I am not going to participate in the SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) blackout day tomorrow to protest the bill, though I have a deep respect for sites such Wikipedia giving people a taste of what life might be like if SOPA passes.  Tomorrow, when you go to access many websites and blogs, you will find yourself either staring at a black screen or redirected to a landing page.  I considered doing it because the bill frightens me, but I realized that the blackout is very similar to placing your blog in a self-imposed “time out” to teach a lesson — and time outs are a parenting maneuver that Josh and I have chosen not to use with the twins.  So it didn’t make a lot of sense to use it on my blog.

The way I see the blackout is very similar to telling a child that they need to go sit in the corner for the play period to give them a taste of how they’ll miss out on fun or be removed from being with their friends if they can’t behave in a certain manner.  Some kids do learn from that time apart.  But others didn’t really care about the time apart and therefore the lesson is lost on them.  In those cases, it doesn’t elicit the desired behaviour as efficiently as positive, active approaches do.  I guess what I’m trying to say is that I don’t believe lawmakers give two shits about Stirrup Queens, and I think even if you give two shits about Stirrup Queens and the blackout goads you into writing your lawmaker opposing SOPA, I think it also has a good chance of eliciting the same response that some children give to time outs.  Which is no response at all.

As a writer, I am obviously anti-intellectual property theft, whether that is stealing a finished product, reusing someone else’s work without permission, or taking someone else’s idea — especially when you don’t give credit.  It’s a huge problem — I can’t tell you how many times my publishers have had to go after websites that offer my books as illegal downloads.  From a writer’s point-of-view, it is upsetting and frustrating and feels akin to having someone run into your kitchen and grab some food from your refrigerator.  I want people to read my books just as I want people to have food to eat; but in both cases, I’d like to be compensated.  I worked hard to create those books and when people steal them, it hurts me.

At the same time, out-and-out thievery that damages the artist is such a tiny portion of the Internet, therefore SOPA scares me because the language is like using a sledgehammer to bang a tiny nail into the wall to hold up a picture.  SOPA affects ALL sites, not just piracy sites.  As the Washington Post explains:

Rather than receiving a notification for copyright violations, sites now face immediate action — up to and including being taken down before they have a chance to respond. Intermediary sites like YouTube and Flickr could lose their “safe harbor” protections. Nonprofit or low-budget sites might not have the resources to defend themselves against costly lawsuits. And, meanwhile, larger companies like Google and Facebook could be forced to spend considerable time and money policing their millions of offerings each day for offending material.

In other words, we’re not just talking about piracy sites that offer up free copies of my book — sites that should be dealt with harshly (all other artists be damned, but my books — those things deserve enormous protection…).  But we’re talking about sites that you use every day: Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, your blog.  Sites that should have copyright violations removed immediately (or really, never used at all) but who are also humans who sometimes make mistakes and should have the ability to fix them.  Every online writer should be familiar with basic copyright laws, but not all online writers are familiar with those laws because people use their blogs for a multitude of reasons.  It’s similar to the way all professional bakers know health code laws, but not all home bakers who are selling muffins at the school bake sale do, even if they should.

Instead of a blackout, I want to draw lawmakers’ attention to the best of the Internet — the best that could get silenced if SOPA passes.  I want to direct lawmakers to the sharing of information on Wikipedia, to the leveling of the movie industry playing field with the advent of YouTube which gets short films out there to the world, to the support and information that can be found on personal blogs.  I want to highlight the good that comes from the online world instead of withdrawing our sites in order to teach a lesson.

I’m proposing an active, positive alternative to tomorrow’s blackout day as Free Advice Day — it’s what I get out of reading personal blogs.  On January 18th, post the best advice you have to give.  It can be something concrete such as how to get out a ballpoint ink stain (how does one get out ballpoint pen?) to something more ethereal such as how you know that love solves all problems, to something very specific such as how you got through the first days after a loss or how to give yourself an injection to something much larger such as how you make sure you never take your partner for granted.  Think about what words you can contribute to the Internet (and if your ideas build off of someone else’s ideas, for fuck sake, give them credit — this is SOPA we’re protesting!) and make the world a better place.  Let’s collectively show the good of the Internet while leaving the door open to brainstorm better ways to stop online piracy.  I can’t believe a blogosphere that can collectively put their heads together on a daily basis to give each other such fantastic life advice can’t solve a problem such as ensuring that people don’t outright steal.

