Welcome back to Show and Tell. 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. In fact, we hope you do go back to your blog and post your own Show and Tell item and then return with the link to your post. Details on how to participate are located at the bottom of this post.

Let's begin.

This week I am showing a pair of shoes times two.

Once, when we were in Paris, we were invited out to dinner by family friends who also mentioned that we would be going to an art opening. Josh warned me that dinner would most likely be a formal affair and I should dress accordingly. I had a little black velvet cocktail dress to wear but the shoes I brought were scuffed. We decided to swing by La Samaritaine and each purchase new dress shoes.

I immediately fell in love with these--they were my first pair of three-inch mary janes.

We walked over from our hotel in St. Germain to their apartment which was about 15 minute walk. By the time we reached their apartment, I was in a small amount of pain from wearing these brand-new three-inch heels, but they suggested that we walk to the art opening instead of hailing a cab since it was a beautiful night. They told us it was by Notre Dame.

So I limped over to Notre Dame, my feet throbbing and a small cut opening underneath my ankle bone where the unbroken shoes were rubbing against bare skin. We passed the church and kept walking. And walking. And walking. And over a half hour after we passed the church, we finally came to this tiny studio where they had mounted a few pictures on the wall and were serving wine in plastic glasses. Josh and I were in so much pain that we could barely breathe.

After ten minutes of small talk with the owners, we left and began walking again to a small Moroccan restaurant nearby. I may not have wanted to show up in jeans, but a casual skirt would have been more than acceptable. I was extremely overdressed for the restaurant. I sat there, trying not to vomit from the pain that was now radiating all the way up my legs. Both ankles were bleeding.

When we left the restaurant, the family friends suggested we walk back since it was such a beautiful evening, but Josh had the good sense to tell them that we would take the metro back to our hotel. We limped back up our street, shoes in hand, not caring if we were walking barefoot through other people's weekend revelry vomit. That was how much pain we were in. It affected the rest of the trip even though we spent the week in sensible shoes and bandaids.

When we got back to America, Josh had a jeweler make me this necklace--a replica of each of our shoes.


We still use the other couple's last name as our personal term for anything that may seem like a good idea at the time but has the potential to bite us in the ass.

What are you showing today?

I am a beach person. I am a flip flops and paperback book person. I am a sandy beach bag that advertises a random film festival person. I am a bandanna-wearing, t-shirt-shrugging, popsicle-eating, fireworks-seeking beach person.

I must have been a crab in a past life.

Wait...scratch that...how would a crab reincarnate into a Kosher Jew? Maybe I was a sea bass.

People have a vacation personality; a type of vacation they constantly gravitate towards when they need to relax. Josh and I are beach people, which is not to say that we can't be talked into a lake retreat or a Disney vacation (Josh, do you want to take me to Disney World?), but we're happiest at the beach when the aim is to relax (as opposed to learning vacations when we go to a random city in Europe and spend a week going to museums...but that's a different sort of vacation and not really relaxing). We're not antiquing people or spa people or adventure people or mountain-climbing people. We are not wear-nice-clothes people or even wear-clean-clothes, per se, on our vacations.

We come home completely encrusted in sand.

The ChickieNob and Wolvog enjoy a good beach vacation. When the ChickieNob gets to a beach, she immediately needs to plant herself face-first into the sand and roll about until she is completely coated like a pre-fried chicken leg. We set up the blanket and she tracks said sand across the blanket and that is her pure bliss--being crunchy and sandy and calling out things like, "there is absolutely a lot of sand in my mouth; how do you think it got there?"

We're pretty open to any choices or paths our children may take as they age--my cousin always jokes that they'd need to have sex with robots to shock me and then that book came out and I accustomed myself to the idea of sex with robots and I'm fine with that too. But I would be really sad if they weren't beach people. I know they have to be whatever they're going to be vacation-wise, but I really hope that they remain mermaid-searching, lobster-worrying, seashell-collecting beach people.

What kind of vacation person are you? If the goal is to relax, where do you go? And do you go back to the same location each time or choose a similar type of vacation in a new spot?

We're going to Chincoteaque in a few weeks for my birthday (yes, Lori guessed right. Bat Mitzvahs are held near birthdays most of the time. So if my Bat Mitzvah anniversary was last week, it means my birthday is...coming up quite soon). And stopping at Smith Island on our way home. I have built up Smith Island to be the most incredible place in the entire world and part of me is terrified to visit and have my vision of the place changed. But what if it's every bit as good as I hope it will be and I've been missing out on chances to be in that space?


You can access the Show and Tell archive on the sidebar and I will updated that each week in case you miss it. You can click here for the icon code if you wish to have it for your blog. It links to the archives. And the best part about Show and Tell is that you can jump in and out week-by-week; join along whenever you feel up to it. And if you're not going to be in town, pre-set your post to publish on the right day and email me your blog url and I'll get it on the list even if you're out of town. And then you can read everyone else's post when you return.

Grey is the new black.

Stripes are the new dots.

Gin is the new wine.

Wait, bourbon is the new wine.

No, I was right the first time, gin is the new wine.

Comments are the new hug.

2350 is the new goal.

Tomorrow is A New Day and Manda had the good sense to kick open the doors to the Lushary. I thought everyone could gather here for a drink before they went over to Our Own Creation and Sweet Zoë to knock those old dates off the dashboard wall. And, for Manda, who has been over here polishing the glasses since the weekend, a strawberry drink in honour of her festival. I have pried myself away from Facebook long enough to make it.

