting hat is.  It’s probably also somewhere in the basement.  But that would mean opening up and unpacking dozens of boxes to find a small ziplock bag filled with Legos.  But part of me doesn’t want to open this second set… and I have no idea why.  I would never get rid of it. (Actually, who am I kidding.  If someone offered to pay the Wolvog’s college tuition, I’d part with it.)  We want to use it.  And yet instead of gleefully tearing off the top and setting it up, it has been sitting in limbo on the kitchen table since mid-week.

Would you let me sort you if I opened my Lego Harry Potter sorting hat?

*******

The ChickieNob cried this week because her brother started reading the same book she was reading.  They don’t have a lot of book crossover with the exception of the stuff we read together.  They both like biographies, but don’t want to read about the same people.  The Wolvog has read every Magic Tree House and the ChickieNob is more partial to Sister Magic and American Girl Doll books.  The ChickieNob has been making her way through the Junie B Jones series this spring, and this week, the Wolvog decided to read them as well.  And this is devastating to her.

I tried to explain to her the concept of a book club, and how people purposefully choose to read books together and discuss them.  She could not wrap her brain around this, and kept saying, “I would not like that at all.  Only one person is supposed to be known as the person reading the book.”  Daddy has erudite American history books, and Mommy has smutty 50 Shades of Grey, and the Wolvog has his Magic Tree House books, and THE CHICKIENOB CLAIMS THE JUNIE B JONES SERIES HANDS OFF.

I don’t know — would you rather be the only person around who has read a book (and feel special because of it?) or would you rather read a book as a group?

*******

And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week as well as the week before.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Don’t Ignore” (The Misadventures of Missohkay)
• “Don’t Ignore: The Secret Life of the American Infertile” (Too Many Fish to Fry)
• “The Scar Remains” (My Life After Loss)
• “Just Ask” (Stirrup Queens) — thank you, Lori!

Okay, now my choices this week.

Lessons from an Infertile Social Worker has a post about the first time she breastfed her son after her son’s birthmother gave her the go-ahead in the hospital.  I really loved reading through the moment, feeling the power of that act through the screen.  She writes, “The first time I breastfed my son, I cried. It was perfect. He was perfect. He was my child. I was finally a momma.”  It’s a great post.

Breathe Gently has a post about how she was feeling after retrieval and the fertilization report.  It is a post about sinking into doubt and then finding a way out of it back into hope.  She writes of transfer: “Tomorrow we’re going to transfer an embryo, something that we created. It may stick, it may not, but we’re having a go. And isn’t this what the goal has been all along? To give ourselves, and our potential baby, a chance?”  I had a huge smile by the last line.

Multimama tells a story about why we shouldn’t judge others.  She admits about the new mother in her playgroup: “She was skinny and I, feeling fat in post-baby mode, felt a flash of jealousy. In that moment, and for no good reason at all, I made a whole set of assumptions–that she had gotten easily pregnant with the cute little boy at her side, that we wouldn’t have much in common.”  Of course, they do have a lot in common, though that wouldn’t have been discovered if she hadn’t set those preconceived notions aside.

Edenland has an amazing post about the changes afoot in her house.  I think it’s incredible to watch someone jump, to have them allow you to see that initial step.  And how breathtaking is this ending when they come home from their respective trips: “In Africa I bought myself a red wooden mask. In Mexico, Dave bought himself a green ceramic mask.  We then met each other back at home.  And took them off.”

Lastly, Family Building with a Twist has a post about her son’s first day at daycare.  I cried reading this post, my preschool woes still pretty fresh in my mind (my G-d, do y’all remember when I hid in the library?)  It’s a bittersweet post about your child growing up and inviting the rest of the world in.

The roundup to the Roundup: Should I open the Harry Potter sorting hat (and would you let me sort you)?  Do you like to be the only person reading a book?  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 27th and May 4th) 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’ve never said that aloud.  I still have never said that aloud unless I one day read this post to someone.  But the thought occurred to me as I was washing dishes, much in the same way that there are relationships where we say to ourselves, “I wish I hadn’t fallen in love with him/her.”  And we don’t completely mean it; we just mean that we wish whatever we had fallen in love with was easier.

