Directions: answer the question in the comment section. 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). The first person who comments gets a free ride and does not need to leave any comments. The last person who comments gets…screwed. My answer is below the picture.

In case you can’t read it, the card states: WHAT COLOUR DO YOU THINK OF WHEN YOU THINK OF HAPPINESS?

For me, it would have to be orange. Or a deep red. Or an orange-y yellow.  Something bright.

What about you? And if you can give us the html colour number, all the better so we can check your choice out ourselves.

My computer can hold about 80 GBs of information and this week, I filled it up within 200 KBs of space (just in case you can’t do conversion math in your head, 80 GB are also 83886080 KB).  I didn’t even have enough memory to burn a disc because it couldn’t create the temporary files.  The machine kept giving me messages, like an overstuffed relative about to vomit after a Thanksgiving meal, and I kept shoveling in more pictures and more pictures until the machine said enough and then mashed its lips together.

So my father came over and fixed the problem because that’s what dad’s who are smart in computers do.  He created all sorts of new space for me on an external hard drive, cleaned out some unnecessary programs, and moved over all my photos.  The only thing left to do in order to reclaim my computer as a functioning machine was to delete the copies of my photos on the main drive.

But then I got nervous, regardless of the fact that I had all the pictures backed up on discs too.  I’m not sure how I got through the first 30 years of my life before I owned a digital camera, when all my photographs were simply printed on paper, the negatives kept in little plastic sleeves.  I didn’t create thousands of back-up versions of those photos and somehow survived.

But it was really nerve-wracking to hit delete.

Afterward, I went back to the check the space on the main drive and it’s half empty (40 GB), ready for me to refill it with 4 more years of photographs.

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The Weekly What If: You know how the photographs in Harry Potter continuously move?  They’re not set on a loop–the person is just seen milling about, scratching their nose, checking their watch, waving at you.  If you could have one photograph that you own move like that, which one would it be?  Describe the photograph.

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I wrote about the site Please Rob Me over at BlogHer.  I think it’s an important thing to think about–not a statement about where you should draw your privacy line (because it will be different for each person), but the fact that you should be cognizant of your comfort zone and operate inside of it.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the piece.

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And now, the blogs…

Parenthood for Me has a post about a dream she had where she appeared pregnant.  The post becomes a fascinating look at how the waking hours inform the sleeping hours yet emotionally, the two sides still remain divided and at odds.  It’s a great post that feels a bit other-worldly–as if you are in a dream.

Are We There Yet? has a post about searching for medical answers for her son, familiar territory for one who spent years searching for answers for herself.  She writes: “I’ve been like a warrior the past few weeks.  I’ve been battle ready.  A steely coat of armor protecting my heart.  My sword at the ready, my feet ready to run.  Last night, I laid it all down, and I raised my white flag.  I surrender.  I surrendered to the tears only one whose heart was breaking could.”  It is a gorgeous, moving, emotional post.

Tales of a Batty Nurse has a beautiful post about learning to like herself.  She writes: “The sort of crappy thoughts? Those are still there. But maybe in a bit less hurtful of a voice. Right now they feel like great motivation to bring about change. Mostly because I’m not liking where things are at right now. And I’m doing something about it.”  It is about dipping into your internal pools of bravery and moving yourself out of one mental space and into another.  Sometimes when we’re struggling with our own fears, we need to hear that other people have our backs even though we still need to take on the hardest burdens of the act.  I’d love it if everyone went over and let Battynurse know that we have her back.

Lastly, Thalia has a fantastic blogoversary post.  Beyond the fact that you should go over and congratulate her for hitting five years of blogging–an amazing feat–she also has musings on the state of our community, from its early years until now.  The whole post made me reminisce and smile.

The roundup to the Roundup: this is what it’s like to fill an entire computer.  Answer the Weekly What If.  Weigh in with your thoughts about Please Rob Me.  And lots of great posts to read.

Show and Tell is wasted on elementary schoolers. Join several dozen bloggers weekly to show off an item, tell a story, and get the attention of the class. In other words, this is Show and Tell 2.0. Everyone is welcome to join, even if you have never posted before and just found out about Show and Tell for the first time today. So yank out a photo of the worst bridesmaid’s dress you ever wore and tell us the story; show off the homemade soup you cooked last night; or tell us all about the scarf you made for your first knitting project. Details on how to participate are located at the bottom of this post.

