One year when I was a teacher, our Christmas gift from the PTA was a big wad of cash.  I know — right?  Sort of strange.  I mean, I get the idea of a Christmas bonus from a company, where they’re sharing the excess in profits with the staff who made it happen, but it was a little bizarre to get this envelope of money handed to me.  It sort of made me feel like a whore.

I didn’t really know what to do with it, so I threw it in a drawer years ago.  I always knew it was there, and Josh and I referred to it as the zombie money; the cash we’d use to get away when the zombie invasion starts and we can’t get to a bank because they’ve been taken over by the brain-eating undead.

I dipped into the zombie money this week, hoping beyond hope that I’ll have enough time to replenish the fund before the undead rise, rancid and mottling, from their graves.

I bought myself a bunch of games.  Like board games.  Like board games I can play by myself and pretend they’re for the kids.  But they’re really for me.

The game fixation started months ago when we got Solitaire Chess.  I was using it to teach the Wolvog how the pieces move in chess, but after he’d go to bed, I’d play it while I waited for websites to load.

( Sidenote: My computer is old and creaky and runs on Windows, which means that it often takes between three and five minutes for all of the error messages to clear so I can see that the website I just clicked on doesn’t have the information I need and the joyful surf across the Internet begins anew.  I like to think of my slowed down ability to Web surf as my version of the Endless Summer — less enjoyable, with fewer waves, but the wait times are often endless since my computer crashes at least once or twice a day.

So you see, I have a lot of spare minutes to fill.)

And I filled them playing Solitaire Chess.  I finished all the levels.  I felt pretty damn proud of myself, and I made the kids and Josh tell me over and over again how smart I was.

I had been eyeing the game Chocolate Fix (another logic puzzle), though I couldn’t quite figure out how to play until the rules clicked with me this week while I was standing in the store.  I tried to convince the twins that we needed it, but I was out-voted (damn you, family democracy!) and we went home with Tilt instead.

Tilt was fun, and I was quickly addicted, but this indignation also took root overnight.  I was an adult, damn it.  If I wanted Chocolate Fix, we were going to get Chocolate Fix.  And if I had to dip into the zombie fund to do it, so be it.

I went online to see what other logic puzzles ThinkFun (the company that makes all these games) made, and found out that they had two iPad apps and more on the way.  So first and foremost, I downloaded Solitaire Chess and Rush Hour onto the iPad.

My thoughts: I like having Solitaire Chess on the iPad because it makes it even more portable (though it was already pretty damn portable), though I like playing it more with the plastic pieces.  On the other hand, I enjoy Rush Hour a lot more on the iPad vs. the plastic pieces.

Then I played their online version of What’s Gnu, which teaches reading/spelling skills and added that to the shopping list.  We don’t play it right now as they list in the rules.  Here’s how we use it:

• Find the 14 word-ending cards.  If you’ve ever taught phonics, these are the word family cards (ig, an, at, ow, etc).
• Sit across from one another and spread out your 7 cards in front of you.
• Click the machine to spit out two letters.  The one closest to you is “your” letter.
• Use it to form a word… if you can.  For the first round or two, you can usually use any letter.  But it gets harder once you have fewer cards.  For instance, let’s say that you’re down to “an” and “at” and the letter you get is “J” — that can’t be used to form a common word.  So you lose that turn.
• Whoever fills all 7 cards first wins.
• I have lost consistently every single time we’ve played.
• The ChickieNob has no clue that she is practicing reading/spelling skills.

In the future, we’ll play the right way (and it has multiple levels).  It’s sort of like Zingo… with forming words instead of recognizing pictures. (By the way, ThinkFun also makes Zingo, if you’re familiar with that game.)

So armed with the zombie fund money, I went to the store and blew it on Chocolate Fix (which is exactly as good as I thought it would be.  I’m up to level 19.  Nothing will prepare you more for the GRE than playing Chocolate Fix), What’s Gnu, and another game called “Spot It” which I liked because it can be kept in my purse (it’s the only one not made by ThinkFun).

Why am I telling you all of this?

