Posts from — October 2012

It is the seventh anniversary of the little Creme de la Creme. 277 bloggers participated last year. If this is your first time hearing about the project, this post should tell you everything you need to know. If you’ve participated in years past, you know how much fun the list is when its revealed on January 1st. So, I hereby declare the 2012 Creme de la Creme list open.

I know this is loooooong, but please read this whole post before submitting your entry. Every year, the rules change slightly in order to streamline the process.

If you didn’t read or participate in this list in 2006 or in 2007 or in 2008 or in 2009 or in 2010 or in 2011, the impulse behind this list are the ubiquitous award ceremonies that crawl out of their hiding spaces usually around December or January. Awards are nice — it’s good to honour someone and mark big accomplishments. But we all have a best post tucked into our archives. We all have words that have moved another person or ideas that have kicked off a series of musings. Bloggers are writers, and all of us deserve to be celebrated.

And we’re doing just that.

This is the way it works. If you want to participate, read through your archives from 2012 and choose a favourite post. You can leave all sorts of comments below telling me how fantastic I am, but fill out the form to send in your submission (do not leave it in the comments section–the point of this list is also the surprise of seeing the choices revealed on a single day). If you post your link below, I will delete it. Again, feel free to leave love comments below — in fact, please do leave love comments below — but not your submission for the list. Let’s keep it a surprise until the list is ready to go up.

You can only choose one entry. You cannot be modest. Everyone has a best post. There is no such thing as a boring blog. Even if you don’t think you have any readers because you’ve never received a comment, you have a best post. The one that you felt really good about when you hit publish. The one that would be the post you’d put forward if an editor called you tomorrow and said, “I have this great writing job for you that will pay a million dollars an hour. You just need to submit one blog entry to get this job so we can check your writing style.”

Even if you just found my blog because you read about the Creme de la Creme on another person’s blog, you are not only welcome to submit; you are encouraged. It is the best posts of 2012 for the ALI community and that community includes anyone who writes about infertility, adoption, pregnancy loss, stillbirth, neonatal death, assisted reproduction, pregnancy after infertility or loss, and every related topic — from living child-free after infertility to parenting after infertility. Everyone on the blogroll (or could be on the blogroll) is welcome to participate. Really, you don’t need to be a regular reader of my blog to join in. It’s open to everyone in the ALI blogosphere. I can’t say this in more ways than that. Which means you don’t need to write me a note asking if it’s okay to participate. The answer is yes. Okay?

Actually, it’s not only “yes;” it’s “please do.”

The list will be posted January 1st, and I promise that you will use up a good portion of the beginning of the year reading through the most stunning posts you’ve ever seen. We had 277 posts last year, and I’d really like to top that this year. My goal is all 3000 blogs currently on the blogroll, but barring that, let’s aim for over 300. Which means that not only do you have to participate if you’re reading this, but you need to spread the word and get other bloggers to participate (more on that below). Link to this post, send out a note to other bloggers you like, and suggest favourite posts to bloggers from this past year.

Um… other FAQ-like things:

How many posts can I submit?

You can only submit one. Please don’t submit two and ask me to choose. Submit one.

How will I know that you received my entry?

When you hit submit on the form, you should get a screen telling you that I have my entry. If you don’t see that screen, I don’t have your entry.

I sent in a post last week but I just wrote one that I love more! Can I switch my submission?

The short answer is no. The reason is that I write up the blurbs that appear next to each entry. This takes a lot of time. When you change your post, I have to write another blurb. Therefore, think carefully. But get your post in early so it’s high up on the list. But take your time picking it so you’re positive it’s the one you want on the list. But don’t give this too much thought…

If you just submitted it an hour earlier and realized you sent the wrong link, email me quickly so I can change it. Once I write the blurb, it’s set. I mean, you can pull your blog from the list, but you can’t submit a different link.

How do I know which one is my best?