I wish I hadn’t fallen in love with writing, which is so difficult to find time to do.  There are so many activities you can do around other people; so many activities where the level of noise doesn’t matter, where you can move in and out of the activity with ease.  Writing is fussy.  I can’t write when there is noise, I can’t writing when there is music playing, I can’t write when people are sitting too close to me, or when I have too long a to-do list, or when the space around me is messy.  I can’t write when I’m too tired, which is usually when I can grab time to write: early in the morning or late in the night.  I can’t write when I am in certain moods.  I can’t write when I’ve been away from a project for a long time; I need to take days to get reacquainted with it, learn it again, even though the characters felt so real it was as if they were in the room with me the last time I wrote it.

I wish I didn’t love to write because if I didn’t love to write, words wouldn’t matter quite so much to me.  I could let words go instead of holding them tightly.  Writers record; not only our own words, but everything said to us, everything we overhear, everything we understand between the lines.  I wish words didn’t weigh quite so much, weren’t so slippy and difficult to hold.  I wish I could set them down somewhere instead of carrying them with me wherever I go.

I wish I didn’t care about writing so deeply, didn’t cling to the act of writing in the same way a surgeon holds a scalpel.  It defines her.  If I didn’t care so deeply, then I could approach writing with the detachment I bring to other tasks.  Either they happen or they don’t.  And I don’t take the completion of those tasks personally, don’t wrap up my self-esteem in those tasks.  It is a shame that I chose writing to do that with, an act that often feels outside my control, as if the project is leading me instead of the other way around.

I wish the consumption of the end product was fulfilled by myself instead of others, like a snake swallowing her tail.  I wish that it was just as satisfying to write something and never let anyone see it as it is to write words and release them into the world.  I wish I could spread wings and tuck them around all my words like a mother duck nestling her ducklings under her body, when instead it feels closer to shoving my words outside naked, to stand in an open square, with dozens of people walking around.

Even the blog posts are naked.  In an open square.  With dozens of people walking around.

There was a great essay by Ashley Judd that made its way around the Internet a few weeks ago, a rallying cry for women to not stand idly by while the media attempts to make them feel like crap about their appearance.  The essay as a whole is fantastic, but I kept returning to this one paragraph that niggled at my brain because it felt like it didn’t tell the whole story.  Or maybe it just made me feel guilty.  One or the other.

Judd explains that she doesn’t read her reviews or interviews anymore.  She went from reading everything to only reading the good ones, and then realized this was detrimental too.  She writes,

Over time, I matured into the understanding that good and bad are equally fanciful interpretations. I do not want to give my power, my self-esteem, or my autonomy, to any person, place, or thing outside myself. I thus abstain from all media about myself. The only thing that matters is how I feel about myself, my personal integrity, and my relationship with my Creator. Of course, it’s wonderful to be held in esteem and fond regard by family, friends, and community, but a central part of my spiritual practice is letting go of otheration. And casting one’s lot with the public is dangerous and self-destructive, and I value myself too much to do that.

Of course, she’s correct.  It would be best if our self-esteem was constructed internally, completely within our control.  Because external validation can (1) sometimes be difficult to obtain, (2) isn’t quite as satisfying in the long-term once you receive it; you always need more and you often begin to second guess the esteem helping already in your belly once you start to digest it and (3) you are in a constant state of seeking it without knowing when it will come next much in the same way hunters and gatherers consume vs. people who produce their own food.

In fact, the analogy of hunter/gatherers vs. farmers is probably the best way I can explain what I’m calling esteem privilege.  All people need food.  The majority of us don’t have the skills to produce our own food, therefore, we aren’t farmers, raising crops and nurturing animals until we need to eat them.  If all the food stores disappeared tomorrow, I — like you — would be roaming the streets, foraging for berries and hunting the great Morningstar Tofu Chicken (you may be hunting the real deal, but I would seek that mythical Tofu Chicken until my dying day).  We would need to eat, but we’d lack the knowledge and resources of farmers.  Over time, if we received support, if we found knowledge and were loaned a few seeds, we may get to enter the world of farming which brings with it a continuous, easily obtainable source of food.

But then it wouldn’t ring true if we turned around, once we were there and said, “everyone can farm.”  And it certainly wouldn’t ring true to the hunter/gatherers if the farmer’s daughter who has known no other way of life were to tell us that farming is open to everyone.  If that were the case, we would never use that time to forage and hunt knowing that there was a way to live that led more directly to food.  This is not to put down hunter/gatherer societies, and I know that most have a higher quality of life in many aspects compared to the stagnant western world, but the point is not to say one is better than the other; the point is that one practice pretty much promises food in the end barring natural disasters or a maniac running into your barn and slaughtering your animals, and the other practice hopes for food in the end.  And if you offered me one or the other, I’d take the semi-sure thing even if it was much more work overall and left me little free time.  You can’t eat time.

