We went to see African Cats in the theater.  The twins have only seen one movie in a regular theater, which was Ponyo.  Ponyo didn’t go as well as we hoped, and they’ve balked at seeing another film.  We do belong to a weekly children’s film series which plays in a theater, but kids talk through the film and walk around.  This was our second foray into a normal theater at a normal time with normal expectations.

The twins were doing fairly well until midway through the film when the ChickieNob suddenly said in way too loud a voice, “heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey, wait a second, how are the baby lions getting into the mommy lions if there’s no fertility doctor to put them in?”

I quickly whispered that there were other ways to make babies, and I’d explain all of it to her at home if she could hold off for a few hours.  Thankfully, she forgot by the time we left the theater.  But I’m just waiting for the thought to return…

Crap.

The Wolvog got very upset when Layla went to die.  He cried bitterly, staring at the screen in disbelief.  At the end of the film, I rubbed his back and said, “that was really hard, watching Layla die.”

“She didn’t die,” the Wolvog told me, incredulously.  “She just went somewhere very far away.  And she is very happy there.  Very very happy.”

Not that he’s in denial or anything.

*******

We had a nine hour drive a few weeks ago.  As we neared home, American Idiot popped into the CD player and I made my move to mute out the curse words.  Except instead of turning down the song on the fourth line, in my exhaustion I turned the dial in the wrong direction, causing the kids to hear, “the subliminal mindFUCK AMERICA!”

In the silence that followed, the Wolvog quietly said, “I can forget a curse word in a second.”

So there went several years of hard muting work down the drain.

*******

I have not been able to find any other takers to join me in a skateboarding class.

*******

At my guitar lesson this week, my teacher asked me if I wanted to try the song I was learning on an electric guitar instead of my acoustic.  He grabbed a standard Fender Squier off the wall (explaining that even I could not break this thing, the Volvo of guitars) and plugged it in.

And it was quite literally the most exciting thing that has happened to me in a long time.  I mean, I sucked hardcore playing it, and I desperately wished I could have an hour or two alone with it in order to try out different songs and fiddle with all the dials (there were just so many things to touch and push and spin).  But I felt so damn cool.

*******

I had a long break from gum — like a ten year sojourn from gum.  While my brother was recently visiting, he opened a pack of Wrigley’s Extra Dessert Delights mint chocolate chip gum.  I know — I threw up in my mouth too.  And after several minutes of discussion, I agreed to try the gum before I continued to mock it.  And it turned out to be not-that-bad.

And by not-that-bad, I mean that I engaged in chewing this gum much in the same way I read Twilight.  I mocked it, I tried it, I didn’t love it, I found myself thinking about it, I took the rest of my brother’s pack, I bought a second pack, I bought a third pack, and now I’m writing about it.  Oh, and when I say that I bought a second and a third pack, I mean that I bought the third pack BEFORE the second pack was even opened.  As in I predicted that I would tear through the second pack so quickly that I needed a third pack in the wings to get me through the night.

What is your favourite gum?  Flavour and brand.

It’s funny; before I posted the blog name post, I was pretty much 100% positive that I wanted to change the name.  Felt at peace about it.  Really loved the other name and felt it fit me perfectly.

And then you guys talked.  And you mentioned the “S” in Stirrup Queens (the one at the end of the word, not the one at the beginning), and I realized that the plurality was a big part of who I am; much moreso than this joke-like title that the ChickieNob and I laughed about one day.  Which is a title in singular.

I think I will take Cradles and Graves suggestion to make it a section of this blog; a small part of the larger whole.  I will still get to use it, only in a smaller capacity.

The problem, of course, is what to put in that space.

Password protected posts?  That’s not really me.

Photographs? I take a lot of them, but usually only to preserve memories.  And without the story, the photograph is sort of worth less (not worthless, but worth less).  And with the words, why not just run them as a regular blog post?

Recipes?  It didn’t really excite me.

Short stories and snippets from chapters I’m working on?  Maybe?

I guess I am looking for something that makes sense to separate it from the main blog.  Because if it’s not self-contained, what is the point?