Think of this list in sort of the same vein as those “Best American Short Story”-type collections except that it’s blog entries and everyone in the blogosphere should be represented with a link. The idea of the creme de la creme is not to put out there “the best” by someone else’s definition of “best.” It’s to put out the entry that means the most to you. Everyone has a best entry from 2012. It’s the one you would cry about if it was ever eaten by your computer. Even if it’s only meaningful to you.

I’m having a lot of trouble choosing my best one.

Why don’t you give a few choices to a friend and get their opinion? Don’t get hung up on the word “best.” It’s more about presenting a small taste of your blog. A lot of people read the list each January and it’s a chance for them to get to know your blog in one post. The goal, of course, is not only to honour every blog, but to also introduce everyone. Think of it like a cocktail party. You certainly think about what you wear, but everything doesn’t hinge on this one outfit.

I want to submit a post about my dog/favourite recipe/vacation in Hawaii. So … er … it’s not about adoption/infertility/loss. Can I? Or I want to submit a post but it has pictures of my baby in it. Do you think this is okay for an IF list?

Well, this list is sort of a pu-pu platter of the ALI community. Therefore, if your post is about your ski trip last winter, it doesn’t really show any emotion, thought, or event flitting through the community. Still, people have submitted off-topic posts in the past. If you have any part of the post that if ALI-related, all the better though.

The second question is a sensitivity one. Personally, I think that babies are part of the community and territory. The reality is that we’re all working towards parenthood or were once working towards parenthood. And children are included in that. I try to always mention in my blurb if it’s about a baby or if there are photos so people are given a heads up before they click over. So, yes, send posts that have photos in it and I will make sure that people know the gist of the post before they click over if they’re in a sensitive space.

I’m a man. Can I participate?

Are you part of the ALI community? Then didn’t you read above? EVERYONE is invited to participate. Male, female, young, old, married, single, gay, straight, everyone everyone everyone.

I’m a minnow. Can I participate?

Er … a minnow with a blog? An infertile minnow with a blog? I guess … I mean … I did say everyone … (but how do you blog underwater?)

I just started my blog in October. Can I participate?

As long as you’ve had one post in 2012, you can participate. Even if you didn’t start your blog until October 2012. Just choose your best from the last two months.

My blog is password protected. Can I participate?

If your blog is password protected and you want to participate, choose your blog entry and create a free blog at Blogger or WordPress and post that single entry. Then send me the link so I can place it on the list. I can’t link to password protected blogs.

When is the deadline for getting in my submission (and this has changed since last year so pay attention)?

To ensure that you’re on the list, please fill out the form by December 15th. No entries will be accepted after 11 pm EST on December 15th.

In the past, the list didn’t close until January, but this year, the list will not be updated after it goes up on January 1st.  December 15th is the only deadline, and it is a hard deadline.  Meaning, no one will be added who hears about this project after December 15th.

Which is why I am asking you, begging you, pleading with you, to spread word now.  Tweet it, Facebook it, Pinterest it, blog about it, email about it, talk about it with that random stranger in the fertility clinic waiting room.  Spread word now because people will not be able to add themselves after December 15th.

Can you post another link to the form right now because I’ve decided to submit.

Sure, here’s another link to the form. Just fill it out and hit send and it will go into the Creme de la Creme spreadsheet.

If you don’t want to participate, do nothing. With the Creme de la Creme List, I never add a blog or highlight a post unless the author has sent it to me. Therefore, no hurt feelings. If your post isn’t on the list, it’s because you haven’t sent one. If you see someone missing from the list after it is posted, go bug them and tell them to submit a post. But don’t send me a note asking me to add them without their permission. I really would like this post to be what the author believes is their best post, but if you are feeling shy and can’t choose, enlist a friend to help you narrow it down and choose your best work.

Lastly, there is another section of the list that needs your help: blogs that closed in 2012. These are blogs that closed entirely — the person stopped blogging and said specifically that they were not going to post any longer — not blogs that went password protected or the person moved their blog to a new space. If you read a blog that closed during 2012, please send me the title of the blog. It doesn’t matter if it was read by one person or read by 5000 people, all blogs should be honoured and recognized. And all blogs stand on the same plateau here.

