I’m going to admit it – I am often overwhelmed lately by how much there is to do online and how much you feel like you’re missing out if you log off. Before smartphones, it was never a given that someone could reach you via email. Now, with my blackberry, I can literally check email 24/7 no matter where I am if I choose, and the pressure is silently there to do so or miss out.

When it was just blogging and there were a handful of blogs out there, it was easy and enjoyable to keep up. But now it’s not just blogging and commenting — it’s Twitter and Facebook and every other fleeting social media site. Many of them move in real time, and if you log off, you miss the conversation.

And then it feels like you’re back in middle school, left out.

It literally feels like the cliques form not by just what people are writing or what they like to read (or, as it was in the past, when you started your blog — people who started writing around the same time tended to read one another): the break down sometimes feels like those who spend a lot of time online and those who don’t.  Those who can hang out on Twitter, and those who can’t.  It’s not that the ones who pop on for a moment don’t say something equally important, but they’re certainly not equally heard as those who are ensconced in numerous conversations at once.  Those who can read every post, and those who can’t.  Those who can always comment, and those who can’t.  The list is endless.

There are suddenly 1000 ways to feel on the outside of things.

The pressure is 100% self-imposed and wholly dependent on the person’s perspective.  You may consider someone a well-connected, popular person online.  They may consider themselves on the fringe (and I’m sure it also occurs vice versa, though I would hazard a guess that more people feel left out of things than think they’re part of the whole).

What does it even mean to feel as if you have the social part of social media under control?  I can say that if I look back on 8th grade, there were moments when I felt like I totally “got it” socially (like the times I was dating someone) and times when I didn’t, but it also sort of became a jumbled mess.  Who cares if I could get it right for that one evening if I didn’t feel “right” or “in” 100% of the time?  No one wants to be included for five minutes.  You want to be socially savvy 100% of the time.

No one wants to have one good conversation on Twitter.  They want to feel like they are part of the stream of words, hanging out on the banks as they flow by, fully seen as part of the picture.  Daily.  Or semi-daily.

I know the answer, so you really don’t have to say it.  Walk away.  Unplug.  Don’t care.  Limit your time online.  Don’t return that email, and don’t spend any time thinking about how you didn’t return that email.  Declare Google Reader bankruptcy.  Don’t comment.  Don’t take it so fucking seriously.

But the thing is, the pressure was 100% self-imposed back in middle school too, and I think we can all agree that it wasn’t necessarily helpful to receive the advice “just don’t care” as the solution to the problem.  I mean, did it work for you, when you went home and told your parents how left out you felt and they told you not to care?  It certainly didn’t work for me: I still cared.

I do take the social part of social media seriously.  Because I care about people; I care that people are heard, I want to hear what they have to say.  I want to spend my time online feeling social, feeling like I’m getting out of those interactions the same sorts of good feelings I get from friends in the face-to-face world.  I don’t distinguish between the two: they are simply two spaces from which I draw social time.

But at some point, when all of these additional sites were added on top of blogging, the game changed.  It became way too fast, spinning those who can’t keep up to the edges.  And it’s sort of strange to stand over here, by the wall, and watch social media keep spinning like a crazy carousel that is traveling at speeds that feel unsafe to jump on.  Or to jump off.

Am I the only one who feels like the game has changed?

Last weekend we went to the Bat Mitzvah of our friends’ daughter.  It was our first friends who we knew pre-birth to have a child Bat Mitzvahed.  In other words, we’ve been to the Bat Mitzvahs of friend’s children, but we met those friends after their children were already born.  These friends have known Josh since college.  The husband married us.  Their daughter — then only two — danced around with my niece at the rehearsal dinner.  We’ve obviously seen her since, but in my head, she is still that two-year-old.

It was bittersweet to be there because so many of our old friends were at the event.  When we moved out of the city, we lost a lot of our close friendships; the people we saw on a weekly basis.  While I know that part of life is moving through various permutations of friend groups, holding onto a few people always while the rest of the cast changes as life changes, it is hard to go back into Wonderland and see that you are the Alice who has moved away while the March Hare, Mad Hatter, and Dormouse are still having their tea parties.  I was so happy to see everyone; I was so sad that life had continued on and that we needed to catch up, that I didn’t know their day-to-day life anymore.

One of these friends had a daughter who was now 13.  She didn’t remember me; I didn’t expect her to.  A long time ago, after a miscarriage, I had decided to visit the mikveh.  I’m not a monthly mikveh go-er — I’ve only actually been twice: right before my wedding and this other time after the miscarriage.  When I went for my wedding, I invited all my girl friends to join me.  They each brought a wish for my marriage and read their blessing after each immersion.  Afterward, we went out to dinner and various bachelorette activities.

