Odds & ends

• Personal note:  10 years ago today (!), we took possession of the condo where we're now living, and moved out of our home of 26 years, on the other side of the city. (We spent the night at BIL's and moved our stuff in here the next day.) 
• "Boy, that went by fast," commented dh, when I reminded him. No kidding. 
• At the same time, what a lot has happened in those 10 years!:  our nephews' weddings, the arrival of three great-niblings (and a dog!),  the deaths of both FIL & my mom, as well as several other people we've loved, BIL's transplant surgery... 
• I've hashed out the pros & cons of condo living and of moving here several times before on this blog, so I won't go into those topics all over again here. Suffice to say, I'm still not wild about the community itself, but overall, we do love the condo and being closer to family.  :) 
• Mom stuff:  
• I had my first dream about Mom since she died, last week. I don't remember much about it, but she was there. I like it when the people I've loved and lost show up in my dreams. It's like a little visit from them. 
• Dh was looking for a newscast the other night, and landed on ABC World News Tonight with David Muir. Which got me teary, because my parents always ate supper late -- partly because Mom insisted on watching "her" news (on ABC -- the network broadcast, followed by the "local" news, from Fargo, ND -- although she almost always fell asleep before the end...!). She really liked David Muir and how he delivered the news as well.  It's the little, unexpected moments like that that catch me off guard and set me off (very similar to after we lost Katie).  
• Vision update:  We went into the city today for follow-up visits with our optometrist, following my opthamologist appointment earlier this month. The opthamologist determined that surgery was not necessary at this point, but there's still a small patch of developing nodules on my left cornea (as well as the small beginnings of a cataract).  Even so, my vision has not changed significantly since I last changed my glasses almost 12 (!) years ago (although both my regular and computer glasses have some scratches on them. The optometrist didn't think the scratches were that bad, though?). 
• The optometrist gave me an updated prescription for my glasses, but suggested it might be worth waiting a while longer to get new ones. We have a number of large expenses right now -- current, upcoming and anticipated:  we just paid our taxes (ouch), paid for flights to visit Dad soon (and will be going there again this summer and at Christmas), possible purchases for his new apartment to fund, as well as subsidizing his rent until he sells the house -- and we still need to purchase a cremation niche or plot at the cemetery for both him and Mom, and inter her ashes at some point -- etc. etc.... So I've decided to hold off on new glasses for a while longer.  (Dh's glasses are about the same age as mine! and he'd like new ones too, but agreed we should both wait.)  We'll be back for checkups again in six months, so we'll see what the situation is then... 

And now a few links to share: 

• Non-ALI/CNBC-related, but I thought it was worth sharing:  Canadian Returnee explains Bill C-18, Meta's response (why I'm unable to see or post news links on Facebook or Instagram), and "What Facebook's News Ban Taught Canadians."   
• I see posts on social media -- from both Americans and Canadians! -- claiming that the Canadian government is "censoring" news.  Not true!  News (actual news, from actual journalists) is readily available, online and elsewhere -- you just can't find it or share it on Facebook or Instagram. And that's because of a decision made by Meta, not the Canadian government. (The article explains more.) 
• (For some reason, Meta's ban doesn't apply on Threads??  But shhhhh, don't remind them of that...!  lol)    
• Great news:  One of the "OG" voices in the CNBC blogging world is back! Welcome back PJ at Making Sense of It All. 
• I love, love, loved this blast from the past via Tracey Cleantis Dwyer (another longtime blogger who recently launched a Substack): "The Hardy Boys and the Mysterious Case of the Magical Meeting." (Featuring Parker Stevenson, Shaun Cassidy, and an older/childless woman role model who changed Tracey's life.)  
• Speaking of Shaun Cassidy, Alan Osmond, oldest of the performing Osmond Brothers, died earlier this week at age 76, after living with MS for 40 (!) years.  Another brother, Wayne, died in early 2025 at age 73.  You know you're getting older when your teen idols start dying...  :(  
• Katie Dunn at Afterglow writes about whether children give your life "purpose" -- something that many childless women struggle with, when parenthood doesn't work out for them ("what's my purpose now?"). Part of the post is paywalled, but what's free to read is worth a look!  
• Another brilliant post from Ali Hall at Life Without Children:  "When Women Supporting Women Defaults to Mothers Supporting Mothers." (Subhead: "Compassion is never found in comparison.")  
• I vividly remember the story about the doctor whose daughter asked her that painful question -- and her response (or lack thereof) -- and posted about it at the time (during the height of the pandemic). 
• Ali is offering half-price annual paid subscriptions during the month of May. 
• Also from Life Without Children, childfree Rosie Diell ponders "What fence sitters can learn from the childless community." 
• Lana Manikowski at "Infertile and Childless. So Now What?" looks at "What Happens to Your Marriage When IVF Doesn’t Work?" A couple of excerpts: 

...for many couples, IVF doesn’t work.

And when fertility treatments end without a baby, you are left with more than grief. You are left with questions about your marriage that no one prepared you for.

I remember thinking very clearly, is this going to be enough?

 

...a marriage without children is not a lesser version of life. It is a different version of life. It can still be connected, meaningful, and something you feel proud of.

Not because you convinced yourself to be okay with it, but because you built something real together after infertility.

• Poorna Bell dismantles "the myth of grandmotherhood" (and why it's important for everyone, whether or not you have grandchildren).  Most of the post is about grandmothers, but near the end, there's this: 

What about the women who aren’t grandmothers? Where is their place in society? Most of these women will have experienced a sense of isolation and an erosion of community the first time round, when it came to not having children. Having spoken to a number of women including Jody Day about this, it appears there is a second wind in one’s 60s, around grandmotherhood that raises the same issues.

