If you follow me on Twitter, you already partially know my tale of bravery this week at the legs of a cricket (I was going to say at the hands of a cricket, but then realized that crickets probably don’t have hands).  For those who don’t follow me, sit back for the story of how Melissa battled the largest cricket in the world.

It was late at night on Tuesday, and I had just finished reading a new post by Somewhat Ordinary when I went in the kitchen and caught something move out of the corner of my eye.  The thing jumped again, and oh my fucking Lord, it was a cricket that was easily the size of the oven.

Josh wasn’t home, and my first instinct was to run upstairs (as well as curse him).  But then I wouldn’t know where the cricket went, and I’ve got to be honest, I wouldn’t probably go back downstairs again until the thing was caught.  As in, I would have spent Wednesday in my room.

My second instinct was to call Lindsay or Calliope to come and get it, but I knew they would skin me alive for calling so late and I wouldn’t be able to handle the wait until they arrived.  My third instinct was to channel Somewhat Ordinary, who is this kickass brave woman who can kill crickets.  I went with this plan to go at it with the Dyson.  All of those thoughts happened in the course of about three seconds.

I plugged in the vacuum and stretched out the wand, and screaming like a Celtic warrior (sans the nakedness and blue woad paint), I started pointing it at the cricket while it jumped around manically, frightened no doubt by my continuous rebel yell as well as the fact that extreme suction was coming close to its body.  It jumped under the sideboard, and as I waved the wand underneath (yes, still emitting a continuous shriek), a miracle happened and the cricket paused from moving long enough to be sucked into the Dyson where it spun until unconsciousness.

Even Josh was impressed with its size when he got home and emptied the Dyson for me.  I felt like such a fucking warrior.  The last time I had that type of high over my prowess, I had a needle of Follistim going into my belly.

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Someone asked me this week when I was going to pop out another child and  “come on, you have to get on with this and have another!”  She was rewarded with me bursting into tears.  Serves her right for poking.

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Back to the cricket: Josh and I have been debating whether or not a cricket that was not dead could live in the toilet and jump back out at you when you sat down to pee.  I wasn’t concerned over my cricket because mine was clearly in a state of rigor mortis with its enormous legs splayed around him.  But it was a hypothetical question about placing a live cricket in a toilet.

Josh insisted that because crickets cannot swim, it would drown.  I insisted that crickets are crafty and it would be entirely within the realm of possibility to have it hide in the pipes until a little girl like me sat down and then it would HOP ONTO MY ASS.

I based this on the fact that there are at least 300 cases of small children who had their bums bitten off by alligators that came through their toilets.  Isn’t that true?  Aren’t there dozens of children who lose their asses every year to alligator-in-the-toilet incidents?

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The Weekly What If: If you had to be born the conjoined twin of someone famous (real or fictional), who would it be and why?

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And now, the blogs…

The video that Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere Storkey, Storkey posted on her blog made Josh and I laugh so hard that Doritos almost came out my nose.

Tales of Rachel has a post about the friends who got away.  I think I was drawn to this post because we had a week where we got together with Josh’s oldest friend and our kids played together like little yentas, which was followed by Josh attending the funeral for a friend’s father.  He came home quietly pointing out that they had been friends as kids and then they went through first jobs and marriage and infertility and kids and now, they are burying a parent.  And it was just this emotional scope of events.  And then Rachel writes this kickass post about the people we want to stay close to but life gets in the way.  She explains, “I wish I could return to knowing beyond a passing moment on a social networking site.”  Isn’t that how it is?

Moving onto more emotional posts, Serenity wrote about what made her push forward in giving O a sibling.  It’s a sad turn of events that brought her to this realization, but it’s also the energy fueling what will be a difficult process.  She writes, “And how much I want that for O. I shudder when I think of a situation like Thursday’s, except with ME. My cousin at least had his brothers to rely on as they waited for my uncle to get home.”

