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.

Josh gave me the most crantastic credit card cover this weekend (bumping my cranberry sauce at least a week in the Show and Tell line up). Someone from Jews United for Justice gave two of them to Josh and while I see nothing on their website directly linking to how you can get one of these, I’m sure if you bothered them with emails they would send one along.

Not to be Bertha “Retail Therapy” Buzzkill, but I thought this was brilliant. “Kavannah” translates as mindfulness, so printed on the sleeve is a list of things to consider before making a purchase:

Let’s hold up two recent purchases and see if they would have made it through. Cookies are something I need. I cannot borrow one because people do not appreciate having half-digested cookies returned. It was made well enough to last until I made it into the parking lot and ate it. Cookies=money well spent.

Overpriced winter coats for the twins: yes, they needed them. But I could have gotten them a used jacket. It most likely wasn’t made with environmentally sound materials or with fair labour practices. It did not bring joy into our lives–JUFJ, WHY DIDN’T YOU GIVE THIS TO US LAST WEEK?

Anyway, I thought it was very cool. And they are a rockin’ organization. It’s nice to have a credit card cover in and of itself. Even nicer to have one that makes me a smarter shopper.

What are you showing today?

Click here or scroll down to the bottom of this post if this is your first time joining along (hint: link to the permalink for the post, not the main url for your blog). The list is open from now until late Tuesday night and a new one is posted every week.

I finally hauled my ass out to Sylene’s and got myself the first of what will be many new bras. I’m buying them one at a time; testing out the goods on my Good Girls. I felt like a preteen again because I showed up braless in a baggy sweatshirt and then stood there awkwardly when the woman at the store asked me to remove my top so she could fit me.

It was very reminiscent of my first training bra when I casually mentioned to my mother that I think I needed one of those as we passed by the display at the preteen store. What my mother didn’t know was that I was going to Heather’s birthday party that weekend and we had been told that we had to wear a bra to get into the party and she would be checking by feeling our back. I was not going to be the only girl at the party without a bra AND I didn’t want to be the only girl in the sixth grade with a bra. What a Catch-22. I think I spent more time covertly taking on and taking off that bra daily than I did on my math homework. Hence why I always had low grades in math.

Oh–and three girls came to Heather’s party braless including my best friend who was one of the coolest girls in the school. Why am I such a sucker?

Anyway, I wore my new bra yesterday and it made it past the Sluffing Hour–you know the hour I’m talking about. About seven o’clock where you can’t stand to be in your bra one more second so you sluff it off and leave it on top of your bedspread? It was still on through dinner which is a good sign. A very good sign.

Achem, now that I’ve told you mine, share your first bra story please.

We should talk about this now because the Christmas decorations were in CVS even before the Halloween candy went to half price and Thanksgiving menus were being sketched out last night while electoral votes were being counted. Tonight we saw the first of the sparkle lights while driving home. Welcome to the lead up to Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years–or a little time period I like to call the Infertility Minefield Trifecta.

Three holidays in quick succession all focusing on family, babies, and time–the salt in the open wound of infertility, when we are desperately trying to get a respite from thinking about family building, babies, and the passing of time. It’s not like you can ignore the holidays–not with the constant barrage of commercials featuring people in turkey costumes, houses draped in sparkle lights, and renditions of “Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer” coming over the loudspeaker (always sung by a choir of children so you get that extra knife in the heart while you try to navigate the clogged aisles at your local food store). Your options are either to hide out, alienate your friends and family, or fake it until you make it (or to legitimately have no problem with this time period in which you should probably click away from this survival guide).

I’m going to recommend going with the Fake It Until You Make It route and have compiled this handy guide of ideas to help you keep grinning and nodding while your Aunt Jane asks you once again when you’re going to start having children:

• 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 infertility 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 its worth, just attend the event. But if you can get your partner to “surprise” you with a holiday trip, all the better.

What tricks do you have up your sleeve to get you through the holiday season?

I’m moving up these suggestions from the comment section below:

• 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

Keep sending them!