Let’s begin.

I was supposed to be Vashti for Purim, but once I put on the costume a few minutes before we were supposed to leave the house, I realized that I was going to be freezing for the rest of the day.  I debated this out for a moment with Josh and I finally admitted that the only other costume I could think of was a slacker a la Reality Bites.  In other words, our life in the 90s.

Josh said he would dress up too.  I ran upstairs and put on a pair of torn jeans, a t-shirt layered over long underwear, and a flannel wrapped around my waist.  A dug out an old pair of steel-toed Docs and slumped down on the sofa while Josh went to change, moaning to the ChickieNob, “I’m so bored.”  Josh came back in a t-shirt that read “wage slave,” a flannel, stained jeans and Chucks.  We went out to my parent’s house to get some help with the ChickieNob’s costume which had pretty much taken over our lives for several days.

As we were walking down the stairs, my mother looked at my scuffed shoes and said, “Melissa!  Polish your shoes.  You look like a slob.”

“But it’s my costume,” I told her, unsure how she could miss the brilliance of my slacker outfit.  “They’re not my normal shoes.”

“How am I supposed to know that’s your costume when you pretty much dress like that all the time?”

Good question.  I would like it stated for the record that I only utilize 80% of this costume on a daily basis.  My jeans are never ripped on a normal day.  I haven’t had a flannel touch this body since 1997.  And I usually wear faux-fur boots, not Docs.  See, it was a costume–not my normal clothes.

When we got to shul, our friend looked at us and said, “you guys didn’t come in costume?”

“We’re in costume!” I exclaimed.  “This is a costume.  We’re 90s slackers.”

“But you look like this every single freakin’ day.”

Perhaps we were not as clever as we thought.

What are you showing today?

Click here or scroll down to the bottom of this post if this is your first time joining along (Important: link to the permalink for the post, not the main url for your blog and use your blog’s name, not your name. Links not going to a Show and Tell post will be deleted). The list is open from now until late Friday night and a new one is posted every week.

Back in 1995, there was a Nike commercial popularly known as “If You Let Me Play Sports” which featured girls reciting the statistics associated with female participation in athletics.  If the assertions are true, your parents hopefully got your ass onto a field at some point because women are 60% less likely to get breast cancer, more likely to leave an abusive relationship, and less likely to experience an unwanted pregnancy.

Unless you count running, I’ve never been much of an athlete.  I’m more of the just-grateful-to-be-picked variety when they were doling out the teams at camp.  I don’t know the rules of most games, therefore, I don’t really watch sports either.  I’m happy enough to be dragged to a baseball game, but again, it’s more that I like being part of something than eager to follow the game.  I am more likely to daydream the secret lives of the players than to focus on how many people are on base when a certain player comes to bat.

I wanted things to be different for the ChickieNob, mostly because my mind was influenced by that 1995 commercial and the unspoken message that runs beneath it.  If I don’t have your daughter on the playing field, she is going to be shit out of luck in the self-esteem department and suffer from depression.

So far, the ChickieNob’s obsession with ballet has eaten up all the time that could have been dedicated to a team sport.  She just started gymnastics, though her interest in gymnastics seems to stem from the fact that the Berenstain Bears take gymnastics and I’m not sure what will happen with that activity if the bears, let’s say, decided their time was better spent studying organic chemistry.

Though when we were watching the Olympics, she’d turn to me and shiver with excitement as the women went hurtling down the ice trail on their luge.  “I would never want to do that, but I loooooooooooooooooooove watching it!”

But is that close enough to letting her play sports?

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With the exception of when the object of her affection, Shani Davis, was on the screen, the ChickieNob wanted to exclusively follow the women’s events.  I taped her the men’s half-pipe and she watched it for a few minutes before asking me where the girls were.

The one exception to the rule was a certain male snowboarder that she informed me may look male but is “all woman.”

I’m not sure I love this route either–the exclusive desire to support female athletes at the expense of any male athletes.  What about balancing it out and supporting the most exciting athletes, the ones that bring the most interesting messages to their game?

She wanted me to fast forward past Apolo Ohno, Steve Holcomb, and Evan Lysacek, craving Lindsay Vonn, Noelle Pikus-Pace, and–since she can get pretty indiscriminate as long as the person had a vagina–any woman whose costume involved sequins and turquoise.