Who is in?  There will be a linky tool on my advice post tomorrow so people can include a link to their advice for Protest SOPA/Free Advice Day.

After the bags had been taken to the dump and the boxes were lined up for Goodwill; after the bins were labeled so I’d never have to open them again if I didn’t want and the things we are passing along to others were neatly packaged up in the laundry room, waiting delivery; after the play room had been tidied and combed over for items worth discarding, Josh and I sat down on the sofa and surveyed the room while the twins played upstairs.  Despite containing four walls covered in books — thousands upon thousands of books — as well as sporting equipment and a few random toys, the basement looked empty.  Part of my brain looked at it as pristine, a space waiting for something to happen.  The other part of my brain looked at it as deflated, void of all those early years — the climby toys and the bouncey ball pit, the ride-on toys and rockers.  It looked like a place where something once happened instead of a place that was waiting to become something new.

I woke up in the morning with my chest in knots thinking about the boxes going to Goodwill.  I am always afraid that I’ve gotten rid of something I really want.  That Josh has accidentally placed something in the donate pile that was meant to be returned to the storage room.  I was awake for about 45 minutes before I finally got out of bed, leaving Josh behind sleeping.  I kept thinking about how much more I loved our house right now, how it feels less cramped and cluttered.  And how good it felt to get rid of some things — the broken incense holder I found in one box and the photographs of an ex-boyfriend — and how scared I felt to let go of anything.  I feel as if our memories are imprinted on all those tangible items: that they are the portals through which we have access to those memories.  I can’t tell you how many things I found that I had forgotten about without the tangible item to jog my memory.  And that scared me; releasing those tangible items even though they were no longer needed.  Because how will I remember things without them?

And do I really need to remember everything?

The house keeps changing as the twins age, like a face maturing.  Sometimes I just need a little bit to catch up mentally, to get used to how old everything looks.  To remember that there are good things that come with change; new experiences, new memories.  And there is the fact that we can’t live in the past; we need to be in the present, and the present twins are no longer the ones who played with the xylophone shaped like a dog or the fake cell phone.  They now play a real guitar and use a real iPad.  So we’re going out to celebrate the new house, talk about what we want to do with the new space.

I’m leaving that doubting side of my brain at home.

Every so often, we gut our storage room, letting go of more of our past.  Back in college, a girl in my department lost everything she owned in an apartment fire.  I think about her whenever there is a need to go into the basement storage room because when she returned to class, telling us about the fire — which was a famous fire that engulfed the bar below the apartment so it had been in the newspaper daily while she was away, almost as if the articles were a placeholder for the lives displaced by the flames — she put everything into perspective for us.

Everyone in the department was a writer, therefore, we were absolutely sickened over the idea that her words had gone up in smoke.  But she said that there were plenty of copies of her stories in her departmental file or at friend’s apartments.  Most of her clothes were there to keep her warm; they didn’t really have sentimental value.  Her books, knickknacks she picked up from her travels, pictures — she realized from this fire that she could live without all of it, and the only thing she missed at all was something she received from the Dalai Lama which was irreplaceable.  And she mourned that item from the Dalai Lama, but could let the rest of it go.

I didn’t think I could ever have her overall attitude towards possessions — and I don’t — but every few years, I get to a place where I am absolutely at peace with the idea of getting rid of things.  And then it becomes a huge weight on me until it happens: from the time I get the idea that we need to clean until the time that everything is donated or given away or at the dump.

I came to pick up that weight recently when I had cause to go down into the storage room to find an old toy.  First of all, the storage room is unusable once again.  There are too many boxes and there’s nowhere to shift them around.  I managed to move a few into the laundry room and sift through some boxes, but I realized two things.  (1) I had saved much more than I needed to save.  There were a lot of things in those boxes that I would never use again such as random stuffed animals or puzzles that annoyed the crap out of me the first time around.  (2) Having my hands in those boxes was so emotionally painful that I felt like I was underwater the entire time I was down there.  I couldn’t breathe normally.