(Bell muses that this particular issue "may merit a spin-off Substack" -- I would love to read that!)  

Annoying things & small pleasures

Annoying things: 

• The opthalmologist I saw last Thursday encouraged me to start using lid wipes again to keep the bacteria that contributes to rosacea at bay. I'd stopped using them (on the advice of my optometrist) when my eyes were giving me so much trouble last fall. They contain tea tree oil, and the optometrist thought they were exacerbating the issues I was experiencing.  We eventually got the problem under control, and all has been well since then. 
• So I used the wipes again on Friday morning (the day after I saw the opthalmologist), and there was some mild irritation. I chalked it up to the dilating drops I'd received the previous day, which left my eyes feeling somewhat raw and strained.  But within hours of using the wipes again on Saturday, my eyes promptly became very irritated, and the lids red and puffy. Not quite as bad as they'd been last fall, but not great either. 
• So I stopped using the wipes, AGAIN (probably for good this time...!). I'll be seeing the optometrist for a follow-up in about two weeks' time, but until then, I increased my use of the topical ointment she'd prescribed for me last fall (from once to twice a day, which is what I started out with when I was having issues last fall). 
• They're not quite 100% yet, but my eyes ARE looking and feeing somewhat better again. Thank goodness!  
• Realizing the new TV adaptation of Margaret Atwood's "The Testaments" (a sequel to "The Handmaid's Tale") is only available on a streaming network (Disney Plus, which we do not have).. (I watched "The Handmaid's Tale" on the Bravo channel, which we get on cable. It was/is also available on the Crave streaming network). 

Small pleasures: 

• Getting a surprisingly (relatively) good deal on airfares for our next trip to see Dad. 
• Checking out new potential ancestors for dh via Ancestry DNA's ThruLines and common ancestors features. (An easy way to lose a few hours!  lol)  
• Sunshine!! Two days this week!! It's been horribly grey for so long ( = annoying thing). Clear, sunny weather in the winter/early spring can often mean it's cold outside -- and it has been that! -- windchill was -15C when we woke up Tuesday morning! -- but it's somewhat sunny and milder today -- we have the balcony door partly open -- and it's supposed to start warming up over the weekend and into next week. (It's ABOUT TIME!!) 
• Artemis II.  :)   I got choked up when Jeremy Hansen announced the crew wanted to name a newly mapped crater after Commander Reid Wiseman's late wife Carroll. (I think everyone did!)  That group hug after the announcement...  :)  
• Also Artemis-related:  I had a good giggle when I read that the crew broke out some maple cream cookies during the time they were incommunicado on the far side of the moon.  :)  
• Small annoying Artemis-related thing:  I was sadly disappointed by the lack of Pink Floyd references I saw on social media regarding Artemis's trek to the dark side of the moon  ;) --  (although when I posted a complaint about this on Facebook, a cousin promptly responded to by posting this meme to my feed...!  Thanks, F.!)  

Odds & ends

• Annoying thing:  Someone's snide post on Threads, to the effect of "who's the genius without kids who scheduled Game 6 of the World Series on Halloween?" 
• I initially scrolled past it, then went, "Hey, wait a minute...!" -- but then I couldn't find it again. :p  Anyway, it pissed me off...!   
• Both Lyz Lenz at Men Yell at Me and Anne Helen Petersen of Culture Study have made the move from Substack over to Patreon in recent weeks (Lyz is now here and AHP here).   
• It's a major pain in the butt to have to learn the ins & outs of yet ANOITHER new platform/app 🙄 (I mean, seriously...??) -- and Patreon is new to the newsletter business, and still working out some kinks -- but these two were, I think, the first two Substacks I paid for, and I get a lot out their writing and the discussion threads with other subscribers, so...  
• Anne Helen Petersen is childfree by choice -- and one of her first posts in her new space is the first in a planned new series called "BIG NO KIDS ENERGY," about the joys of not having children. 
• The post is from a childfree by choice perspective, and so are some of the comments. Happily, those of us who did not necessarily choose this life are commenting too. (I added a comment myself). It may be difficult, especially if you're new to realizing children are not going to be in your future, to imagine that life can still be good, in a different way -- that there can be anything joyful about not having children. But there are positives, and I think that childfree people and their positive perspective can be helpful to us in realizing that. :)  
• The post itself is public, and I'm not sure about the comments, but I believe you have to be a paid subscriber to comment.  
• She's looking for ideas for future posts in the series too!  
• Rosalyn at The NoMo Book Club had a great Substack post recently about inclusive language, labels, and reproductive identity. 
• The New York Times's Well newsletter on anticipatory grief:  "Is It Healthy to Grieve Before a Loss?"  (Answer:  "Yes. Here’s how to cope.") (Gift link.) 
• Lisa Sibbett at The Auntie Bulletin makes a compelling argument that "The Nuclear Family is a Failed Experiment." 
• "Jennifer Aniston Said No To Adoption. Does That Mean She Is Selfish?"  writes Marcia Garcia at Life Without Children (originally posted on Medium). This is written from a childfree by choice perspective, but happily, it does reference the CNBC experience.
• Non-ALI related, but very personal to me: Canadian Returnee shares "The Ukrainian Story of the Prairies." 