Maybe I was looking for that feeling that I had after my bridal immersion — that feeling like I was ready to get married; ready for whatever came next.  After this particular miscarriage ended, I had this idea that I wanted to go back to the mikveh.  This friend was one of the “mikveh ladies” — women who were trained to help you through your time in the mikveh — and I asked her to take me and to bring along her daughter.

Her daughter didn’t know why we were there and she kept asking me, “are you a new Jew?  Are you a kallah?  Are you a monthly?” — religious conversion, pre-wedding, and after your monthly period all reasons that would make sense for us to be there.  I’m sure she was confused by how hard I cried as I went underwater.  I wanted my friend to bring her child because I really needed this visual reminder for why I was putting myself through everything.  I wanted my own child so badly, and I just remember looking at her daughter and thinking I want that I want that I want that.

And now, seven years later, I was at this Bat Mitzvah and I had that.  This little girl who had accompanied me to the mikveh when my heart was completely broken was now this lovely young woman — so grown up — and she had no idea what she did for me that day in the mikveh.  And my own little girl was only a bit older than she had been when she had taken me there.

Sometimes time moves so quickly — like the earth — that you’re not even aware of its movement.  And then an event such as this Bat Mitzvah happens and you suddenly realize how fast you’ve been spinning.

I have been married ten years.  My friends and I have all aged ten years since that night when I first went to the mikveh and they stood giggling by the water’s edge, giving me these blessings of a happy marriage.  It has been about eight years since I went to the mikveh after losing that pregnancy.  Eight years since this little girl crouched by the water’s edge and tried to figure out why we were there.  And it is an incredible thing to age: to have these memories of people from before they can remember; to still be around to see what they’ve become.

You are probably waiting for an email back from me.  I use the singular “you,” but it’s sort of like shooting fish in a barrel — there is a good chance that many dozens of people reading this are awaiting an email back from me.  I can explain: NaBloPoMo.

I thought I had things under control, but that is the thing about NaBloPoMo: it’s like the undertow that you can’t see, the one that sucks you out to sea where — if you were in a storybook — you would end up on a grand adventure featuring you, a raft made out of thousands of discarded Coke bottles, and a pelican named Sam.  And if you’re not in a storybook, you simply drown.

I am firmly in the not-in-a-storybook camp.

When BlogHer took over NaBloPoMo last spring, they handed the project to me.  There was a bit of an uphill learning curve, but I felt like I entered the trucking-along stage after a few weeks.  Then, the site completed its physical move on November 1st, a day when nearly 2000 bloggers signed up to participate in the month-long project.  Since last Friday, I have been uploading those thousands of blogs (and linking them) by hand.  I’ve been writing posts and featuring posts and syndicating posts.  Everything I eat has started to taste like NaBloPoMo.  And I’m like a pet owner, morphing into looking like NaBloPoMo.  And even worse, the kids have started to talk about NaBlo as if its an additional resident in our house (“Mum is cooking with NaBlo so she’s probably going to burn the crepes.” — for the record, I didn’t burn the crepes).

I know that November’s NaBloPoMo has an end point — it has to calm down soon, right?  I mean, I know the whole thing starts up again on December 1st and on January 1st and on February 1st.  But at some point, it will go back to a mild buzz instead of deafening sirens.

Right?

*******

We’ve been watching The Parent Trap — the original one — which means that in addition to working on NaBloPoMo for a grotesque amount of hours each day, I’m speaking like Hayley Mills.  The twins are watching it in 20 minutes increments, so we go through movies at a painstaking slow pace.  I like to think of it as recreating the feeling of radio serials.  You know how you were left hanging until the next installment, imagining 1000 what ifs until you could find out what really happened?  The twins, by the way, agree with what you’re thinking right now — about how they should just get to watch the whole damn movie and not have things dragged out like this.

It is raising all sort of twin conversations, namely, would we ever separate them and send them to live on opposite coasts? (Wait?  What?  But I’m not divorcing your father.)  And why didn’t they get real twins to play the twins instead of making one girl pretend to be her own twin?  And why are people so weird about twins?  And how it feels to actually be a twin vs. playing one in a movie.

It’s interesting because since we started watching it, they have alternated between wanting to be close to one another (perhaps a little too close… perhaps the other person doesn’t actually want you in their lap…) and not wanting to be twins because it makes them different from all their singleton friends (and then wanting to be twins because it makes them different).

