The Daily News

LFCA Latest Issue: Friday, September 25, 2009.

Latest Post on BlogHer: Parenting after Infertility.

My Status: Fed Josh's almonds to the squirrels. They needed them very badly.

Friday, June 20, 2008

Friday Blog Roundup

I've been cleaning up the sidebar and adding things. It just felt like it was time to streamline. I've started adding labels so I could find all of the Roundups or all of the Virtual Lusharies in one fell swoop. Those labels (and I'm just doing them for repeating projects such as Show and Tell or Barren Advice) are currently housed on the left sidebar above the blogroll and Operation Heads Up. On the right sidebar, I've moved a bunch of icons and their links to that yellow square called "ye olde sidebar." Just click there and you can find everything again.

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So, the Blogging Name Registry space on the sidebar is now clear (so says Lollipop Goldstein), but what is the new stamp icon? U.T.E.R.U.S. has started work behind the scenes to plan for another big fundraiser. This is what has been decided thus far (though nothing is set in stone):
  • We will hold two big fundraisers per year.
  • We will hold smaller projects throughout the year.
  • We will choose recipients based on what is read in the blogosphere (by U.T.E.R.U.S. members, random suggestions, and--hopefully, though I haven't asked them yet--the Clickers)
  • We have set up a way for people to email in suggestions.
  • People may suggest themselves and state their needs via email.
  • We are coming up with ways to raise money in addition to the eBay sales.
There's other stuff and random conversations going on, but you need to join U.T.E.R.U.S. because we've taken stuff off-blog until we have the next project to announce. What? You want to know how to join U.T.E.R.U.S.? If I've told you once, I've told you 1000 times...click here.

Oh, but now there is a space on the sidebar with a hyperlink you can click to bring you to the discussion group. And, if you click the icon itself, it's sort of like a bat signal--it sends out an email that you need help. By which I mean that you need to actually write the email and tell us what help you need, but we will receive the email and act on it. Much like Batwomen.

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I totally meant to write Huge Jackman.

Okay, I didn't, but when Leah wrote that comment, I ran and checked and then spent a good ten minutes laughing.

If you're going to have a typo, you should have a good one. Something Freudian.

Without further ado, the award winners for the first ALIes...roll out the red carpet.

1. Best movie with an adoption/loss/infertility (ALI) plotline
Winner: Juno

2. Best book with an ALI element to the book
Winners (a tie!): The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood and Waiting for Daisy by Peggy Orenstein

3. Best television series with an ALI storyline
Winner: Sex and the City

4. Best song (and hence musician) with an ALI theme
Winner: "I Would Die for That" by Kellie Coffey

5. Best mainstream magazine/newspaper for ALI coverage
Winner: Redbook

6. Best ALI actor/actress
Winners (a tie!): Courtney Cox and Jamie Lee Curtis

7. Best ALI musician
Winner: The Dixie Chicks

8. Best ALI writer
Winner: Peggy Orenstein

9. Most interesting ALI mother/mother-one-day
Winner: Courtney Cox

10. Most interesting ALI father/father-one-day
Winner: Huge Jackman!

11. Celebrity of the Year (a public figure who has been upfront about their ALI status and used celebrity to educate)
Winner: Emma Thompson

Speeches, speeches, I'm calling for speeches!

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Next week ends NaComLeavMo. I think we have all started sucking towards the end. By which I mean that I have started sucking towards the end. I am looking forward to IComLeavWe--a week feels much more do-able than a month. The list for IComLeavWe opens on July 1st (with a spanking new icon that is colour-coordinated to match with each month. I am such a lover of Microsoft Paint). Y'all better do this with me because I need that comment high. At least once a month. Like a small multivitamin. It gives you energy to keep writing the other three weeks when commenting fall off.

Lee's Things has already created a doodle for it (how cool is that?).

If you attained Iron Commentor status, could you email me and let me know?

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The Roundup Extravaganza list closes next Friday. This is your final warning until the final warning. Because once the list closes, I can't reopen it because people will be matched with their blog's reviewer. Just saying.

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I think that's all of the business-y stuff. If you're still with me, I have some blog posts for you to peruse:

(Not) Coming to a Uterus Near You
had a post about how we move through this world--literally and figuratively. She wrote: "If I focus on the circumstances in direct proximity to me, however interesting, joyful, or challenging, I can become overexcited, dizzy, ill. I do take advantage of slower moments to take in what is immediately around me in order to process those things appropriately." It is a very cool analogy and it is a post that will stick in your mind as you drive from A to B.