#MicroblogMondays: Odds & ends

• 
  "I had an accident," my 86-year-old father sheepishly confessed over the phone on Sunday afternoon. (!!!)  VERY thankfully!! he's fine!  
• However! -- the wall between the garage and the laundry/mud room of the house is not. :( 
• He was bringing the car into the garage when it started raining on Friday. His foot slipped on the brake and the car crashed into the wall. (!)  :(  There is a sizeable dent in the wall that I am told you can see daylight through. (My sister was there this weekend, and has promised to send photos.) 
• Funnily enough, the car came through with barely a scratch too. 
• It will probably cost several thousand dollars to repair the wall -- money that my parents do not have to spare. ("Dust off your chequebook,"  my sister told me grimly.)  My sister's partner has boarded up the crash site to keep out the cold, rodents, etc., until it can be fixed.   
• The potentially good (?) news to come out of this is that my parents have agreed to add their names to the waiting lists for seniors housing in several different places in town this week -- something we've been wanting them to do for several years now. 
• I always thought it would probably take a crisis of some sort to get them to move. I'm just glad it wasn't something worse! 
• Big changes to come in the next few months/year, I think...  :(  
• World Childless Week is over and (sadly, as is often the case for me), I still haven't read or watched very many of the wonderful offerings now available on the WCW 2025 website. If you haven't yet done it yourself, go have a look! 
• I did manage to post something every day during WCW about the daily theme and any relevant posts I've written, all tagged "WCW 2025." 
• Seasonal allergies haven't bothered me much in recent years -- and when they have, it's usually in late May/early June. But this past week or two, I've been suffering through violent sneezing fits, scratchy throat & ears;  itchy, burning, sticky eyes; fatigue.... ugh. I've been taking Claritin daily since this started, which usually does the trick... I'm feeling somewhat better this weekend (fingers crossed...!), but it sure took its time kicking in...!  
• I know everyone advises you to close the windows & run an air purifier, but I hate to do that when it's been so nice outside (and the time that we can do that is rapidly dwindling, as temperatures start to drop...!). 
• I was so sad to hear that Robert Redford died this past week. (How was he 89?!!).  
• I fell in love with Redford at age 12 when I saw him (and Paul Newman! -- were there ever two more gorgeous men on screen, together or separately??) in "The Sting." (I didn't get to see "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" until several years later, on TV.) 
• My sister & I saw it with our two cousins, while our parents watched "Blazing Saddles" -- rated R -- in an adjacent theatre. And "The Exorcist" was playing in the theatre right next to ours.  I remember my cousin pressing his ear against the wall to see if he could hear people screaming, lol. 
• A few years later, my mom took my sister & me to the drive-in theatre -- on a school night! (such was the power of Redford back then...!) -- to see "The Great Gatsby." (But first, we had to sit through "The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad" -- what a double bill!!)  
• We saw "The Way We Were" around the same time.  And, in the years that followed, "The Great Waldo Pepper," "All the President's Men" (which I wrote about here), "Three Days of the Condor," "Sneakers," "The Natural," "Out of Africa" (saw that one on one of my birthdays), "The Horse Whisperer," and so many more -- not to mention the amazing movies he directed -- among them "Ordinary People," "Quiz Show," and "A River Runs Through It." 
• I was reminded of a popular dessert from the 1970s (which my mom still makes from time to time). It was commonly known as "Better Than Sex"(lol) -- but on my Mom's recipe card, it's called "The Next Best Thing to Robert Redford" (or simply "Robert Redford"), lol. 
• I realized the minute I mentioned this dessert, someone was going to ask for the recipe -- and while I think I have a copy somewhere, I took the easy way out and Googled, and sure enough, up it popped. If this isn't the exact same recipe my mom had, it's pretty close!  Enjoy! 
• ALI note:  Did you know Redford and his first wife Lola lost their first son Scott to SIDS in 1959?  He was just two months old. :(   (His parents were in their early 20s.) He also lost his second son, James, in 2020, to cancer, when James was 58.  
• They don't make 'em like that anymore... 
• While dh watched the first NFL game of the season on a recent Sunday afternoon, involving his beloved Pittsburgh Steelers, I blocked out the cursing and yelling (lol) by catching up on some podcast episodes, including a couple from The Full Stop.
• I also listened to episode #71 -- the one I appeared on with Sandra McNicol in February, talking about childlessness and pregnancy loss. (I posted about it here.) This was the first time I'd actually listened to the finished episode on audio only, although I'd watched a video recording the day after we recorded it. Maybe it was because I was actually just LISTENING and not WATCHING myself on a screen too, or maybe enough time has passed, but it was (thankfully!) not as difficult to listen to at this point..
• Y.L. Wolfe muses "This Is Why We Hate Childfree Women"  ("we" = society). (The answer is in her subhead:  "They represent everything the patriarchy fears.")  
• British podcaster and author Elizabeth Day had an article in The Guardian recently about a life-changing call with a psychic. (There's an ALI angle.)  
• I've been following Charlie Angus's Substack, "The Resistance," for a while now. Charlie is a year or two younger than me, a punk rocker in his youth (!) who still plays in a band, and who was, until recently, a member of Parliament from the New Democratic Party (NDP), representing the riding in northern Ontario where he was born. He's been one of the most vocal and effective advocates for a strong, independent Canada in recent months. 
• This particular post is about the Group of Seven (a group of influential 20th century Canadian artists), and how Tom Thomson's famous painting "The Jack Pine" personifies and symbolizes the country and our spirit of survival and resistance. 
• As a proud Canadian, and a member at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, which has a large holding of Group of Seven artwork, this one struck a chord. ;)  
• I appreciated this Substack post from Garrett Bucks at The White Pages about social media and the role it plays in building community, for good and for bad:  "The Internet is Killing Us." 
• In a similar vein:  I'm an unpaid subscriber to Katherine May's Substack "The Clearing," and while most of this post -- also about social media -- is paywalled, I completely agree with her thoughts in the portion that's visible (particularly the second paragraph I've quoted here):  

I was one of the true believers in the early days of Twitter, and I’m still grateful for so much of what I’ve found and learned across the various platforms I’ve been on. But I think, on both a personal and professional basis, social media has become unmanageable. It’s addictive by design, primed to draw us into tribalism and conflict, and - unless your creative practice is making short videos - a major distraction from the work that matters.