External validation — what Judd cautions is a dangerous practice (and it is), what makes us feel like crap about ourselves when we can’t find it — is akin to foraging.  You are asking the universe to bring you food… or good feelings.  And sometimes it comes.  And sometimes it doesn’t.  Internal validation is like farming.  You make your own garden grow.  It takes hard work, and there may be setbacks, but in the end, you have a steady supply of food, delivered right to your home multiple times a day.

I guess what didn’t ring true for me is that Judd, on one hand, is a farmer now, even if she hasn’t been a farmer all her life.  It is easier to find internal validation when you already have external validation, when you’re not in a state of hunger for attention, kindness, or accolades.  Because most of us are pretty damn hungry for that positivity.

I feel like I’m entering the lush world of internal validation ONLY because I have spent a lot of time with external validation.  It is easy to start building it from within when it’s already around you.  I’m not saying this to be immodest but to make a point; I have accomplished a lot in the last few years, reached personal goals that I wanted to reach and also received accolades and opportunities based on my hard work.  And so, because I have that abundance on the outside, it’s easier to crawl around inside and build that self-esteem.  In addition, teaching life lessons to the twins; I’m also learning some of these things myself.   Reinforcing what I should be doing.  When the farmer teaches his kids how to plant the seeds, he’s also getting some additional practice and reminders in planting them himself.

And to that point, even the twins will be more Farmer Judd than hunter/gatherer kids.  They may not be growing up in a home with monetary wealth, but they certainly have esteem-building opportunities that other kids don’t have because of their parents as well as their own intellect (I had nothing to do with the Steve Jobs note; that was a teacher marking the Wolvog due to his intelligence) and talents.  They too will probably experience low self-esteem, but they have so many advantages because they are constantly receiving this message from the outside telling them that they rock.  And because they get it, they can crawl inside and build that self-esteem.  Which is to say that I think the whole “don’t compliment your kids too much” ideology is a load of crap.  I give them a healthy dose of reality, but I make sure they hear several times a day how much they rock.  How else will they be full enough to give farming a try?  People can’t farm when their stomach is growling — that’s when they need to spend their time foraging to stop the hunger.  But when people aren’t tending to their immediate needs, they leave room to seek knowledge, understanding, resources.

And that is esteem privilege.  We talk about male privilege and socio-economic privilege and white privilege, but I googled the term and couldn’t find one place on the Internet that spoke about esteem privilege, a privilege that separates out members of society just as much as money or race.  We are not wealthy, but my kids are growing up with two parents who are over-educated writers who give our time and patience to our kids, something that we’ve noticed others can’t or don’t do.  We give them the tools to achieve so they’ll feel good about themselves knowing full well that it’s that advantage that is going to lead to great things more than throwing money at them.  That is esteem privilege; knowing without a doubt that you are loved and respected, being told that anything is possible and given the tools to not only achieve but to deal with disappointments when they come.  My kids have the advantage here over so many other kids in their school, and one day they will have the confidence to take that chance or to try again when they’ve been rejected because we gave them this external esteem from which to learn how to create self-esteem.  If all goes according to plan, they’ll take advantage of their esteem privilege and keep going during a time when other people would give up, not believing in themselves.

I work on this every single day because it is the advantage my parents gave me.  So if I am a farmer, it is because my parents gave me the knowledge that farmers have, handed me a plow, and helped me out so I could grow my own food in the future.  And I have to admit that my personality is such that I have a tendency to go hunter-and-gathering from time to time, forgetting those farming lessons, but that esteem privilege is such that the muscle memory is always there.  I have never spent a day of my life wondering whether or not I’m loved, feeling respected and encouraged, and that is esteem privilege and it has given me an advantage even when age, race, or sex might hold me back.

With Judd’s essay, context matters.  The fact that she has self-esteem because she received external esteem matters.  For instance, I could write a post about how comments don’t matter (oh, please, don’t believe that.  They really really matter) but you’d have to take into account the fact that my viewpoint is constructed after getting a bunch of comments.  Again, I’m not saying this to be immodest, but because it’s fact.  Conversations happen here, and I’m grateful for them.  You often make me see my words in an entirely new way.  And I’d be sad if the comments went away.

