This week, Josh and I are celebrating our 9th anniversary.  After debating the pros and cons of numerous locales (Charlottesville sure looks interesting sort of!  And Deep Creek Lake would be lovely if it wasn’t dripping with memories of a past chemical pregnancy), we decided to go to Hershey because it (1) held no surprises, (2) had a hotel with a good fireplace which is perfect for reading time, (3) had chocolate in abundance as well as numerous alcoholic chocolate girlie drinks, and (4) had a free ride with singing, animatronic cows.

Wait, did I say that it held no surprises?

Would finding yourself one of only 6 hotel guests NOT attending the enormous Christian convention taking place this past weekend at the hotel be a surprise?

No?

So, we cozied around the hotel lobby fireplace with my vampire smut novels and Josh’s more erudite literature.  Just the two of us and over 1000 convention goers all discussing the theme of the weekend: “It’s All About Jesus.”

But wait — not only did we get 1000 convention goers, there was an enormous marching band convention happening in town too!  So if you were inside the building, you were listening to speakers screaming about Mary and Martha, and if you went outside the building, it was non-stop drum corp.

And we had an enormously fantastic time.

No, I’m serious — it was a really good time.

Save for the drum corp.

*******

We got home and immediately jumped back into running around and the shrieking schedule of life, and I wanted to stop for a second and just breathe in nine years.

Josh is this really incredible person, and I get to wake up every day with him.  Which is not to say that I always recognize that fact.  There are plenty of mornings where I roll over and hiss like a banshee trying to induce fear by lowering her voice: “your alarm went off.”

But what I’m trying to say is that banshee-hissing aside; when I am of sound mind and fully awake, I recognize that I married this incredible person who supports me in everything I do, including insane projects such as building numerous squirrel feeders in our kitchen (by the way, Josh, we’re building squirrel feeders today).

This story illustrates the type of person Josh is: two days before our wedding, I saw a news report while I was running that said local giving was down in the wake of 9/11 and some of the area soup kitchens didn’t have enough donations to put together Thanksgiving.  So I ran upstairs and woke him up, and made him call one of the soup kitchens and ask what we could bring.  The woman said “collard greens would help.”

So Josh went with me to the food store where we bought up all of the collard greens that they had out on display.  And then I told the cashier that I sort of needed all the collard greens in the store, and the cashier got them to bring out more collard greens.  So Josh filled his trunk (mind you, two days before our wedding when I had also given him a bunch of other tasks to do) with bags and bags of collard greens.

And he drove those collard greens downtown because I was too shy to go.

He didn’t laugh at me or roll his eyes or try to reason with me that a check would be easier than a collard green delivery.  He didn’t say, “this was your crazy idea; you go deliver a trunk-full of collard greens.”  No, he just gave me a kiss and said he’d see me in a bit, and he went downtown with his vegetable-laden trunk.

And that’s why I love him.

I love him because he makes me listen to his music and tell me that I like it when he knows that I don’t.  I love him because he tempers me when I’m running ahead with something that might not be a very good idea (such as the time I almost brought home the pet chicken, sweetie).  I love him because he forwards me newspaper articles I should read.

In other words, I love him because he makes me a better me.

And I love him because he makes 1000 sacrifices for our family.

Happy anniversary, Josh.

9 is half of 18, and is therefore, in Judaism, half of a life.  May our next 9 years be filled with even more Christian conventions and drum corps, more collard greens and squirrel feeders, more Wilco and New York Times.

I love you.

While the movie Alive was in the theaters, a popular topic of conversation was what you would do in the same situation. Would you eat your teammates if it meant your survival — if it was the only way you were getting out of the situation alive? Some people stated that yes, they could find it within themselves to do it. And others said no, they couldn’t foresee themselves eating another human. And I admitted that if my plane crashed in the Andes, and there was a properly roasted chicken on a silver platter (with a lid so that no snow could dirty-up the bird), surrounded by potatoes and carrots, I would not only not eat my teammates, but I wouldn’t eat the chicken, and I wouldn’t eat the potatoes and carrots because they had been on the platter with the chicken and touched it.

And this is why Josh tells people that I have poor survival skills.

Which is probably true — in Darwin’s world, I would most likely be snuffed out like those poor peppered moths — but what it comes down to are my extensive list of food phobias. It’s not that I don’t want to live; it’s just that my food phobias are that much stronger than my desire to get out of the Andes. (And, let’s face it, I rarely wear a coat or have one with me, so I probably would die of hypothermia long before they pulled the lid off the silver platter filled with chicken. My poor mother — can you imagine having a picky-eating-non-coat-wearing daughter?)