And yet; and yet. I’m averse to the view that social media is uniformly evil or dangerous; I still believe that it can bring isolated people together in a way that we’ve never seen before. I don’t think I’ll ever be the kind of author who does no socials at all. I love the opportunity to be in contact with the the people who read my books and with other authors. I often think of how unnerving the author’s life must once have been before we could do this: sending out books into silence, and perhaps waiting months for any response.




So I remain on social media, but in a far more controlled way than I once did... 

I've been trying (trying!) to wean myself away from social media a bit, especially the mindless scrolling. I still have a Twitter/X account, but rarely go on there. I'm on Bluesky & Threads, but try to limit the time I spend scrolling there. I am not on TikTok. 

On Facebook, I generally just go straight to "Feeds/Friends," where I only see content posted by my friends. (There's a feed for "Groups" too.)  Depending on the friends (lol), I may not may not be interested in or agree with what they post (but that's where the "mute" button comes in handy, lol), but the "Friends" feed is much more curated than just scrolling through the random stuff in the general feed, and I get to see more of the stuff that matters to me -- i.e., my friends' posts -- which is what I came to social media for in the first place.  

• Infertile Phoenix has noticed a substantial increase in the number of views her blog has been getting lately, and asked readers to indicate if they're human (or bots?).  
• Someone commented on Phoenix's post to say it was probably "'referral spam—fake visits that try to show up in your Google Analytics so you’ll click the link or buy their “traffic” service. It’s noise, not real customers.'" That's good to know. 
• I don't often look at my stats -- I've never been one to worry about increasing readership and getting clicks, etc; I'm just happy if people who are looking for support and want to feel less alone find my blog. 
• But I was curious, so I had a look. Sure enough, there's been a SUBSTANTIAL spike in page views recently. If I look at the trends over time, there was a small spike in mid-2023, a larger spike in early 2024, and then a HUGE spike this past month, peaking at almost 86,000 views on Sept. 19th alone (an all-time high)! That's BONKERS!! (compared to what I was getting in years gone by). 
• The U.S. is still a top source of viewers, but I've had a huge uptick in viewers from Hong Kong, Singapore and Brazil, among others.  
• "Referral spam" or not, it's a bit creepy. I wonder if AI is scraping my blog (our blogs?) to fuel its databases... or possibly (even worse) whether childless women are being targeted and monitored in some way for political purposes?    
• I try not to get too overtly political here -- but it seems like everything is political these days, especially when it comes to women, reproductive matters, and those of us who have deviated from the "norm" (even when that's been despite our desires and best efforts). 

You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here. 

Is this a "thing" now??

It's Labour Day weekend, and I'm bracing myself for all the back-to-school photos next week (and over the next few weeks) -- although I've already been seeing them from the States, where some schools start in mid/late August.  

This is the weekend a lot of parents are moving their kids into university/college dorms and apartments, and I have a couple of friends who are sending kids off to university for the first time. For some, it's their last kid to leave home, and they're going to be empty nesters. Lots of angst. (Needless to say, I cannot relate.)  

One such friend took both of her sons to their respective schools over the weekend -- the older one starting third year at one school, and his younger brother starting first year at another = leaving home, and leaving her and her husband empty nesters. I knew there would be photos -- but I was dumbfounded when she posted photos of a a beautiful silver bracelet her younger son bought her as a "thank you Mom" gift. (It actually spells out "THANK YOU MOM" in silver letters.) She also posted a photo of the necklace her older son bought her when HE first went off to university three years ago. 

Is this a "thing" now??  (Or did she just raise very thoughtful boys?? lol)  I've never heard of buying your mom a "thank you Mom" gift when you go off to school or leave home. Of course I never heard of "push presents" until a few years ago either. 

Everything is a production and a photo op these days, it seems...!  (And a marketing/sales opportunity for businesses too, of course...!) 

(Here's another example:  Older Nephew's Wife has been a bridesmaid for several friends in recent years, and apparently you don't just give gifts to your wedding party at/just before the wedding anymore, you also hold a party where you ASK them to be in your wedding party, and give them gifts then too!! At least, that seems to be the practice hereabouts.)  

Have you ever heard of this? 

*** *** *** 

On a related note -- this article from The Atlantic (gift link) points to another back-to-school trend I've noticed in recent years and been hearing more about lately:  elaborately (and sometimes even professionally)(?!!) decorated dorm rooms, mostly courtesy of the Bank of Mom & Dad.  

I mean, seriously?? 

Here's how much times have changed (and why I simply cannot relate to all the back-to-school stuff, beyond not having a kid myself):  

I arrived at university 46 years ago this weekend (Labour Day weekend, 1979). There were no pre-application/acceptance tours of campuses with parents in tow. (I can't think of anyone who would have been caught DEAD doing that with Mom & Dad in those days.)  My high school arranged group tours of the two universities and one community college in the nearby city (an hour away) for any students interested in checking them out, and I did go on all of those, even though I was pretty sure which one I was going to attend. 

Earlier that summer, one of my high school girlfriends and I took the bus into the city to register and sign up for our courses -- which, in those early days of computerization, involved filling in a form manually, then going around from one prof's office to another to get their signatures, and then standing in long lineups at the student union building with our chequebooks and forms to pay for it all). 