Spread the word with the following button on a post or your sidebar to encourage others to send a link:

The code for adding the link to your blog can be found here. You can also use the social media buttons at the bottom of the post.

Everyone has a best post. It is your personal best. It is not best by any other standard. Stop comparing yourself. Stop feeling shy. Stop thinking it’s immodest to toot your own horn when I’ve told you to toot your own horn. Start reading through your archives. Reflect on the year. And then send me a link for the list.

Wheeeew. Sorry about that last part. But everyone in the blogosphere should be represented and honoured.

As certain as the CVS leftover candy sale on November 1st or Black Friday post Thanksgiving, this is my annual plea on the day before the opening of the Creme de la Creme list to read the post in full when it goes up tomorrow.  Because things change from year to year.

This will be the seventh Creme de la Creme.  For those new to the community, the Creme de la Creme list has been the answer since 2006 to those ubiquitous “best of” lists that come out every winter.  Instead of honouring a small handful of people, the Creme de la Creme points out that every single one of us has a post that is our personal best post of the year, the one we would be devastated if it were to be accidentally erased.  Please don’t get hung up on the word “best.”  We are talking about favourites.  About the post you love.  The one you’d want people to read if they could only read one post from your blog.

Because what the Creme de la Creme list becomes when it goes up on January 1st is a speed dating list.  It introduces people to your blog and gives them a single taste of what 2012 meant to you.  The point of the list, beyond celebrating every single member of the community, is to also make connections.  To help you find new blogs to read.  To help people find your blog to read.

If you want to peruse old Creme de la Cremes, you can see 2006 or 2007 or 2008 or 2009 or 2010 or 2011.

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There are two reasons why I write a yearly pre-list opening post:

1. There is some truth to the fact that those higher up on the list (the list is shown in the order in which the submission was received) receive more eyes on their post.  If you care about being high up on the list, you may want to choose your post today and be ready to go when the list goes live tomorrow morning with the submission form.

2. The list will close for submissions on December 15th this year.  This is different from all other years when I took submissions after the post went live on January 1st and updated the list.  Instead, the list will be closed for submissions at 11 pm EST on December 15th, and every entry will be on the list when the it goes live on January 1st.  Which means that if you want to be on it, don’t dawdle.

And it also means that I need your help now to spread word when the list goes live tomorrow.  Tweet it, Facebook it, Pinterest it, blog about it, email about it, tell your sister about it.  I am a little worried about closing the list early since I know a bunch of people only find out about it when people start to tweet or blog about it come January 1st.  But I also know that I suck lately at getting up the stragglers, and I want all the entries to be together when the list goes live so all will be read.

So… read the whole post when it goes live tomorrow.  Then submit your favourite post.  And tell other people about the list so they submit their favourite post.  And then sit back and relax until January 1st when you get to read the most fantastic post of the year; a condensed, delicious, panoramic verbal view of the ALI community.

Someone sent an article from Mental Floss into the Prompt-ly list a few days ago about when premature babies were essentially side shows set out for the public’s entertainment, and in exchange, the babies received care that would have been prohibitively expensive for the parents.  It was a hard idea to wrap my mind around.  If I had lived during that time period, I would have needed to use this set-up to get the twins the care they needed when they were born early.  And yet it was so exploitative of families, of needs, of a health situation.

There is zero chance that I would willingly participate in a reality television show or put the kids in one.  But what if my back was against the wall, if I had to allow people to gawk at our life in order to save the twins?  What would be the emotional fallout from that type of experience; what emotional residue would be left from that decision?  Of course, if I were Snooki and amenable to being on a reality show, it would be a moot point.  But I’m sort of the anti-Snooki.  There is no amount of money one could pay me in order to subject myself to being on a reality show.

What is your reaction to Couney and his Infantincubators (with living infants!)?  Which perhaps is your reaction to reality television in general.