I hadn’t opened most of those boxes in many years.  I had carefully packed away all of the twins’ favourite toys from babyhood.  There was the plastic puppy who barked when you pulled him around on a string and sorting toys and two Noah’s Ark sets because people love to give those to twins.  I had packed them up so carefully both to save space and fit more in the box, but also because I thought we’d need them again soon.  I found myself throwing everything around in the boxes, and since I hadn’t removed the batteries from one toy, I heard a dog barking over and over again every time the depressed button shifted.  I literally was sifting around the toys as I stir cooking pasta, and the puzzle pieces were leaving their wooden cases and the trucks were getting scattered as I tossed them around.  I didn’t care.  I just jammed the tops back down on the boxes and went back upstairs even though I could still hear the dog toy barking every few seconds in his box.

Psychoanalysts believe the mind is like a house, with the basement being the subconscious; memories and thoughts we can access by walking down the stairs, which lay beneath our daily living space, but isn’t part of our hourly world.  And in many ways, I have treated our physical basement as a receptacle for everything from our past as well as things I’d like to tuck away and just not deal with for a moment.  If you ask me where the old toys are, I can tell you exactly where in the house they are stored.  But I don’t think about them on a daily basis.  I don’t go down there most of the time.

A therapist would have a field day discussing my toy search.

As you read this, we are gutting the basement.  I am selling a few things.  I have boxes that are going out to various people, and others that I am repacking neatly and writing the contents on the outside, intended either for my own future child or a sibling’s future child.  I won’t have to open them again if I don’t want to.  I’ll be able to send someone else downstairs to fetch something if we ever need to pull anything out.

I would like someone else to play with these things again.

I am trying to conjure up that attitude that the girl in my department had and stop feeling so sentimental about every small item.  They are just things.  I can let most of them go.  We don’t need to keep every book, every stuffed animal, every game.  If another child comes along, we don’t need to put out 100 toys.  We can put out 25, and they will still be happy.

I know in the past that I’ve treated cleaning like this as doing double duty of gutting my mental basement; of discarding the emotions that are boxed up down there.  I know that when we lived in our old apartment and I dumped all my research down the garbage chute, I thought I was also doing the hard work of closing up that unfinished degree.  I know that when we gutted the basement the last time in 2010, using the money for our first trip to Disney, I thought that I had made peace with those leftover baby items.

It doesn’t really work that way.  One thing doesn’t really solve the other.

I told the twins how we were going to spend the weekend.  That we’d be cleaning from the bottom up instead of our usual top down.  That we’d be boxing up things and giving things away and taking things to the dump, and I expected them to be helpful and generous and not make this any harder than it needs to be.  The ChickieNob immediately went into frantic mode thinking about her toys going to other people — she’s the sort who likes to save every tiny goody bag toy — but I promised that the things that mattered most, the things she’d mourn if she ever lost them, would remain in our basement.  She’d see them again when we had a new baby to play with them.

And she looked so hopeful, following after me to ask if I was going back to the doctor.  That she would be such a good big sister and help me.  She would play with the baby so I could get things done.  I would see this weekend how helpful she could be.  And there’s no way to explain to her that there is no level in which a person can be good enough, helpful enough, loving enough to ensure that they get the sibling they desire.  I told her that she should just be herself; that I knew already what a helpful person she was, and then I skittered on to talking about deflating her ball pit, making a work area in the living room, creating more spaces in the house that were for the twins to do with as they will.

You wonder, as someone who has her own filled basement, what sort of boxes your children are storing in theirs.  I can’t keep their mental basements neat any more than my mother can clean mine; but I do wonder what from this longing is going into boxes in her mental storage room.  What she’ll decide to toss when she goes through cleaning.  What will go up in the flames of forgetfulness as she ages, that she doesn’t miss at all.  That she has learned to let go of because it’s they’re just things, just thoughts.