We may have taken a stroll past the all-female dorm we'd applied to live in (one of several on campus), but never set foot inside before moving in. We'd requested each other as roommates on our applications, which you could do -- but it was not guaranteed our request would be accepted. In fact, I don't think I knew until I actually arrived on campus that weekend who my roommate would be. And -- unbeknown to me -- she had expressed preference on her residence application for a single room -- should she not get one, she'd take a cheaper double room with me. Preference for singles was given to returning students. Nevertheless, she beat the odds and got a single room. I think I knew this before we moved in, but I don't remember for sure. 

My mother drove me into the city that day (I think it was on the long weekend Sunday, and I don't think my dad or my sister came). There was no specific set time (other than showing up on the weekend before classes began, during office hours); we just showed up. (I remember standing in a few lineups, but they weren't very long.) I think I had two suitcases with me containing mostly clothes and a few small items, maybe a few other things, and that was about it. I don't think I was too unusual in that respect (although of course my parents didn't live tht far away, so anything I'd forgotten or needed, I could get the next time I was home or they were in the city.) 

We paid my fees at the administration office desk, got my keys and meal plan punch card for the dining hall, had my photo taken for the residence directory, and headed up to see my room. The "proctor" (residence assistant for my floor) came over to introduce herself and invite me to go with her and a couple of the other girls who had already moved in to party/social event that night. I don't remember Mom helping me unpack or lingering, or any tearful goodbyes. I was, of course, only an hour away from home, and those were very different times. 

I knew my new roommate's name, but nothing else about her. When Mom & I arrived at the room on the third floor (it was a nine-storey building overlooking the river, built in the early 1960s), my roommate was not there, but her stuff was. I stared at the framed photos on the desk and other things, trying to guess from those clues what she might be like.  She didn't actually arrive until Labour Day Monday. I'd been out and when I returned, she was sitting there, painting her nails, a polished, petite blond girl. I was a little taken aback at first -- but very happily, after some initial awkwardness, we soon got to know each other better, became fast friends, and we're still in touch, all these years later,  

Like many dorms of the era, the rooms had cinderblock walls. There was one long shared built-in counter/desk, spanning the wall below the window, with a couple of drawers below on either side, and two bookshelves and two bulletin boards on either side of the window, two chairs, two beds and, on the walls opposite the desk/window, two small closets for our clothes, and a couple of drawers topped with a counter and mirror. The beds came with pillows, linens (changed weekly by maids;  we had to strip the beds if we wanted the sheets washed, and make the beds up with the new sheets ourselves) and thin bedspreads. Some girls brought their own pillows and bedspreads/quilts from home, which I did, eventually (nothing new, a castoff from my sister's room at home).  

There was a bathroom shared by the entire floor, with several (four, I think) toilet cubicles and sinks, which was often a gathering space at night as we washed our faces and brushed our teeth before going to bed. There was a shower room with several shower cubicles, and a couple of separate tub rooms each equipped with a bathtub and sink. A handful of  large rooms or suites were reserved for people like the residence council president, the head resident (an administrative role), and some of the residents who had lived there the longest, had larger rooms/suites with private bathrooms. I got one of those rooms in my fourth and final year by virtue of my seniority -- a double room converted to a large single with a private bathroom (including tub/shower unit) -- and I must say it was nice. :)  There were coin-operated washers and dryers in the basement where you could do laundry. 

Our rooms had no phones: there was a payphone downstairs. There were phone jacks in each room, though, and we could (and did) go to the phone company office at the local mall (a short bus ride away), and arrange to rent one. (Most of us got the basic black, dial model, which was the cheapest option.) My roommate and I split the rental cost and each paid for our own long-distance calls. Long distance, of course, was expensive in those days. The weekends that I didn't go home -- and I didn't actually go home that often, especially after the first while, and then my parents moved further away, which reduced my incentive to visit too often -- I would call home on Sunday night to chat (which was the cheapest). We also bought a small wipe-off message board with an attached water-soluble marker. Just about everyone had one; that was how we left messages for our friends and neighbours, in those pre-computer & pre-cellphone days.  

Over time, I brought more and more stuff from home. I think I already had an electric alarm clock-radio (with the numbers that flipped over -- pre-digital days!). I brought a desk lamp, and my portable typewriter, and a couple of favourite stuffed animals. We papered the walls with posters, bought at the campus bookstore and the nearby KMart (I particularly remember Peter Frampton and Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem from The Muppets over my bed, lol -- maybe because they're both visible in one of the few photos I took of my room that year -- see below). 

There was a full-sized refrigerator in the floor lounge (also a kettle and toaster), but my new roommate brought a small kettle/hot pot, and I contributed a small bar-size refrigerator (thanks, Dad!), and we assembled a small collection of mugs, glasses, plates and cutlery (many -- ahem! -- pilfered from the cafeteria). The parents also provided a small (12") black-and-white TV. Using the "rabbit ears" antenna, I could pull in a few (about 4) local stations. When I was in third year, my parents gave me a stereo for Christmas, which I'd been begging for for YEARS -- a turntable, tuner/radio/cassette . (I promptly burst into tears.)  I took it with me when I returned to school after the holidays, along with some of my LPs (and naturally I accumulated more over time). When I got a bigger room in third year, I made a low bookshelf out of a couple of boards and some bricks that a friend with a car helped me to buy at nearby lumber yard. 

There was storage space in the basement where you could keep boxes and trunks and larger items (like mini-fridges) in the summertime. We'd leave a note in the elevator for Tom, the good-natured caretaker, asking him to "please come take my boxes from Room 324 down to storage, thanks!" and then the reverse in the fall -- "Hi Tom, could you please bring up the boxes for Lori Lastname to Room 742" -- and they would magically appear in your room when you got back from class later that day. 