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And now the blogs…

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

• “Flying Solo” (She Dreams of Babies)
• “Lady Gaga” (Creating Motherhood)
• “A Carrier’s Perspective” (A Passage to Baby)
• “The Next Step” (My Fertility Blog)
• “The One Where I Screw Hope” (Stupid Stork)
• “The Hardest Part” (The Adventures of a Mama Gringa)
• “The One Where I Get Bitchy” (Searching for Our Silver Lining)
• “Twin Favourtism or PPD?” (Life in the Fruit Basket)
• “That Room” (No Baby Ruth)
• “My Dining Room Floor” (A Woman My Age)
• “I May Have Ripped My Dermatologist a New One” (Idiotic Infertility)
• “5 Stages of Knowing an Infertile Person” (Nuts in May)
• “My Greatest Fear” (Follow Every Rainbow)

Okay, now my choices this week.

The Elusive Second Line has a great post for her first blogoversary.  She sums up life perfectly when she writes, “This year has been the best bad year that I could have imagined.”  I love the fact that this post looks forward as well as backwards.  Congratulations on your blogoversary.

Weathering Storms has a deeply honest post about wanting a girl.  I was drawn into the post by the hope contained in the first sentences: “Last night, McRuger and I started talking about names for Adoption #2. It’s the sort of conversation that I love having with him. In those moments that we are talking, anything is possible, and there is no fear of what the future might bring.”  But what unfolded was a post that placed on the table the innermost wishes of her heart.  And that’s a beautiful thing; when someone allows you to see their deepest wants.

Something Out of Nothing has a post about the two week wait.  She spills out every jumbled thought from her brain, and what the reader gets is the ability to feel that penduluming between hope and fear, hope and fear, as she waits for the beta.  Sending her so many good thoughts.

Lastly, I love Mrs. Spit’s post about the museum this week, perhaps because it is such a touchstone of my childhood and a way that I have never thought about the building, but it’s also a reminder of the two sides to every story.  Or how there is a balance for the events that lie on either end of the extremes.

The roundup to the Roundup: What are your thoughts on the Infantincubator side show?  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between October 5th and 12th) 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.

Yesterday ended my Internet diet.  It was definitely a diet: non-sustainable but quick results.  Like the Grapefruit Diet, except with considerably less grapefruit.

Perhaps because I’ve been thinking about how I changed the way I eat, I could see all the similarities between my relationship with food (unhealthy) and my relationship with the Internet (unhealthy).  Yet, with one of those unhealthy habits, I changed my relationship into something that is healthy, reasonable and… just to repeat the word again… sustainable.  That seems to be the key here.  I didn’t change my relationship with the Internet into something sensibly proportioned with my life.  I went on what amounted to an Internet fast, and now the fast is over and I’ve reverted — within MINUTES — back to my unhealthy ways which leads to my “ill” feelings (you know, in the same way that I felt like crap physically due to what I ate prior to changing my eating habits).

I knew my Internet diet wasn’t realistic due to the enormous amount of work that went into the ability to go on an Internet fast.  I had to do all the work I would normally do during that time period.  In the interest of full disclosure, there were about three days when I tacked on an extra 10 minutes to my allotted 30 minutes because I had to deal with something work-related.  I didn’t want to give up my personal 30 minutes, and I reasoned that work has to come before diets.  I was fairly miserable working ahead in order to go on my Internet fast.  I used the computer double the amount I would normally do since I was doing my normal workload plus my future workload.  There were a few days when I didn’t get dressed.  I just sat in front of the computer and typed and typed and typed.

My blog was the easiest element to deal with during my Internet diet.  I write double what I post, so I just unleashed a few posts that had been sitting in the draft folder, ready to go.  It meant that I wasn’t creating commentary on anything in real time, but that’s fine.  Not every post needs to reflect the present moment.  Yet I felt oddly detached from this space because I had written the posts and set them to run and then didn’t really go back into my blog except for the times when I uploaded people to the IComLeavWe list.  I wrote every day, though I did so longhand.  Which felt honestly like a pain-in-the-ass since I’m accustomed to the speed to typing.  But I knew that if I allowed myself to type, I would find a reason to look up “just one thing.”  So I didn’t allow myself to type.  And it felt weird.

