So, the end of the autograph story.  We went to see American Idiot on Broadway last weekend.  It was a fantastic performance despite the plotline being a little thin.  Okay, a lot thin.  But the music was great and the kids had a lot of energy and Billie Joe Armstrong was the most adorable drug dealer in the world.

Afterward, we walked outside and there were hundreds of people all lined up, DOWN A CITY BLOCK, in order to catch a glimpse of Billie Joe when he walked out.  Josh and I ducked across the street behind the police barrier, trying to catch a picture of him for the twins.  One of the policemen dryly said to the other policeman, “If I told these people I was giving out $1000, I don’t think it would get a reaction like seeing this guy would.”  Fair enough, but money is pretty much meaningless to the twins right now, but a picture of Billie Joe Armstrong would bring about a huge grin.

After waiting a half hour, security came out and announced that he wasn’t going to exit the theater (ever?) so Josh and I turned and left.  The reality was that I was fulfilled by that point, but it had nothing to do with the play exactly.  We had witnessed two moments that made the trip worth it.  The first was when we were waiting to get into the theater, this little boy with Down syndrome walked by with his mother, and when he saw the painting of Billie Joe on the building, he stopped and got so excited.  His mother took his picture with it.  It was actually quite touching to watch this little boy get so emotional at seeing the painting — like we live in this magical world where you could pass your favourite person painted onto the side of a building.  I will never forget that smile he made while posing.

The other was the teenager in front of us in the theater.  I forget which song it happened during, but he gave this emotional fist pump at the end of the song.  He played air guitar.  He mouthed all the words.  It was again catching this moment that meant so much to another person.  I think as you move away from the teenage years you forget how meaningful it can to have your thoughts reflected back in song.  Every once in a while, I can tap into that — but it is so much easier to remember when you see a teenager hooked into their music.

So… no autograph, no picture.  But seeing those two moments meant more to me than a signature on a Playbill.

(Though, Billie Joe, if you’re reading this, please email my kids at the address under the “contact me” section — they were so disappointed that we came home with just stories and no visuals, though we stayed up giving them the sanitized version of American Idiot.  My daughter was particularly amused to hear that you proposed to Van Hughes on stage and that Leslie McDonel pretended to be upset.  She made me retell that story several times.)

So.

The other post was getting too convoluted, and I thought it best to divide this thought from it.

My other question was whether interacting with a blogger changes the way you read their blog.  It’s different from actors or musicians because the medium literally has interaction embedded in the process.  There is that comment box, practically begging you to start a conversation.  Most bloggers freely give out their email address.

But still, there is the moment where the blogger steps out through the screen and you meet in the face-to-face world or you speak over the phone or you Skype — and in those moments, does it change the way you read their blog?

I’ve had it happen both ways — I’ve had bloggers step through the screen and appear exactly as I imagined they would be based on their writing.  And I’ve had bloggers step through the screen and be so wholly different from their blog that it affected how I read their blog after that point.  Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing — it’s not as if the blog was ruined and I could never read it again.  But I now needed to incorporate this experience into the equation.

And because of that knowledge, there are some people I would rather not meet.  I’d rather not have their blog change for me at all, and not knowing which way it would go — would it enhance my reading experience or change it — I think I would choose to have them remain on the other side of the screen.  Therefore, I’d never be offended if someone didn’t want to meet me, either because they think I’m as boring as a syrup-less pancake or because they don’t want reading this space changed for them in any way.

Have you met many bloggers in the face-to-face world?  Were they exactly as they appeared on their blog?  Did it change the way you read their space?

Welcome to the third concert on the blog. Get your lighters ready because here we go…

[For those who are new: Concert on the Blog Series is a weekly post highlighting a musical, theater, film, or comedy performance. It’s also a chance for viewers to communicate with the artists via the comment section on the post. In other words, it’s free publicity for artists and it’s free enjoyment for viewers — a win-win for all participants. Please click here to find out how you can have your performance featured.]