If I had to describe my food phobias with some umbrella factors, it would include foods that are white, foods that are goopy, and foods that come from animals. The two main food groups affected are meat/protein and dairy, though I have to admit that there are plenty of light-coloured vegetables with goopy preparations that don’t make the cut.

So on the spectrum from I’ll-eat-it-grudgingly to I-won’t-walk-down-the-aisle-of-the-food-store-where-this-item-is-housed:

• Eggs, Milk, Sour Cream, Cream Cheese, Butter: I’m pretty good at eating these five items, even though all are white. I added them to my diet fairly late in life, and while I’ll sometimes go through phases where the thought of them makes me queasy, it’s generally a given that I’ll eat these foods on their own, or mixed into something.
• Light-Coloured Ice Cream: It’s a given that I’ll eat chocolate ice cream, but every once in a while, I’ll have something with a vanilla base and survive to tell the tale.
• Yogurt: I’m fairly inconsistent with eating it, but I can do it sometimes if it’s a flavour dark in colour and something is in the yogurt such as bits of fruit. Smooth yogurt on its own is almost never consumed.
• Potato Chips and Other Light-Coloured Snacks: Again, not consistent with eating them, but I can generally be counted on to eat a few. It comes and goes — some weeks, I’m willing to eat a Pringle. And other weeks, they make my teeth hurt thinking about crunching something so light in colour.
• Mashed Potatoes: don’t like them, but I’ll eat them sometimes if I want something small off a menu or I need to be polite.
• Mashed Sweet Potatoes: ha, a surprise side-trip off the grid — it’s darker in colour than white mashed potatoes, but for some reason, I find mashed sweet potatoes goopier (perhaps smoother?), plus, people often put marshmallows on top, and marshmallows are one of my bigger fears.
• All Animal Proteins: I wouldn’t dream of eating chicken, beef, or fish, but I’m generally okay about touching it when I’m wearing gloves. One thing I can’t do at all is pureed animal — such as fish spreads or pate. Even tuna fish prepared for a tuna fish sandwich makes me throw up in my mouth when I see other people eating it.
• Jello and Marshmallows: anything with gelatin. I am a freak about checking things for gelatin, and I can’t even bring myself to prepare things with gelatin for the kids. Which is fine because the one time they tried it, they hated it. Gelatin is goopy bone marrow, or something like that, so … yikes! Goopy and clear — a terrible combination.
• Cheese in General: I am willing to shake mozzarella, Parmesan, or Monteray Jack out of a bag. I am willing to even eat said cheeses if they’re melted, and I don’t have to think about it being cheese. Every other cheese not only makes me queasy, but I don’t even want to touch them. I don’t want to see them or smell them. I don’t even want to walk by the cheese counter at Whole Foods. I do not want to shred my own cheese. I don’t want people to touch me after they’ve touched cheese. Cheese freaks me out. The only thing that can make me deal with cheese is if the twins want it. I can overcome my cheese fears for them and only them.
• Cottage Cheese: it literally almost made me throw up to type the word and stare at it on the screen, just as I feel like throwing up when I walk by it in the dairy section or see someone eating it.
• Mayonnaise: number one food fear. Can’t walk by it in the food store. Won’t let Josh bring it in the house. (We tried once, keeping it in a brown paper bag, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it being in the refrigerator.)

So there are the inconsistencies — for instance, we will probably be having huevos rancheros tonight — but like Walt Whitman, I defend this by admitting, “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.” But all in all, these are the foods that strike fear in my heart as I munch on my broccoli and green beans (thank you, world, for dark vegetables).

What are foods you could never bring yourself to eat or look at?

Cross-posted with BlogHer.

I’ll admit that the wishes made me weepy.  And that while I made my wish on something for myself, I also wish that everyone else’s wishes come true.

*******

I started running again this week which has made me stupid tired.  You know that kind of tired where you have to reread every sentence several times because you can’t remember the first part of the line by the time you get to the second independent clause?  By which I mean please excuse any typo-s in this post.

I was so worried to oversleep and miss my first day running that I woke up four times in the middle of the night to look at the clock.  And finally, at the godawful hour of 6 am, I trekked down to the basement to run indoors. (Please, I wouldn’t walk outside to the mailbox at this hour in my neighbourhood much less take a leisurely jog.)