One night after watching their sliver of movie, I came into the ChickieNob’s room to check on her and saw a lump in her bed.  “Is there a child in there,” I asked, pointing at the blanket.  She pulled back the covers to reveal her brother’s beloved enormous black lab stuffed animal.

“Uh, does the Wolvog know you have that?” I asked, wondering how she stole something that large from his room without him noticing.

“He heard me crying because I miss him.  So he brought me his dog to hold because it reminds me of him when I miss him.”

And that, Hayley Mills is what you can’t replicate with acting.

*******

We have had two more winners with the Creme de la Creme lucky spots (and more on their way for next week).

Jen from Here We Go Again claimed the glass jewelry donated by Battlefish (thank you, Battlefish!) and  Brooke from Becoming Parents claimed the mugs donated by First Time Twins (thank you, First Time Twins).  No, really really really — thank you.

*******

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:

• “I Wasn’t Going to Post Today” (Egg Drop Post)
• “On Giving Up” (Bodega Bliss)
• “Perfect Moment Monday: Spending” (Four of a Kind)
• “Grief” (The Pursuit of Pregnancy)
• “Question 3 in a Series on Gender, Parenting, and Being Gay” (Regular Miswesterners)
• “Vulnerability” (Breaking into Blossom)
• “Maslow and Mompetition” (In Loco Parentis)
• “Milkweed” (Bloodsigns)
• “The Heartache of Infant Loss” (Jack at Random)
• “The Heartache of Infant Loss” (By the Brooke)
• “The Heartache of Infant Loss” (JSOnline)

Okay, now my choices this week.

I didn’t read this Thursday post until last Friday, so I’m counting it with this week.  What IF? has a post about how we identify as well as when and where we choose to discuss infertility.  The post begins by pointing out a discrepancy between numbers and the number of people out: “Statistically, how likely is it that I’ve made it to my mid-30’s without having one friend or acquaintance that I know of who has undergone fertility treatments?”  You are going to love, love, love this post.  You can tell her so in the comment section.

A Fine Mess has a small and sad post called “Broken” about Halloween.  I know people often speak about Christmas and Mother’s Day as difficult holidays for infertiles, but truly, Halloween has to rank up there as third.  Listen to all that is contained in this single sentence: “I was planning to write a longer post, but I just don’t have it in me.”  It stuck with me a long time after reading it.

Lastly, The Hairy Farmer Family has an explanation for why she hasn’t been blogging.  It’s a never-ending cycle of not blogging, and then wanting to write, and then feeling as if there is too much ground to cover, so she doesn’t blog, but then she wants to write…  Okay, I’m a sucker for blogging about blogging, but what I really loved in this post was this: “I was, in fact, the elephant in the church, which is not something you often get to be.”

The roundup to the Roundup: I am drowning in the NaBloPoMo Sea.  Loving rewatching The Parent Trap.  More winners in the Creme de la Creme (please keep helping to spread the word).  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between October 28th and November 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.

Some of you have marveled how a hardcore socialist like myself has bought into Disney, the epitome of consumer-culture.  I can’t really explain it myself except that I think that saying Disney is about consumerism is about as true as saying blogging conferences are about brands.  That statement only allows for one viewpoint, where the reality is that if you give Disney or blogging conferences a panoramic treatment, you will see that some come to Disney for the magic, some come for the products, some come for the service, and some come because they need that time away with their family in order to cement them as a unit; much in the same way some people do go to blogging conferences to connect with brands and promote their own blog, but many others attend in order to catch up with friends, meet people face-to-face, learn something new, or simply infuse themselves with more energy so they can continue their blog.

The products aren’t why we go to Disney.

And the reality is that as expensive as Disney is overall, we do it fairly cheaply all things considered.  We use points for the airplanes.  We stay on-property at a value resort (much less expensive than other hotels because you also knock off transportation costs from the airport, the rental of a car, and daily parking — believe me, we’ve priced this thing out).  The tickets are expensive, but when you look at the cost vs. how many hours you’re in the parks being entertained, it looks like a good deal considering we wouldn’t think twice about seeing a two-hour movie for $8.  We saw three Broadway-quality shows and went on rides for 14 hours (yes, we’re that crazy family) for $40.  We don’t buy the kids additional toys or costumes until the last day when they’re allowed to choose one thing for under $20.  And we bring our own food, eating out only one meal per day.

So Disney doesn’t feel like consuming to me — at least not in the sense of collecting tangible products.  It feels like experiencing, and I am fine paying for experiences.

That’s how I justify it.