*******

I am having massive anxiety about kindergarten ending.  On one hand, I want school to be over.  I am done with this school thing.  I’m done with the lunch boxes and homework and racing out of the house at an ungodly hour so we’re not late (I’ll admit that we are an incredibly lazy, slow-moving family).  But I am beyond freaked out for that last day because that last day means that I can no longer say that I have kindergarteners.  After that day, they’ll be first graders.  And that doesn’t sound babyish.

I can’t even write this without crying.

I know that they will be exactly the same age before and after.  That they won’t suddenly change overnight; refuse my kisses and tuck-ins.  But it is the same feeling that came with turning 35.  I was still the same Melissa, but it felt like this wall looming in front of me that once I stepped over, everything changed.

I am well aware that all people need to age.  That I could have a dozen children like a freakin’ human opossum and still need to go through this with the last one.  All puppies turn into dogs.  All babies turn into sulky teenagers.  There is no way to stop this, and I know that “fair” isn’t being used correctly in this instance, but… by fuck… it’s not fair.

Forgive me if I’m moody in the denouement to the year.  I am having a really hard time with them growing up this month.

*******

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:

• “One of Those Girls” (Single Infertile Female)
• “A Public Service Announcement” (By the Brooke)
• “Hope” (Sprogblogger)
• “A Conversation with Painting” (Still Life with Circles)
• “Remember Us on Sunday” (Hannah Wept, Sarah Laughed)
• “On My Mind” (SassyMama)
• “Orphaned and Eldered at 40” (Waiting for the Ukulele)
• “I’m Not Fat, I’m Big Boned” (Bring on the Babies)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Nuts in May has a post that starts out so brilliantly that I would argue that she hit the mark she wished to reach: “I have Bloggers Block. What I want, is to write something (something? anything!) of searing beauty, or utter hilarity, or elegant irony, or intense meaning, or, of course, all four because the English Language, she is my bitch. What we’ve got is a sort of low-grade flu of the intellect.”  Wasn’t that so damn good?  Plus her point about thanking your mother on Facebook when your mother isn’t even on Facebook made me snicker.  Aloud.

Marriage 2.0 has a post about rejoining Weight Watchers that resonated with me because… well… we sound very much the same.  It had me musing to myself how you bring about that internal spark that goads you into buckling down and getting serious.  Doing it right.  Doing it with support. (Whatever “it” is in your world.)

Our Family Beginnings has a post about adoption that I’d like to show to everyone who says “just adopt” in order to have them understand the intricacies that come with the process.  The very real people involved in the triad, the banging-your-head-against-the-wall paperwork, the waiting.  It’s just an every day post, unleashing frustrations, but I thought about it long after I clicked away.

Lastly, I had to include Baby Smiling in Back Seat’s incredibly moving Mother’s Day post.  It is brief, but it packs an enormous punch, especially the realization about 2010 that comes at the end.

The roundup to the Roundup: Keeping the name, but trying to incorporate the new one somehow.  Having trouble with the concept of everyone aging.  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 6 and May 13) 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.

NPR’s Fresh Air recently re-aired an old interview with the Beastie Boys to go with the most formal review of Hot Sauce Committee Part Two in the world (“my favourite couplet goes…”).  They were asked if they knew when they started out that they would still be together 25 years later.

They responded:

Mr. YAUCH: You know, I think if we knew that the band was going to be around for this long, we probably would’ve thought of a better name.

Mr. HOROWITZ: Yeah, that’s true.

GROSS: How did you think of the name?

Mr. HOROWITZ: I had nothing to do with it. This is Adam Horowitz.

Mr. YAUCH: It just seemed like it was a funny idea at the time. It was literally like we thought we were probably just going to play a handful of gigs. You know, all our friends were in bands. Everybody was in bands. You just, like, used to throw together a band and like write a couple songs, play a couple shows, and you’re done.

I loved the response because I often ask when the Beastie Boys will become Beastie Men.  It’s a side trip off the constant argument about content, which was covered in this interview too.  Gross asked them about how they changed from punk band to hip hop, and the difference between Licensed to Ill and Paul’s Boutique.  And they said that with each change, people got weeded out (though you must listen to the whole interview to get their amusing take on the multiple ways “weeded out” is used).