Melissa the Emcee: We’ve heard quirky and we’ve heard mind-expanding, but it’s time to focus on some good, old-fashioned folk rock.  This band is the embodiment of the outdoor, evening concert.  The sort where you throw a picnic blanket on the ground and lie around with old friends, listening to jeans-and-chucks rock-and-roll.

There’s a story behind the song: He wrote it in 1997 as a lonely, single guy living in Israel, and “I actually used it to propose to my then-girlfriend Beverly almost a decade later.  MKB had a gig at the music venue where Bev and I had our first date — a club called the Middle East in Cambridge MA.  She was there, along with a whole lot of friends and family, and when the time came, I hopped off the stage, got down on one knee, and sang the ‘Will you marry me?’ lyric.”

Seriously, hearing that, how can you not get goosebumps?

The beautiful, lilting “Maple Tree” by the Max Klau Band.

[audio:https://www.stirrup-queens.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/07-Maple-Tree.mp3]

The band is actually currently holding a contest that you can read about on their Facebook page.  They’ve launched the “Best Musical Proposal Story” competition.  Go send in any true stories of ways that someone used music to propose marriage, and whoever submits the most creative, moving, and romantic story will win a free CD.

More about the band: “In just over two years of playing the clubs of Boston, MKB has built an enthusiastic base of fans who appreciate great musicianship, quality songwriting and energetic live shows. Fans love their Dave Matthews Band Alternative/Folk via Van Morrison style. The band has a rare combination of catchy, intelligent hooks, soulful lyrics and musical sophistication that’s too good to pass up.”

For those in love with the music (and please let them know in the comment section below), you can find them in many places on the Web:

• Website: http://www.myspace.com/maxklauband.
• Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Max-Klau-Band/100607403926

Now go mill about the lawn (fine, the comment section), hanging out with your fellow concert goers and chat about what you just heard and saw.

I’m going out on a limb here and making the assumption that we’re not the only couple who has made family building decisions based on our lack of insurance coverage.  If we were only considering the money it takes to bring a child from birth to adulthood, we have the means to bring a few more kids into the world.

But we’re not talking about the money it costs to bring a child from birth to adulthood.  We’re talking about spending several thousand dollars each month for the chance to have a child.  In other words, it would be like plopping down $10,000 for a car, having the salesperson beam at you as he takes your money and says, “no car today, but try again soon!” and have you leave the lot empty-handed.  I mean, literally empty-handed.  No car and no $10,000.

Makes you throw up a little, right?

I’m in a mandated state but we’ve managed to always have insurance that finds the loopholes.  The first time through treatments, I approached treatments without regard to the cost.  By which I mean that I fretted over the cost and made myself sick over the cost, but like a gambler unable to leave the craps table, I kept entering the game again and again.

I started out the second round of treatments with much the same mentality.  Let’s just do what we need to do and spend what we need to spend to get through this.  And then the recession hit.  And then it was unclear whether we’d have jobs tomorrow much less a house and food on the table.  Like most Americans, we lived in this precarious state for many months wondering what would happen next.  And not knowing what would happen next suddenly made the money decisions loom large.

At one point, we needed to decide whether we’d spend our savings on a cycle — yes, on a single cycle — and part of me wanted to take the gamble.  But when Josh asked me how I’d feel if the cycle didn’t work, I replied that I would want to kill myself for making life hard for the twins for the sake of providing a sibling.  And there we had our answer.  Because it makes me nauseated just to think about it.  I couldn’t live with myself if we didn’t hit the jackpot and that money was gone.  And with it, opportunities for the twins.

Would our decision have been different if we had insurance coverage — absolutely.  I think I have the mental and physical fortitude to do a few more cycles.  But it’s the financial side impacting the emotional side that terrifies me.  I don’t want to end up hating myself.

So we’re in limbo.  We haven’t stopped and we haven’t started.