And there was a cricket.

Okay, maybe it wasn’t a cricket, but it could have been an emaciated, red cricket.  So I ran upstairs and woke up Josh and told him about the cricket as if the house were on fire and he came downstairs and saved me.

And then I went running.

And discovered that I had gained four pounds in the five month interim between running routines.  I have felt the extra weight and it has made me miserable, so I decided to do something about it.  In addition, I went on a walk with the twins this week, and in the middle of the walk, I started having chest pains.  By which I should clarify that it was probably indigestion, but I started thinking about heart attacks and properly freaked myself out.  So, yes, running again.

On Wuhu Island.

Which is why, if I’m a little slow on the uptake for the next few days, you’ll understand that it is the fact that I’m still trying to make it work where I can watch Colbert and wake up at 6 am.

Like I said, stupid tired, emphasis on the word stupid.

*******

I got to meet up with a bunch of bloggers while in Boston last weekend.  Which rocked.  On Friday night, I had dinner with I Won’t Fear Love; Henry Street; Ultimate Journey; and Slaying, Blogging, Whatever.  So first, I got to eat dinner with these funny, sassy, smart women.  I seriously had no idea how much time had passed, but we were down there in the empty restaurant for more than three hours.

Then, on Saturday morning, I got to meet Keiko and her husband at the conference.  She is just as organized and smart and funny as you’d expect her to be from her blog.

And then, perhaps the creme de la creme moment, I was sitting at this table and I looked up and a few feet away was Natalie.  Which was 20 kinds of emotional and I feel so lucky that I got to hug her in person.  I wasn’t expecting to see her, so it was amazing to look up and see here there.

(This is me looking stunned)

Plus, the conference itself was amazing.  New England Resolve is so organized, and their executive director, Rebecca Lubens, who was heading the conference is this erudite, kickass woman who brought together a conference combining information with support.  The conference was like finding test answers inside a chocolate bar.

That last line made perfect sense to me with my lack of sleep.

*******

Instead of the Weekly What If: tell me which bloggers you’ve met this year (in 2010).  Or which bloggers you want to meet in 2011.

*******

And now, the blogs…

An Unwanted Path has a bleakly honest post about how she now doesn’t wish for a pregnancy insomuch as she wishes to not have another loss.  I love this thought: “But … I guess I’m grasping here. But, not getting pregnant could be a blessing in disguise. And maybe, just maybe, it means something. Or it could just be another sad mind-fuck on the path of infertility.”  It’s a brief, beautiful, sad read.

From IF to When has a post about what fertile women don’t know.  It’s a post that works best with the least amount of description.  It is something you need to read; to experience.

I Spy a Family has a series of posts for National Adoption Awareness Month and her post on fear was particularly well-written.  I especially love the last line: “If I haven’t done that, I would’ve missed out on the chance to parent the two people I love most in this world.”

Lastly, in a heartbreaking week, Hold My Hope has a post about needing a diet for the soul rather than the body.  She explains that she knows how to manipulate her body, train it, lose weight, gain weight.  What she can’t do is exercise that control over her emotional cravings.  I thought the analogy and the question was simply brilliant, and I wish I had a good answer to give.

The roundup to the Roundup: damn, running makes me tired. I got to meet a bunch of fantabulous bloggers.  Who have you met/who do you want to meet? And lots of great blogs to read.

A yearly tradition…

November 11th.  11/11.

Make a wish.

Here’s how this works: (1) Make a wish in the comment section (and don’t believe that stuff about how if say it aloud it won’t come true.  That is precisely when the parts that are within another human being’s control can come true).  (2) Then leave a comment on the blog of the commenter directly before you (so it’s a chain.  #2 comments on #1, #3 comments on #2, etc. If the commenter above you didn’t leave an address, just go one above that.  The point is to find new blogs/leave a comment–not stress).

The first person who comments on this post gets a free ride and does not need to leave any comments.  The last person who comments on this post gets … screwed.

It would be nice within your comment to refer to their wish (if it ties in to the post you read and comment on) and if you can grant any part of it, to do so.  If you can’t, because their wish is outside of human control, don’t feel badly.  But if you have the power to grant a wish, why not do it?

Just a heads up — this post is not going to be nearly as funny as Julie’s post on it (which just might be my favourite post ever).  By which I mean that it won’t be funny at all, but I was giving a quote for an article and it made me think through the whole situation.

