As we were driving home from my parent’s house on Christmas (which was also known as Saturday, in our world), we were sucking in the last of the Christmas music from 97.1, by which I mean that I was sucking in the last of the Christmas music and everyone else was enduring. (I earned this right by promising to do things that a lady doesn’t discuss on a blog.)

And I remarked to Josh as John Cougar Mellancamp (sans either the Cougar or the Mellancamp — I can never remember which he dropped) crooned about Mommy kissing Santa Claus that I thought the song was a horror show.  What sort of song celebrated a woman cheating on her husband?  What was so titillating about it being Santa Claus?  Why was it okay for Mommy to have an affair with a man who delivers toys, but not okay for her to be having an affair with the soccer coach?  Would the little boy in the song be just as gleeful if he caught Mommy making out with his principal?

And Josh looked at me as if I were insane and said, “his dad was Santa Claus.  Mel, he was dressed up as Santa Claus, and he thought it was the real Santa Claus.  Hence why his dad couldn’t walk in — because his dad WAS Santa Claus.”

Which just didn’t ring true for me because (1) there is nothing in the song about dad going out of the house — in fact, it is assumed that Dad is upstairs in his bed, blissfully unaware that his wife is cheating on him downstairs and (2) who dresses up AFTER their child goes to sleep to put the toys under the tree?  You dress up in the morning when the kids are awake or in the early evening on Christmas Eve when — again — the kids are awake.  But who the hell dresses up when the kids are asleep.

“Well, it was probably for a sex game,” Josh added.  “Like he got the costume to surprise the kids, but then he put it on at night for a role playing game where he would treat Mum as if she were a bad little elf.”

Which is really no better that a little boy is watching the beginning moments of his parent’s sex game.  Seriously: a horror show.

So, which one of us is right: are we celebrating the fact that mum is having an affair, or is it dad in a Santa costume?

And on that note, Happy Boxing Day!

On Tuesday, I was in the house writing when I heard strange music playing, and while it was faint, it sounded like it was coming from inside the house.  My immediate and completely logical assumption was that there was a deranged killer waiting for me in my basement, playing electronic music to lure me downstairs where he would hack me apart (I have a very very healthy imagination).

So I stood by the basement door, my ear pressed to it, about to call 9-1-1 to tell them about the killer playing electronic music in my basement when I realized that the basement wasn’t the source of the sound.  It sounded like it was coming from the living room.  And my next thought was, “great, so the killer is under the table and now I’m going to be hacked to bits.”

I bet you’re wondering how I could possibly be writing this, but I was actually wrong.  The twins had downloaded a musical screensaver to Josh’s computer, hence the creepy, quiet electronic music as fish swam past on the screen.

Terrifying.

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Merry almost Christmas!  I hope you have excellent plans for the weekend and much happiness over the holiday.  And if you’re not having a happy holiday and need to vent to someone, hey, this Jew will be around.  Saturday is sort of just Saturday in my world.  We’ll be volunteering.  And making marble runs.  And eating chili.  And trying to get in the last few moments of Christmas music from the radio (Josh doesn’t know about this last piece…shhh…)

Instead of the Weekly What If: Since Christmas is ending this weekend, and the Christmas music will go off the radio (sniff), please share your favourite Christmas song to make the ultimate play list.

Mine is either Josh Groban’s “O Holy Night” or the Kinsey Sicks dragapella version of “Jingle Bells, Don’t Ask Don’t Tells” (which they retired since they repealed DADT).

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Rather than ask people to make big resolutions that we never keep (come on, admit it), BlogHer is asking people to write small steps they’ve taken towards better health.  One small thing you’ve worked into your day that sets you on a different path.

I’m working on this project so I really want to encourage you to participate.  We think a lot about our bodies — maybe more than the average person.  Surely there is something you have done, some small step, to wrest back control of your body and overall health.

Click over to read how to participate — I’d love to see some ALI people represented in the project.