Lastly, Shorty’s Adventure has a post about her recent loss.  I cried with the end of her post: “My heart and soul, buried in this globby mess I was about the flush down the toilet.  I started at it, I was already on the morphine, and all I could do was stare at it.  I even said goodbye as I threw it away.  I am supposed to somehow go on, but how do you go on, with no heart or soul.”  I think anyone who has had to flush one of those globby messes down the toilet understands how it feels to lose your heart and soul.  And I can’t explain how you go on, but somehow, you do go on.

The roundup to the Roundup: I took on the cricket from Hell.  Thanks for asking when I’m going to have another kid.  Do alligators live in toilets?  Answer the Weekly What If about your preferred conjoined twin.  And lots of great posts to read.  Hope those who celebrated Thanksgiving had a wonderful day.

I’ve posted the pareve (meaning: no dairy) cornbread muffin recipe below because I couldn’t find one online that didn’t contain things that I deemed “weird crap” such as flax seed.  So I made up a recipe and got it right on the second try.  So just in case someone else is searching for a dairy-free cornbread muffin recipe or a pareve cornbread muffin recipe, scroll down and see below.

As I waited for them to rise, I looked through the numerous Christmas catalogs that arrived in the mail for Williams Sonoma or King Arthur.  I started marking pages — not stuff that I needed or even had any room to take into my house, but stuff that just looked interesting.  That I coveted.  A popsicle maker despite the fact that I have popsicle molds I rarely use.  A couche for making baguettes despite the fact that I have managed without one until now, still popping out crispy baguettes by making my own cloth couche.

I just wanted shit.  Even if they were unitaskers that would cause my beloved Alton Brown into become a twitching mass on the floor.  I have cooking equipment I barely use, and still, I wanted more just for the sake of having more.

Perhaps that is just part of being a certain type of human?  How do some people become minimalists, able to let go of all possessions and other people don’t even really pay attention to what they have, instead focused on seeking more?

I think I used to feel the same way about people.  I had friends, but I’d always feel like I didn’t have “enough” friends.  And I would collect more people to hold close emotionally.  We’d have these insane Shabbat dinners back in college and early marriage where we’d have 30+ guests in a tiny apartment.  And yes, those parties were a lot of fun, just as owning a popsicle maker could be a lot of fun.  But still, how much could you connect with 30+ people in a three-hour window?

By the time the cornbread muffins were ready to come out of the oven, I realized that I needed to close the catalogs.  In fact, I needed to toss them and realize that I had enough right now.  Which is not to say that I can’t own new things in the future, but just as I need to listen to my body when it is full and doesn’t need more food, I need to listen to my house when it doesn’t need more things.

And I need to focus on what is in front of me, the people who are in front of me, and just be thankful.

Dairy-Free or Pareve Cornbread Muffin Recipe

Ingredients
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1 cup cornmeal
2 tablespoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 cups soy milk
2 sticks unsalted margarine
2 eggs

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Line a muffin tin with paper liners.  Mix together the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, cornmeal, baking powder, and salt) in the stand mixer with the paddle attachment.  Start melting the margarine in the microwave in a separate bowl.  Break the two eggs and add them to the mixer while the mixer is off.  Pour in the soy milk.  Turn the mixer on and after a few seconds of mixing, add the melted margarine.  IT IS VERY IMPORTANT THAT YOU DO THIS IN THIS ORDER.  If not, the margarine will curdle as it comes in contact with the soy milk.

Spoon the batter into the paper liners, filling each one to the top. Bake for 30 minutes.  The tops will be golden brown and crisp, and a toothpick will come out of the muffin clean.  Allow them to rest and cool before eating.

This is apparently the version of Thanksgiving that they teach in kindergarten: the Mayflower came filled with smiling pilgrims who all wore cool hats and shoes with buckles. Wait, no, they were also sad because they had no toys. When they got here, they realized that they didn’t know how to farm this strange new land (because, apparently, dirt is different over here vs. England), but their new friends — the native Americans — taught them. In the winter, they were sad and homesick, and some of the pilgrims were even very ill! But they sat down with their new friends — those native Americans — and made a big dinner to say thank you and celebrate the fact that they were here in a new land. (Though the ChickieNob asked a good question: how does killing animals and making someone else eat them say “thank you?”) They were all happy and sang songs and even did a few dances around the table.

