354th Friday Blog Roundup

Taking a break from Hurricane Irene prep…

*******

I’m still pouring drinks over at the bar.  Thank you to all who have taken pity on me declaring Google bankruptcy and told me what I missed this past month.  I’m set to keep up now.

*******

I would like to add that the port-a-potty story is only amusing because it didn’t tip.  If it had and we had been covered in… well, do I really need to spell out for you what we’d be covered in?  If it had tipped over, I wouldn’t have told the story at all.  I would have been too busy bleaching myself.

Even more amusing, the next day, we went to the beach again and the port-a-potties were being trucked away due to impending hurricane.  We took photos of the port-a-potties’ departure.

The ocean was incredibly strange on Wednesday morning.  As east coasters know, the Atlantic beaches generally have big waves that crash right at the shore.  But on Wednesday morning, the big waves were much farther back in the ocean, leaving yards and yards of calm, clear water.  You could see tiny fish and we collected buckets of enormous sea shells.

Weird (and wonderful) trip to the beach.

*******

So to recap my week: went to the beach, experienced an earthquake while in a port-a-potty, comforted my son when Steve Jobs announced his retirement, the twins split into separate rooms (more on that in the future), did back-to-school stuff, and we’re now preparing for a hurricane to hit the coast.

*******

And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week as well as the week before.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Are You Infertile? The New York Times Thinks You are Rich and Whimsical” (Too Many Fish to Fry)
• “Confessions of an Infertile Imposter” (Stumbling Gracefully)
• “The Butterfly” (Team Baby)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Team Baby has a post called “Depth Perception” about a questionnaire that she filled out for her therapist and the feelings it brought to the surface.  I love the way she describes the advice from her therapist: “We then talked about grieving some more; I feel like she keeps hammering home the same points: this is hard; this is unfair; you need to grieve, but not too much; focus on the present, don’t imagine the future, don’t dwell on the past. It reminds me kind of like when I took belly-dancing classes; you’re instructed to do 27 things at once, most of which are in total contradiction of each other, and you feel like a complete buffoon.”  I hope it was as helpful for her to write the post as it was for others to read it.

Endo&Beyond is trying to find an outlet for her grief.  She writes, “When I have finally worked up the courage to tell people in my awkward way they have all faded away …  I guess I don’t have anything to offer them now.  I guess I am one of those poor friends who isn’t there for them either.  Maybe they’ve got their own blogs wondering why no one hears them.”  It’s a sad post but also a beautiful one.

Lastly, The Cornfed Feminist implores you (and herself) not to judge double strollers.  She writes about the walks she is taking in the evening: “I’ve seen deer running around out there, herons, geese, ducks with ducklings, and jumping fish, plus some really cool birds. Unfortunately I don’t stare at any of that as intently as I watch the strollers.”  I especially love the dinner party idea at the end of the post, and I wonder why more people don’t do this — connect all the individual people they know who are experiencing infertility (or name-that-problem).  After all, she points out that “the online fertility support groups are helpful, but there’s no food. ”

The roundup to the Roundup: Thank you for taking pity on my Google bankruptcy.  My trip to the beach and all the crazy things that have happened this week.  And, of course, lots of great blog posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between August 19th and August 26th) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.