Click here to Kirtsy this Survival Guide.

children mentioned and pictured…

The underwire in my bra was driving me crazy today–I still haven’t gotten a new one–so I nipped into the preschool bathroom after I picked up the twins’ bags and slipped it off. I dropped it inside the ChickieNob’s tote next to her dot paintings and yanked back on my pullover. I had so many layers on, you couldn’t really tell and we went home–the parents at the preschool none-the-wiser and my breasts thanking me for their release from the underwire from hell.

When we were walking up to the house, the ChickieNob asked for her bag and without thinking, I gave it to her. She peered inside and smiled at me slyly: “I think I see a little jewel in here, Mommy!”

She turned out to be speaking about a piece of sequins that she had found buried in the sandbox that morning–apparently her eye skipped over that massive expanse of cloth and wire that was draped over her art project. Apparently, her teacher hides beads in the sandbox and calls them jewels and the kids can dig for them at outdoor playtime. The whole moment tied in to the story I was trying to tell them at lunch before we went over to vote.

Four years ago, Obama was relatively unknown. I remember first seeing him during Convention coverage. Who was to know then that we had found the jewel in the sandbox or the bra in the totebag? Just an ordinary man, half-hidden. Someone essentially in plain sight if we’d just notice. And now, he is this receptacle for all of our hopes; this tangible reminder of the excitement of possibility.

The twins and I had a final long talk about McCain and Obama during lunch before we went to vote. A few years ago, I worked for a school with this headmistress that the parents despised. They finally succeeded in getting her removed from the school and that afternoon, this mother stood near the carpool line passing out buttons that said, “Ding, Dong, the Witch is Dead.” What kind of message did she send her child? What message did all the parents who wore that button send to their children?

That having a difference in vision is bad? Makes you evil–wicked witchlike? I didn’t love the headmistress either, but I do like to save labeling people as pure evil for those who actually are pure evil.

Josh and I have been careful to explain that the difference between McCain and Obama is that Obama matches our way of seeing the world more than McCain. That it’s not a matter of right or wrong or better or worse–simply two different visions of the best way to help America and we align ourselves more with one way over the other. And regardless of who wins, we still need to keep doing what we’re doing to help the world.

We waited for a little under an hour on line along with a bunch of elderly men and women who were entertained as the Wolvog tap danced and show them his belly (“I think you all want to see this–it’s my belly!”) and the ChickieNob swung from every available railing. They finally rounded up their performance by running up a flight of stairs and calling out to everyone from the landing, “Mommy is an Obama Mama Mama Mama!”

I wanted to take a photo of our hands voting, but the volunteers wouldn’t let me take out my camera. There was this freeze-frame moment in my heart where I saw their little finger pressing down the square next to Obama’s name (all three of us had a turn checking off the box and then unchecking it to give the next one a try) and it was as if I was watching a pen race across a piece of paper, writing out the history books they’ll bring home when they’re in high school. They just made history. I know every day is a moment in history and we are all constantly living history, but this moment was different.

I could imagine myself years from now at the kitchen table, helping them study for an exam, and telling them about how I held them up so they could vote for Barack Obama. I became very emotional staring at the ballot, trying to imagine how the next four years will look, the next eight years, the next twelve years until we get to that homework assignment and I pull out the photographs I took outside the polling place, our “I voted!” stickers on display.

When we got home, we were washing our hands and the ChickieNob repeated the idea we had spoken about at lunch and said, “Obama is the jewel in the sandbox, you know.”

Please don’t ever forget that lesson, sweetie. That idea is more important than who wins or loses today. Don’t ever overlook someone because they may be the person who ends up holding your hope. And don’t forget all the talks we’ve had due to the election about how we want to treat other people. That is my biggest fear for all of us–that once we vote, we will forget about all of the excitement and not actually carry through with the change we all spoke about in the run up to this day.

I was so incredibly moved by my cousin–who is known in our house as Aunt Li-Li–who temporarily left her job and home to go live in Florida and work for Obama’s campaign. She grabbed this chance to honestly make a difference (and who better to explain the issues to your Bubbe then my sweet little cousin) and did so by taking an enormous step outside her world in order to help many more. I love her for that.

I’m not just on pins-and-needles tonight waiting to see the results come in; I’m on pins-and-needles to see if America can be the change we wish to see. And I also am on pins-and-needles to get out to the lingerie store tomorrow. It’s all about simple needs.