The End.

And that Thanksgiving story is precisely what makes us feel like shit when we come to our own Thanksgiving table feeling less than stellar when our life is craptastic. As kids, we’re told this sanitized version of events because can you imagine your kindergarten teacher telling you the truth?

That out of the 103 pilgrims who came over on the Mayflower, only 53 were alive for that meal? And only 4 of them were women, so good luck with that re-population effort, my friends. And those new friends, the native Americans? 90% had died of leptospirosis a few years before the Mayflower landed. They couldn’t defend their land because there were so few of them still alive. The pilgrims robbed the native American graves for corn stores, creating a strange tension as they tried to build a relationship with the remaining native Americans. But yes, they did sit down for a three day feast that included wild turkeys and deer.

So with all of that shit going down, are you honestly going to tell me that the coping mechanisms of the pilgrims was so fierce that they were able to set aside that small fact that half of their compatriots (as well as spouses, children, or parents) were dead and they were across the sea from anything familiar and grin through the feast?

Are we honestly expected to believe that the pilgrims didn’t bitch about the cold or the fact that they were eating corn that had been in the ground with corpses a few days earlier or the fact that their loved ones were dead — that they smiled and thanked G-d that they were alive, and we’re all supposed to set aside anything we might be feeling and just talk about how freakin’ thankful we are? That we’re supposed to become Suzy Sunshine for one day of the year and grasp to find silver linings in our life even if we’ve just lost someone we love or were downsized from our job or had a miscarriage or broke up with our partner.

Well, call me less self-actualized than the pilgrims, but I can’t set aside everything that is happening in my world when I sit down to a dinner table — even if it’s a dinner that took several days to prepare and the table is populated by people I love (and who love me back regardless of my mood). I can’t let it go, and frankly, I don’t really believe that the pilgrims let it go. But I do think we do a world of damage when we perpetuate that myth and teach it to our kids.

They should know that sometimes things suck, and sometimes, you have to feel what you’re going to feel while things suck. That it’s okay to mourn and it’s okay to cry and it’s okay to not pull yourself up by the bootstraps based on someone else’s timetable rather than your own. And that sometimes, when you push yourself to do something, you find that you actually derived a great deal of peace from the experience. Such as sitting down at the Thanksgiving table when you’re sort of dreading being around people.

Every year, I write a Holiday Survival Guide because I think that everyone experiences something in life that makes a particular year or set of years difficult for them. That for every holiday season that you enjoy and look forward to participating in, there is also a time in life where you dread all the reminders that come with a holiday season and wish you could avoid the whole thing. And this year may be that time for you.

You can sit out of the festivities if that’s what you need to do, but a survival guide is sort of like holding your breath to eat (you know, so you don’t taste anything) when your mother asks you to try lima beans. Like slimey green lima beans, going to events is usually good for you, and it’s important to be around people who care about you when the going is tough. You just may need a trick for getting through family time just as mouth-breathing (and not tasting) works for choking down undesired foods.

I’ll offer up the same advice I gave the last year two years with additional notes from comments that came on those old posts:

• Create your own incentives and treat getting through the holiday season as your job. Pay yourself in whatever will make you happy. For instance, after a trip to the local mall to have your picture taken with your niece and Santa, pay yourself with a manicure. Attending the holiday party from hell may win you an entire bar of chocolate. It’s worth setting up small incentives and budgeting for your own happiness because it can be something to focus on during the task at hand.
• You know the idea that you can take a large school and make it small but you can’t go the other way around? Flip that concept when it comes to the holidays: take a small part of the holiday and make it big. Focus on something that you can do and make it your contribution to the holiday season. If you know celebrating Christmas will be too much, make sure you throw yourself wholeheartedly into helping prepare Thanksgiving (and then develop an unfortunate case of the stomach flu on December 24th). If you can organize the family gift but can’t fathom how you’ll do Christmas dinner, make sure you send out an email to your siblings early asking for photos of your nieces and nephews so you can design a great picture calendar for your parents. And then skip the ham.
• Do all your shopping online instead of subjecting yourself to walking past the displays of toys and Christmas baby clothes at the store. Keep it simple this year – you have a lifetime to plot out the most fantastic gifts of all time. This may be the year that you need to buy a DVD or book for each person your list and be done.
• Leave a note in your pocket: write a note to yourself, ask a friend to jot something down, trade letters with your partner, or simply leave a list of names (therapist, fellow bloggers, the friend you’ll drink with the moment you get home) in your pocket to touch as a reminder that someone has your back when you begin to feel overwhelmed at the holiday table. I can’t be with you at your Christmas dinner (the whole Jew and vegetarian thing aside, I just don’t think your family is going to be cool if you drag along a random blogger), but I can give you a note right now to keep in your pocket. Simply print this out and whenever you get overwhelmed, touch it and remember that there are people out there who get you. And change the line about mini hot dogs if you’re a vegetarian:

Hey Sweetie:

I know it was really hard to come to this party/dinner/get together but now that you’re here, you’re even closer to it being over. Try to enjoy yourself, but if you can’t, nip into the bathroom for a cry or bury yourself at the buffet table and do nothing but eat mini hot dogs for the rest of the night. There is no shame in enduring rather than enjoying and you need to do whatever you need to do to get through this without ruining any relationships. Make sure you take time for yourself today/tonight after you get home. I’m here on the other end of the computer if you need me.

Love,
Mel

• Pick and Choose: there is no rule that says you must attend every event during the holiday season – even if you’ve gone to everything in the past. If it’s going to cause more grief than it’s worth, just attend the event. But if you can get your partner to “surprise” you with a holiday trip, all the better.
• Book: I actually include a lot of ideas like these in Navigating the Land of If to get through life in general; not just holiday. I’m just saying.
• I will tell you the only trick I have up my sleeve: the holiday card. Most holiday cards we receive are either generic package-of-12 types or pictures of kids/families. We send out cards every year that routinely get responses that it was the best card they’ve gotten all year, or sometimes the best card ever. Sometimes one fabulous photo of us in some fabulous locale; sometimes a whole series around the world (which it will have to be again this year). We used to just have a normal photo card, but now we include a newsy update of career progress and travels. The people with kids (or limited funds, or limited outlook) say, “Wow, your life is amazing. I’m stuck here at home.” I’m not trying to make them feel envious of us, but envy is way better than pity. –Baby Smiling in Back Seat
• All of our friends have been sending photo X-mas cards in the past years. In previous years, we’d send an awesome vacation photo. Like- heh!- we still had fun this year!–Mrs. Spock
• One tip I figured out early on: If you can’t shop online & have to go to the mall, find out what hours Santa will be there — & then go when he’s not around. There won’t be as many kids & babies around to deal with then. –The Road Less Travelled
• I manage to work in a reference to Katie in every edition of our Christmas letter … usually in relation to our volunteer work. But I like being able to remind people that she was real & is still a part of our lives. My Christmas card itself usually has either an angel or Classic Pooh theme (which was also the theme of her nursery). I know other people who use angel stamps on their cards as a subtle reminder of their lost baby(s). –The Road Less Travelled
• This year I solved my problem in the cowardly fashion … I offered to work. I work at a domestic violence shelter, which is open 24/7 … So I figure I might as well. I can get paid double time as well, so it’s all sorts of awesome. –An Unwanted Path
• I started listening to holiday music in August this year. I’m using it as my own private technique for connecting with the joy of the season early enough that I won’t suddenly get trampled in the crush of child-centric images, events, and conversations coming my way during the actual season. I want this year to be different! –Lisa
• Instead of focusing on what I can’t handle, I’m heading into the season excited about the possibilities of the new traditions TH and I will make this year. I’m just going to roll with the punches. If I’m really excited about putting up the tree, we’re going to do it and not wait. If I can’t handle being around our nephew, TH can go and I can stay home. I’m not going to force myself into any situation, and I’m just going to accept where I am and be there. —Kim
• I just bought three bottles of my favorite wine yesterday to take to my mom’s….and I don’t plan to share any of it. –Guera!