I come from a place of comment privilege, so of course I get to look at them through that lens.  I happen to see their enormous worth, so I point out their intrinsic value.  But I’ve equally heard people who receive a lot of comments write things like, “comments don’t matter that much” or “it doesn’t matter where the conversation takes place.”  And that just isn’t true except for a few like-minded comment privilege people because that is pure comment privilege pontification.  For the majority of bloggers, it is clear from the number of blog posts on the topic, that comments matter very much and many people would like to have the conversation unfold in their comment box in order to keep all the thoughts in one place vs. scattered across the Internet in various streams.

Context there is everything.  If you have a lot of external validation, it’s easy to build your internal validation.  If you have a lot of comments, it’s easy to let go of the hold comments have on you.  Without one, it is very difficult to get the other.  Not impossible; but those people are probably boring and eat really healthy too.  And go to sleep at a normal hour.

Every once in a while, someone adds a comment to Operation Heads Up where they say that a procedure “wasn’t that bad” and then follow it up by stating that they took a previous commenter’s advice and took two Alleve ahead of time.  I sometimes want to add an editor’s note and say that the Alleve is the most important part, even though it’s usually mentioned in passing towards the end.  Because those people have no clue what their HSG or sonohysterogram or pick-your-uncomfortable-procedure would be like if they hadn’t received that external knowledge first, enabling them to build a very different internal knowledge.  Do you see the theme here?  There are so many places in life where privilege comes out to play, and we can’t dismiss that privilege and honestly think that it doesn’t matter.

I’m writing this because I don’t want to get hung up on this paragraph in Judd’s essay because the rest of it kicked some serious ass.  I have this deep need to release it and stop playing with the word “otheration” in my head while I try to sink down into humble warrior pose in yoga.  I have nothing but respect for Ashley Judd as an actress and writer; but she is coming from a place of privilege, being named one of People’s most beautiful women and being a well-respected actress.  She should be proud of the work she has completed internally, and perhaps her desire to go internal stems from experiences with the external.  But I also think that we would all opt for internal validation if we could; if we all had esteem privilege to get there.

If you plan on reading the series or you’re still reading 50 Shades of Grey, skip this post.  I make a prediction, and I’m going to be talking specifics; namely, orgasms, orgasms, and more orgasms.

Can we start there?  The orgasms?  I am finding it very difficult to suspend my disbelief over the frequency, intensity, and physical acrobatics of the multitude of orgasms scattered across the pages of this book.  Ana is a virgin who has never masturbated when the book begins.  That I can find perfectly believable.  There are college students out there who have never masturbated — there are probably grown women who have never masturbated.  That I can accept.

But without ever stimulating her clitoris or having sex, she is able to achieve the first time being touched on her good-girl mind-blowing orgasms.  Multiple times.  In standing positions.  Wait — read that last fragment again.  She is having orgasms standing-up.  I am not saying this isn’t possible, nor am I saying that multiple orgasms isn’t possible, nor am I saying that having an orgasm your first time having sex at 21 isn’t possible.  But until someone steps forward and says, “I was a 21-year-old virgin who has never masturbated, and I just had sex for the first time yesterday and achieved multiple orgasms within the same round of sex, and then even achieved orgasm upright,” I can’t believe in Ana.  Actually, even if that person stepped forward, I can’t believe in Ana.

Here’s my analogy (come on, it’s me, you knew an analogy was coming in this post): skilled doctors are capable of performing surgery.  We even sometimes have people without training react in an emergency situation and do what amounts to haphazard surgery such as sawing off a body part.  BUT we do not have untrained first year medical students walk into the operating theater in September and perform open-heart surgery on a person.  What Ana achieves sexually is completely believable for someone who knows their body well, how to bring it to orgasm and is so skilled at reaching orgasm that they can even remain upright while experiencing one.  She is behaving like the surgeon of orgasms while she’s just a first year medical student.  Hence why I keep getting hung up on this fact.

I know this is supposed to clue us in as readers as to how mind-blowing the sex is between Edward-Without-Fangs (I like to call Christian EWF) and Ana, but it steps over a line of believability for me.  10 – 15% of women never have an orgasm under any circumstances.  And 75% of women cannot achieve an orgasm from sex alone (meaning, without something other than the penis inside of the body.  They need manual stimulation to achieve orgasm or a vibrator or… well… get yourself hot and bothered using your imagination).  So Ana fits into that quarter of women — again, totally believable — but of that 25% of women, how many of them achieved orgasm the first time they had sex and achieved that orgasm without any other stimulation except his penis going in and out and in and out…

I know someone will leave a comment on this post telling me that they have an orgasm 100% of the time, every single one the more difficult vaginal orgasm, and that they were a virgin who had never masturbated until age 21 — just like Ana.  And I say good for you.  But as a reader, in order to find a character believable, I need to have these types of silent questions answered, and so far, E L James hasn’t explained to me how Ana can experience this.  Mother Theresa was saintly, so completely giving, selfless people exist in this world.  But that doesn’t mean that I will believe a saintly, selfless character until I understand what brought that character to that point of self-actualization.  We’re given a reason for why Christian is “50 Shades of Fucked Up” from his abusive childhood.  But we’re not given a reason for why Ana is such a sexual high achiever.

