442nd Friday Blog Roundup

I threw out my old toothbrush this week and got a new toothbrush. Even though this is a fairly regular occurrence, I forget in between new toothbrushes how lovely new bristles are against my teeth. It’s like making love to my mouth. I use the term “making love” instead of “having sex” because that’s how beautiful and pure it is.  Getting a new toothbrush is like arriving at a Caribbean resort and being told that the staff hasn’t allowed anyone else to book a room in order to give you complete privacy as you roll around with your lover in the sand, the warm ocean gently lapping your bare legs while he/she spills pina colada over your breasts and licks it off in one, long, moan-inducing…

I mean, I just really love getting a new toothbrush.  That’s all.

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I recently learned how to score a baseball game.   I should add that I know how to do this in the most basic way possible.  When the coach first asked me to score, I looked around at every other parent and tried to convince them that they wanted the task.  No one did.  So I sat down with the stubby, eraser-less pencil and started scoring.

It made me watch the game in a different way, helping me shut out anything that wasn’t happening on the field.

If you would have told me twelve years ago that I would be excited to score a baseball game, I would have told you that you obviously don’t know Melissa.  But then I married a baseball-loving boy and became the mother of a baseball-loving boy, and somewhere along the way, I decided to love baseball because I love them.  It’s funny how a person can change due to love.

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A reader asked me to make a PSA request: before Google Reader closes, make sure your blog is updating on the various blog readers others are now using — Feedly, Netvibes, Bloglovin, Old Reader, etc.  This is especially important for people who don’t post often because people may not know whether there is a problem with their new reader not getting your posts or whether it’s simply a time period when you’re not posting.

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All I can say is… it’s coming.  And it’s going to be good.

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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:

• “In Which We Discuss Sex” (Who Shot Down My Stork?)
• “One Day, This Will All Be Behind You” (Who Shot Down My Stork?)
• “In My Shoes” (Who Shot Down My Stork?)
• “Join the Movement for NIAW” (The Infertility Voice)
• “What IF: Three Years Later” (The Infertility Voice)
• “Secondary Infertility Stories: Just One More” (Bereaved and Blessed)
• “10 Gift Ideas for a Bereaved Mom on Mother’s Day” (Still Standing Mag)
• “How to Support a Friend or Family Member with Infertility” (Resolve)
• “Audrey Pearl” (Real Life & Therafter)

Okay, now my choices this week.

For the Love of Baby Liam has a very moving post about tearing down the old nursery and creating something new between the loss of her two children and the baby on the way.  She explains the difficulty she was having in marking her daughter’s birthday, and a conversation she had with a woman from her grief group whom she still speaks to once per month.  No suggestion for marking the day felt right.  But she was able to come home and keep moving ahead even with tears close-by.  It’s a great post.

Nuts in May has an incredible post about living child-free after infertility.  I love this so damn much: “Life without kids will not suck, will not destroy me, will not lead to my abandonment and feral death, will not burn out my retinas. Life without children will, in fact, be dandy. I will grieve, I will feel burning flailing resentment for the costs to my health and sanity trying to have children exacted, I will heal, I will pull by bloody socks up, and I will move on. This may take years, it may take months. But there it is, and there am I, and that will be that.”  Go read the whole post so you get the part about her retinas.

Lastly, A Life of Choice has a post about suddenly becoming fertile post-divorce after being part of an infertile couple for years.  It was interesting to me because it was the first post I read in the community that goes this direction — moving from infertility to fertility.  She writes: “In a strange way – I spent 7 years mourning the children that I could never have with my husband. I can now, finally, lay their ghosts to rest. I can stop wondering what our children would look like, be like. I can just be.”

The roundup to the Roundup: I love having a new toothbrush.  I learned how to score a baseball game.  Make sure your blog posts are updating on readers.  Secret Ode Days are coming!  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between May 3rd and May 10th) 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.