For those who have no clue what I'm talking about since I posted about Allison's situation right before Memorial Day weekend, please click here and read about A New Day because we really need your help tomorrow. Well...starting tonight. Starting at midnight GMT and running through the entire 29th of May. 24 hours of clicking your heart out at her blog. She will have a start post up when the time starts and then put up an end post when the 24 hour period is over. Just so you know if you're clicking at the right time.

We haven't yet opened the doors to the bar this month and it seemed like a perfect time to do so. As always, it has been a bit more than a month since we met, bitched, cried, comforted, and caught up each other on our cycles and lives. Pull up a seat and I'll pour you a drink. Let everyone know what is happening in your life. The good, the bad, the ugly. My only request is that if a story catches your eye, you follow it back to the person's blog and start reading their posts. Give some love, give some support, or laugh with someone until your drink comes out of your nose.

I have a ton of assvice in my back pocket and as a virtual bartender, I will give it to you unless you specifically tell me that this is simply a vent and you do not want to receive anything more than a hug.

So if you have been a lurker for a while (or if this is your first open bar as someone who found this space through NaComLeavMo), sit down and tell us about yourself. Remember to provide a link or a way for people to continue reading your story (or if you don't have a blog--gasp!--you can always leave an email address if you're looking for advice or support. If not, people can leave messages for that person here in the comments section too). If you're a regular at the bar, I'll get out your engraved martini glass while you make yourself comfortable. And anyone new, welcome. I'm glad you found this virtual bar.

For those who have no clue what I'm talking about when I say that the bar is open, click here to catch up and then jump into the conversation back on this current post.

So have a strawberry cocktail and tell us what is up with your life and then go over and help out Allison.

So, I heard that Facebook is a real time suckage and since I always have so much extra time at the end of the day (after the bon-bon eating and the watching of my stories), I thought I would turn over those excess minutes to the good people at that site for the sake of social networking.

What is social networking?

Truly, I don't know why it is so difficult for me to figure out Facebook, but it is literally taking me a painfully long amount of time to add applications and navigate my way around the site. I found a page today that told me that I had over 20 requests waiting for me. I didn't even know this page existed or that anyone was requesting anything. I now can't find that page again. I am really lost.

The logistics I can figure out on my own or by begging Josh for help. These are the questions I have about etiquette:

• Adding people: how close do you need to be with the person to add them? I have to admit that I've been feeling rather shy about this, which sort of defeats the point of social networking. I found 80 or so people I knew back in high school, but I didn't make a friend request for any of them because I haven't spoken to them since the last reunion (and some I haven't spoken to in 16 years). Obviously, if they were at one point a good friend and will immediately know who I am when I "friend" them, it seems kosher. But what about the people who may or may not remember me? Or bloggers who may not know me even though I read their blog?
• No response: what happens when you friend someone and they don't respond? I mean, within a week or two since people go away on vacation or get busy and don't log onto Facebook for a bit. When you "friend" someone and they don't respond...it feels a little like "you're not my friendster." And yet, is that simply the nature of the beast? That people simply ignore requests for friendship and it means nothing? I am guilty of this as well--an organization friended me and I can't figure out why. I understand doing it when you don't recognize the name or how the person knows you, but what about when the person knows it's you and they...well...they just don't want to be my friend?
• Requests: which brings us to question three--the pending requests. What do you do when someone sends you a request for you to add an application to your Facebook page? Do you have to keep adding each application? Do you pick and choose? Does it mean anything if you don't upload the new application? Does it mean I hate Mother Earth if I don't have Lil Green Patch? If I hate Mother Earth, will I have fewer friends?
• The point: once you have everyone "friended"...well...what is the point? Beyond the online Scrabble games? What is the networking part? What happens next?
  

I'm thinking this too much, aren't I?

This is an open invitation for anyone to friend me if they would like to be my friend. I'm not sure how to link to a Facebook page since my understanding is that the profile can only be accessed once you're friends. So look for me via my email address. If we don't normally email and I don't know your name, write the name of your blog in the message feature on the friend request (or however we know each other). You know...so I don't ignore you and turn this into a massive ego-bruising exercise of you thinking that you are not my friendster.

Forgive me if you ever don't get a response back. By chance, I clicked on something and discovered that Allison challenged me to a game of Scrabble (which I am currently losing, by the way). Everything seems to be lagging behind and I'm not getting notifications of requests. And I can't find the request page again anyway...

This is the sixth installment of Barren Advice. You can ask questions that are fertility or non-fertility related.

Barren Advice is posted each Tuesday. If you have your own question for Barren Advice, click here to learn how to submit. Please weigh in with your own thoughts in the comment section and indicate which question you're addressing if there are multiple questions in the post.

Dear Mel:

Okay, this is a pregnancy mentioned question. I am finally out of the closet about this pregnancy. So, now that everyone knows, the stupid advice has started flowing in mass quantities. It has barely begun and I am already going crazy.

Everyone wants to know if I am taking the right kind of vitamins and whether I know not to eat soft cheeses and sushi. My mother-in-law just told me that I have to stay away from cats because they kill unborn babies. I have yet to receive any actual, true advice. Not a single person has told me a real fact yet. And the next person who emails me that cell phone story will not find out about any future babies until they can talk well enough to announce themselves.

I am smart enough to do my own research (especially being that no one has even been right yet). I majored in psychology in college and I spotted every error in that cell phone study before the authors of the study themselves announced that it proved nothing and the media was blowing it out of proportion. The worst part is that everyone means well and it’s just because they care and are really excited. (This is the worst part because I have to bite my tongue on all the sarcastic comments that are dying to slip out of my mouth. Plus, I am too nice to actually be mean in return.)