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I love this quote from Johnny Weir, which he stated to explain the fact that his parents never pressured him to conform:

Every step of my life it’s been one thing my parents had preached to my brother and I.  You must always be yourself and always enjoy what you are doing and take no prisoners. You can’t care what anyone else thinks because really there is no basis for that in your life.  You have to live your life for yourself. So even when I was little I was playing on a soccer team and running the complete opposite way pretending to be a zebra, an ostrich or something. So I have always been like this.

Say what you wish about Johnny Weir–I think he has a healthy attitude and it would serve kids well to have a quote of the day calendar spouting his ideas.  The people who call him the Lady Gaga of skating sort of miss his point, which is that each person is unique and should never conform, instead following their bliss wherever it takes them without regard to how it comes across to others.  All people, insofar as personality, are incomparable because unique beings should have no comparison.  Johnny Weir is no more the Lady Gaga of the skating world than Lady Gaga is the Johnny Weir of music.

Hearing his quote made me rethink the idea of letting girls play sports, because maybe it’s not about sports at all, but the idea of finally releasing the barriers that kept some girls–those interested in sports–in following their bliss.  Girls sport teams certainly weren’t as prolific and mainstream back in the early 70’s as they are now.  Generations of girls were funneled into “girl appropriate,” home ec-y activities (though there were always a few who luckily broke free of the mainstream pack and followed their bliss).  The ones who were naturally inclined to find their bliss through ballet and art and baking were set to go, reaping in the self-esteem that comes from doing something you enjoy–often times well because if you enjoy the activity, you’ll dedicate yourself to it.  The ones who were interested in sports but told they couldn’t play?  How could they build self-esteem when the message sent was this: you’re not good enough because of your vagina.

And how much internalized self-worth can a girl build if others make decisions for her?  If others tell her that her desire to play sports is unladylike and shunt her off to learn crocheting from grandma while her brothers play tag football?  At the same time, I can’t see it as healthy if we now berate our girls onto the field in the name of statistics without regard to whether they show any inclination towards sports.

Maybe the statistics associated with girls playing sports has nothing to do with girls playing sports, but instead is a sign of how much we used to hold our girls back and in releasing them to be themselves, we have by default built self-esteem and curbed depression, allowed them to find their voice because they are expressing themselves either on the field or in the art room by following their interests instead of having them dictated by outside sources.  Maybe girls are less likely to stay in an abusive relationship or experience an unwanted pregnancy not because they are finally handed a baseball mitt, but this statistic could apply to all people who are allowed to explore their interests with the full support of people they respect behind them.

Five-year-olds, I have learned, have the attention span of a pancake.  Today, the ChickieNob loves ballet.  By tomorrow, it may be dragon wrangling.  Or Cheerio sculptures.  Or rugby.  Therefore, I can’t tell you if she’ll ever make it onto the field.

What I do know is that one needs to be prudent to guide instead of lead, to allow a child to completely follow their bliss and learn all the rules necessary for playing the sport or performing the activity while still leaving room to be an ostrich running across the field.

Did you play organized sports, and if so, which ones (and were you born in the sixties, seventies, or eighties)?  Did you want to play on an organized sports team but had no opportunities?  And what do you think you gained from being on the playing field if you were an athlete?

It turns out, that the fastest way to make the Internet implode is to have a state send a crazy miscarriage bill to the governor on the same week that a woman live-tweets her abortion.  Something about the hashtag #livetweetingabortion coupled with the idea of a woman paying $150 to have someone beat her into a miscarriage makes people talk.

I think Josh has been rubbing off on me and his penchant to make jokes when he’s nervous.

I’m rarely nervous to publish a blog post, but my heart is pounding as I write this.  I don’t even know what I’m worried about; after all, my blog is merely a recording of my thoughts.  But abortion is a different bag of hair.

I think the reason that most people do not write about abortion isn’t that there isn’t discussion to be had, but because the comments that come after writing about abortion are so stressful that sometimes the influx of craziness isn’t worth the expression of the ideas.  Which is, when you think about it, a sad example of self-censorship.

Opportunities to talk about abortion beyond rhetoric rarely come around because so few want to be subjected to the commentary that follows when they talk about the act–either the congratulatory remarks from people who dismiss the entire emotional side of abortion or the scathing and scary vitriol spewed by those who condemn the action (and, apparently, the person who commits the action too).  We are taking something that needs to be discussed–especially on the personal level–and making people keep quiet just to save themselves from the backlash that follows the act.

