I am in the middle of an edit for Life from Scratch which means that it has been pure craziness in terms of time management this week.  But I had this overwhelming need to switch my personal email address and to change providers midweek because my old account often gets misspelled when people write it down.

So I made a new email address with a completely unable-to-be-misspelled name and imported my old emails into my new address, a process that took about 8 hours because we’re talking about about 12 years of emails.

It imported them in the strangest way–it would drag in a chunk of emails and put them out of chronological order on the front screen, and then, after 10 seconds or so, it would sucked them into the archives based on their labels.  So I could see the emails for about 10 seconds, and then they would disappear into the archives.

But if I clicked on them, I could read the message and it would stop it from being immediately archived.  So I started reliving all these moments from the past 12 years–an email from Josh talking about how excited he was for an ultrasound appointment, a fight with a friend, a catch-up email with a person I knew in college.

There were emails I had somewhat forgotten about that I sort of wish I hadn’t reread because they reopened old hurt feelings, such as the fight with the friend.  But at the same time, I didn’t want to lose a single email.  I was terrified not to import them and possibly lose them if I stopped checking the old account and had that account deleted.

The email I absolutely loved finding was the first email.  Before I gave out the address to everyone else, I sent myself an email written in code where if you took the first letter of every word, it spelled out a morale boosting message.  And I freakin’ love that I did that for myself.

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We are in the middle of a major purge and we cleaned out the front closet, now making it possible for people to remove the fold-up chairs from the closet without having an avalanche of mittens and empty bags fall on them.  The closet has not been cleaned in years, and we found a treasure trove of printmaking supplies buried under a mountain of crumpled up wrapping paper.  And a winter coat from an unknown owner (anyone leave a navy blue pea-coat at our house?).

I mustered up all the unsentimentality I could find and tossed several pairs of baby shoes.  I had pangs of regrets when I got into bed that night, even though we would buy new shoes for a new child and no one would want our children’s scuffed up, worn-down sneakers.  Not deep pangs, but small pangs that I soon convinced myself to ignore.  But I wondered why I worked so hard to keep all my old emails whereas I tossed their sneakers unceremoniously in a trash bag.

Is it the difference between virtual space and actual space?

Okay, for the 300th post of the Friday Blog Roundup, we’re going to play a game that I am calling: Blog Marks the Spot. It will air in place of the 299th Friday Blog Roundup on July 30th so we can have a proper Roundup for the 300th post on August 6th.

If you want to be included, this is what you need to do:

Step One: Make a 1 minute video

• It should showcase where you commonly write your blog.  If you take your laptop on the road, feel free to shoot outside your house.  If you commonly work at a desktop, show your messy desk.
• It can also showcase you or you can keep it anonymous.  I would prefer for it to also showcase you (so either set up a tripod or have someone film it or turn the camera around and pop into the frame at the end) but if you do not wish to be featured (since some people blog anonymously), only film inanimate objects.
• Even if you feature yourself, please do not mention your name, your blog name, or show your blog on a screen during the video.
• Please make sure you make one of these types of files: avi, mov, mp4, wmv (email me if you need to use a different type of file).

The question I know you’re going to ask: what if I don’t have a way to shoot video?  You can still participate by taking a photograph of your writing space and describing it in one paragraph.  One brief paragraph.

Step Two: Email me this 1 minute video.

• Email me your video.  Do not post it anywhere, do not load it on YouTube, do not show it to friends.  Just make it and mail it.  If you are going the photo route, email me the photo and paragraph.
• Also email me your blog name and the url.
• The deadline is July 16th.  No videos that come in after July 16th will be included.

Step Three: Wait until July 30th.

• I will upload all the videos and embed them in a single Roundup post.  And you will try to match the blogger with the video from a linked list of participating blogs.  The answers will be announced later in the weekend so you can always go back and visit each blogger’s video and get a glimpse into their writing space.

Important points once again:

• Make your video 1 minute or we’ll be here all day.  Do not go over 60 seconds.
• It can either be anonymous or feature you, but it should feature where you commonly write your blog.
• If you truly can’t shoot video, send a photograph with a one paragraph description of your space.
• Email it to me without showing it to others or loading it on a video-sharing site.  Do not say your name, your blog name, or show your blog in the video.  Make sure you include your blog name and blog url in the email.
• The deadline is July 16th.  Videos that come in after July 16th will not be included.
• Come back  on July 30th to see how many blogs you can identify just from seeing the writing space.  Oh–and get to see a small glimpse into the lives of your favourite bloggers.

If you plan on participating, please let me know by leaving a comment below that says, “I’m in!” Just trying to get a sense of how many videos to expect.

You will be horrified by my writing desk.  I’m not even going to clean it up one bit before I film.

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The Weekly What If: What if you could see the writing space of any blogger out there?  Who would it be? (Not to guilt anyone into making a video just because we want to see your space ever so badly).

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And now, the blogs…

Stacey’s Thoughts on Infertility has a post discussing the past as well as the present.  When she was in the throes of loss, she wasn’t always there for people.  On one hand, she can look at it rationally and say, “Only you know how much you can handle at any given time when you are the one who’s hurting. While it may sound selfish, sometimes you really do have to think about your fragile emotional state and do what’s necessary to protect yourself.”  And now, during pregnancy, she also understands that not everyone will be able to read her blog.  She hopes they will stay, but she also gives her understanding if they need to leave because just as she has mourned the losses, she also needs to feel and express joy over this current baby.  It’s a beautiful, moving post.

The Fertility-Challenged Black Sheep has a post I love and it’s not just because she quotes “Psycho Killer” by Talking Heads which happens to be a family favourite but because it is one of those ordinary trying-to-catch ovulation posts that is both familiar and funny at the same time.  She’s a great, humourous read.

