Darcy: I was on Facebook today and xyz person was totally annoying me. Me: I haven’t been on my personal Facebook page in weeks. Darcy: Really? Not even when you’re bored? Me: Nope. Darcy: Why? Me: It’s too fake. Like, there’s only professional portraits of smiling, photoshopped families. Or shallow stories trying to make someone look funny. Or political diatribes. Darcy: Or people saying they’re eating dinner at Poggio’s or checking into the Four Seasons Maui Resort. Fuck that. Me: Totally. You know what would be rad? Darcy: Can you stop trying to make that word happen? Me: You know what would be rad? Darcy: (Sighs) What? Me: If someone would actually post on there about their real life. Like today, for example: Me: Status update: 3/3/2012, 11:25 AM Jjiraffe: Husband not successful flushing toilet. Darcy: YES! Status update: 3/3/2012 11:26 AM Darcy: Going to CVS to buy new plunger. Darcy: Status update: 3/3/2012 11:32 AM Darcy: CVS doesn’t have a plunger. Shit. Ace is the place? Me: Status update: 3/3/2012 11:32 Jjiraffe: Where the hell is Darcy? It stinks! Darcy: Status update: 3/3/2012 11:48 Darcy: Toilet successfully plunged. But we will need to replace our plumbing pipes, for real this time. Me: Status update: 3/3/2012 11:49 Jjiraffe: $10k more down the drain? Can’t we just eat more vegetables? Me: Status update: 3/3/2012 12: 04 PM Jjiraffe: Depressed. Just binged on half a box of thin mints while watching two episodes of “Hoarding: Buried Alive.”
AAANND now you know about the super-glamourous, chic and fancy life we lead.
What would YOU really say on Facebook about today?
Darcy won’t watch movies more than once. You can imagine that this limits us. I tend to think that the late 90s was a FANTASTIC time for films. Last night we saw “Titanic”. This is only the second time I saw it since it came out in 1997. My family has a tradition of seeing movies on Christmas Day. I remember seeing “Sense and Sensibility” with my parents in 1995. I was dating a douchey guy at the time, a guy who resembled Willowby. He’s still like Willowby: if there is a modern day equivalent of being scandalous and gambling and not committing to a girl unless she’s a rich heiress or whatever nebulous activity Willowby was engaged in. My ex is still like that. In his early 40s. Those English lords who are, uh, wastrels? Yeah, they still exist today in modern society.
I’m sort of a stuffed shirt mid-western type (can I say that without being offensive?) and so, it’s a bit shocking that I have had a past history associating with a wastrel and that one of my favorite movies of all time is “Boogie Nights”, a morality tale set in the pornographic industry in the “Valley” of Southern California. The lesson? Don’t be pompous and presume hubris when all you have is a career in adult films. Incredible camera work and the soundtrack improve viewing immensely.
“Titanic” imparts similar lessons, right? The engineering power of man is limited. I actually think that movie has aged well. I know there was a huge uproar about the silly dialogue, but I will risk hipster scorn by saying: is it any different, really, than my beloved “Downton Abbey?” No, not really. I love to remind my brother that he made my poor, long-suffering mother see this movie, while my Dad and I were blown away by “Titanic.” Yep, that’s right, that movie blew me away.
Anyway, my favorite movie of the late 90s is “English Patient.” And I am making Darcy see it tomorrow.
This is a post that may be a trigger for those recently suffering from loss or who are feeling vulnerable. Please be warned, and avoid. I totally understand. Take care of you.
Yesterday was the two-year anniversary of my miscarriage. I was eight weeks along.
I thought I might write about it. I thought about telling the story of how I started to miscarry at someone else’s baby shower, a shower I had planned. I thought of writing how I plastered a smile on my face and played hostess and pretended I didn’t feel the physical pain. I thought about telling you I pretended that my heart wasn’t breaking into tiny bits. And how no one was the wiser.
According to this MacLeans article: this is exactly what I should do for the rest of my life. I should pretend it never happened. Because I might make other people uncomfortable.
F%$& THAT S$^&*!
My dad the journalist tells me I need to fight fire with fire. Fight this steady stream of media stories denigrating or marginalizing the Adoption/Loss/Infertility community by writing my own series, “Faces of ALI”. I am working on another profile.
But, I am so offended by this article that I feel I cannot let it stand.
From MacLeans:
“Slate’s ‘Dear Prudence’ columnist Emily Yoffe fielded a question from a woman whose sister delivered a full-term stillborn child and wanted to send out a ‘birth’ announcement with a photo of her and her husband holding their dead child. Yoffe advised against it: though the couple had ‘suffered a crushing loss,’ she wrote, it would be wiser to circulate the image among intimates only; a ‘birth’ notice would be ‘confusing and disturbing’ since an actual birth hadn’t occurred.”