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It’s also one of the only public places on earth that is entirely child-focused.  I know we think that the world revolves around pregnant women and mothers; the special parking spaces and the early boarding on planes and the enormous strollers.  And like the example above with blogging conferences, it is easy as an infertile woman to get tunnel vision (especially when I leave the house and start noticing all. of. those. bellies. and. babies).  But then I remove my adult glasses and my infertility glasses and take another look at the world.

The reality is that it’s an adult world and we expect children to comport themselves as close to adults as possible within it.  We expect them to use quiet voices and not knock over things and not run about.  They don’t always function well in that adult world (mostly because they’re not adults so they’ll never behave in the exact same way), and they also can pick up how much their mere presence fills people with dread.  We were out to lunch this week and a woman stopped by our table to tell us how well-behaved our children were.  And that just about says it all.  Would you ever go up to the adults at the table next to you and say slowly and carefully: “I really liked your behaviour in this restaurant.”?  It was nice to get that feedback, but what she was saying was “you did a good job blending into OUR world, the ADULT world, the one that rules public spaces.”  And when you get the snarls, what they means is that the child did a crap job blending into our world, the adult world, even if they would have been doing a fine job if they had been in their world, the child world.

Listen, I’m guilty of it too.  I’ve gritted my teeth in a movie theater while a child asks questions about the film behind me.  And I’ve wondered why a parent isn’t removing their tantruming child from a store.  I am an adult — I like spending the majority of time around people who are comporting themselves in an adult-like fashion regardless of their age.  It is more pleasant to dine with someone quietly eating rather than bouncing around on their seat.  But I’m also mindful that I drag my kids into the adult world (food stores, restaurants, bookstores… every store) daily and that affects both the twins AND every adult around them who are also trying to use those public spaces.

But Disney World is a kid-focused space, where they can make noise and no one cares.  They can have a meltdown and no one blinks an eye.  No one comments on the size of a stroller.  The menus reflect the tastes of the common child.  And adults are expected to act more kid-like there rather than the other way around.  We’re expected to get excited and use all of our senses and be in the moment.

And it’s sort of cool to allow your kids time in a completely fun, kid-focused space.  And it’s sort of cool to spend time as an adult remembering how it felt to be a kid again.  To shriek with excitement when you see something so amazingly cool that it is not to be believed.  To be scared to go on a ride.  To soar high above the park on an elephant.

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And then there are the unintentional things that occur, those moments that Disney didn’t orchestrate, but that allow you hold onto their babyhoods that much longer.  The buses are crowded, so you pull your child onto your lap to give another person the opportunity to sit down.  And then you travel from the park back to the hotel with your nose buried against your child’s sweaty scalp.  And you try not to cry because it has been so long since it was a given that they’d sit in your lap and snuggle against you for a good half hour trek.

It was hard to leave Disney — and I know I say this often and it hasn’t exactly come true yet — because at some point, it’s going to look a little odd if we’re still holding our kids on our laps.  Seriously, picture a 12-year-old boy being snuzzled by his mother on public transport.  Right now, they’re still totally willing to have us pick them up or carry them or sit on our laps.  But if we look at cuddle minutes like an hourglass, our sand is running out.  Back when they were newborns, I craved the ability to put them down for five minutes (oh please oh please oh please G-d just give me five minutes without a child attached to me so I can urinate in peace… or at least with a door between me and the squalling baby).  And now they’re totally happy to give me five minutes to pee; in fact, if I want it, I can take three hours to go work and they’ll play by themselves happily.

Crap.

It’s this strange blessing; I wouldn’t want them dependent on me forever, but I certainly don’t want them to pull away.  And really, I just want more opportunities to pull them into my lap, where they can’t squirm away or tell me that we’re late to soccer or that they have homework to do.  Disney is a place where they’re mine, they’re mine, they’re ALL MINE and I don’t have to share them with teachers or their friends or their coaches.

And I’m just fucking greedy when it comes down to it.  Disney didn’t orchestrate this truth — that it is a space to steal away to with your child, where you can hold them to youth like the boys in Neverland — but it is a side effect of the space.  And that’s why I crave it, more than other trips, other vacations.  Because they cocoon too, not asking for electronic products or other distractions.  They are just there, in the moment, and you’re floating on a theoretical island, remembering what it felt like when they never left your arms.

*******

Fine; I drank the Kool-Aid.

It’s hot down there; it happens.

I know we’ll have fun on our next holiday — a literary trip where we are reading four books from the same country and then traveling to all the spots in the stories — but it won’t be exactly the same.  They’ll be a little more grown-up, magic will be replaced by a different sliver of imagination.  And it’s not a bad thing; it’s just different.  I want them to grow, I want them to stay exactly the same, and the sadness stems from knowing that you can’t have it both ways, and you don’t even get to decide anyway.

