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.

A few days ago, Josh and I had a brilliant idea and marked the calendar with an “H” so we wouldn’t schedule something else in the space.  “What does the H mean?” the Wolvog immediately asked the next morning.

Which kicked off a long list of what it didn’t stand for–hiccups, hippopotamus, half-and-half, or hermeneutics (What?  Don’t all five-year-olds read Heidegger?  Who, by the way, is also not the “H” on the calendar).

This morning, the twins awoke to a map on their floor and a series of clues that could be opened in fifteen minute intervals once they entered the car.

Destination?  Absolutely insane day of fun including a pretzel factory tour; a Christmas-themed, chocolate-tasting, carol-singing trolley ride; a trip to Hershey’s Chocolate World, and dinner at the Hershey Lodge in front of the fireplace.  Just because we had the time.  And I love that singing cow ride at Hershey.

This is what happens when your parents start innocently Googling “factory tours” one evening.  I luuuuuuuuuuuurve factory tours.  Will absolutely make Josh drive random long distances for me to see things being made–even things that I don’t like at all.  And what do I love more than factory tours?  Eating chocolate.

We’re returning this evening from our festivities, hopefully the follow-up report will match the pre-trip excitement because damn, that would suck hardcore if I was this giddy in the morning and the trip sucked.  But we are armed with peanut butter and jam sandwiches, roadtrip scavenger hunt sheets, and enough excitement to power a small vehicle two hours.  Because we’re freakin’ heading towards chocolate.

Oh…and before I left…wrote all the blurbs and laid out the Creme de la Creme.  It is ready to go up January 1st!

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.

Updated at the bottom…

I failed to make Babble’s top-50 mommybloggers, failed to be one of Neil Kramer’s blog crushes of the day in 2009, and most importantly, failed to get more than M** to respond when I asked this week via Twitter if I was a JILF.  Or a JYLF if we’re going to be grammatically correct since I’m the one being needy and asking the question rather than just waiting to see if people state my name on a JILF list without prompting.

So am I one?  Am I a JILF?

Maybe the problem is that just as there are too many bloggers out there to think that I would be asked to pose for one of those porn-y naked blogger calendars, there are simply too many Jews in the competition.  13.2 million of them.  And I’m not helping matters by hanging out both online and offline with so many of them.  I need to stop conversing with Jews and therefore break free of the pack and be the only one in the vicinity and therefore become a JILF because I am the only option.  And what would you take–me or nothing?

And if we’ve already gotten to JILF, what do you think will be the next hot acronym to fit this pattern?***

* When we were driving home today, the Kojo Nnamdi Show was on NPR and he was interviewing Hal Niedzviecki (who is Jewish, yes? no? why am I bringing up yet another Jew and more competition?) who wrote the book The Peep Diaries and he talked about bloggers oversharing and truly, what could be more needy and peepish than asking if you’re ILF-able?  I’m only asking to prove his point and help him sell books.  Oooh, and I just love the term and have been looking for as many excuses as possible to use it.

** Just in case you’re wondering, M let me know that yes, I am a JILF in her beautiful eyes.

*** With 73 more blurbs to write for the Creme de la Creme before I go to bed tonight, don’t you think I should be doing something better with my time than writing blog posts asking if I’m JILF-worthy?

Update:

They put my recent TOOTPU post on the front page of BlogHer!

Last year, my resolution was to “tell people how much they mean to me as often as possible. I am going to tell the people I love that I love them every chance I get and I am going to make sure that people hear me (or…I guess read…) describe why I think they are wonderful.”

And I mostly succeeded in the sense that I am a fairly effusive person and I tell people I love them.  But I didn’t do it in a conscious way.  I didn’t give myself a goal each week, seeking out a person in my life who may not know how deeply I care for them and let them know.  I sort of just went about it haphazardly and at the end of the year, there are a handful of people who already knew that I love them who heard it a lot more over the last 365 days.  So….er…maybe more a failure than a success?

I think the key to keeping a resolution is to create one that is very specific.  “Losing weight” isn’t good enough.  You’re not saying how you’ll do it and without an actual plan, people rarely follow through on the goal.  What I should have done last year was create a spreadsheet of dates and spend every Monday reaching out to one person and then marking it down on the spreadsheet so I could spread out the love to 52 people.

And yes, describing it like that sounds all kinds of weird and stalkerish and perhaps had I actually come up with a plan, I would have realized that my year of love wasn’t a good resolution.

This year, I tested my resolution for a few weeks prior to January 1st to make sure it was feasible.  My goal is to do at least 20 minutes of aerobics a day with the Wii for at least 300 days this year.  It’s realistic because I gave myself 65 days to slack off and still meet the resolution (I like to call them my Period Points because I am not dragging my ass to that machine while I’m bleeding).

Obviously, I’m doing it because I want to lose weight, but I’ll still consider myself a success if I hit my goal and I haven’t lost a pound (oh for the love of G-d, please don’t let me do all this work and not lose a pound).  I started a new blog called The Shrinking Ass where I will be posting my daily workout, how many calories I burned, and how long I exercised as well as more bloggy-like posts a few times a week about my progress.