TheNewLifeofNancy relayed a conversation she had with her RE and a nurse. It is enlightening to hear what medical staff believes would be hopeful for their patients. As well as hearing Nancy's advice: "take a moment to explain how much infertility takes out of you. Keep it simple if you'd like or sit her down and take 20 minutes. But don't keep quiet."

Xbox4NappyRash had a post titled "Too Much Information?" about when you've told people you're trying and then it has all gone to shit. He wrote: "Deciding to start a family is a huge decision for a couple, and to be honest, once we'd made it, I felt people should notice something different about me." And that is it: the excitement brings out such a strong urge for oral diarrhea when you have no clue how long it is actually going to take. He continued: "I'm torn between what seems to be an instinctive urge to be frank and open (or immensely idiotic) about this, telling anyone who has a functioning eardrum, and a new gut feeling, an instinct to shut up shop." It is a brilliant post--not just because you get to hear the male side of things, but because he so eloquently says what so many of us have thought.

A Little Pregnant had a post about perfection that was, by extension, about her father whom she lost earlier this year. I am finding it very difficult to describe it with words that do it justice. It is literally one of the most beautiful, cohesive posts I've ever read.

Henry Street had a post about Father's Day, namely her husband's reaction to the day. This thought: "T's biggest fear is that he will never see his children as adults. Because we are getting older and will be close to 40 when becoming parents for the first time, this fear gets stronger and stronger as every anniversary passes. We have T's birthday, the anniversary of his father's death, his father's birthday and Father's Day all as reminders of time passing. I a expecting another round of these anniversaries to pass before we become parents" touched me tremendously. That acknowledgment of the passing of time. The desire to repave the road that life set for us long ago.

Lastly, CDE from Once in a Lifetime was a guest blogger at Glow in the Woods. He had a post about how Father's Day has changed for him over the years and this paragraph is something I'd like to pass along to people when they mention the myth that men do not feel infertility and loss as deeply as women: "And it's at this point, in the middle of my grief, my loss, my sadness and rage, that Father's Day finally means something. It is yet another reminder of who I could have been, but am not, and may never be. It is my empty arms, my days not spent shopping for onesies and strollers, my evenings not spent cooking dinner for the family, my nights not spent with a baby asleep on my chest. I am mourning the absence of something I never actually had. No child grew inside me, nobody expected me to have the same connection to my boys that my wife did. But even though all I had was the idea, the potential, the love for what could have been, that emptiness, that lack of possibility, hurts so much that some days it drains me, empties me, robs me of the desire to do anything but sit on the couch and retreat into the shelter of fiction." You will need to click over and read this stunning post in its entirety.

The roundup to the Roundup: Cleaned up the sidebar. New icon for U.T.E.R.U.S. and a new way to contact the group when you need help. The results for the first ALIes. NaComLeavMo is ending and IComLeavWe is soon beginning. Last week to sign up for the Roundup Extravaganza... Oh, and catch you starting late Saturday night for Show & Tell.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Huge Jackman here.
I just wanted to thank all of you that voted for me and my Hugeness.

:)

HereWeGoAJen said...

You know, I thought I joined the UTERUS group AGES ago, but never got any emails from it. I just joined again and this time it worked. Oops.

Malky B. said...

I did the show and tell a day early. My link is:

http://www.benedictfamily.org/show-and-tell/

Io said...

I am trying soooo hard to finish out NCLM and I am making it, but not at the crazy fun pace I started with. I think the week will be much better. Though gosh...it sure starts soon.
Yay UTERUS! I have been looking for things for the ebay at garage sales.

Anonymous said...

Hiya. I have a suggestion/request for ICLW -- would it be possible for you to note the blogs on the list that are parenting or pg blogs? (Or conversely, note the ones that aren't?) After I recover from NCLM I will probably try to participate again at some point, but the truth is there are days when those blogs are not a good place for me, and I doubt I'm alone in that. Other days I have enjoyed exploring out of my usual comfort zone. But I'd just like to have a little more control over it. Anyway -- just a thought, fwiw. Thanks -- k

Lee said...

Thanks for the linky! Glad you liked the doodle.

Martin said...

Thanks, funny how these things go. It was just a total brain dump in a melancholy moment and it's had a good reaction.

Go figure.

Thanks again.