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And now, the blogs…

Trying to Conceive has a post utilizing one of my favourite songs: “Circle Game.”  It’s about using a song to plug back into how you felt as a child; singing the song with the idea that it was pretty and life continues on, but without the realization of how you’d feel when you’re dragging your feet to slow the circles down.

Blue.Bell.Beat has a post set in 2000.  It is about her first time being alone; on the other side of the world.  And meeting the woman who would kick her out of her funk and get on with seeing the world.  It’s a lovely post, and I feel like a good reminder about living is tucked away somewhere within the lines.

Lastly, Uncommon Nonsense has a post about the uncomfortable questions and comments that can arise when you’re visiting friends and family (you know, as you might be this weekend).  I absolutely love this phrase: “pre-wincing with pain” and wish her good thoughts for her upcoming visit.

The roundup to the Roundup: it turns out that it was a screensaver and not a killer in my house.  Merry Christmas if you celebrate it and answer the Instead of the Weekly What If.  Participate in BlogHer’s small steps project.  And great blog posts to read.

If you never read Coraline and don’t want to know one smidgen about the book (I am being careful not to spoil it), don’t read these posts. They are about infertility, but they springboard off the book.

Willy Wonka: But Charlie, don’t forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he he always wanted.

Charlie Bucket: What happened?

Willy Wonka: He lived happily ever after.

When Coraline goes into the Old Man’s flat while looking for the lost souls, the voice inside promises her everything she wanted before she ever met her Other Mother.  The material items — such as the green gloves or the Wellies in the shape of frogs — but also a parent who understands her need for adventure and interaction and is able to provide it.

Coraline’s response:

Coraline sighed.  “You really don’t understand, do you?” she said.  “I don’t want whatever I want.  Nobody does.  Not really.  What kind of fun would it be if I just got everything I ever wanted?  Just like that, and it didn’t mean anything?  What then?”

It’s the familiar concept that the sweetness of the victory is contingent on the struggle.  Those things that we think we want that are easy to get really aren’t appreciated and might not even have been deeply wanted if push came to shove.  Coraline’s point is that humans don’t want life handed to them in a neatly wrapped package.  We want to work towards things, struggle — that’s what Coraline calls the “fun” part of the process.

Would you like to debate her right now?

I’m sure anyone who has really struggled with something such as … oh … let’s say family building might have a different view point about the benefit of struggle.

Yet there have been many posts up in the ALI community about whether infertility makes you a better parent; and if not “better” in the sense of knowing all the verses to “Wheels on the Bus” and being an expert diaperer, does it make you a more patient parent, a more appreciative parent in the same way that if you have food all around you, you may not stop to marvel at a meal in the same way that you would if you were once starving?

I think it’s a little offensive to think that the struggle makes you a better parent.  I can think of plenty of people who reached parenthood with ease and are kick-ass parents, and plenty of people who did multiple rounds of IVF that really suck as parents.  And I can think of the opposite too — those who didn’t struggle and suck, and those who did struggle and knock the figurative parenting baseball out of the park.  It all seems a little too much like a crap-shoot to look at this as a “if … then …” situation.

So what of the process?  What part of struggling is necessary in order to build us into who we become?  And where do you fall with life overall — are you closer aligned with Willy Wonka or Coraline once you get past the frustration of your current situation?  If given the choice between always receiving anything you ever wanted without working for it, or having to gather your own happiness, which would you choose? (Think of the big picture beyond the here and now.)

Disclaimer: I have finally reached the end of Coraline, and I liked it quite a bit.  Enough to start reading Good Omens when I finish reading the vampire smut novel I’m currently on.  Perhaps it’s more indicative of where my head is in how I read Coraline, but I couldn’t help but see all of us within this book; within her frustration for how what she wants is mismatched against what she has, and the struggles she needs to go through to reclaim what was there all along.