The hardest thing — and the place where I perhaps learned the most about myself — was with reading blogs.  I didn’t leave as many comments as I would have liked, and that made me feel like crap.  Not leaving comments made me anxious.  I also ended up not reading any feeds in my Reader that didn’t belong to a personal blog.  I have a tendency to read like I eat: candy first, protein second.  But during my diet, I got rid of ALL the candy: Jezebel, Gawker, Lifehacker, Slate, Mashable, HuffingtonPost.  I just hit “mark all as read” every day, and then dove into the heart of my Reader, which are all personal blogs.  When you only have 20 minutes to read blogs because you used up 10 minutes reading emails, you want the best.  You want the protein that is going to stick with you until you get your next online meal.

30 minutes goes awfully quick.

I started my diet on a weekend, which is a time when I’m usually online less than a weekday, so it felt like a good starting point.  It wasn’t hard to fill the time with other things: craft projects (um… more like futilely going to stores to collect supplies for said project and finding that they don’t carry what I want and then changing my mind several thousand times… it’s a long story), reading books, chillaxing with the kids.  It was Succot, so we celebrated Succot.  Actually, the biggest thing I did with my new-found time was read.  I mean, I chillax with the kids during a normal week.  But reading books always falls by the wayside.  I read pages here and there, but I rarely have the time to sit down after the kids are in bed and read for hours.  But that’s what I did — I read for hours.   And I loved it.  I forgot how relaxed I feel after being in a story or a structured piece of non-fiction, a peace I don’t find as I jump from blog to blog.

Perhaps that is because when you read blogs, you are jumping from writing style to writing style, topic to topic.  I feel the same way about magazines; I don’t walk away from reading magazines feeling relaxed.  I walk away feeling as if my mind is buzzing.  And that’s how I feel when I leave blog reading.  Blogs make me think and they make me want to write, but they don’t really allow me to enter that deep state of imagination or consideration that can be found in books.

I can’t say the diet was impossibly hard or that I wanted to gnaw off my own hand as I went through Internet withdrawal.  There were times when I was itching to go online and see if a post received any comments or if someone had emailed back, but for the most part, I was able to put the Internet out of my mind when it wasn’t my allotted half hour.

And then Simchat Torah ended (the last day after Succot) and I lifted my Internet ban, allowing myself to fall back into normal usage.  The story we all kid ourselves with when we do any sort of diet is that we’ll be able to sustain the results; they’ll jump start a new habit.  But that’s not what happened at all.  The moment I allowed myself open usage of the Internet, I felt my familiar online-induced anxiety.  The pile of emails needed responses.  There were blog posts I wanted to return to comment on that were screaming for my attention now, now, now.  People had made various requests for my time during the fast that I felt fine putting off under the excuse that I was on an Internet diet.  But now I had to deal with all those requests.  Even though they’d take hours to fulfill, I felt like they were all sitting on my chest, having to deal with their full weight all at once.

Within minutes, I felt stretched thin.  The soup I wanted to make didn’t get done.

My inbox felt cluttered, and that in turn affected my train of thoughts.

All within one evening of normal Internet usage.

I’m not sure what the answer is.  I already limit my Internet usage in many ways including not being online for the most part when the twins are at home and awake.  I could say no to more things, but I think we all know that isn’t very realistic.  I mean, yes, I can say no, but it would mean not paying forward what others have done for me, and that doesn’t sound like a very enticing way to live.  Being a dick is easy; finding balance between doing things for others while still finding time for myself is much harder.

I think that in a few more days, everything will shake out and return to normal.  I’m in that place now where I’ve been Internet starving so now I’m over-consuming.  And soon I will return to my normal state of Internet-induced guilt about non-returned emails or comments not left, and also find time to finish Rowling’s new book.  I hope.

Even though it totally didn’t work as a sustainable solution, since we have another 8-day holiday in the spring (Pesach), I think I’m going to repeat this experiment again.  Even if I know it doesn’t bring long term results.  Just because.

The soap question a while back reminded me of this.