Moving on.

I am currently on book two, though my assumption is that the birth control in book one is the Chekhovian gun that needs to go off by the third book.  I’m assuming that Ana is going to be pregnant at some point.  And I also believe that will be the turning point in her relationship with EWF/Christian, probably making her the dom and him the sub since the pregnancy gives her power.

You don’t need to tell me if I’m right; that’s just what I’m guessing.  The writing is such that James practically wraps neon around the obtaining of the birth control JUST SO YOU NOTICE IT.  And now, if that gun doesn’t go off, I need to wonder what the point of showing it in the first book was.

Moving on again.

Though I had heard of fan fiction prior to 50 Shades of Grey hitting the mainstream, I finally poked around and found it.  Television writing often calls for a spec script — a sample script using the characters on the television show — except in that case, you are auditioning for a job using the characters who are already in place.  With fan fiction, you are showing your deep love for the characters by continuing the work started by the author, moving them around in their world, or taking them out altogether and placing them somewhere new.  Harry Potter goes to Durmstrang!  Edward enters into a three-way with Bella and Jacob!  Or, here’s a whole new slew of students entering Hogwarts.

As a reader, I completely understand the impulse to do this.  As an author, it makes me — to be honest — a little uncomfortable.  I guess it comes down to the idea if someone owns a character just because they brought them to life or if characters are like real children — the parents raise them to a certain point, and then others can take over and have their own relationships with that person.

So let’s start with these questions (and I used Harry Potter because I saw over 500,000 stories written about him in the fanfic base):

1. Does JK Rowling own Harry Potter?
2. Does JK Rowling lay claim to all boy wizards?
3. Would it be kosher to write a story that has a boy vampire who was orphaned when his parents were staked by the evil vampire, Christodeath, and now he is in vampire boarding school and Christodeath is coming after him?  And he is the only vampire who can stake Christodeath?

I would argue that (1) JK Rowling owns Harry Potter.  (2) But she does not lay claim to all boy wizards.  There were boy wizards before Harry and there should be boy wizards after Harry, even if all boy wizards now draw a comparison to Harry Potter.  And (3) While I think it’s kosher to write that story, I don’t think it’s kosher to post it on a blog, upload it to a fan fiction site, or publish it.  I think it’s the dissemination of that story that makes me uncomfortable; not the writing it itself — though I know a lot of people would not agree with me.

I think this aspect of the book — that 50 Shades of Grey piggybacks on the work done by Stephenie Meyer since it started out as Twilight fan fiction — is what has been bothering me the most.  Oro (who is a book seller and knows her novels AND fanfic) even pointed out the fan fiction code in her comment: “you should not make a profit on fanfiction, that’s part of the freakin’ deal.”

But there is a fine tradition of borrowing from past plotlines to create a new one.  Twilight itself is supposed to be a modernization (and vampirezation) of Pride and Prejudice.  At what point is it okay to do this?  Any time?  When the author is dead or has made it clear that he/she is done with those characters?  Never?  Can you borrow plotline as long as you don’t borrow characters?  Or characters as long as the plotline is different?

Authors borrow; authors reformulate; authors reimagine: none of this is unique to E L James.  So why does 50 Shades of Grey feel like it oversteps a line?  Because Twilight was a massive success only a few years ago (as opposed to borrowing from long-dead Austen)?  Because it mirrors it too closely, scene for scene?  Because James wrote it as Twilight fan fiction to begin with?  I have no idea.  I would love to hear from people who write fan fiction and understand if there is a code that exists, and what the fanfic community thinks of this book moving into the main marketplace.

Those are my questions for now.  Apologies; if I’m slogging through these books, I feel the need to discuss them.  And because — really — who would pass up the opportunity to write the word orgasm that many times?

And I’m going to add that EWF/Christian and Bella/Ana are growing on me, starting to feel like old horny friends.