Because I wanted to counterbalance the words I said about Crayola’s coloured bubbles of evil (to be fair to Crayola, their Colour Wonder markers have been a lifesaver on long car trips.  We always get the twins a new one each trip).  Because I want to talk about how I spent the zombie fund.  And because I’m usually squeamish about purchasing toys from an unfamiliar company, and I wanted to spread word that we’ve had a good experience with every ThinkFun game — both the kids playing them and then the adults playing them after the twins have gone to sleep.  And we’ve really enjoyed both iPad/iPhone apps (and you can try them first for free).  So I’m using my words for good — to write a favourable review of all the games we currently have scattered across the living room floor in various stages of play.

Since, you know, we can never take out one game at a time and put it away.

To continue this love fest, please share your favourite game — either from your childhood or a current one that you like to play.

I used to have a friend in college who annoyed the ever-loving crap out of me by leaving his used tea bags (the actual kind, not the urban dictionary kind) on plates in his kitchen so he could reuse the bags several times.

I always felt terrible accepting a cup of tea because the saving of the tea bag signaled to me that this was an expense that worried him, a treat that needed to be rationed.  But even if I bought him tea, he would still save the tea bags, insisting that it was wasteful to throw them out until they had been used many times.  This annoyed me because it meant the dishes were never finished because there were always one or two more holding tea bags.  Sometimes the counter was littered with a multitude of little plates and wilted tea bags.

I bought a box of vanilla rooibos to try from the local organic market this week, and I liked the first cup so much that I left the tea bag on a plate so I could make another cup in a moment without having to grab the step stool to reach the cabinet again.  Every time I passed the plate, I thought of him and his annoying plated tea bag collection.  I almost took a picture and mailed it to him.  I wonder if he still saves his tea bags.

Do you?  Do you save your tea bag and use it a second time?  What about third?  At what point do you toss it?

I am also curious about your teapinions — which teas you like that I might like.  Here’s what I’m looking for — decaf or mostly decaf.  Nothing that falls under the category of “weird ass shit.”  I think you know exactly what I mean by this.  It’s when you’re reading the ingredients list and it has something like dried placenta as one of the items.  And while you may think I am making this up, go peruse the tea section at your local organic market and you’ll find some things that will shock and amuse you, making you do that laughing/crying thing simultaneously while dropping the box.

Beyond that, I don’t do things like beet juice.  I just don’t.  If you list dried beets as an ingredient, you have lost me.  It also took me a long time to move onto drinking rooibos, just to give you a sense of how squeamish I am about trying new things.  I still have not tried Yerba Mate.  I don’t do ginseng.

So, for a squeamish pussy tea-drinker like me, what do you have?  Especially stuff that’s decaf because do you honestly think I need more caffeine in my diet?

In case you are wondering about my teapinions, mostly so you don’t have to shell out $10 a box to try a tea you’ve never had, here are my thoughts on some recent purchases:

• Strawberry Chocolate (The Republic of Tea): uh… okay?  It’s sort of growing on me.  It’s one of those teas where I will finish the case, but I don’t know if I’ll buy again.  If you like berry teas, you’ll probably love this one, but I’m not a huge fan of berry teas, so it’s so-so for me.
• Organic Vanilla Rooibos (Equal Exchange): excellent.  I purchased a second box when I was only a few bags into the first box because I could tell that I’d want more in the future.  Liked that it was simple, sweet enough to not need sugar, and didn’t contain weird ass shit such as dried human fingernail clippings.
• Decaffeinated Chai (Twinings): I’ve tried a lot of chais, and this is probably my favourite so far.  Again, I can recognize every ingredient on the list and my tongue can recognize every ingredient as well.

So, your teapinions?

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Family Act of 2011 was introduced into Congress last week by Senator Gillibrand, which is a tax credit to cover out-of-pocket costs for infertility.  Interested in seeing this become a law?  Click over to Resolve to get involved.

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I am going to an all-ladies open jam session this weekend, which is a night that a bunch of thirty-something and forty-something women get together, drink beer, and play music.  The songs were picked a week or two ago, and they told me what to learn when I signed up to be part of the group.  They meet about once a month.  Not sure what to expect — how far behind skill-wise I am from the rest of the group, whether I learned the correct chords for the songs, whether I’m going to look like an ass, whether I’m going to meet some really cool women to hang out with once a month.  Will let you know how it turns out.