The Wolvog lost another tooth.  He was biting into a bagel in the Orlando airport on our way back from Disney, and he felt it wobble in his mouth, so he did what any sane first-grader would do: he stood by the gate and screamed with his mouth wide open and filling with blood, “mahuutisallinoooooooooooooooooooooout.”  I really think the boy has a strong future in movie zombie work.

Josh took him to the bathroom to clean up and returned victorious with said tooth in his hand.  He tucked it into his pocket and then passed it to me when we returned home.  I placed it on top of my desk so it wouldn’t get lost and then promptly forgot about it for a week.

The Wolvog waited about seven days until he meekly said to me, “uh, the tooth fairy sort of hasn’t come.”

Crap.

So I fully accepted the blame: I hadn’t emailed her.  The tooth had gotten lost in the shuffle of unpacking from the trip.  But I was totally on top of this.  I was emailing her right now.  I was asking her to come tonight.

The Wolvog placed the tooth in his special pillow (which had been my special pillow when I was little — sorry, I’m cheap and didn’t buy the kids their own tooth pillow… another mark against me if you’re keeping score).  And he set it on the floor next to his bed.  And he went to sleep.

And I completely forgot about it.

I didn’t realize that I had forgotten until the next day when I walked in his room to turn off his lights (seriously, it’s as if the kids are allergic to light switches) and saw the pillow now on top of his dresser.  Crap. I hoped the kid somehow didn’t notice.

To check if he had somehow missed checking the pillow, when he returned from school I casually asked him what the tooth fairy brought him and he answered: “She didn’t come last night.”

“Are you kidding me?  What happened?  Let me check your room; I’ll be right back.”

I went upstairs, paused for a moment, and then came back down.  “Sweetie, you moved the pillow.  I told her it was on the floor and now it’s on your dresser.  She must have gotten confused.”

The Wolvog stared at me for a moment.  “The pillow was on my floor all night.  Daddy moved it to the dresser this morning.”

Crap.

So I insisted that the tooth fairy must have had something crazy important come up.  I’d email her again, make sure she knew which room, told him to leave the pillow in PLAIN SIGHT on top of the dresser, and she would absolutely definitely come that evening while he slept.

The little boy went to sleep, dreaming toothless dreams.  And I forgot.  AGAIN.

He woke up in the morning and reported that the tooth fairy once again hadn’t shown.  And I did what any irresponsible parent would do: I tore the tooth fairy a new asshole.

“I seriously can’t believe that fairy!  What the hell is wrong with her?  I can’t believe how irresponsible she is.  I am really really angry.  I am emailing her right now and telling her that she can’t treat my little boy this way.”

“Please,” the Wolvog pleaded with me as I scraped my chair back.  “Don’t make her angry.  I’m sure she has a good reason.”

“She could be very very ill,” the ChickieNob intoned.  “Very ill.”

“No,” I heard myself say because I am the worst parent ever.  “No, she’s not sick.  I don’t buy that.  She’s irresponsible and she’s treating my kids like crap and I’m angry.  I’m going to wait up until she comes tonight, and then I’m going to talk to her about this.  In fact, put the tooth pillow in MY room, right on my bed, and I’m going to grab her when she flies into my room tonight.”

The Wolvog pleaded with me not to grab the tooth fairy, but he agreed to leave the tooth pillow in my room and let me handle it.

And seriously, even though it was ON TOP OF MY FREAKIN’ BED, I almost forgot a third time.  A THIRD TIME.  Josh and I were about to go to sleep, and suddenly I saw it and said, “crap!  Give me the tooth.”

I slipped it into the ziplock bag of baby teeth I have for each kid.  I have to admit that it feels absolutely bizarre to have a ziplock bag filled with human teeth in my bedroom.  I mean, if someone said that to you: “I have a ziplock bag filled with human teeth in my bedroom,” wouldn’t you run screaming?  And yet, that is precisely what I have — one for each child.  Because what else do you do with these tiny parts of your child?  Throw them out?  Do you know how hard it was to grow those kids?  Do you honestly think I’m ditching even one part of them when they cost me so much to create?

In the morning, the Wolvog casually came into our room, and Josh proudly told him to check the tooth pillow.  He reached in and said in a quiet voice, “she finally came and she left a dollar.  She took the tooth.”

And, seriously, because I couldn’t help myself, I said in my most enraged voice, “are you going to tell me that she has the gall to just waltz in here, take the tooth, leave some money, AND NOT WRITE AN APOLOGY NOTE?”

Because, you know, I forgot that too.