This just may be the first post I’ve ever written knowing exactly how the comments will go before I have even written the first word.  There will be some who say, “oh shit, now I get it.  I saw that and didn’t know what the hell my friend was talking about.”  And there will be some who will say, “that is so fucking stupid that I can’t believe grown women believe this is raising breast cancer awareness.”  And there will be about four people — most of whom comment anonymously — who say that it’s just a fun game and it raises awareness and if I don’t like it click away and if I’m writing a post about this, I must be a loser.

I am a loser.

Today I encountered the latest breast cancer awareness meme on Facebook.  You write, “I am going to X for Y months!” and fill in the X and Y with a country that reflects your birth month and the day of your birth.  For instance, if your birthday was today, it would read, “I am going to Mexico for thirteen months!”

And somehow, from that, we are supposed to learn something about breast cancer.  Even though breast cancer itself isn’t mentioned.  Even though this meme assumes that the reader somehow forgets that breast cancer exists until they are reminded once again with a meme.  As if I’m eating my Cheerios and reading Facebook and suddenly shout out, “oh crap!  I totally forgot all about breast cancer!  Now I remember that breast cancer exists… wheeeew.”  And somehow, that saves a life.

I am all for education — I will forever be grateful for Toddler Planet’s viral post about inflammatory breast cancer.  That bit of social media potentially saved lives.  It made me aware of something I didn’t know existed.  It gave me concrete steps to take if I saw any of the symptoms listed in the post.

What I do have a problem with is slacktavism because it’s lazy.  Because I think it does more harm than good when it makes people roll their eyes rather than listen.  I wrote about this a while back with the fake pregnancy meme that went around and how it had the potential to hurt.  And while moving somewhere may not evoke the same emotional reaction as a pregnancy announcement, I find the whole thing to be equally as annoying — and yes, I will write this type of post every time I see it because it bothers me in the same way that I feel an internal rage building when someone describes themselves as “really nice” when we all know that they’re a total bitch.

Because unless you are the type of person who calls your friends and coyly tries to confuse them, I don’t see why you’d engage in that same behaviour on Facebook.  And if you are the type of person who calls your friends and says, “I’m moving to Mexico.  Just kidding!  Think about breast cancer!” well..  I truly don’t understand why people think that the very same social rules that we use to comport ourselves in the face-to-face world aren’t applicable to the online world.

I know I’m going to be told to lighten up.  That it’s just a game.  It’s just Facebook.  It’s just for fun.  But breast cancer isn’t for fun.  Breast cancer isn’t a joke.  It isn’t something to be taken lightly.  And frankly, I think it sucks that I have to live in a world where people hear that someone is offended and their response is lighten up, just as much as people who tell me to lighten up probably think it sucks to live in a world with someone as un-fun as me.

We downloaded Google Earth for the iPad, which is a free app.  It has brought us hours of amusement.  First and foremost, I love that when you put in a new location, the screen sucks backwards as if you have suddenly lifted into the air, and then you fly across the screen until you land in the new place.  We virtually visit Disney World, using our fingers to drag ourselves between the park and the Contemporary Hotel.  We walk through neighbourhoods in London, seeing how all the streets intersect.  I sometimes go back to old places I’ve lived and follow the roads between different landmarks.  It’s as good as Adele, in that regard, if you’re looking for a good cry.

But our absolute favourite thing to do is to put in fictional places and see where Google Earth places us.  We’ve looked up Privet Drive and Hogwarts (Hogwarts is obviously unplottable, but we still tried it anyway).  We’ve looked up Neverland (it brings up nothing).  Terabithia (again, nothing).  Radiator Springs (if you add in Route 66, it takes you somewhere in Arizona where the road layout is close enough to Radiator Springs that if your children don’t poke around too much, they will totally find it believable).

I think it is a major failing of Google Earth not to pepper in a few additional, fictional locations.  Or, at the very least, create a second app called Google Earth Fantasy, where you could go to the Shire or Whangdoodleland or Cockaigne.  Wouldn’t you love to see a map of London and then see Diagon Alley coming out from behind of The Leaky Cauldron?

What fictional place would you want included in Google Earth Fantasy?