As the woman admitted in an interview: “I think any time that we are silent about things or secret about things, it is unhealthy. I say this as a sexual abuse survivor. When I stopped keeping secrets [about the sexual abuse] and starting telling somebody, life got better.”

I’m trying to not censor myself on my own blog.

Abortion is a medical procedure but we have turned it into a question of ethics.  Where else do we chastise someone for taking care of themselves physically or emotionally?  Where else do we dictate another person’s medical decisions from afar and believe we know better than the person living the life?

We can take any other medical procedure and debate whether it’s gross or weird to tweet about it, but when we talk about abortion, we talk about it in terms of ethics rather than societal thresholds on privacy.  Tweeting your colonoscopy (or live broadcasting it on television a la Katie Couric)=cool, yet a little nasty.  Tweeting your abortion=burn in hell.

I support abortion rights.  It may seem contradictory–an infertile woman who supports the abortion option?  And writing about it in the same week that I mourned my first miscarriage?  But restricting access to abortion is just one step away from restricting access to fertility treatments, and I would like to retain control over what happens in my uterus.  I don’t believe we should get into grey areas deeming some abortions ethical and others not; stating that within certain situations, it’s merciful and in others, it’s irresponsible.  It’s a slippery slope once you step onto the rights of others, and anyone who favours outlawing or restricting abortion and is also infertile should consider how they would feel if the reach of the general public went into their body; went towards restricting assisted conception, making the use of fertility drugs illegal.

It’s not that far a jump.  We already saw states try to enact laws restricting IVF in the past year.

Do I think live-tweeting an abortion is a noble or wonderful thing to do?  Well, no.  I really hope this doesn’t start a trend of people live-tweeting their abortions any more than I want people to live-tweet their births.  But I do think that sending her words out there was a powerful act that is ultimately helpful for those who encounter the information.

I am drawn to this story because it is, at its core, about education.  It has opened up an enormous discussion that is extending into all the nooks and crannies of female genitalia including cervical cancer and the HPV vaccine.  It’s about making sure the women who come after you have a heads up that you never got to receive.  It’s catharsis for those who have experienced an abortion with RU-486 to know that they’re not alone.  And I can never see education as a bad thing.

Good teaching conveys information.  It’s not meant to influence your opinion or tell you how to think.

We are drawn to social media because we are social creatures.  We thrive on making connections, exchanging information, and gathering support from others.  Even if there are times when I see information or support being gathered on Twitter and I think to myself, “I would never tweet in that moment,” I am also open-minded enough to understand that what works for me might not work for another person.  So I can see the need, when you are in an emotionally fragile state, about to embark on an act that weighs heavily on your heart, to reach out to people via social media applications such as Twitter.

I would like to try to discuss abortion without the discussion withering into a series of accusations and vitriol.  Let’s start with the basic understanding that we all believe different things, and that’s okay.  That we don’t have to share the same beliefs in order to listen to one another.  That just because something seems right to me, doesn’t make it right for you.  And vice versa.  That we can divorce the person from the action, and understand that a person is the sum of millions of moments and not one situation.  That there are plenty of rights I can support, even if I wouldn’t partake in utilizing that right.

At the end of the day, I want my kids to inherit a world where they have choices.  I want to know that doors aren’t closed to them if they need those doors to be open.  So yes, I believe that abortion needs to be an option for all women.  And just as I started Operation Heads Up because I believe that hearing someone’s personal experience is just as if not more important than the dry information a doctor can convey about a procedure, I think that having someone live tweet their abortion can only be a good thing for other women who find themselves at Planned Parenthood, needing to utilize RU-486, and scared out of their minds.  It’s important for social creatures to know that they’re not alone.

What are your feelings about the woman live tweeting her abortion with RU-486 in order to create a written record–physically and emotionally–of the experience for a woman who takes the same route in the future?

Edited to add (after the first 10 or so comments): hello, America, this is what it looks like to have a respectful discussion on abortion with both sides welcome and encouraged to speak and be heard.  I am really proud of how we are talking about it without disintegrating into name calling or hysteria.  Thank you to everyone who is adding their thoughts–especially the ones that respectfully disagree with me because it’s important to be challenged and consider the whole picture.