A birth hadn’t occurred? Are you fucking kidding me?
For too long, women have suffered in silence and often shame because it was not culturally acceptable to talk about “such things.” Finally, with Jay-Z’s song, the Duggars’ memorial service and the Facebookization (yes, that’s a word) of milestones like pregnancy, there has been an intersection of the public with the private. Celebrities like Kelly Brook and Lily Allen have grieved babies born too early in a media glare.
And an incredible blogging community has sprung up to help women support each other through these terrible, terrible things when no one else will.
MacLeans has some choice words about that blogging community, BTW.
But, as blogs attest, mobilizing around loss can amplify it, and extend the mourning process. ‘Mother of an Angel,’ a regular poster on Ling’s website, reports she’s so mired in grief three years after losing her child she’s neglecting her other children. David Morrison, president of the Strathmor Group, a health consultancy in Charlottetown specializing in grief and palliative-care counselling, has seen the focus on perinatal death stall the healthy grieving process. Putting a lifelike photograph of a stillborn child in an office, for instance, could create awkwardness with co-workers, he says: ‘Such a public parade of grief risks alienating people who could provided important support.’
Yeah. Because we have all found so much support amongst the general public. We could be comforted by people saying, “It was for the best.” And “You can try again.” “The good news is you can get pregnant!”
Also, I love that a MAN is telling women how to mourn perinatal death.
Without the support of this blogging community, I would be a shell of who I am today. You have bucked me up and helped me understand I am not alone, you have abided with me on bad days and you have shown me by example how to get through the pain.
And MacLeans: I suggest you read this before you write a story and patronize us all.
Mel and the crew over at BlogHer asked me to write about my experience with my blog going down: please feel free to go over there and LEARN FROM MY NIGHTMARE Comments are always appreciated too
I knew that my blog was important to me. I knew that it was responsible for finding good friends, connecting with others in the Adoption/Loss/Infertility community and really coming to terms with my own experience with infertility and loss.
Yesterday I realized my blog is almost a physical part of me. And when it was taken away, I ached. I was numb. I was in shock. I couldn’t sleep.
We unfortunately have been reminded this month that there are many, many worse things than a blog vanishing. I felt silly for having such a reaction.
Here’s how it began:
At about 6:00 PM, I checked my email to see if I needed to approve any comments. There was one, so I clicked the approve comment button. Instead of returning to the dashboard, I saw a notice in bright red letters notifying me that my blog had been deacticated, and I wouldn’t be able to administer it. Shocked, I tried to go to my site, and there was a notice that my blog had basically been suspended for violating the terms of service.
I reeled, and immediately filled out the contact form provided by WordPress requesting my blog be reactivated. I filled out a couple of other forms online. I started to get emails from friends who went to my site and saw that it was down. I went on Twitter and asked others for help. I went on Facebook and did the same.
So many bloggers came through for me. Stirrup Queens worked tirelessly and talked to friends who have a lot of experience with the WordPress platform. She also had saved all my entries and sent them to me in word documents so, worst case scenario, I would have a hard copy of my blog to look at. It made me cry to see my entries all together on actual pages. Mel, you are my fairy godmother. I cannot thank you enough.
My husband Darcy, who I must admit is not the biggest fan of my blogging, was full of action and sympathetic and reassuring and supportive. He knew how much of a blow this was to me.
I obsessively checked my email until about 12:30 PM, and with no word from WordPress, I fell into a shallow and restless sleep until I checked my email at about 5 AM and found the note from WordPress that I was looking for: my site had been flogged by automatic anti-spammer controls. They had reviewed my site and corrected this and now my blog was reactivated. They were very sorry that it had happened.
Now in the aftermath, I have learned some valuable lessons.
- Back up your blog. You just never know.
- I am looking into self-hosting. It’s time.
- I treated this blog very cavalierly and casually. I haven’t done any updates to it, I didn’t back it up, I used a basic template to create it, I never hired someone to create a cool banner. I thought about it, and promised to do it, but I didn’t. I TOOK MY BLOG FOR GRANTED Y’ALL, like some douchebag boyfriend in college takes his rad girlfriend for granted.
If my blog could sing, it would be singing this Adele song to me:
‘Cause there’s a side to you
That I never knew, never knew,
All the things you’d say,
They were never true, never true,
And the games you play
You would always win, always win.
