National Blog Not-Posting Month: a Post in Two Parts.

National Blog Not-Posting Month: a Post in Two Parts.

It looks like I not only failed at NaBloPoMo, I pretty much boycotted it. !!. Julia loves a good boycott. But, why didn't I just hold out another week? Well, I am tired of trying to stay away from you, Bella.

Basically I have two major and unrelated things to post about. Instead of doing bullets when I am feeling all disjointed and incoherent, I am going to do separate subheadings like a good little recovering technical writer.

TTC
Yes, dear friends, there is an internet acronym for deciding to start or increase your family. "trying-to-conceive" just has way too many letters and that pesky i-before-e-except-after-c thing you would always have to remember. This way, we can most efficiently be all OMG ur TTC m2 EWCM! I'm not going to explain the last acronym because we're in mixed company and I'm too classy for that.

Erik and I decided to get serious about trying to get pregnant again this last month (do you see how much shorter that sentence could be if I could force myself to use "TTC" as a verb?). We really haven't been avoiding it for a while now, but we certainly weren't "trying." And, these things being as they are, this month also yielded the first disappointment, the first un-success. I had assumed that because I am in a much more relaxed and prepared headspace than when we were trying to get pregnant with Ollie, that the disappointment wouldn't sting as much. But I swear, it's like it picked up almost right where we left off. The only thing I'm missing is the underlying fear that I would never have any children. But, oh, the sting, tempered only with the slightly distracting dull ache of cramps, those little bitches.

I'm not charting at all (there is NO WAY the little morning person in our family would allow me to leisurely take my temperature every morning before getting out of bed), and we're not really doing anything special besides resuming all the herbal teas and tinctures that are supposed to do things like lengthen your luteal phase and balance your hormones. The only reason I paid any attention to the dates this month was because cycle day 1 happened to fall on November 1st. With Ollie, I got a faint faint positive line on a pregnancy test on cycle day 25, so with November 25th rolling through yesterday, I have to say I definitely had my hopes up, way up. A 25 day cycle is pretty average for me, maybe even a little long, but it means that the little hippie tricks I was doing to lengthen my luteal phase (the second half of your cycle, after ovulation) probably didn't work.

Before we started to try, we had thought a lot about child spacing, and I guess we had even given ourselves a year+ range that we would consider ideal, and even then, it's not like it wouldn't be completely awesome to have two children spaced out however long. We are a little behind in that year+ window, but there is still plenty of time. It could take us another six months, or it could be longer. Or it could be next month. I know that I'm 100% okay with any of these scenarios, but I don't know if I will ever be able to forget this feeling of disappointment and failure at the end of the cycle. It's as fresh today as it was almost three years ago. Typ. I can quickly forget how painful contractions are, but this I can't seem to shake?

Twilight
On that happy note, lets move on to something even worse. I have whispered about Twilight quite a bit on here, I'm sure, fully owning up to the fact that I indulged in the books, and now the movie. As I read the books, I was annoyed by the pathetic writing (unadventurous word choice, redundant word choice, and annoying word choice, to be specific), the cloying narrator, and the obvious author-proxy fantasy that involved someone whose tastes in literature were stuck in the 11th grade. (Note, I found the movie a huge improvement). BUT I still loved reading the stories. I thought it (it being Twilight, the first book in the series) had a great concept: girl meets vampire, girl loves vampire. Vampire meets girl, vampire wants to kill girl, vampire loves girl. Kind of Buffyish. Oh wait, exactly Buffy-ish. Stephenie Meyer claims to have never seen Buffy. That said, she kind of laughs in the face of traditional vampire legend, and does so so uninhibitedly that you assume she did it on purpose?

[Listen. I know the kind of writer I am, and when faced with the option of painstakingly researching centuries of legend and lore versus just making my own shit up however I want, I know which option I'd choose to make a quick buck or two.]

But, then I read more of the books. Concurrent to reading the rest of the books (this all took place over a 5 day period), I also started devouring some of the criticisms and, uh, mockeries, online. And it was at this point when the frightening, blood-curdling world of Twilight fans was revealed to me. Oh, mercy. Hold me.

One blog in particular completely defines my Twilight experience.

Everyone, meet Cleolinda. Here is her blog: http://cleolinda.livejournal.com BUT WAIT, don't go there yet. Start here, at a special Wiki table of contents thingy for her blog. !!. That should link you right to the "Twilight Book Discussion Entries." Make yourself a cup of tea, find a cozy corner, and watch yourself start to think in strikethrough font.

Next up is someone I discovered last night, who isn't as endearingly original as Cleolinda but maybe I wouldn't think that way had I stumbled upon this "LDS Sparkledammerung" series first. Okay, so back to the sparkledammerung. Whatever, we don't try to understand these things, we just pass on the facts. This person has gone through all of the books from a Mormon perspective. Nay, not just that, but they shed light on all of the parallels and symbols for LDS things and doctrines in the story. Here it begins: LDS Sparkledammerung. It starts off a little choppy but who am I to judge?

[Also, it turns out, somebody has written their masters thesis on Mormon tenants in the Twilight series. It's a PDF file, by the way. This is all good and well, but I kind of prefer to read about this stuff when they're not forced to use intelligent language and nice phrasings. I want someone to use bad words and photoshop to layer on some sparkles.]

All in all, I have learned a few Key Takeaways from my time with Twilight, but nothing more striking than this: NO, I am not underestimating the Youth of America by saying that they are smarter than this, that they are not going to eat this stuff up. The movie made $70 million its first weekend. SEVENTY MILLION DOLLARS.