WashPo did an article about Facebook updates and infertility a few weeks ago, and many places did a follow up post, and — as you’d expect — the comments were a mixed bag of “thank you for reminding people to be sensitive” and “these damn barren bitches need to get over themselves.”

Because apparently, asking someone to practice circumspection is a little bit too much to ask.

Circumspection is very different from not speaking about it at all.  Circumspection means that you think about how your words may be perceived and you tailor them to the person.

I gave news of my engagement differently to different people:

• Some people got: “Josh proposed and we’re getting married in November.”
• Other people got: “Josh and I got engaged, and this is how it went down…”

In other words, single friends who I knew might be happy for me but sad for themselves got the bare facts.  I gave the news, they processed the news, and if they wanted to know more, they asked for it.  Add widows to that category too.  I wanted them to know what was happening in my life, but I have to believe that it’s painful to hear about someone else’s happiness when you’re grieving your loss.

Oh, and add everyone not particularly close to me in that list as well: my co-workers may think I’m swell, but few needed to know more than “Josh and I are getting married” even if I was so excited that I wanted to talk about it incessantly.  It wasn’t about me, you see.  It was about me operating within a larger whole, where it can’t all be about me.  Just because something is exciting in my world doesn’t mean that everyone else is going to find that news exciting enough to hear more than a cursory amount of facts.

But here’s the thing, engagement announcements rarely come out of the blue.  You know the people are dating and you know it may be coming in the future, so if you’re sensitive to those sorts of announcements, you brace yourself for it.  Pregnancy announcements are different because most of the time, you don’t know when your friends are ovulating or if they’re trying to procreate.  Pregnancy announcements can come at 5 weeks or they can come when the person is 6 months along — you just never know.

I like to think of engagement announcements like spiders — when you see them on the wall, you know they’re going to move up or down or left or right.  Whereas pregnancy announcements are more like crickets: they jump out at you and you never know where they’re going to land.

Part of what people are missing with the infertility example is that — like most health issues — it’s wholly outside of your control.  Think about it this way: if your friend just lost her legs, would you put up a status update that says, “I just ran 5 miles and it feels so good.  It’s amazing to have legs and I’m so blessed!”  Or would you put up this more sensitive update: “Just ran 5 miles.  Going to shower now.”

In both updates, you convey the information, but with Facebook — unlike a blog where you might not know the audience — you do know who is possibly reading your feed.  You can save the detailed, gushy news for personal emails rather than broadcasting it to the larger audience.*

Which is also to say that if infertile men and women want a little sensitivity thrown their way, they need to be upfront.  People only know what you tell them.  And beyond that, there are other options beyond schooling someone when you’re unhappy with the way they deliver news — you can hide their feed or unfriend them on Facebook (though hopefully keep them as a friend in the face-to-face world).  It has to flow in both directions with people realizing that the way they deliver news may affect how the news is taken AND people realizing that if we all walk around on egg shells around each other, the world will be a very uncomfortable place.

And what people need to understand about the WashPo article — WashPo ASKED infertile men and women how they dealt with their friend feed.  Infertile men and women didn’t go to WashPo and say, “please let the world know this because we think they need to change.”  Instead, WashPo wrote the article, people were honest in their quotes, and now, it’s up to people who read the article to decide how they want to comport themselves.  They know the truth about how people are reading their feed.  Or not reading their feed.  Which is very different from your friend calling you up and saying, “you, Person X, need to change the way you write your feed.”  WashPo’s article was simply presenting how people approach Facebook.

And on that note, posting an update to Facebook is just about the worst way to deliver important news.  Some people are on there daily.  Some people go on monthly.  And some people on your friend list don’t actually go on at all.  If you have important news to share, share it directly.  Send an email or make a phone call to ensure that the person knows rather than posting it to a social media site.  If the news is so important that you want people to know about it, then take the time to actually ensure that they know about it.  The only people who should be finding out important news (such as the fact that you’re pregnant) via a social media site should be peripheral people that you wouldn’t mind if they stopped reading your friend feed.

So why get your panties in a twist if they stop reading it?

* This, of course, assumes that your Facebook friend list is a mixed bag of people.  If everyone on your list is in your family, carry on as if you were sending a group personal email.  If your list is made up of a few co-workers, a few old college friends, a few random people from your neighbourhood, and your great-aunt Rose who happens to be an Internet junkie, then treat your status updates like the subject line of an email — you don’t gush all the news there; you just provide a taste.