My question is does anyone have any good ideas of things to say that are polite but might get my point across? I need a few answers that I can memorize, so that the polite answer can come out of my mouth while my brain processes the sarcastic things I would like to say. I will also take funny stories about things that other people said to you, so that perhaps I can begin to laugh about this and it won’t bother me as much.

--Jen from Here We Go Again

See, that's the whole problem, the person means well and is giving the advice because they love you and they desperately want to be involved. There's not a lot they can do when the child is still in your belly. Sure, they can help you shop or set up the room, but for the most part, they're left standing around staring at your belly, throwing out whatever small tidbits they've managed to collect since the last time you spoke.

Advice you can't use is the worst kind of advice because you can't get angry--the person meant well--but you get angry because they are inadvertently calling into question your intelligence and judgment.

Barring that the person is speaking from a place of animosity, make your first response sweet and kind. Make your second response firm. If you have to get to a third response, I give you full permission that it can be a free-for-all. So, what are some sweet responses you can practice?

• Wow, I didn't know that.
• That sounds like a very interesting study.
• Thank you for letting me know that!

And then change the subject to make it clear that you are done with that topic. If they keep coming back to it, you'll need to ramp it up to firm. Or, if the same person keeps coming back with more and more advice, you may need to jump immediately to a firm place:

• I know you mean well, but we're only taking advice from our doctor.
• Thanks, we heard the same study but our doctor told us not to worry about it.

Lastly, you may need to be a little more pointed in your response to get the advice to stop.

• I know you're saying these things because you care about us but do you really think we're not capable to taking care of ourselves?
• We really need a moratorium on the advice; all of the stories are simply giving us more stress than helping.

And if it continues after that point, a hearty, "shut the fuck up!" always stuns the crowd.

Er...um...oh, this was Grandma giving the advice? Then maybe a "shut your piehole!" is better?

No really, the beauty of a blog advice column is that you get to weigh in with your two cents too. Let the questioner know if you support the advice, add to the response, or dispute it completely. And you heard the girl: she wants the best assvice ever given to you.

Leave a comment in the reaction box below--only keep in mind that conflicting advice is embraced and rudeness is not. Want to ask your own question? Click here to see what you need to send in order to be included in a future Tuesday's installment of Barren Advice.

Welcome to the twelfth tour of the Barren Bitches Book Brigade--a book club from the comfort of your own living room. Grab a cup of coffee and start clicking away at the links below.

Just to explain, this book club is entirely online and open to anyone (male or female) in the infertility/pregnancy loss/assisted conception/adoption/parenting-after-infertility world (as well as any other related category I inadvertently left off the list). It is called a book tour because everyone reads the same book and then poses a question to the group. Participants choose a few questions to answer and then post their response on their blog. Readers can jump from blog to blog, commenting along the way.

Book: Water for Elephants
Author: Sara Gruen
Start Date: April 17
Post Date: May 26
(need an explanation of how a book tour works? Click here to go to a list of posts on the past book tours as well as information about all upcoming tours and book events.)

Barren Bitches Book Brigade List (click on any of the links below to take you to a stop on this book tour. Jump from post to post to read a plethora of opinions and thoughts on Water for Elephants).

Life After Infertility and Loss (JuliaS)
All Things Deb (Deb)
Slaying, Blogging, Whatever... (Delenn)
The Road Less Travelled (Loribeth)
Everyday Stranger (Helen)
Falling or Flying (Jodie)
Carrying On (Katherine)
Weebles Wobblog (Lori)
Crazy Yet? (Jenna)
Desperately Seeking Baby (Heather)
Fertility Notes (Gabrielle)
Excavator (Excavator)
Southern Infertility (Samantha)

Even if haven't read Water for Elephants, you can still add your own thoughts on the blog tour or react to someone else's critique.

Like the idea of being in a book club without leaving your living room? The next book for book tour #13 is The Empty Picture Frame by Jenna Nadeau. The author will be participating too. Y'all know who this is, right? It's Jenna from Epi-blog, which is now invite-only. The purchase of the book also benefits Resolve since she donates part of the profits. The book chronicles her IVF attempts and contains the thoughts of her husband, Mike, woven through the pages as well.

The Details: Tour #13 (lucky 13!) will start May 27. Participants will read The Empty Picture Frame by Jenna Nadeau. On or before July 1st (Canada Day), everyone will send one question based on the book (to get a sense of questions, click here to see the questions sent for book tour #2) to me. I will compile the questions into lists that will be emailed out to you by July 3rd. You can also send along any questions you have directly for Jenna Nadeau. Everyone will choose 3 questions from the list and answer them on their own blog on July 9 or 10 (we will break up into two or three smaller groups and you can choose which day works best for you when the date gets closer). Each day of the tour, I'll also post a master list and people can jump from blog to blog, reading and commenting on the book tour.

If you would like to sign up to participate in book tour #13, leave a comment below or send me an email. I need the title and a link to your blog as well as an email address where you'd like the two or three book club emails sent. If a spouse wants to participate too and he/she doesn't have their own blog, have them set up a blog solely for book tours (as we did with the Annex) and send me a link to that blog. And if you're a reader without a blog, now is a great time to set up a space for yourself on Blogger. People will be able to find brand-spanking-new blogs because they will be on the book tour's participant list. The next few tours are always listed on the new upcoming and past tours list. Happy reading.

Welcome back to Show and Tell. Just to recap for any newcomers, here's how it works:

• 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.
  