Blogs have to change in content.  They must because their writers don’t remain the same person indefinitely.  We go through different life stages; we grow, we change.  What’s important to me right now will be very different from what is important to me in 2016.  At least, I hope.

I’ve said this dozens of times before, but I think all people should think of themselves as general diarists and then make their content reflect their life.  Reflect what is in the forefront of their mind at the moment, rather than start a new blog for each new stage of life/idea.  I know others describe me as an infertility blogger, and that’s fine if that’s how they need to define me.  I define myself as a general diarist who happens to write about infertility because its a lens through which I see the world.

Though I have this really infertility-related blog name.

When I started out, I wrote about infertility a certain percentage of the time.  I have yet to do a scientific breakdown of my blog, but I probably wrote about infertility 40% of the time in the beginning if you count the Roundup and such.  Right now, I probably write about infertility… 40% of the time.  Nothing has changed, and yet, I sometimes think about that blog name — Stirrup Queens.  It clearly states what you’re going to find here: a whole lot of vagina.  But it also dismisses that other 60% of content that has been here since the beginning: reflections on community, on pop culture, on the twins, on blogging itself, on writing.

I have a feeling more than one person is nodding along because they also wonder about their blog name.  When you come up with a name for your blog, it fits you at the time.  It perfectly sums up what is happening in your life, the subject matter of the space.  And then life changes and you continue writing, and suddenly, this perfect blog name no longer fits your content.  Because it can’t fit your content.  Because people aren’t static, we are constantly in flux.

I was thinking about this because I came up with the most perfect new blog name.  It came from a conversation with the ChickieNob, and that, in and of itself makes it feel special to me.  It’s a name that brings together infertility with parenting after infertility.  That plays with the idea of word definitions.  It is just a good, solid, general diarist sort of name.**

And yet, how could I ever change the name Stirrup Queens?  It has an emotional history for me.  It’s a part of who I am.  I couldn’t imagine letting it go even if it means making space for this new, better name.

I’ve thought about changing the name and still listing “the blog formerly known as Stirrup Queens” in the header.  The reality is that the url would remain the same, so stirrup-queens.com would still be how you’d find me.  But then I open my blog to read an old post, and I see that name at the top and I think, “that’s my name.  That’s just the way it is.  How could I change it?”

After all, there are our personal names — our name names, for instance, Melissa — which we are expected to have fit us indefinitely.  Nicknames may come and go, but people rarely change their first name (not that it never happens, but it’s rare).  No matter how bored they become with the sound.  Even if their name doesn’t fit their personality.

Because I’m Melissa just as much as I’m Stirrup Queens.

I’m not sure where I stand on this.  I’ve seen people move from one title to the next with great happiness (think: Cecily changing to Uppercase Woman — do you remember the original name by this point?  I do, but the point is that she quickly inhabited this new name) so I know it’s possible.  It would be a small change since the blog url would remain the same.  Since the name Stirrup Queens would still be woven into the blogroll.  People would most likely always use both names — I couldn’t see Stirrup Queens disappearing altogether.

And yet.

Your thoughts? (Taking into account that no one likes change) And do you like your blog’s name or do you wish it were something different?

*My goal for the title was to mimic the refrain: “do these pants make my ass look weird?” And then realized right before posting it that people might not make that connection.

**I would say the name, but I don’t want feedback on the name.  I mean, I’m set on the name — if I changed it, this would be it.  So I don’t want it to become a comparison, an “I like Stirrup Queens better than that.”

Once upon a time, there was this blogger known as Dynamo Dad.  He was one of the backbones of the early ALI community.

It has been one year since the world lost Alex, and it is a much darker place without him — without his art, without his energy, without his words.

Around the world, people are doing such cool things to remember him.  I am going to remember him as I first met him online — as Dynamo Dad — part superhero, part-all-too-human.  I am wearing my Superman t-shirt in his honour today.

His wife is getting through this day by putting one foot in front of the other during this very difficult anniversary.  Please circle the wagons around Vee at Trois Little Birds.  Show her your enormous love by surrounding her with good thoughts.  Even if you don’t personally know Vee and never knew Alex, you can still go over and leave her these words: “I’m abiding with you.”  Let her know that she is not alone; that the whole world is remembering him with her.