I lived in that dorm for all four years of undergrad, moving up to larger and larger single rooms -- and accumulating more and more stuff. ;)  (Textbooks alone took up a few boxes.) As I said, I arrived that first fall (1979) with little more than two suitcases. When I moved out in April 1983, my dad had to borrow a friend's half-ton pickup truck, and we completely filled the back. We borrowed a trolley from Tom, and made several trips up and down in the elevator and out to the truck, as my floormates sat in the lounge and watched in amusement. When we brought out the last few boxes, they broke out into applause. (Smarta**es, lol.)  

I cried as we drove away. It was the end of an era. That dorm was my home for four years-- especially once my parents moved away from the town where we'd lived for six years, and where I'd gone to high school. They were some of the best -- definitely the most fun -- years of my life, and I still think about it, and dream that I'm back there. 

I think I've posted this photo before? 
My side of my first-year dorm room, with standard dorm bedspreads and furniture.
Dr. Teeth & the Electric Mayhem & Peter Frampton above the bed. :) 
Fall 1979. 

Odds & ends

• I spotted my first back-to-school post on social media yesterday, from someone in the U.S. It's only mid-August...!  I expect to be bracing myself against the onslaught for the next full month... sigh... 
• Dh & I went to the mall this morning. The temperature around noon was 29C, humidex reading 39C (it's currently 33C & 42C) -- the mall was busy (some of them back to school shoppers, I assume) -- it was very clammy/humid inside there too (despite the a/c) -- and I saw a rack of WINTER COATS on display in one of the women's wear stores!! I mean, seriously?? 
• Carrie Hauskens of Blooming With Care was a guest on NBC's high-profile Today morning show with Jenna Bush Hager (the former president's daughter) and Tyra Banks on Aug. 1st -- International Childfree Day.  She & her husband resolved to live without children after infertility and the stillbirth of their daughter Clementine. What a platform!!  I especially appreciated Tyra Banks's thoughtful comments -- she actually "got it" -- you can almost see the light bulb going off over her head. ;)  You can watch her segment -- a full 9 minutes! -- here. 
• Jody Day of Gateway Women was interviewed in an article for the Associated Press that was published in a number of major U.S. newspapers, including the Washington Post and Seattle Times, as well as online news sites -- about  "Why the search for meaning can cause ‘purpose anxiety,’ and what to do about it."  (I'm not sure I've heard the term "purpose anxiety" before, but I certainly believe it exists!) 
• Says Jody:  "Even after 14 years of my work being widely discussed across the world, this is the first time I've been in the mainstream US press!"  IT'S ABOUT TIME!! -- Congratulations!   
• On a similar note, Katie Couric Media recently shared a personal essay:  "This Isn’t the Midlife I Imagined — Here’s How I Pivoted at 55."  The author pursued parenthood until she was 54 (!) -- and realized, after spending time with a friend's teenager, that it was time to pursue new dreams. Still, she struggled with the question of "what now?"  She concludes: 

This version of midlife is different from the one I expected; it’s more trial and error, more exploration and unknowns, but I’m learning to live it fully — and I’m uncovering interests and dreams I never knew existed as I go. I’m excited to see what awaits. I’m no longer chasing the life I thought I was supposed to have; I’m focusing on the one I have right now.

• This was an interesting article in the New York Times recently, about a co-housing community of aging women living in "tiny houses" in Texas.  **NOTE:  Not everyone in the community is childless.**  Nevertheless, it's interesting to read about how one group has structured such a community and is making it work!  (Gift link attached.) 
• The love of my life -- when I was 15 years old, lol -- Stuart "Woody" Wood of the 1970s band Bay City Rollers (whose memoir I recently read and reviewed), and the current band lineup (he's the sole remaining member of the classic 1970s lineup) -- played a concert at the Highland Games in Fergus, Ontario, about 1.5 hours from here/Toronto, on Saturday night (while I was otherwise engaged, attending a family wedding -- not that dh would have been keen to take me to a BCR concert anyway!  lol).  
• On Sunday afternoon, they posted photos & videos on their social media of Woody and the other band members out & about in downtown Toronto -- including Nathan Phillips Square, scene of a hysterical mob of some 55,000 screaming teenaged girls, on a hot summer day in June 1976. (A photo from that day appears on the inside cover of their "Dedication" album -- unfortunately, while I could find photos of the album cover, the inside cover photo remains elusive! but there are other photos from the day available on Google.)  
• Needless to say, almost 50 (!) years later, it was quite a different scene -- the square was almost completely empty -- and I posted a comment to that effect on the video. And Woody actually responded to my post!!  Teenaged me was THRILLED!!  (lol)  (Okay, 60-something me was pretty tickled too!  lol)  See the screenshot below (with a few redactions). 
  
  
  
  

Annoying things & small pleasures

 Annoying things:  