• If you would like to join circle time and show something to the class, simply post each Sunday (or earlier in the weekend or on Monday if you can't do Sunday), hopefully including a picture if possible, and telling us about your item. It can be anything--a photo from a trip, a picture of the dress you bought this week, a random image from an old yearbook showing a person you miss. It doesn't need to contain a picture if you can't get a picture--you can simply tell a story about a single item.
• Label your post "Show and Tell" each week and then come back here and add the permalink in the comments section below (make sure you don't just comment that you participated: add a link to your blog in your comment so people can click over). I post a new Show and Tell post every Saturday night or Sunday. I usually move people up into the body of the post every few hours.
  
• Oh, and then the point is that you click through all of your classmates and see what they are showing this week.

Let's begin.

This week I am showing two items that are both guitars of a sort.

The one on the left was given to me by my uncle who died. It is the toy that I took away from the ChickieNob and Wolvog because I was afraid they would break it. It is so quintessentially my uncle, my childhood, that time period. It's so Mork and Mindy. I wish I hadn't just put away the camera because I would zoom in on the font on that orange sticker. It is called the Magical Musical Thing. When my mother gave it to the twins, I hadn't seen it in a long time and I sat with it for a while. It felt so fragile, like it had become more breakable with all of the meaning I bestowed on it. It has been hidden in the top shelf of the cupboard. Please don't tell the twins. It still plays and whenever I take it down, there is an overwhelming need to run through a few rounds of Mary Had a Little Lamb.

The guitar on the right is something I made in Home Ec in 1987. It had been a source of huge frustration--the item that dashed my childhood hopes of becoming a clothing designer. If I couldn't piece together a simple stuffed guitar, how was I supposed to make couture gowns? Cocktail dresses with cabbage rose sleeves? My mother saved this project and also passed it along to the twins. The ChickieNob likes to play rock star with it and jam out in the toy corral. It is funny to see it lying around my living room, this object that is from Home Ec, from middle school, from an entire different life time.

What are you showing today?

1. Coming2Terms
2. Weebles Wobblog
3. Life From Here
   
4. My Sanctuary
   
5. Stop the Train, I Wanna Get Off...
   
6. There's Hope
   
7. The Life and Times of Me!
   
8. The Sweet Life
   
9. Infertility on the Brain
   
10. Kore Chronicles
    
11. Spuddy Buddy
    
12. Sticky Feet
    
13. Bloorb This!
    
14. Fumbling Towards Eggstacy
15. T.K.O...more or less
    
16. Letting it Out
    
17. Isn't it Pretty to Think So?
    
18. In Due Time
    
19. Mommy Sparklykatt
    
20. Baby, Borneo, or Bust
    
21. Fertilized
22. Life, Part Deux
    
23. I'm a Smart One
    
24. And the Rest is History...
    
25. The Road Less Travelled
    
26. I Think I Hear Your Mother Calling
    
27. Working on It (invite-only blog)
28. Bee Bangbage
    
29. Who Shot My Stork?
    
30. Serenity Now!
    
31. Worth It All
    
32. The Therapist is In
    
33. I Won't Fear Love
    
34. Imagine Alyzabeth An
    
35. The Only Constant is Change
    
36. Southern Infertility
    
37. Soulbliss
    
38. Adventures [in]Fertility Wonderland
    
39. So...who's next. Don't be shy, don't be shy. Even if other posts are above this one, you can still add your item to the discussion. Though if it's after Tuesday night, maybe save the post until next week. We do this every weekend.

If you want it...
I've now placed a Show and Tell archive on the sidebar that will be updated each week in case you miss it. And click here for the icon code if you wish to have it for your blog. It links to the archives.

Updated at the bottom:

On your marks.

Get set.

Go forth and comment!

Um...okay...so you have seven more hours (remember, it runs May 25--June 25). Currently, there are 207 people on the NaComLeavMo list and the list officially closes in a few hours at midnight, EST. So a few people may slip under the wire, but right now, that seems to be the semi-final number. Which means that to be an Iron Commentor, you need to leave 207 comments once a week for all four weeks. That is a crazy amount of commenting, true, but I have full faith in you.

For everyone else, please do peruse the list and find the new blogs--not just the ones that are at the top of the list, but all of those people in the middle too (if you have the icon on your blog, you can simply click on it and quickly access the list--see, I'm think-y). The list is about 80% IF, but the other 20% are everything ranging from psych post docs to a parent of two teenage boys.

Ideally, leave 5 comments a day + return one comment (meaning, choose someone who has commented recently on your blog and comment on their blog). If you haven't written anything new and do not have any comments to return, simply leave a random 6th comment that day.

Let the games begin!

Update:

The list is now closed--12:01 a.m. Sunday, May 25th. Let the commenting commence! 214 participants in all.

Somehow I forgot that it was Memorial Day weekend. I thought it was next weekend. Then someone mentioned the pool opened this weekend and then I read Luna's post and then I said, "oh!"


If you missed the post below this one, go over and read it and spread the word. I'll remind you a lot next week so we can coordinate our efforts and time this properly. Allison is going to write an "on" post to go up at 00:00 GMT on the 29th. We'll have 24 hours to get as many people as we can to visit her blog on that day. When her counter switches over, she'll put up an "off" post so we know it was a success. Remember, next Thursday the 29th. Take the graphic, spread the word. It's such a simple thing we can do.


Show and Tell is happening again on Sunday (as it will happen every week). What will I show this week? The ballpoint pen I love enough to buy in bulk at Costco? A photograph of me at age 8? The glasses that I never wear anymore even though I love the frames? And what will you show? I'll post the thread late on Saturday and you can post any time over the weekend or Monday (once it gets to be Tuesday, you should probably just save the post to put up the next week. See, isn't this nice? You can do your posts ahead of time and always know that you have at least one post to write each week).