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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:

• “Envy, Atheism, and Neil Gaiman” (Mommy Odyssey)
• “My ‘Expressing Motherhood’ Story” (Life Without Baby)
• “And Yet” (An Unwanted Path)
• “Out-Grieve Me” (The Mompetition)
• “Just Relax” (Are You Listening?)

Okay, now my choices this week.

The Hairy Farmer’s Family about Turbo squeezed at my heart; not just because it is a difficult situation, a sea of suck, a tenuous time period, but because despite all of that, the post is so beautifully written.  And below the words is this undercurrent, this understanding of a mother’s love.

You too will find yourself singing Still Life with Circle’s song: “she is strong / she is brave / she can do anything she waaaaaaaaaants to do.”  And your breath will catch with this line: “It seems a strange habit to try to control the passage of time by sheer will.”  Aaaah, but this is the thought that killed me: “Ironically, the only permanent thing I know in my life is that Lucy is dead. Everything else I can hold in my arms is a lesson in impermanence and that scares the shit out of me.”  Can you believe how beautiful this post is?

I love Tales of a Batty Nurse’s post about attending the Prince concert.  It contains this thought: “Yes, it would have been more fun with someone but if I’ve learned nothing else from my life, I’ve learned that I can sit home thinking about what I would like to be doing and wishing I had someone to do things with or I can just go do them myself.”  I love her differentiation between “alone” and “independent.”  It’s a lovely post.

Lastly, I like this post about having a second child at Unwellness.  I really liked the beginning — the contrast of the wet walk to holding a baby chick.  And then it enters the well-trod territory of trying to make sense of family building; of how do you know and what if you can’t make it happen and what are you willing to try.  There are never simple answers for anyone; with someone infertile, there are added layers.  It’s not about finding the perfect  answer; it’s about finding peace of heart.

The roundup to the Roundup: What tea do you like?  Support the Family Act of 2011.  Wish me luck at the open jam.  And lots of great blog posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between May 13 and May 20) 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.

Interesting article on Health.com about a new gene discovery:

A gene variation that causes faulty cholesterol regulation also appears to affect production of the pregnancy hormone progesterone and may be a reason why some women can’t get pregnant, researchers say.

I looked up information about the gene online, and walked away still not quite understanding it except that this gene regulates cholesterol in the blood stream.  Mentally bookmarked it to read more about it in the future.

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Jezebel has reported that the Kate Middleton is infertile rumours have ALREADY STARTED.  I want to repeat that: ALREADY STARTED.  As in, I don’t even think they’re back from their honeymoon yet, and the stories have already started running in the tabloids.

Do you think this is the part about being royalty that little girls think about when they dream about becoming a princess?  That they’ll wear pink and have a tiara and have their uterus scrutinized in the tabloids?

Just scroll on down to their coverage of “In Touch” magazine.

Cheers!

Updated at the bottom

Whether or not to out anonymous commenters was a warm up to this next, related conundrum.

Though I will say that we need to distinguish between saying something rudely, saying something politely while disagreeing, and saying something cruelly.  We’re all aware of what sounds rude when said aloud (leaving room for the fact that we are all sometimes unintentionally rude), and those same sort of things sound rude when written.  So… no, I don’t really understand why someone would need to leave a comment like that.  If you don’t like the post, click away.  Or leave a politely worded disagreement.  I think all people should welcome politely worded disagreement because being challenged is what grows new ideas or cements opinions.  Rudely worded disagreement doesn’t have quite the same effect in opening up a person’s mind.  In fact, it usually does the opposite.

Saying something cruelly means that it has no helpful basis and is only said to upset the person.  Not really sure why anyone would ever need to do that either.

So, there you have how I’m distinguishing between the three ways people could leave these sorts of anonymous comments.  One way (politely worded disagreement), I’m totally for.  The other two, not so much.

The next conundrum.