• It's Blue Monday today. I've written about Blue Monday (and its origins) in the past, and while it's basically a made-up event, it seems more appropriate than ever this year, due to an unfortunate convergence of Martin Luther King Day in the U.S. with that "other" most un-MLK-like event in the U.S.  'Nuff said. 
• Also, it's a chilly grey day here, with late morning temperatures of  -12C, windchill factor -16C. It could be worse: at the same time, where my parents are in Manitoba, it was -31C and -43C windchill. (And they moved today's events in Washington DC indoors because the forecast was -5C??)
• (Maybe more like like "alarming"?)  Politics, current events, etc. I am something of a news junkie, but I've had to turn the channel a lot lately, because I can literally feel my blood pressure rising. I said to dh, "I think I understand a little more about how Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland must have felt back in the 1930s."  :(  
• Two related annoying things:  (1) Mark Zuckerberg removing fact-checking from Meta platforms -- (not) coincidentally just as You-Know-Who was preparing to take office in the U.S. --which (2) has prompted a bunch of my friends to start exploring alternatives to FB & IG on other platforms (and some outright leaving altogether). (WhatsApp, which some have suggested as an alternative, is also owned by Meta, albeit it has the advantage of being encrypted.)  
• I'm not at the point of leaving Meta (yet -- too many friends & relatives on there, too many FB groups I'm active in, including a family group that I co-moderate) -- but maybe it's a good thing I haven't had a lot of time to spend on its sites lately anyway??  
• Trying to find another forum, especially for the groups I belong to, and one that everyone can agree on, is maddening. (How many new apps is this aging late Boomer/early GenXer supposed to install and learn how to use??)  A lot of people are moving over to BlueSky because of the even more maddening things happening on X/Twitter -- but for all its merits, BlueSky is not really an alternative to FB/IG, and certainly not conducive to private group chats. 
• Speaking of BlueSky -- as I was in this post -- I had a flood of new followers over the Christmas holidays -- again, most of them people I do not know or follow, and most of them men. I went in this week and started blocking them, and now I feel much better!  lol  
• My left eye has been twitching lately -- on & off, for well over a month now (maybe almost two). I was complaining about it to dh recently while we were watching the news, and he joked that I have to stop stressing out about the Orange One, because he's going to be around for another four years. I said, "Come to think of it, this DID start around mid-November...!"  Hmmm.... 
• Dh went out to get groceries this morning and brought me back some soup for lunch. And of course my sweater sleeve caught the spoon as I was reaching over to silence a spam call on his  phone (while he was in the kitchen) -- and almost the whole thing wound up on the placemat, tabletop and floor.  (And I was hungry!!)  SIGH... I wound up having toast with peanut butter instead.
• I've noticed that the most recent box or two of teabags I've bought (Tetley) is now being made from flimsier (presumably cheaper) cardboard. And the teabags themselves are now being made from a different material. I haven't been quite as satisfied with my tea lately, and I'm wondering it that's why? (It's quite possible they've changed the composition of the actual tea itself too, I suppose.)  Shrinkflation, grrrrr..... 
• I did some Googling and found this on Tetley Canada's website: "Notice some of our Orange Pekoe packs looking a bit different? Don't panic! We're still serving up the same great tasting tea you know and love... As part of our dedication to sustainability, we've upgraded our Orange Pekoe packaging. Our sleeker and more compact carton design means less packaging waste and all Orange Pekoe teas now utilize plant-based tea bags!"  Hmmm.... 
• Little Great-Nephew #2 is one month old and we STILL haven't seen him!!  :(  We left for Manitoba right after he was born and were away for two weeks. BIL told us because we'd both been sick and because we'd been flying, we were in "quarantine" for two weeks. (!) (Even though we'd both worn masks at the airport & on the plane.) Not BIL's idea, the parents' (!). They were not at all like that when LGN #1 was born -- but of course that was pre-pandemic. (Hoping this weekend may be the time...!) 
• Back home for two weeks now, and still feeling tired and overwhelmed by all the stuff that we let slide while we were sick/away.  :p   
  
• SO DRY in our condo unit (despite running the humidifier constantly -- albeit not at top speed -- too noisy!). I can probably count the number of times the humidity has cracked the 40% mark since we got home on the fingers of one hand (with some to spare). It was below 30% when we returned, and is often below 30% when we wake up in the morning. Constantly applying hand lotion, lip balm and eye drops. 

Scary thing: 

• Repeat bloodwork to check our cholesterol levels, booked at the nearby lab for the end of the month. If the numbers haven't declined since the last bloodwork was done in late September, we're getting meds prescribed -- and neither of us wants another prescription...! 

Small pleasures: 

• Spotting a box in my parents' crawlspace with my name written on it in a corner I don't often enter, while hunting for gift wrapping supplies -- which turned out to contain some books and other items I'd been hunting for for several years now. I was THRILLED -- I'd feared they'd been sent to the thrift store by mistake. I couldn't bring everything home with me this time around, but I did pack: 
• My four university residence yearbooks (including one with photos of dh in it!). 
• Not just the two or three I remembered, but FIVE paperback novels by D.E. Stevenson that I'd bought at a used bookstore on Portage Avenue in Winnipeg in the early 1980s. (Proof that I'm a longtime fan!  lol) I posted about it on my DES fan group, and the other members were almost as thrilled as I was! (The titles were The Baker's Daughter (my favourite), The House on the Cliff, Shoulder the Sky, The Blue Sapphire and Green Money.) 
• Another paperback novel that I'd read as a teenager and LOVED: "The Distant Summer" by Sarah Patterson (daughter of British novelist Jack Higgins), who was just a teenager when she wrote it (published in 1976). It's what would be called a "young adult" novel these days -- set in World War II England, and beautifully written. It appears to be the only novel she ever wrote. (What a pity.) 
• Not in the box, but I also found and brought home my copy of "Nancy Drew and the Clue of the Whistling Bagpipes" by Carolyn Keene. I bought it with the allowance money I'd saved, while on an Anglican Church Junior Auxiliary bus trip to Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, when I was 7 or 8 (late 1960s). Cost: $1.59 at KMart.  It's the one Nancy Drew book I wanted to save. :) 
• My (TV) broadcast news demo reel from journalism school. (I graduated -- gulp -- 40 years ago.) I don't recall what they called the format -- it looks a little like a VHS tape, but it's not VHS, or a format you could play on your VHS at home (assuming you still have one, and it still works!).  I doubt there's a newsroom in the country (in North America? in the world??) that uses that technology anymore. But I brought it home with me. I figure SOMEONE might be able to digitize it for me. I'm sure it would be both a cringe and a hoot to see what's on it!  
• Also in the box: other books, as well as a few old photo albums (one mostly empty, and one exclusively devoted to photos from concerts my friends & I had attended. Faded 50-year-old snapshots of the Bay City Rollers, anyone?? lol). 
• My sister pointed out a couple of other boxes in another dark corner of the crawlspace that had my name on them. They were too hard to access just then, and it was towards the end of our visit -- but I will definitely drag them out and go through them the next time I'm there.  (Still hunting for the box that contained my diaries, journals, holiday postcard collection, teenage fan fiction and other early writings/embarrassing stuff, lol.)   
• Returned to the dentist on Jan. 8th for my twice-postponed checkup and cleaning (not really a pleasure, lol). The dentist said one of my lower left teeth still seems a TINY bit loose, but it's better than it was when I took that tumble in December, and the others he noticed seem to have firmed up. He'll continue to keep an eye on things. The hygienist was not my usual one (she's away on vacation), but told me everything looked good and to keep doing what I was doing. 
• My knees -- which were KILLING me from going up and down stairs in my parents' SPLIT LEVEL house! -- are starting to recover...! 
• Finding some cute new clothes for the great-niblings at the mall. :)  
• Cashing in on my birthday discounts and other offers from various retailers. 
• Annoying thing:  realizing I had a discount from the mega-bookstore, AFTER I spent my Christmas gift card from dh there! Grrrr....
• Small pleasure:  I guess I'll just have to go back and buy some more books, right??  Why let a good discount go to waste? lol