For those watching my midlife crisis unfold, I bring you the latest installment which has included guitar lessons, a wardrobe consisting exclusively of superhero t-shirts, pinball-and-comic-book afternoons, and now… the scooter.

After the royal wedding, I went out and got the twins scooters.  Not a Vespa, but those pre-skateboard things consisting of a skateboard with a handlebar.  Watching them try with mixed results to balance on the board filled me with jealousy.  I wanted a ride, and if I hadn’t purchased kid-sized ones (where I probably exceeded the weight limit), I would have demanded a turn.

I spent a night researching my options and went to bed with the decision to buy myself one in the morning.  By the time I woke up, I rethought the whole plan.  What the hell was I thinking?  First and foremost, I would most likely break something because I’m the most uncoordinated person in the world.  Secondly, even if I didn’t break something, I’d probably do some other sort of bodily damage — pulled muscles or gaping flesh wounds.  Thirdly, even if I managed to somehow remain alive, I would look ridiculous.  Please, picture for a moment a greying-haired woman on a skateboard.

So I tabled the idea.

Even though it kept nagging at me.

Last Tuesday, we had a few errands that had.to.get.done; adult, boring minutiae that were the more exciting alternative to what had to get done in the house (namely, clean toilets, vacuum floors, and laundry).  As I looked at our afternoon, the nagging entered a crescendo.

I was thinking about a friend of ours with cancer, the same diagnosis that kicked my ass into restarting guitar lessons.  The last time we saw him, he looked so old.  And the amplified, internal get-the-fucking-scooter song was wailing out about how I’m not getting any younger, and how I’m more likely to have the body to do this now than I will ten years from now.

So I picked up the twins from school, and we took care of what needed to get done, and then we went to buy me a scooter.  The man at the store mistakenly thought the scooter was for the kids, so he kept bending down and directing the answers to my questions to them.  We finally informed him that the scooter was for me, and he stared at me dubiously and asked me to be careful.  He sold it to me with this expression that can only be described as fearful.  Like he was a goodhearted drug dealer who wondered if he should be selling this horse bladder-sized bag of cocaine to a junkie.

Something like that.

I should stop here and say that I’ve been on one of these exactly once and it was when I was under ten years old.  We were inside a house, on a flat surface, and the scooter had three or four wheels.

I planned to ride the one I purchased outside.  On a hilly street.  With uneven pavement.  Oh, and it only had two wheels.  And did I already tell you that I’m very uncoordinated?

We brought it home and assembled it.  Even though I should have been making dinner and we were going to be massively late to bed if we went outside, we trekked outside with our scooters.

And I was scared shitless.

I mean, my heart was pounding and I felt dizzy because I was so terrified.  I’m not a fan of roller coasters.  I’m not even a fan of driving over 15 miles per hour.  I am just not a scooter type of person.  But I thought about myself at age 80, and how I’d have regrets if I didn’t do this.  And I pushed off.

After a bunch of wobbly, urine-releasing moments of terror (moments filled with my neighbour screaming, “please be careful!” interspersed with her laughing hysterically at me), I started being able to keep both feet off the ground for three seconds without falling.  And as time went on, I was able to go farther and farther. (Dinner, kids?  What dinner?  I don’t have time to make you your damn dinner.  I’m scooting!)  After a half hour or so,  I was riding down the street — the entirely length of our street — with both feet on the board, taking curves, navigating around the other kids on scooters who came out of their houses to ride with us.

I was a fucking rock star.

Which took care of my first two fears — I was physically doing this without harming myself.  I thought about the third fear as I watched the teenage boys playing football; all of them pretending that they weren’t laughing at the woman on the scooter.  Maybe I was their joke of the evening, but perhaps they’ll one day be in their late thirties and think about how difficult that was for me to get on the scooter and conquer my fears.

Oh, and they’ll think about how I was a fucking scooter ninja rock star.

So much so that I contacted the local skate park to inquire about getting skateboarding lessons.  I think I’ve found my calling.

As I was writing this, I looked at the play kitchen next to my desk and noticed that one of my little Stuart Smalleys had left herself a message:

And I can freakin’ do it too.