We are having a major issue with a newly purchased appliance, and the store we bought it from is being difficult about actually working with us to remedy the situation.  Which is frustrating not just because we shelled out a lot of money to this company for this particular appliance, but we have spent a lot of money over the years on other household items from this store and had planned to work with them for two more major purchases in the near future.

They can clearly see our customer loyalty, but they don’t seem to care if we return as customers in the future.  In my personal opinion, you’d have to be crazy to buy from this national store knowing what we know now about how they treat long-time customers.

BUT.

I haven’t blogged about it.  I haven’t Tweeted about it.  I haven’t threatened to do either when we argue with various employees.  I don’t know why beyond the fact that I think that writing something down and making it accessible to others is a huge responsibility.

I stand by everything I put out there, which is why I don’t do random reviews for products.  Unless the product grabbed me, I see no reason why I should stand behind a product just because someone else asks me to do so and offers me a free item.  So the Go Girl, the gum, the vegan worcesterire sauce I once blogged about — those were all my decisions and I wrote about those products without the makers asking me to do so.  If I tell you I liked it, it’s because I really liked it — I would hate for my opinion to get watered down (even if my opinion means very little) because you hear every two seconds: “and this is the best too!”

But the opposite holds as well.  If words have power, then a negative review has the ability to do some serious damage.  Even if I only lose the store one sale, it’s still one sale.

I think about this constantly because we argue about it weekly on a local listserv that I’m on.  People will post a negative comment about their experience with a local business.  Another person will chime in with a “me too.”  Then a third says, “I was going to go there, but now I’m not!” And then a fourth says, “This is terrible.  You’re ruining someone else’s livelihood.  At this rate, we’ll have no local businesses left.”  And then a bitchy argument ensues, and I generally hit delete instead of reading the listserv for a few days until it dies down.

That said, a new restaurant opened and I was considering trying it.  Then a few people posted a negative review on the listserv, and now I can’t see myself ever choosing it when there is a perfectly good and similar option across the street.  I mean, this is a dueling restaurant so it already had a bad taste in my mouth (who builds the exact same type of restaurant across the street from a beloved established restaurant?), and now that I know that the food is too salty, it doesn’t seem worth using my limited eating-out dollars on the place.

So that posting on the listserv created some serious damage.  I know I’m not eating there, and who knows how many other people won’t support it now that they read those listserv posts?

And that’s why I haven’t blogged about this major appliance situation.  Because while I know it can be effective, and I’ve seen plenty of irate bloggers take to the blogosphere, vent their spleen at a frustrating situation, and see some actual customer service help in return, I’ve been squeamish about joining in precisely because I know bad postings can hurt a business.  Even though I can also see that it’s often the way to get the job done.

When big businesses are closing their ears to your words, how else can you get their attention beyond kicking them in the figurative groin with negative words on social media?  Why should bloggers be polite, when they’re not getting politeness in return from the business?

That said, we got the Crayola coloured bubbles and it made such a wreck of our clothes and lawn that I had no qualms tweeting about it.  People immediately joined in and added their bad experience with it.  Some people said they were considering buying it and were grateful to learn that it wasn’t actually washable (even after two storms, the front steps are still blue.  It looks like a Smurf murder site).

And that’s where I could see the good of bad-mouthing a product online.  I immediately had validation that the product was shoddy.  My tweets warned others who were considering purchasing it.  It saved them time, effort, and clothing.  Did it hurt Crayola — well, probably yes.  But should they be protected when property was damaged due to their product?  If something is going to make you sick or ruin your property or harm you in some way, do you have any obligation to be concerned about their livelihood or reputation?

I can see both sides of the bad review online, and that extends to posts about people.  Saying negative things about another person.  This is where it ties in with the last post — if someone posted an anonymous, shitty comment, wouldn’t I want the heads up about the person, especially if it’s someone two-faced?  Would I want, let’s say, to help or celebrate someone that leaves crap-ass comments ruining someone else’s day?  If I’m not told who they are, I could be telling you that this person who leaves snarky, hurtful comments anonymously across the blogosphere is a great person that we should all rally around and support.

Why should someone who tears down community get to reap the rewards of being part of a community?