And this post is to challenge you to publicly state your resolution and how you’re going to accomplish this in your own blog post.  Let us hold you accountable just as I hope you hold me accountable.

Think small: even break up infertility into the three points on the triangle and focus only on one.  For financial, your resolution could be to not obsess about money once the check has been written.  To reframe how you feel about the money spent and create a meditative ritual to let go of the frustration of spending thousands of dollars.

For the emotional side, make a resolution to write out exactly how you feel for five minutes every day.  Every single post may look exactly the same, but that isn’t the point.  I mean, every single bowl of cereal I eat looks exactly the same and yet I still chow down another one daily even though I had the exact same thing the day before.  The point is to set a timer and pound out that entry in five minutes; disjointed words, angry expletives, or deep sadness.  You could just write the word “fuck” as many times as possible for five minutes and while it may not be the most helpful exercise for a single sitting, you may find that it helps to carve out that space every single day where you can yell it out for five minutes and five minutes only.

And for the physical, it’s sort of obvious.  Use your body to great success for something other than family building.  You choose the activity–anything from insane amounts of non-babymaking sex to winning every activity on the Wii Fit (er…now it seems like I once again chose an un-fun resolution).

So, go and write down your own resolution in a post or Twitter it and return and post a link to that post using the widget below (use the permalink for the post, not the main url for your blog.  In turn, use the permalink for the Tweet, not your main Twitter url, if you go that route).  It doesn’t have to be a long post; it can be one paragraph.  It can even be a Tweet if you can say your resolution in 140 characters.  But if you post it, we’ll all hold you to it.  And I hope you kick my large ass if I stop doing my workouts.

I’ll pick some of the resolutions below to feature on my BlogHer post this week.

Oh–and if you are doing a fitness one and you start a new blog like The Shrinking Ass to chart your progress, let me know and I’ll add you to the blogroll over there.

Happy almost New Year!

I am working on the Creme de la Creme which always puts me in a mood.  It’s hard to describe with terms like good or bad.  It’s a sweater-wearing, curl up in bed in thick socks and read a lot of amazing posts mood.  It is a quiet space, a contemplative heart, a weariness from a surfeit of words, a challenge to my brain.  I take a lot of breaks to make sure that my blurbs are fresh.  I worry sometimes that I’m misunderstanding something.  I worry that I won’t get the list accomplished in time.  It is a little bit like crocheting where you work for hours and still the project isn’t done, even though you rationally know you are closer to the end and that it’s worth dedicating the time because you want the finished product.

But it puts me in a mood.

Oh, and I’m probably five seconds from getting my period.

In the last three weeks, I’ve learned that two good friends are pregnant and neither of them told me.  The first shared with me all the small details of fertility treatments for years and I was under the impression that they were on a break because she hadn’t shared any news for a bit.  It turns out that they are not only expecting a child, but are far along.  She’ll be delivering soon, but since we have only spoken by phone, I didn’t know.

Maybe she felt shy about telling me, worried that it would hurt my feelings when the reality is that this hurts a lot more.  My heart feels like it has been used; served as a soft pillow for someone to rest upon while they were hurting and then kick aside without any thought to the fact that I might have needed that muscle after she was finished borrowing it.  You know, for pumping blood and such.

I don’t think I made it hard for her to tell me; but perhaps I have.  Or it is embarrassment about not only the success, but having the means to keep trying.  I can’t roll back time, I can’t issue her a request that she share with me happy news in addition to all the sad news so I guess I just move on from here and go purchase a baby gift for the upcoming delivery.

The second is also far along.  The last time we saw her, I thought there was a bump underneath her loose shirt and I asked Josh what he thought.  “That’s rude, Mel.  You know she’d tell you if she was pregnant.”  Except that she didn’t.  She is also far along, ready to deliver soon, and the bump I thought I saw a few months ago was her child either at the end of the first trimester or the start of the second.  She probably started telling people a few days after she saw us.

I don’t think she withheld the news maliciously, but instead fell into a sort of mindlessness in the same way that I didn’t tell everyone I knew that I was going to graduate school.  While I always knew it was a possibility that I wouldn’t be accepted, it wasn’t a shock when everything worked out according to plan and therefore, I took it for granted.  Close friends knew my news.  Others found out when I was deep into the process of getting that next degree.  I didn’t withhold the information out of embarrassment that I got in when others didn’t or because I felt only some people were worthy of knowing my plans.  I didn’t tell because it didn’t occur to me how big a deal it might be to other people; people like my friend who applied and was rejected from every program.  And the same thing occurred with my marriage.  Close friends knew instantly when we got engaged.  Others found out a few weeks away from the wedding date.  Some found out after the ceremony occurred.

I think those who conceive easily sometimes enter this mindless state where those close find out instantly–grandparents-to-be, best friends–and the rest of us find out either by chance because we see them and they share the news or through the grapevine.  I think sometimes people take for granted that parenthood is just what happens next.