Dear PR People Who Don’t Actually Spend Any Time on My Blog Before You Write Me:

I am very tired of receiving requests to write about your exciting! new! baby! product!  I am also very tired of receiving requests asking me to write about your wonderful product that will make my pregnancy as easy and wonderful as one of those douche commercials where they’re running along the beach.

You caught that part where I can’t get pregnant … right?

I’m not sure how I got on your list in the first place.  Because if you had done your job at all — if you had actually focused on the “relations” part of “public relations” you would have noticed that I have an infertility blog as we were building our relationship, and you would have tailored your pitch to reflect my status and how I identify.

Oh … wait, we don’t have a relationship?  Then why the hell are you writing me?

No, I don’t want to host an online baby shower for your pregnancy product.  No, I don’t want to send you pictures of myself pregnant and using your product — do you know why?  BECAUSE I CAN’T.  Because I can’t get pregnant.  Hence why this blog has an infertility focus though I also write about other things such as my fear of crickets or the latest Harry Potter movie or my interactions with PR employees.

And while I recognize that your job is difficult — that there are a lot of blogs out there and without key information such as daily page view numbers or which blogs share the same exact audience, it is difficult to know where you should send your pitch for the biggest bang — it doesn’t excuse this.  Because we’re starting from a place where you are asking a favour of me — you’re asking me to write about your product.  I get nothing out of this interaction and you get everything.  Therefore, it would be nice if you took the time to get to know me a bit.  And if your product doesn’t fit at all with my blog, please don’t send the email.

Yes, I love babies.  I love holding my friend’s babies and then sniffing my shirt the rest of the day.  But coveting a child is not the same thing as wanting to hawk your product.

Because receiving an email asking if I want to try a new bottle/pregnancy belly band/binkie/diaper/formula/breast pump is like taking a plastic fork, snapping the tines so they’re extra sharp, and then dragging the broken utensil over my heart.  I could have said a knife to the heart, but I think we all know how incredibly surprising it is when a plastic utensil snaps when you’re digging into your food.  And that’s what it’s like to get your emails in my inbox.

Because I expect to see emails from friends in my inbox, and work emails, and even random requests from people that are completely on target with who I am and what I write and the blogroll I keep.  In fact, I usually love hearing from new people.  But I never expect to see a PR pitch for a baby product — you know, due to that whole infertility thing.

Sincerely,

Mel

If you never read Coraline and don’t want to know one smidgen about the book (I am being careful not to spoil it), don’t read these posts. They are about infertility, but they springboard off the book.

Back in college, my boyfriend-at-the-time (the one who had a heart the size of a rancid sesame seed) and his friends were all passing around a physics book, and I ended up reading it one night too.  I have no memory of what the book was called, but one of our favourite parts was a chapter on hyperspheres.

Hyperspheres are a kind of torus or donut-shape four-dimensional sphere where the outside can rotate through the inside, creating a way to show how everything is connected.  Two points that are as far away as possible from one another are also closest to one another … at the same time.

In Neil Gaiman’s Coraline, there’s a scene where Coraline begins walking away from the house and ends up back where she began.  Sort of like that aptitude test question of how far a dog can run into the woods (halfway; then he’s running out).  Because the world — even if Gaiman doesn’t use the term — behaves like a hypersphere.

It’s a concept that moves out of the physics world and is found in our everyday lives too — that idea of one thing being both as far away and as close as possible at the same time.  For instance — the ALI community.  We’re strangers, but we share our stories like intimate friends.  We live far apart from one another, but we feel emotionally close.

And I can’t think of another real life situation that mirrors this more than infertility because — at the very same time — you are far away from reaching parenthood as well as close to parenthood.  You are deeply entrenched in that parenting world — thinking about not-yet children, revolving your lives around not-yet children, preparing for not-yet children.  And yet, you cannot have children so you are also far away from parenthood.

Perhaps the hypersphere also serves as an explanation for why we can be both joyous for another person and miserable for ourselves at the exact same moment.

Disclaimer: I am midway through the book, and these are my thoughts midway through the book. I may have a very different reaction to the book once I get to the last page.