 *******

Today is obviously Friday the 13th.  I couldn’t remember ever remarking that it was Friday the 13th in a Friday Blog Roundup even though it happens all the time.  By which I mean that the Roundup is always on a Friday and Friday the 13th is always a Friday, therefore, the two must intersect.  I searched my own blog and found mentions of it in pretty much two year jumps.  The last time was 2010, so it feels like we’re ripe for another remark about the date.

I wrote this last time and it still stands, except instead of noticing it on Twitter, I noticed it when I was writing down plans for the weekend and I said, “oh my G-d, it’s Friday the 13th this weekend!”

Today is Friday the 13th.  That only occurred to me because someone Tweeted about it earlier in the week.  I also missed the fact that it was 8/9/10 on Monday.  I am not the brightest woman when it comes to dates, though I have 2012 circled on my calendar not just because the world is ending that year, but because it’s also Queen Elizabeth’s diamond jubilee.

Though I’m usually fairly anxious around certain dates, allowing my imagination to run towards grotesquely disturbing scenarios, I’ve never had big feelings concerning Friday the 13th.  Even if I live … like … 2 miles from Camp Crystal Lake and I totally know someone who knows someone who is the cousin of the counselor who decapitated Mrs. Voorhees.

It’s one of those dates that I feel like I should have big feelings about.  If I’m not worried, then I must be a fool.

You know how girls pinched each other’s arms with a Cootie Shot to ward off boy germs?  Mentioning that it’s Friday the 13th feels like a horror Cootie Shot.

Do you care about Friday the 13th or are you not superstitious about the date?

*******

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:

• “A Letter to My Fertile Friends” (MMCC – IF Only)
• “Failed” (Are You Kidding Me?)
• “What I Was” (TheStorkDiaries)
• “Has Anger Solved Your Other Problems?” (DoctorMama)
• “Plan B” (Even Miracles Take a Little Time)
• “Mawage, that Bwessed Awangmen” (Eggs in a Row)
• “Devastation…” (For We Are Bound By Symmetry)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Baby Smiling in Back Seat has an interesting post about theft, and it made me consider tangible items (of which I had none) and non-tangible items (of which the perspective sort of changes whether you ask me or you ask the person “stolen” from — I don’t know if you can really steal friends, but someone else, for instance, might say I stole a friend).  It’s not only an interesting topic on a very organ squirmy subject, but it also makes you think about the various ways you may have inadvertently or purposefully trespassed on another person’s life.  Food for thought.

Miss Conception has a post about the hidden side of grief, the additional things that are missed after the initial loss.  The day before what should have been her baby shower, she sits with her grief over her twins.  It is not just the twins who aren’t here, but it is all the happy moments that can’t be partaken in due to their death.  She writes, “Now…there will be no celebration. Tomorrow there won’t be any acknowledgement that they were supposed to be here at all. No one will even know that it was supposed to be my shower because the invitations never got the chance to be mailed. It will be just another day, like every other.”  But it’s not just another day to her.  Please shower her with love as she mourns her loss.

My Scar Smiles at Me also has a post about mourning, which becomes an exploration of why we mourn, why we don’t just sweep life under the rug.  This thought took my breath away with its brilliance: “Yes, I don’t want to grieve every moment of my life. But I finally just said to my husband, ‘I don’t want to spend all day on the toilet, but no one wants to never ever take a shit’  its part of life and I while I don’t mind keeping it to myself now and then, the reality is we don’t talk much about our bowel movements at work, but there is unspoken space (both in time and equipment) provided for that necessary part of life.”  You have to read this whole post.

Lastly, With Just a Little Help has a post about being ok-ish after their last IVF cycle.  She relays a frustrating conversation with the physician’s assistant who messes up telling her important information about her embryos, as well as a difficult conversation with their parents.  But it is a final phone call — a call from a friend — that reminds her that she is still ok-ish.  A great post about the aftermath.

The roundup to the Roundup: Which fictional places would you like to see on Google Earth Fantasy?  Do you care that it is Friday the 13th?  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between January 6th and January 13th) 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.