On Sunday, just leave a link to your Show and Tell post in the comment section and I'll keep moving people into the body of the post. Can I just say one more time how much I love Show and Tell? I loved seeing all of these random things and these brief posts about tangible objects that have so much meaning in your world. It just came to me what I'm showing this week. But you'll have to wait until Sunday to find out.


This Sunday is also the start date of NaComLeavMo. The list is open until May 24th at 11:59 p.m. EST. So if you haven't signed up yet, go do so. And if you have, start commenting this weekend.

I ask you to do a lot. This time, it is simply a small click. Perhaps more than once during the day, maybe moving around to different computers if you work in a space with multiple computers. I, for one, am hitting a local library where I can log-on each computer and click once.

It is such an enormously small thing--a click.

The day that Allison lost Zoë is forever marked her "best day ever" on Wordpress because it is the day that the most people visited her blog. For her own emotional well-being, she needs this post to be taken off her blog dashboard. The way to do that is to create a new record for visits to her blog.

On Thursday, May 29, please click on Allison's blog, Our Own Creation, and help replace that post with whatever is currently up on her blog that day. Everyone needs to visit on the same day--May 29th--because if we simply click throughout the week, it won't bump the day she lost Zoë from that section of the dashboard. I am writing this now to give us time to spread the word. Take the graphic I created and place it on your own blog. Don't worry--I'll remind you to click that day.

We need 2,350 people to visit Our Own Creation on May 29th. We need 1,785 people visit Sweet Zoë.

We just raised $3000 for a FET. We can raise a couple thousand hits. Are you with me?

Can this be U.T.E.R.U.S.'s last spring fling before we have a quick nap? Isn't it all about sending love when it really comes down to it? Reminding a person that they're never alone in all of this?

Just to be all sexist for a moment, men talk and women do. A few months ago, we lamented the fact that it was going to take years for Cali to raise the $3000 needed for her FET. It was April 1st. Today, May 22nd, Cali now has the money needed and the FET scheduled for July. It took us 52 days. I think we can safely say that women rock.

What happens now? We breathe for a second, Helen and Jen crack their typing knuckles since they entered a shitload of information into eBay, and we keep going. If you would like to participate in the planning and execution of the next fundraisers, sign up for the listserv. We will start brainstorming the next recipient(s) soon.

In the meantime, I am continuously putting up the ad space on my right sidebar for bidding even between recipients. The money made will simply sit in the fund and give us a leg-up for the next round.

An enormous thank you to everyone who joined in and helped. It is seriously amazing what women can do.

When I was in middle school, I was allowed to choose two nights each week to stay up a bit later and I always picked Tuesday, the reason being that Thirtysomething aired that night. Thirty seemed such an in-between age. It wasn't cool like twenty or responsible like forty. My cousin was in his thirties at the time and I remember thinking, "what a boring time--you're not set."

What did I mean by set? I have no idea what I thought was going to be so precarious about my thirties. The characters of Thirtysomething were married and had kids and had careers--I'm still not sure why I thought crossing over into your forties would be so different. But I did.

Bleu and I constantly talk about getting our hands on old episodes of Thirtysomething to see how we process the same episodes twenty years older. In my mind, they remain impossibly realistic--this was how I believed adults acted; the things they thought about, the problems they grappled with.

And yet, as a current thirtysomething, there is a storyline that I don't remember them ever covering--the adult who still feels like a child. Someone like me who wrote a note to my co-volunteer this weekend and explained that I could fixed the document, but I'd have to go ask my dad for help. Or who calls my mother on a daily basis to ask my how-to questions. I am in the center of my thirties--about to add another year to my age in two weeks time--and I don't feel like an adult in the thirtysomething sense of the word. I don't feel like I am currently as old nor as responsible as Hope and Michael or Elliot and Nancy. I don't feel like I could handle things as they handled things and I have no memory of them calling their own parents as frequently as I call mine. I still feel like a child even though I am raising children. Even though in my circle of friends we have weathered all the hot topics covered on the television show--death, divorce, illness, career-change, job loss.

There was a time this week when I was looking at the blogosphere as a whole, thinking about the things individuals are grappling with--health issues, parental death, loss of spouse, divorce. And it all seemed so old. I was thinking at first what is up with the world that all of these things are scootching younger and younger. And then I realized that I was at that age--that age where these things happen. Yes I feel so incredibly young even if my numerical age and the grey hair belies that.

I'm not sure when the shift occurs--when you move from the dependency I saw inherent in your twenties (though my middle school aged eyes) to the responsibility I believed existed in every fortysomething.

I am letting my hair currently go grey. I'm not sure if this is a permanent decision or one I'll change my mind on down the road. I don't particularly like the grey streaks through my hair, but I also don't like the idea of covering them up and pretending that it didn't happen. I was having my hair done for my sister's wedding and the hairdresser offered to cover up the grey with a quick rinse. I told her I wasn't interested and I was going to let me hair go grey with time. She looked at me semi-horrified and said, "why?" I didn't really have an answer, it was just a gut decision.

When we got in the car, the ChickieNob said out of nowhere, "I love your grey hairs."

It made me wonder how she'll see this age when she is in middle school and her cousins are thirtysomethings and that time period seems impossibly far away.

This is the fifth installment of Barren Advice. You can ask questions that are fertility or non-fertility related.

Barren Advice is posted each Tuesday. If you have your own question for Barren Advice, click here to learn how to submit. Please weigh in with your own thoughts in the comment section and indicate which question you're addressing if there are multiple questions in the post.

Dear Mel:

I have a history of recurrent pregnancy loss and am currently 5 weeks pregnant. I'm taking 200mg prometrium suppositories three times a day. If this pregnancy fails, will the prometrium cause a missed miscarriage?