Of course, sometimes it simply comes down to the enormity of a person’s social circles.  But these are both people that would make the cut if we were planning a wedding again.  That is sort of how we’ve viewed our friends since we had to make that damn guest list and we wanted a small wedding.  Were the friends wedding-guest-worthy or were they Shabbat-dinner guests–nothing to sneeze at, but not in our closest circle?  These two women both would still snag wedding guest spots.

I am trying to make sense of these two lost announcements, looking for answers in the posts I’m reading via the Creme.  Perhaps, tucked into the next post I read will be an explanation of how two people could overlook telling me, having the news come from mutual friends, who gleefully shared the news knowing that I’d immediately be happy to hear it.  And I was.

But after I heard about the second one, I excused myself and asked Josh to watch the twins for a moment and I ducked into the bathroom and cried because even if I was happy for them, ecstatic for their good luck and happy news, it doesn’t erase the fact that I don’t have what they have.  And unlike Christmas, where there are no presents left under our non-existent tree, enough to make any Jew feel a little out-of-sorts when everyone is celebrating around her, having a child isn’t within my control like celebrating a holiday.  It is my choice not to partake in Christmas, to follow a different religion instead.  It isn’t my choice to be on the outside of that easy family-building experience.

This is the first time that someone didn’t share their news with me.  And I am trying to figure out whether I have had my hand in this; whether it is something I have done or perhaps speaks more about their embarrassment or mindlessness.  Whether this is my imminent period talking, making me more sensitive to having a pregnancy announcement withheld.  Whether it’s normal to feel slighted or if the energy wasted on thinking about this reveals more about me than about them.

I wrote this mostly to vent, to get it out of my mind where it has been churning away for the last few days.

This is, most likely, the last Roundup of 2009.  The Creme de la Creme falls on a Friday and while an orgy of blog posts upon an orgy of blog posts sounds delightful, I have to assume that the Creme trumps the weekly Roundup.  Therefore, this is it.  Goodbye Friday Blog Roundups of the aughts.  Hello Friday Blog Roundups of the teens.  The tens?  The teens?  What is the next decade called?

Had I realized this prior to today, I would have sent off the year with a fireworks display and parade of elephants.

*******

The Weekly What If: What if you had unlimited funds to buy one object or experience (read: must be purchasable.  It could be a trip, but it couldn’t, let’s say, be a round of IVF or paying the agency fee) for another person in the blogosphere as a Christmas present?  Would you give it anonymously or would they be able to figure out it was you?  And what would it be?

Added: uh, uh, y’all.  It has to be a purchasable gift to give someone.  We’re talking hedonism, here–not good deeds.  I, for one, would buy Jendeis a Wii so we could play each other via the Internet from our houses when we’re feeling too lazy to cross the bridge.

*******

I am having a lot of trouble with one section of the Creme de la Creme which is the blogs that closed in 2009 section.  If you have any blogs in your Reader that have clearly stated that they are closing, blogs that you used to read that have been deleted, or blogs that literally haven’t updated since last January, send the name to me with “closed blog” in the subject line.  I have a handful, but I know that I’m missing dozens.  Hundred?  Thousands?

*******

And now, the blogs…

Barren Blog has the story about her egg retrieval.  She tells the story with humour and grace, leaving no detail out and because of that, she gives a heads up to every woman who will come after her in this process.  And even though I’ve read a lot of egg retrieval posts these last four years, this one was particularly helpful and well-written.

MeAndBaby’s Blog has a post that begins with a quote by Lance Armstrong: pain is temporary; quitting lasts forever.  It’s the perspective she brings to her 8th IUI after numerous losses; it’s the strength that powers her words.  By the end of the post, you’re cheering her on and I just send good thoughts and hope for this cycle.

Adventures in Reality has a post about the different grief processes after two different losses.  As she explains: “I’m not the same person. Losing Daniel took a piece of my heart. And losing Joy took another piece.”  I love this post not only for her perspective, but because she retells the story of my friend, Paz.  The first time I read this post, there was something familiar in the story she talks about reading, and in the second read-through I suddenly said, “this is Paz!  And I know that Starbucks!”  And it made me smile that our corner of the blogosphere is so small.  It was like finding out that two of your friends know each other and you never knew they were in the same circle.  Her unfulfilled due date for the baby she mentions in this post is coming up this weekend and it would be lovely to flood her with love right now.

Lastly, A Woman My Age has a post about being tired, happy, and annoyed.  In lieu of a shower, she held an open house so people could meet her new son.  Which is both the tired and happy part–that joyous sleepiness from having too much on your plate, but thankful that it’s all there.  The annoyed part is the unsolicited advice coming from all directions.  I love this post because it feels cozy.  It made me smile.

The roundup to the Roundup: The winding down of 2009.  Answer the Weekly What If (think of it as the ability to send a virtual gift to someone).  Help me with the “closed blogs” section of the Creme de la Creme.  And lots of great blog posts to read.  Merry Christmas, if you are celebrating Christmas today.