And yet, at the same time, the reach of the blogosphere can stretch so far that it behooves everyone posting online to think before they hit publish.  The moment that triggered the last post was that a friend was recently being torn a new asshole on a listserv, and while it may have been an exercise in venting for the anonymous person writing about her, it has stayed with my friend — both emotionally and professionally.  And that’s scary — the idea that we could have a bad interaction with someone and it could enter this Googlable space for eternity.  And she can’t even address it properly because the person is anonymous.

I’m not sure there’s a clear answer, and certainly, I don’t think it’s a case of right or wrong.  But it makes for an interesting discussion since we are all citizen journalists and reviewers with the potential to make or break a business (or person) just as much as an established newspaper or media outlet.

So how do you feel about posting negative thoughts about stores or people online?

Added:

I also read online reviews religiously before a purchase — especially one where I don’t have a person or organization giving me advice on the purchase.  So I’m grateful to everyone who has saved me from reading a crappy book, wasting money at a restaurant, or purchasing a toy that would most likely break.

But what do you think about someone who has a bad experience on, let’s say, Southwest Airlines and then trashes them online.  A la Kevin Smith.  Is that different from writing a bad review?

I was reading a blog a few months ago (I didn’t mean to sit on this question for months, but I forgot to write about it and was reminded by a posting on a listserv that triggered the thought again), and the person had gotten an anonymous comment.  It wasn’t that obnoxious in nature, just disagreeing with the writer.  Of course, there is really no such thing as a truly anonymous comment because most comment programs log the IP address.  Unless it’s your first time leaving a comment, a person can search their email for the IP address, see the last few times you’ve commented, and know exactly who Anon is.

That’s what this person did.  They got an anonymous comment (in which the person explained why they wanted to be anonymous) and wrote a post about it, outing the person.  Linking to the other person’s blog.

It left a really bad taste in my mouth.

The reality is that most people should stand behind their words.  Remaining anonymous should be reserved for whistleblowers or those confiding information that is delicate in nature.  There are plenty of reasonable explanations for wanting to post something anonymously.  Being a shithead is not one of them.

In other words, if you’re looking for the ability to freely speak your mind without having to face the person, you’ve abused the good will extended to anonymous posting.  It’s never okay to say crappy things to someone or about someone on the Internet, but I can stomach it a lot more if the person has the ovaries to stand behind her words.  I have no respect for someone who shouts hurtful things into a comment box and scurries away to hide behind the word “anonymous.”

So this walks a grey line: on one hand, the person should have stood behind their words.  They should have been transparent and admitted their feelings with their name attached.  And if they felt anxious doing so, that should have been their first clue that their words were simply unnecessary.  Her words were really just obnoxious for obnoxious-sake.  We should all use that internal barometer and choose not to speak when our desire is to lobby our words like a hand grenade and run away.

On the other hand, the blog writer is in the wrong for outing the person; a person who clearly states that they’re remaining anonymous because they’re going against popular opinion.  Not in a hateful, name-calling way.  But simply a “I respectfully disagree with you” sort of way.  This person isn’t a troll, trying to foment hate.  Trying to get under someone’s skin.  They simply have an unpopular opinion and want to express it. (Why?  Who knows.)

I swing back and forth on who I believe is really wrong here.  And it raises all sorts of other questions when trying to define the line:

• Is it okay to out someone if they’re a troll?  Truly, unequivocally obnoxious?  Popping on your blog just to call you names.
• Is it never okay to out an anonymous commenter?  Should we simply deal with the person directly and take everything out of the public arena of a blog post?
• And what do you think of someone posting anonymously simply because they have an unpopular opinion and don’t want the rage of the community upon them?  Since y’all know we can get a little rage-y sometimes.

Let’s put it this way.  If an anonymous poster left a comment below saying:

“Melissa, I’m posting this anonymously because I know people will disagree with me, but this post was an enormous waste of time.  Why the hell do you overthink these things?  You should get back to writing about infertility and stop musing about stupid things like anonymous commenters.”

Would it be cool for me to write my next post outing that anonymous poster, linking to her blog, and yanking apart that sort of comment?  Is it ever okay?