We talk so much about the emotional side of infertility and we certainly bitch about the physical side of infertility, but we rarely touch on the hard questions that pop up in the financial realm of infertility.  Our kids will one day know that we paid a lot of money to have them (even if we don’t yank out the receipts, they’ll know at some point how much fertility treatments cost and be able to do the math) — will this make them feel special in the future?  Will they feel like they owe us something?  Will they be ashamed that their parents paid a lot when they know their friend’s parents simply coughed up a co-pay?  I hope they never feel indebted.  If they had to feel anything, I’d want them to understand how much we wanted them in our lives that we were willing to do anything physically (and pay any price) to get there.

It’s hard to talk about money; for some reason, it’s harder and feels more impolite than speaking about my vagina.  I’m glad Lori and Cassandra raised these questions in their blog carnival.

What are your thoughts?  Has the financial side of infertility ever impacted the emotional side of infertility?  Have you made decisions about family building based on money (and how you’d feel about said money if the cycle didn’t work)?

Visit Write Mind Open Heart for more perspectives on the Dollars and $ense of Family Building and to add your own link to the blog hop, should you want to contribute your thoughts.

P.S. Rather than provide my answers in a Q and A format, I wove the questions into my post.  Click over to read the full list of questions.  You’ll easily be able to see the ones I answered.

P.P.S. I wrote this before I went to the theater, therefore, the story of whether I got the autograph/picture/used my time differently will need to wait.  I’m here, I’m around, but I wrote this post earlier in the weekend so I could take a few days simply to catch up on my Google Reader rather than write.

Just to drive home the point that I read People magazine and pretty much only People magazine lately, I clipped out the Chatter section that contained Amanda Seyfried’s thoughts on Twitter.  It is, you should know, her biggest pet peeve.  More than people protesting at funerals or people who drive twenty miles below the speed limit with their coat belt dangling outside their car door or people who use up the last of the sugar and then don’t put it on the shopping list therefore screwing up your baking plans.

Seyfried says,

Twitter drives me mad.  It’s just to be nosy.  For an actor, I don’t think it’s a good idea for an audience to know you too well.

I’m not going to point out to Seyfried how easily avoidable her pet peeve is (I mean, all she needs to do is not go on Twitter and she can apparently live a stress-free life sans her major annoyance), but I do think she raises an interesting point.

Part of being an actor — or really, any type of performer — is to make the viewer believe you are the character.  The audience shouldn’t be distracted from the performance by thinking about how you’re just pretending and reciting lines.

So does Twitter do that?  Does interacting with an actor online change the way you view their performance?  Do you see the seams, so to speak?  You may know information about an actor’s personal life from a magazine article, but everything other than a direct pipeline of personal thoughts (a la Twitter) or direct interaction (such as meeting the performer or speaking to them via email) is pretty much two dimensional.

I certainly feel that way with actors I know (as in, we see each other socially in the face-to-face world).  It’s hard for me to watch them on stage or screen and not see that they’re acting.

I have to admit that I stopped following a musician’s Twitter feed because I thought — based on his song lyrics — that he was a smart guy.  The punctuation errors and spelling errors in his Twitter feed made me uncomfortable — first and foremost, reminding me unpleasantly of an ex-boyfriend, but secondly, changing the way I was listening to his music.  It’s not mutually exclusive — you can have a brilliant mind and be a terrible speller.  But it bothered me enough to stop following him so I could enjoy the music without having the musician ruin the false image I had mentally created for him.

At the same time, meeting or interacting with a performer (or writer) often makes me more interested in their work.  Being able to ask a question via email or Twitter can make the difference between whether I listen to their music or watch their film or read their book OR whether I walk on by.  Shaking the President’s hand pretty much ensured that I’ll get involved with his campaign for re-election.  Get a book signed and I’ll pretty much read the next two or three books the writer puts out regardless of whether I speak to them again.

Why does the autograph have that power?  The simple signing of a name (or an email, or the ability to @ them on a tweet), can make all the difference in whether I’m engaged or not.  So how can it be both a good thing and bad thing — destroying the 4th wall that needs to exist between the performer and the audience AND the element that ensures that the audience returns?

In the same way that taking a photograph of someone you don’t really know has the same power?  I am more likely to go back and see the Sklar Brothers again because of that picture.