On the other end of the spectrum, A + B, Waiting for C has a really heartbreaking post about her friend’s loss.  It also comes with the realization that she may need to come clean to people in her face-to-face world and how deeply she has been emotionally affected by this experience.

Lastly, Can I Get Some Sugar with These Lemons has a post about her trip.  She writes, “I expected it to be a barren vast land of emptiness, much like me. Perhaps it was a blessing we visited when we did because it was hardly the lifeless space I expected. Instead it was covered in beautiful wildflowers that smelled so strongly we didn’t even need to open the windows.”  The trip is both metaphorically and actually connected to IVF, and it’s a great read filled with stunning pictures.

The roundup to the Roundup: I finally know how we’re going to mark the 300th Friday Blog Roundup–with my video getting-to-know-you/matching game, Blog Marks the Spot.  Let me know if you are planning to participate.  Answer the Weekly What If.  And lots of great blogs to read.

In regards to the last post on boundaries in blogging and what we don’t say, I often do write and post something else when I am leaving something out, but the other thing I do is to write the post I want to write and leave it in draft form.  There are hundreds of completed posts just sitting in my draft folder, serving to record a moment, get feelings off my chest.  I write them knowing full well that they’ll never be posted.  I sometimes cannibalize them later for a different post, but stop short of posting them in full.

I’m sure other people do this too.

Yes?  Is your draft folder as full as mine?

My question is, if there were only two options–pretend there is a glitch in blogging software and either have all of your draft posts instantly publish to your blog or have all of your draft posts forever lost (without the opportunity to back them up anywhere else), which would you choose?  In other words, would you rather have your private journal posted for the world to read, or lose those private journals?

I struggle with this because while I write those posts never intending for them to be read despite going back and editing and polishing them, I think I would rather post them than lose those thoughts from those times.

I wrote a post on BlogHer about how Mark Twain’s autobiography is being released 100 years after his death by his request and how this relates to the boundaries we set for ourselves in blogging (please join the conversation over there about how you set your boundaries).

As much as we tell on our blogs, the flipside is the stuff we don’t admit.  The all-consuming thoughts we leave out, the major moments we never talk about, the health crises or fights or embarrassing moments, not to mention the stuff we want to blog about, need to blog about, but don’t blog about because it’s not our story to tell.  Because it crosses a line, it opens a door.

I think what goes unsaid often leaves something akin to a watermark on the blog.  The unspoken stories come out between the lines if you look closely enough.  Suddenly a blogger stops writing for a few days and then resumes without mentioning the absence.  Or the tone doesn’t match the subject matter.  There are times that I’m reading a blog and I’m wondering more what is happening off the screen than what is being recounted on the screen.

Every blog post is only a tiny sliver of a life–by necessity, we must leave things out.  But are there also watermarks inadvertently left behind with what we wish we could write about but choose not to say?  Not the things we leave out simply due to space, but the moments and thoughts we leave out consciously.  Purposefully.  Because they open a door that we either don’t want to open or isn’t our door to turn the knob?

There was a time when I posted the cheeriest, happiest post as life was falling apart behind the scenes.  There have been times that I’ve scheduled a post to run because I haven’t been in town, but reading my blog, one would assume that I’m just lounging around the area.  And then there are the times when I am angry beyond belief, but I can’t write about it lest the person find my blog.  Or I am gutted for a friend and it’s all I’m thinking about, but I can’t talk about it because it’s not my story to tell.  I am incredibly circumspect about what I stories I tell that belong to the twins, but the twins are a clear focus of my day-to-day world.  So much gets left unsaid, but is it still somewhere tucked into this blog regardless?  In the unused white spaces; between the existing letters?

Do you stop blogging when you can’t tell a story (because it’s not something you’re willing to reveal on your blog or it’s not your story to tell) or do you blog about something else?

I once said that I would do anything to build my family–even to the detriment of my own health.  I certainly thought a lot about whether the fertility drugs were increasing my cancer risk, worried about very real possibilities such as OHSS.  And yes, in the back of my mind, I wondered how much we really knew about how these drugs would affect the children created in the process far down the line, but those weren’t the risks I focused on.  I worried about immediate issues such as IUGR and premature birth.  I worried about genetic disorders.  I worried that I would never parent.

Several news sites reported over the weekend about new studies that link fertility drugs and autism.  ABC News reports that children born to women who used fertility drugs are twice as likely to be diagnosed with autism.

The study, conducted by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health and presented Wednesday at the International Meeting for Autism Research in Philadelphia, found that autism was nearly twice as common among children of women who were treated with the ovulation-inducing medicines than women who did not suffer from infertility.

In addition, “The longer women reported being treated for infertility, the higher the chances were that their child had an autism spectrum disorder.”

The study has yet to be published, nor is it complete.  These are just the initial findings.  ABC News points out that children with spectrum disorders often have older mothers, and that older mothers are more likely to need assistance to conceive, therefore begging the question–is it the treatment or age?  And Momlogic points out another possibility: “Fertility treatments are also linked to increased rates of twins, triplets, premature births and low birth rates — which are all indicators of autism in and of themselves.”

There is nothing to do with this information because the studies are still in their infant stages.  They’ve found a connection between the usage of Clomid and autism (the longer you remain on the drug, the higher your chances of having a child on the spectrum–though the threshold number of what constitutes “longer” hasn’t been given) and IVF and autism.  Nor is this new “news”: people began reporting on it back in 2006 and the subject comes up from time to time as the studies continue.

But it made me feel quiet, like I had crawled into the bottom of a sleeping bag and zipped it closed.  Curled up against the puffy down and slippery material, the space dark and muffled.