Lyrics written by Adele and Fraser T. Smith
I’m so sorry, beloved blog. I will never again treat you like Adele’s ex-boyfriend allegedly treated her.
What would YOU do if your blog disappeared? Do you back it up? Feed it, water it? Give it love?
There is a RAD roster of fertility experts speaking at this event, and you can listen to them all FOR FREE! I absolutely adore this idea, because so many of you have told me how difficult it is, either geographically or financially (or both), to get in touch with the experts you need to get more information about your infertility. I hope that this resource can help those of you looking TTC, whether it’s from a traditional medical viewpoint or from a nutritional or eastern medicine standpoint, or you’re wondering how to combine different types of treatments. In addition to listening to the experts, you can have the opportunity to have questions answered.
You can join the event by either listening over the phone or via webcast.
This is the third year of the event, and last year 4,000 people “attended”.
In addition to the experts, two TOTALLY RAD bloggers are speaking, and I am seriously blushing that I have been asked to join them. Keiko Zoll, from Hannah Wept, Sarah Laughed (SOON TO BE THE INFERTILITY VOICE!) and Single Infertile Female will also be speaking about their own experiences with infertility. I am a huge fan of both of their work, so to be grouped together with them? SQUEE!
The Fertility Focus Telesummit goes from March 12-18, 2012.
Here’s speakers I think might be super helpful: Dr. Michael Dooley – An Integrated Approach to Fertility Management. Hethir Rodriguez – How to Use Herbs to Promote Ovulation, Balance Your Hormones, Prevent Miscarriage and Boost Your Fertility Naturally. Dr. Marilyn Glenville – Fertility Facts: Using An Integrated Approach To Getting And Staying Pregnant By Combining The Best Of Both Worlds With Conventional And Nutritional Medicine. Iva Keene – Proven Strategies to Maximise your IVF Success with Natural Fertility. Sarah Holland – EFT for Fertility: Reduce the Overwhelm of Emotions and Discover a Positive Way Towards Pregnancy and Parenthood.
The Bloggers will be speaking on Saturday, March 17th: you can listen to my interview for 24 hours starting at at 3pm Pacific, 6pm Eastern, 10pm UK time
Want to sign up? Click HERE! Enter your information. And please let me know if you have any questions!
Yesterday, I had many perfect moments, chez Bodega Bliss.
Many of you know and love Bodega Bliss. I visited her yesterday (I know you’re jealous) and no surprise, her home is worthy of being featured on the pages of a glossy Design*Sponge book. She lives about five minutes from the sea in a small town. Her home is a converted barn and is full of quirk, charm and beauty in that uniquely personal way that is impossible to reproduce.
Some days I relax by pulling up a virtual chair at her cozy table with Esperanza and enjoying a bowl of her made-from-scratch curried butternut squash soup. Or eating a homemade whoopee pie. And talking and talking until the sun goes down and the winding road calls me back home to the burbs, where the air is less magical. Yesterday, THAT WAS MY REALITY!
I took some photos for inspiration. Not pictured: the smell of salt and delicious food, rolling hills dotted with picturesque cows.
Bodega’s husband is a devoted surfer.
Artwork wall and personal photos. Most of the artwork Bodega found on Etsy.
Pull up a cozy rocker
Bookcase against the original barn walls
Stag head
Salvaged chair, repainted and reupholstered by Bodega.
- Having to write blog posts on a phone
- The fact that my downstairs is a literal shitstorm
- The unfortunate tendency of Darcy to get the worst songs stuck in his head. He sings them out loud and tortures me. Often.
- He’s had the ever-classy club anthem “Sexy Chick” in his head. FOR TWO YEARS!
- Poverty
- David Guetta
- George Clooney’s date’s dress. Yuck.
- Injustice
- Laundry
- My need to eat. And eat. And eat.
- My lack of desire to work out. Ever.
- The realization I’m turning 40 this year. Boo.
- The popularity of beets. They taste like feet.
When bad things happen, I tend to nest. I am horrible at interior design myself, but appreciate the good work of others. So, Pinterest has been a retreat of sorts: I can pin some lovely photos of “inspirations” and dream of someday making my home lovely. Because right now between the sewage spill, fans blowing 24 hours and our general decor of frat guy meets random in-law castoffs, I’m feeling our house is not too far from the horror cases featured on “Hoarders”.
I also set up a bulletin board for “Faces of ALI”, too Any repins or likes would be RAD. Also, I’d love to follow you over there: I’m here.
Are you on Pinterest? Do you like it? Or are you worried about getting sucked into a time wasting nightmare?
Comments are always appreciated too 