I have the opportunity today to get the autograph of someone whose work I really admire.  It would mean waiting around after an event and perhaps missing out on doing something more fun with that time beyond milling about for a half hour in order to gain 30 seconds of connection. 

What do you think I should do?  Wait for the autograph?  Stand there somewhat creepily and snap a picture silently?  Or simply walk on by, still enjoying the art and not having the connection? But being okay with that because those sort of moments are Amanda Seyfried’s pet peeve.

Seriously?  They needed a study in order to prove that if we had insurance coverage, we would actually elect to do single embryo transfers?  Did they actually think infertile women (and men) WANT to transfer multiple embryos and deal with those risks?  It didn’t occur to them that perhaps we make those choices because we’re paying out the nose for each cycle?  No?  Not obvious?

We’ve all been writing about this for years.  It seriously pains me that this is news.  But now that it is, for the love, give us insurance coverage because it will save money for all on the back-end.  NPR says so.

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I am very much in love with post-it notes.  I always have a couple of pads around the house to jot down ideas or random things I’m trying to remember or construct to-do lists.  The ChickieNob recently asked me for her own pack of post-it notes because she had terribly important work that needed to get done.  I acquiesced, laying down a bunch of ground rules as to where post-it notes could be left after finding them lining the upstairs hallway.

She recently turned her play kitchen into her home office.

I was going to write something snarky about her terribly important work and then thought better of it when I looked down at the inane commentary I’ve  scribbled on the post-it notes on my desk.  Touche.

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I shaved my legs for the first time this week since the beginning of winter.  Which means that, yes, I did go to that fancy winter wedding in a long ball gown with hairy legs.  And no one was the wiser.

I actually not only hate to shave my legs, but I actually like how it looks au natural.  Shaving my legs is the one thing I do for public appearance.  I don’t wear make-up, I don’t dye my hair, but I’ll shave my legs to blend in with the majority.  I don’t really have a reason for why I choose to do this.  It defies reason why I care.  Yet I do.  So out comes the razor when the weather gets warmer.

Where do you stand on the shaving leg front?

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Remember how I’m offering one NaBloPoMo prompt in the Roundup to entice you to one day commit to doing NaBloPoMo?  It’s a chance to test in a comment if you have the brain power to do a full month of NaBloPoMo.

So try your hand at a single prompt each week and if you can think of an answer, perhaps consider doing the entire month at some point.

ComOnNaPro (Comment on NaBloPoMo Prompt): What three words do you hope other people use to describe you?

You can either answer this in a comment, or if you’re moved to do so, answer it in a post on your blog and then come back here and let me know the permalink to the post.

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And now, the blogs…

Things get If’fy has a post about questions you can’t answer.  It’s a wisp of a post — it travels from one if to another (if she answers this way, if Linnea fell different…).  But it’s powerful in its quietness.

Three Little Birds has a beautiful post about sex and missing her husband.  I’m not sure why I found this so touching, but I did.  It’s one of those posts that I sat thinking about for a long time, wondering why I was so moved by it.  And unable to come up with the words, I instead send it out there so you can be moved by it too.

Tippy and Tidy’s Tumultuous Trip to Toddlers has a post about hanging out with her sisters in the city.  These trips recharge her because “…besides the good food, drink and dressing up, it’s also great to be reminded that there are a lot of women out there near my age who aren’t mom’s yet and that’s… ok!”  It’s an excellent reminder that this reality exists — even if the reality that surrounds you is otherwise.

Lastly, Delayed in DINKville has a post about opening up to friends and family about their infertility.  She explains all the times when she didn’t tell others what they were going through and what became the tipping point where she sent a letter that she held onto as a draft for months.  She writes, “I’m so glad that we sent it. Sending the e-mail felt liberating.  It felt like the right time to finally “out” ourselves.  I felt like I got rid of a huge weight I had been carrying around.”  The post, of course, is an excellent reminder that NIAW is right around the corner beginning on the 24th.  And I loved reading the aftermath from sending the letter.

The roundup to the Roundup: the whole family is now overusing post-its.  Shaved my legs — how about you?  ComOnNaPro.  And lots of great posts to read.