--Antigone from Antigone Lost

It's a complicated question because not only does every body respond differently to the medication, but so many other elements--both known and unknown--contribute to how our body deals with a loss. Boiling it down to the most basic level, Prometrium does not trump all other functions or hormones. It is not powerful enough to hold the body at bay: there are women who bleed regardless of Prometrium (either related or not related to a loss) and there are those who do not.

Prometrium definitely can delay a period if the cycle is going to end regardless, which is why REs run a beta at the end of the cycle to know definitively your status before stopping the medication. There are those who are given the advice to keep taking Prometrium until their period arrives, but this isn't the correct use for the drug. Prometrium may not delay a period in everyone but as a progesterone supplement, it will certainly delay a period in a large portion of women since the drop in progesterone is one of the signals to your uterus to lose that uterine lining.

With loss: if one of the reasons for early loss is low progesterone, then Prometrium can aid the body in maintaining the pregnancy. If the reason for early loss is not tied to low progesterone, taking additional supplements is not going to maintain the pregnancy. Which is when we come to the situation you asked about--can Prometrium cause a missed miscarriage; in other words, can Prometrium keep the body from letting go of an embryo that is already lost?

I consulted with a doctor to answer this question and these are her thoughts:

Generally progesterone, either natural or artificial, simulates a luteal phase. This phase promotes a secretory endometrium in the normal menstrual cycle which is best for implantation.

The practice of giving progesterone in early pregnancy in the face of low progesterone levels is supposed to decrease the likelihood of loss due to poor implantation or poor development of a nice hospitable lining. The lining matures under progesterone's influence.

So about missed miscarriage. Progesterone can indeed make it more likely that you will not bleed after a 1st trimester loss, but it is not the only factor since people not on exogenous progesterone still have missed miscarriages until the conceptus stops producing enough hormone to trigger the uterus to expel the tissue.

Thus progesterone can make it more likely but it is not the only factor.

And I'll just add that I hope this isn't a situation you have to deal with this pregnancy. Sending many good thoughts to you.

Dear Mel:

Lately, I have been really trying to read a lot more blogs, be present, be available to other women who struggled with IF or are still struggling. In doing that, I knew that I would be reading things that would be about things not quite working out for some couples. I thought I was really ok with that, when we were still struggling I know that some people wouldn’t want to read about how we our IUIs failed or the decision we came to try IVF. I know that in the world of IF--as in the greater world--there would be stories of success and stories of failure. I am, by heart, very sentimental and emotional and in knowing that about myself, I knew that reading about both the good and bad would touch my heart for lots of different reasons. I guess what I am trying to say is that I thought I was prepared for the failure stories and could read them with a heart that could take it. I am not so sure these days (and it really bothers me).

I am feeling a whole lot of survivor guilt, enough that I am crying almost daily about other couples and their losses. I wonder if I should step back from the blogs and then I feel even more guilt, because I truly want to “be there” for other women, to show them the same kind of support they showed me. Yet, when I read about the losses, I can’t comment, there is nothing in my heart or mind that is good enough to say and I can’t just forget them.

--Anonymous

When the war started a few years ago, I stopped reading the newspaper and listening to NPR. It was too upsetting and it was affecting my whole day. The decision was definitely the best choice for my mental health. But how could I not think of the people who were over in Iraq who didn't have the choice to flip off a radio or stop buying the newspaper? The ones who couldn't blot out reality and go about their day--those serving our country or living in Iraq or the people they left behind at home? It felt like by not reading or keeping up with the news, I was turning my back on them. And certainly, there are those who will still agree with that statement regardless of what I write after this point.

My lack of newspaper reading is different from my unwillingness to watch movies that scare me including war movies, stories about serial killers, or child endangerment. I know my limits and I know how things affect me. And while some movies are not placed out there for entertainment value but to raise questions, awareness, and conversation, I still cannot take partake in watching them. Yet I don't feel badly about this even if I'm not supporting film makers or actors by carrying through on this decision--and they're real people too. It just feels different somehow.

As much as we are a community and part of being a community is taking support and giving support, at the end of the day, we also have to be for ourselves. Which is why I always believe that a person needs to do what a person needs to do in order to keep putting one foot in front of the other. If the stories of loss or cycle failure are affecting your day and the way you are living your life and the idea has already come to you that you may be better off stepping away, I would recommend stepping away. Either temporarily or permanently--whichever one brings you greater peace of heart.

At the same time, I return to the newspaper and film boycott. There is more than one way to support a person or group of people and I think that a one-size-fits-all approach only builds guilt. Some people are wealthy and can afford to contribute financially to causes and others feel guilty when they receive the same request for funds yet can't afford to participate. At the same time, some people have an abundance of creative energy and are great about pulling together a fundraiser whereas others simply don't excel in that area. I can support our troop by reading about the war, or I can participate in numerous programs established to support the troops or their families back home.

Reading their blog is simply one way to support a person. But there are so many other things you can do that also show support or bring comfort. It is harder to come up with a unique way to support a specific person--in other words, not a random group of those experiencing loss but specific people who are currently experiencing a loss who supported you through IVF. Harder, but not impossible. And sometimes, it simply takes time for the good idea to come to you, but I trust that it will.

No really, the beauty of a blog advice column is that you get to weigh in with your two cents too. Let the questioner know if you support the advice, add to the response, or dispute it completely.

Leave a comment in the reaction box below--only keep in mind that conflicting advice is embraced and rudeness is not. Make sure you indicate which advice you're addressing by numbering your comment with a 1 or 2. Want to ask your own question? Click here to see what you need to send in order to be included in a future Tuesday's installment of Barren Advice.