This is not going to be the end of my discussion about this. I am still trying to wrap my brain around this and decide how I really feel, because even though they were enjoyable books and an enjoyable movie: WTF, I say. What the fuck.

So that is all. TTC and sparklemotion.

Yearbook Confessions, vol IV

Yearbook Confessions, vol IV

I have to admit that I am only lagging on this project because I am a lazy HTML-er and never feel like looking up the links to the other entires in the series. But, you're worth it!

This next installation has the shortest message in my entire yearbook, and also another one I almost overlooked, because it wasn't in the blank pages at the front or the back of the book. Rather, it was on page 3 of the actual dorky introductory photos and inspirational quotes. In fact, Greg scribbled (I almost made a pun that only people who know his last name would get) his message over some 40 point text that says, "We didn't just touch... We felt." Which makes it so much better.

Greg apparently remembers the first time I rode on a school bus. That makes me cringe so much, although he thankfully glossed over any details of how awkward and ridiculous I was.

Dixon,
I remember seeing you ride the bus for the 1st time in middle school. Then you became popular. I have really honestly enjoyed meeting you and being your friend. Remember Pride and Prejudice and the presentation we did. Also, remember the times we spent in Middlemas's class making fun of her and me listening to you talk about Mr. Mitchell. The best of luck to you in el futuro and we will see each other again, I know it,
Love,
Greg S

There we go again with the listing of "intimate" details which are really not that intimate. Remember Pride and Prejudice! OMG!

Interestingly, we have yet to see each other again. He is a very good person, so I hope he was right.

And here is the shortest message in my entire yearbook. The best part is that I have no idea who this is, which is even more fail because of the message's content. The only Ryans I can remember had signed the yearbook in other places, and included their last names.

Hey sexy.
-Ryan

Awesome.

Things, they are going on.

Things, they are going on.

Here is my life these days, neatly packaged in a bulleted list.

Ollie is officially singing, as of last Tuesday. SINGING. His first real-song-that-we-noticed is a Music Together song from our current class, called Palo Palo. It's in Spanish! My bilingual musical genius! Actually, while I was singing it to him, he sang, "Baw-oh Baw-oh, Ay Ay Ah" and then did a happy dance, which perhaps only a mother could hear as "Palo, palo, palo, palo, palito palo ay, ay ay ah, palo bonito palo ay." But he definitely tried to sing at different intervals, in a high pitched sing-songy tone.

That's right, it's a song about a stick. A pretty little stick. Ay Ay Ah.

Tonight, he sang "The Wheels on the Bus," which is usually a big hit around here, what with it's wheel-ness and bus-ness. He sang "wee-ah [muffled two syllable placeholder for "on the"] bus" first, and later added "round and round." Well, "rah [muffle] rah."

Notable: Ollie's word for "wheel" sounds exactly like his word for "willy." "wee-ah." Yes, we are calling it his willy. I know I should really be anatomically correct with him and call it a penis, but I can't help myself. Besides, I am English, and all English penises are willies. They just are.

I am currently rereading one of my top five all time favorite books, "The Virgin Suicides" by Jeffrey Eugenides. I have probably written about this book an awful lot, but I recently found this old post, mostly about the way the soundtrack, the movie, and the book work together in my head, which got me reading the book again. I had forgotten about the amazing narrative voice in the book. I think this is probably my third or fourth time reading, and I still can't get enough of it.

However, it's a brand new copy (my original one has long since been loaned and lost), which kind of makes me sad in a "Perks of Being a Wallflower" copy-significance sort of way, but I do love cracking open the binding on new books.

For the last few months, I have been making my own espresso at home, nearly every morning. This is not because I am too cool for normal drip coffee; it's because all I have is an espresso machine. This is not (entirely) because I am too cheap for my beloved Krakatoa or Calabria lattes; it's because I seriously cannot survive long enough without coffee to actually get the both of us dressed, ready and out of the door to buy some.

Ollie can point out what happens next in the espresso machine set-up and usage.

I finally tried Dreena Burton's Autumn Puree recipe, and OMG. Dude. That is some deliciousness. I admit that I shied away from it for so long purely because of the word "puree." People, this is not puree. THIS IS MASHED POTATOES. But (unsweetenedly) sweet. And autumnal. It's a mixture of sweet potatoes and butternut squash (or other winter squash), baked nearly whole (in my case, with copious amounts of coconut oil and some cinnamon) and blended up with some non-dairy milk (hemp milk here) and some spices that I probably can't list without violating copyrights. But they are... autumnal.

After writing about it just now, I was about to go into the kitchen to start making some more, but it kind of takes a while what with all the baking, and it's kind of 11:30 pm.

I can't even begin to write about how I feel about Obama's victory, but until then I will touch on the total buzzkill that is Proposition 8. Erik sent me this op-ed piece from Joe Solmonese, the president of the Human Rights Campaign: http://www.hrc.org/11522.htm. I found some of it a little hard to attach myself to in this sort of middle ground in the essay's rhetoric, a straight person opposed to prop 8, but overall it is a really powerful and crucial statement. Particularly this:

In recent years, I’ve been delivering this positive message: tell your story. Share who you are. And in fact, as our families become more familiar, support for us increases. But make no mistake: I do not think we have to audition for equality. Rather, I believe that each and every one of us who has been hurt by this hateful ballot measure, and each and every one of us who is still fighting to be equal, has to confront the neighbors who hurt us. We have to say to the man with the Yes on 8 sign—you disrespected my humanity, and I am not giving you a pass. I am not giving you a pass for explaining that you tolerate me, while at the same time denying that my family has a right to exist. I do not give you permission to say you have me as a “gay friend” when you cast a vote against my family, and my rights.

And that is all.