The act of buying a yoga mat cleanser became an epic journey that culminated in the purchase of a random bottle from Whole Foods (the one by Gaiam).  I should start out by explaining that I have a thing about smells.  I do not wear perfume and whenever possible, I purchase the unscented versions of things.

I am not only bothered by smells, but I have a very acute sense of smell — it’s sort of the worst of both worlds — therefore, I can smell someone’s perfume, let’s say, on the other side of the room.  It’s like this: you expect someone standing next to  you to have the ability to poke you, but I can be nasally poked by people next to me or people many meters away.  So I can’t just move away slightly when a smell is bothering me.

You may have picked up on the fact that smells bother me a lot.

So, after yoga, I sometimes want to clean my mat.  But I can’t use the cleanser at the studio because that cleanser is under someone else’s smell domain.  Maybe this week, she feels like buying something lemon-scented.  And then next week, the yoga store is out of the lemon-scented variety and she picks up lavender.  But I don’t know this until I go to use it and I’m screwed by my smell expectations.  So I need to bring my own cleanser in order to have control over the smell situation.  Especially since I push my face into my mat pre-cobra.  Must have smell control.

So I started trying out cleansers.

The first one came from a yoga boutique.  The owner gave me a tangerine-scented yoga wipe as a sample.  I am usually good with citrus scents EXCEPT when they are on my skin.  I ask Josh to peel all clementines, for instance.  Though I can get lime on my hands.  But not lemon.  By the way, this all makes sense inside my head.

So the woman handed it to me and said, “when you open it, before you use it, wipe it all over your hands and face and then use it to clean the mat.  It will smell heavenly.”

It was as if she had just told me that she was going to feed me cricket-laced brownies.  She started nodding like a Bobble-head to counteract what must have been the look of horror crossing over my face.  So wipe my face and hands with something citrus-scented — GET IT ALL OVER MYSELF SO I SMELL LIKE IT AND HAVE TO LIVE WITH IT FOR HOURS — and then take my sweat-soaked wipe and use it to clean my mat?

After class, I gingerly opened the packet and took a sniff.  It was right on the line of usable — meaning, I could stomach the smell, though I didn’t love it.  I wiped it all over the mat and tossed it, and then washed my hands numerous times to get rid of the smell.  For the next class or so, I was distracted by the smell which still lingered on the mat, making it impossible to listen to the teacher’s instruction because I kept thinking, “I am standing on tangerine-scented oils I am standing on tangerine-scented oils I am standing on tangerine-scented oils.”

Which meant back to square one.

What I really wanted was a bleach-scented spray, but without the colour-draining properties of bleach.  And I didn’t want to use something like a Clorox-wipe on the mat because I wasn’t sure how it would affect the mat over time.  I spent two weeks picking up bottles of mat spray in various health food stores and yoga boutiques until I finally settled on the one sold at Whole Foods which smells a little citrus-y and a little ginger-y, and I’m okay with it as long as I don’t get it on my skin.  I can stand to inhale it during downward-facing dog.  And over time, I know it will grow on me until it is a scent I associate with yoga and actually find comforting instead of distracting.

Because the opposite is true too — certain smells bring me enormous comfort.  I love sleeping with a shirt that Josh wore that week if he ever goes out of town.  I can’t really borrow other people’s clothes — even clean clothes — because of detergent smells, BUT I never pre-wash anything my best friend or sister give me because I like it still smelling like their detergent (at least until I have to wash it post-wear) when I miss them.  I think grilled meat smells amazing (even if I never would put it in my mouth).  I love the smell of old books.  When I think about buildings, I often think about them in terms of their smell, because buildings and houses have smells just as much as each person has their own individual smell.  I am a fan of suntan lotion (though not make-up).  And the fishy scent of the Chesapeake Bay (it’s like Maryland’s vagina).  And when you go outside right after in snows and it smells like nothingness — like all the smells have been erased from the air.  And bleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeach.  I am such a fan of bleach.  Children often comment that our house smells like a swimming pool when they come over for playdates.  I like to respond that our house smells like happiness and calm.

What are your best smells and worst smells?