This is what happens when it rains: my tooth starts hurting necessitating a drive to the dentist in a downpour. Which means I get stuck in a terrible line of traffic because there has been a fender bender. Which means I try to take a short cut discovering if I had just waited, I could have been through the traffic in two minutes except I couldn't see around the SUVs. Which means I drive an additional ten minutes out of my way. Which means that a traffic camera goes off and I will be getting a ticket. Which means I arrive at the office with the pain miraculously gone. Which means the pain comes back as the dentist starts fucking with things but finds nothing wrong. Which means I leave the office in more pain that I was in when I entered with the entire day gone and nothing accomplished.

And how was your day?

And incidentally, was it in any way connected to the grey dreariness that accompanies rain?

Barren Advice coming later tonight.

children mentioned...

I thought this post up on Lindsay's blog was really interesting especially in light of a new storyline that has been happening in the doll world at our house. We had a fairly traumatic trip to the pediatrician a few weeks ago that culminated in the ChickieNob screaming and me sitting on the floor sobbing afterwards with her. The pediatrician called two times after the visit to check in on her mental well-being and I told the doctor that the ChickieNob wanted to talk about the visit non-stop. The doctor encouraged me to let her talk about it because it was healthy.

After a few days, that topic of questioning was replaced with new and more interesting sets of questions including, "why do people have to wear clothes?" and "what do bears do all day?"

A few days ago, the ChickieNob started insisting that she needed me to play doctor's office with her. It couldn't be Daddy--it had to be me. The visit began much like our usual doctor's office game which is really just a reenactment of an old Max and Ruby episode. Then suddenly, the ChickieNob strayed from our usual storyline and started talking about her own traumatic visit to the doctor and making me act it out with her--sometimes following the story to its actual end and sometimes veering off into a happier tale.

I am always the doctor and the ChickieNob is the Mommy and Minnie Mouse is the baby. The ChickieNob does a much better at mothering than I did at that doctor's visit, but to be fair, I had to act in the moment with an actual crisis at hand and the ChickieNob has the benefit of three weeks of deep thought on the matter.

I'm not sure if this game is for her to make sense of what happened or to show me what she wished I had done or to make me feel guilty as all get-out. And if there will ever be a release--is this the figurative draft form of a post and she'll soon hit publish and release it away from herself?

I asked a while back if people felt the thought was complete or the peace gained if they didn't hit publish. We also often discuss the unhealthy side to blogging--how another person's situation can escalate our own fears, how we can become more upset than we would have if we were merely living our own life vs. living our life while reading so many others. Yet here is this article that states the enormously positive aspect to blogging--the release of those words, the feedback gained, the cheap therapy.

I definitely use blogging as such--the cheap therapy and the more vocal therapy. So much of therapy is just sitting there and talking it out but blogging is really a conversation with the main idea placed out by the writer and all of the responses provided by the reader. Why do you blog--to record the story, to get the words out of your heart? And do you feel emotionally healthier right now than you did before you started blogging or do you feel that blogging can be detrimental to your emotional health overall?

Found poetry is a literary term for "rearrangement of words, phrases and sometimes whole passages that are taken from other sources and reframed as poetry by changes in spacing and/or lines (and consequently meaning), or by altering the text by additions and/or deletions. The resulting poem can be defined as "treated" (changed in a profound and systematic manner) or "untreated" (conserving virtually the same order, syntax and meaning as in the original)."

In other words, taking the mundane and making it art. Finding bits of beauty in the commonplace. Turning a palm pilot manual into a work of poetry.

It is also the name of a series of posts that I'll put up from time to time when I find interesting things related to infertility, adoption, donor gametes, child-free, and loss. Sometimes others have passed along the information, others I found on my own. Whenever I have a critical mass, I'll post them. By interesting I mean that it's just to put it out there and pass along information. It's up to you to form your own opinions and do your own research.

Who am I kidding? I just wanted a more formal space to discuss the Brothers & Sisters IVF-and-now-suddenly-adoption storyline...

And I am totally grooving on Show and Tell. I love that we're going to do this every week. So look around the house or your town this week and think about something you want to show the class...

Books

Perspectives Press, which is solely a publisher of infertility and adoption books, put out a new version of their popular book, Adopting after Infertility. The new book is called Adopting: Sound Choices, Strong Families. It is a long book--509 pages including resources--and definitely worth the read if you're considering adoption or already well-ensconced in the process.

The book talks about the logistics of adoption, but it also addresses the emotional side of the process--from thinking about whether adoption is the right path for you to years down the road after you've built your family. I like that the author, Patricia Johnston, comes from a space of understanding that adoption isn't right for every person and helps you to work through your emotions to know if it is right for you. I think once you begin from a space of openness like that all that follows is equally helpful and respectful.

This book is perfect if you're seeking answers and if you're open-minded to hearing about different ideas in adoption. Personally, I am seeking answers and am open to gleaning advice anywhere I can take it, therefore, I thought this book was extremely helpful. I'd recommend it to anyone starting the process or anyone who is emotionally bumping into walls in the process. It is a strong, solid book--well-written and very thorough. You may not agree with every bit of advice, but for me, the mark of a good book is one where I walk away having underlined a few things. And my handwriting dots the margins throughout the whole book.

Websites

Last year, during a Peggy Orenstein reading, I met a woman while I was waiting to get my book signed. She contacted me recently and told me about a project she is doing through work which spoke so enormously to one aspect of the IF blogosphere--the idea of being an e-patient. The tagline of the site is "because health professionals can't do it alone" and that is sort of a huge reason for blogs--we share information, pass along what we're doing or how we were diagnosed, weigh in with our own opinions on someone's question. It becomes one more aspect of treatment and it enables a person to feel more in control of the process.