How do you get through the holiday season when you’re feeling less than your best? And are you more like those fictionalized pilgrims or do you bring the weather with you wherever you go?

As I said last week, I started running again in the morning, and my body is finally getting accustomed to waking up at 6 am and shlepping downstairs to workout.  I’ve purchased a nice, new, BPA-free camelbak water bottle as a reward.

I didn’t weigh myself for a week, wanting to see that big loss rather than the few measly ounces I might see in a day.  After 6 days of hauling my ass downstairs to run (okay, and after a short trip to Hershey), it turned out that I HAD GAINED 1.3 POUNDS.  Yes, gained.  As in not only did I not lose weight with my sleep sacrifice, but I actually gained weight.

I almost torched that princess castle on Wuhu Island in my rage.

So I’ve upp’ed the workout and cut out all the lovely treats we have in the house.

Being a grown-up is hard.

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We have been playing around with the idea of getting a pet — most likely a hamster.  Part of me thinks it’s a terrible idea: I don’t need another thing to take care of that isn’t a human baby.  It will be one more headache to deal with when we travel.  I’ll have to buy it food and clean its cage and … did I mention that it would become one more thing?

And part of me thinks it’s a terrific idea: that animals teach compassion and responsibility to kids.  That having a pet is an integral part of growing up.  And perhaps the most important point — they’ll never be able to come up with a porn star name if they don’t have a first pet.

A hamster fits our space constrictions and is furry and cute.  But yesterday, the twins informed me that they now want a guinea pig (which wouldn’t fit in the space I’ve allotted for a pet’s cage) named Andrew Sparkles*.  They told me they wanted a name that no one in their class had so they wouldn’t hear the teacher say the shared name and spend class time daydreaming about their pet.  Fair enough.

But Andrew is the name of my ex-bi-boyfriend who broke up with me when he realized that he wasn’t actually attracted to women.  How am I supposed to procrastinate from doing work by talking to our pet if he shares a first name with my ex-boyfriend?  And Sparkles?  How can I forget my Andrew’s disco-ball-like shirt with an unfortunately-paired name like that?

When I explained that I couldn’t have a pet named after my ex-boyfriend, they informed me that this name was already a done deal.  It was not up for discussion.  Josh has been amusing himself by making up terrible pet names out of all the names of our ex’s paired with a noun from the reason we broke up.  It’s a fun game — try it.

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Instead of the Weekly What If: Take the first name of a past boyfriend, girlfriend, friend, or frenemy, pair it with an unfortunately accurate noun or adjective that ties into the reason you’re no longer with this person, and create your worst-pet-name.

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And now, the blogs…

I love love love this post by Edenland about speaking at a conference about blogging.  She writes, “I told my blogging story. My big, fat, messy, wonderful, terrible blogging story. That story is all mine … all of the ups and downs and joy and mire that I put in here. I am the expert on it, so I spoke much more freely … (and openly!) … than I had originally intended.”  I love posts like this, just as much as I love blogging itself.

In a similar vein, Love, Hope and Faith has a post about her 500th post.  She asks for an uncreated word: “What is the word for things that happen on the inside of you? For things that cause you to feel more emotions and intensity than you ever have before?”  I’ll admit that I cried when she said that her friendships have grown as her boy has grown.  And what a long, strange trip it’s been.

Once a Mother has a post about the hour-long disc they have of their daughter’s life.  They watched it once, right after she died, and they haven’t watched it again.  She writes so achingly: “The videos ended. The nightmare continued.”  She asks: “Can one simultaneously live and grieve?”  It is such an amazing and moving post; you need to read it in full.

Lastly, Mrs Spock has a post (amongst other things) about finding a connection with the coach’s sister at a dinner.  There is a pause after a question is asked that she recognizes, that hesitation that speaks volumes.  In their conversation, another woman adds her experience with loss, and it brings to the forefront this quiet sisterhood.

The roundup to the Roundup: I can’t believe I gained weight this week. Andrew Sparkles, our future pet.  What would be your ill-named pet?  And lots of great blogs to read.

*Names have been changed to protect the not-so-innocent as well as future pets.