Part of our email conversation is up on the website but I think one of the most interesting questions she posed was "The term 'e-patient' describes individuals who are equipped, enabled, empowered and engaged in their health and health care decisions. And naturally the e also stands for electronic. Would you identify as an e-patient?"

How would you answer?

This is my 800th post so it seems fitting to kick off something with this. Show and Tell was getting smothered in the Roundup and it wasn't easy to click down the comments and find who was doing it. And I've loved the posts that have already gone up. So, since the Roundup is already too long for words, I am officially moving Show and Tell to Sunday. Put up your post at any point in the weekend and link to it in the comments section on Sunday when I put up the new post so everyone can find each other. If you've had writer's block, here is the perfect antidote--you can have a built-in post every single week. And we can sometimes declare a theme and announce it in the Roundup so people can prepare in time. So...Sundays. Show and Tell Sundays. Posted this week a day early since I had already posted about it in the Roundup yesterday and things were getting too confusing.

To repeat:

Do you remember Show and Tell from elementary school? You agonized each week what to bring to show the class and then ended up grabbing a random He-Man character as you were running for the school bus ("um...this is She-Ra. And she's a friend or something of He-Man. And she comes with this little plastic snake.").

If you didn't have Show and Tell at your school, it was pretty simple: you brought in an object and got up in front of the class and spoke about it for a minute. Then, if you had a nice teacher as I had, the teacher encouraged you to let it be passed around the classroom. Everyone examined your object and then it made its way back to you. And you were the kindergarten equivalent to the Rock-Star-Bat-Mitzvah girl that day.

I'm kicking it old school and reinstating weekly Show and Tell starting...now.

Here's how it works.

If you would like to join circle time and show something to the class, simply post each Sunday (or earlier in the weekend or on Monday if you can't do Sunday), hopefully including a picture if possible, and telling us about your item. It can be anything--a photo from a trip, a picture of the dress you bought this week, a random image from an old yearbook showing a person you miss. It doesn't need to contain a picture if you can't get a picture--you can simply tell a story about a single item.

Extra points if you take us down memory lane, teach us something new, or make me cry. Label your post "Show and Tell" each week and then come back here and add the permalink in the comments section below (make sure you don't just comment that you participated: add a link to your blog in your comment so people can click over). I will post a new Show and Tell post every Sunday. You can make your Show and Tell post a separate post or include it as a small section of a larger post. Oh, and then the point is that you click through all of your classmates and see what they are showing this week.

So, classmates, let's begin.

Since books are a huge part of my life, I thought I would begin by showing you my favourite book of all time: The Phantom Tollbooth.

The first time I read it, I was in first grade and I brought the school library's copy to class as a Show and Tell object. I loved this book so much that I always refused to read the last page because I thought that if I didn't read it, the book didn't end. I am terrible with endings.

I think I loved it so much not because I wanted to be like Milo, risking life and limb to save the princesses (okay, so not really life and limb, but the Terrible Trivium was pretty damn scary), but I loved the idea of a world where a random gift could pop up one day in your bedroom. I used to wrap gifts for myself in the morning and will myself to forget about them so I could be surprised in the afternoon. It didn't really work.

This is the book that made me want to be a writer.

What are you showing today?

1. Spuddy Buddy
2. Kir's Corner
3. Busted Babymaker
4. Serenity Now!
5. Waiting for My Turn
6. Life From Here
   
7. The Sweet Life
   
8. Imagine Alyzabeth An
   
9. Life After Infertility and Loss
   
10. Bloorb This!
    
11. There's Hope
    
12. The Therapist is In
    
13. Living with the Cards I was Dealt
    
14. Quiet Sanctuary
    
15. Weebles Wobblog
    
16. Fumbling Towards Eggstacy
    
17. Infertility on the Brain
    
18. Baby, Borneo, or Bust
    
19. Surrendering
    
20. The Only Constant is Change
    
21. In Search of Biscuit 2.0
    
22. Dreams Come True...Sometimes
    
    
    
    
    

I'm Missy No Mates today.

I wrote about this on Jendeis's blog but thought it was worth printing here too. I have no problem with posts that vent about a situation or even a group. My problem is with posts that are written about a single person, usually linked to their blog or easily searchable, that are the written version of speaking loudly about someone when you're in the same room. Your intention may not be for them to overhear you, but it's such a strong possibility that your words will reach them. I used the one I found about myself as an example because frankly, it bothered me. No one wants to read that others find them annoying. But the examples I was speaking about were much larger than calling someone annoying.

In my mind, there is a huge difference between venting your spleen at a group of people ("IFers with children annoy me") and a single person ("Melissa annoys me with her damn kumbaya-ness"). In one, the anger is directed at the situation and in the other, it is directed at a single person.

The only danger in some of the generalized "I hate it when..." posts is that sometimes people get what they ask for. I read once in the comment section of a blog that a certain blogger didn't like it when those who had children commented on her blog. I made a mental note of this and haven't commented on her blog again. I then received an email where she asked me if I had stopped reading--she was confused why I had stopped commenting. I told her what I had read and she responded, "oh, but I wasn't talking about you. I like it when you comment." But I belong to that "with children" group. So...it's a mixed message. And that's sort of the problem with blanket statements.

A massive, public thank you to those who embraced my kumbaya-ness and sang along with me today: Bleu, Tracy, Jendeis, and Kir. It means more than you know and certainly more than I can put into words.