#MicroblogMondays: Blue skies

I recently signed up for Bluesky, the much saner (so far, anyway...) alternative to the cesspool that has become Twitter/X.  So far, so good!  and many of the people I follow over on X have similarly made the move. (I haven't deleted my Twitter/X account yet, but rarely visit these days, and likely will delete soon. I want to check my "following" list there vs Bluesky and make sure I won't be missing out on any favourites before I cut the cord!)  

One of the few things I find I don't like about Bluesky, though, is that your profile is completely public: unlike Twitter/X or Threads or other social media platforms, there is no ability to accept or refuse/delete new followers. You just get a notification that you're being followed.  

I don't have a huge amount of followers -- 56 at the time of writing -- but of those 56, 44 (almost 80%!) are complete strangers to me -- most of them men. (eyeroll)  (Just 12 are people I know, from online or "in real life.")  I haven't posted anything original there yet (and likely won't do that too often, if at all), but I have "liked," "shared" and (very occasionally) replied to others' posts (generally people I know). It's one thing to know that anything I reply to is up there for all to see, but quite another to know that my profile and all my activity is completely open for total strangers to peruse. I'm not a public figure;  why they would want to follow me (and how they found my profile) is a mystery to me. (Yeah, I know  -- they're hoping I'll follow them back -- and a lot of them are likely bots, right?) 

(As I was writing this, I got another notification of a new follower:  Elon Musk. On Bluesky. Yeah, right...  THAT was an immediate block!  lol)  

You do have the ability to block people on Bluesky, and while I haven't blocked anyone yet, I'm considering doing so. I figure that someone who's following a couple thousand other accounts won't miss me if I block their ability to see my stuff in their feeds. (I doubt they're really interested in what I'm sharing there anyway;  as I said above, they probably just hoping I'll follow them back to boost their follower numbers. And I'm certainly not doing that.)  

Thoughts? 

(I realize this concern about privacy sounds completely irrational when I've been spilling my guts here in this blog for the past 17 years to all and sundry (albeit semi-anonymously)...!  lol  But I don't expect too many people are hanging out here if they don't have some connection to pregnancy loss, infertility and/or childlessness themselves.)

You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here.  

Mid-month odds & ends

• I'll admit that -- as a former journalist & communicator -- I'm biased, but I wanted to cheer, reading Catherine Rampell's post-U.S. election tribute to the "mainstream media" (on an otherwise dismal day): "This election year, legacy media consumers came out on top."  (Subhead: "We’ve made our share of mistakes, but readers of traditional media understand the stakes of this election.")  
• I know I'm a dinosaur,  but every time I hear people saying they get their news from Facebook or Twitter/X or (God forbid) TikTok (!!), I want to scream. SOCIAL MEDIA IS NOT JOURNALISM/THE NEWS!!! 
• (It would have meant even more if the owner of Rampell's paper, the Washington Post, hadn't put the kibbosh on the editorial board's planned endorsement of Kamala Harris at the 11th hour -- and Rampell does allude to this in her article -- but, I digress...).  
• BBC News featured "The real reason for the rise in male childlessness" prominently on its home page recently.  The article quotes Robin Hadley, who is well known in CNBC circles as one of the few men speaking out about involuntary childlessness. 
• "I'm the Witch:" Colleen Addison on Substack and Medium, about how life and fairy tales converge. Absolutely gorgeous writing.  
• The New York Times had an article (on the front page, apparently!), about "The Unspoken Grief of Never Becoming a Grandparent," about dismayed Boomers (always the Boomers, of course...!) whose children are opting not to have children themselves. (Gift link.)  As usual, no acknowledgement of the fact that not all these children may not be CHOOSING not to have children (and that they might be feeling some grief over that themselves...!).  
• My comment here (I've spotted a few from other CNBCers -- there are more than 3500 right now!).  
• Earlier this year, there was a similar article (also on the front page!) in the Globe & Mail, which I wrote about here (includes gift links to the articles mentioned). 
• Also from the New York Times:  "Its Birthrate Falling, Russia Targets Child-Free Lifestyles." Subhead: "The country’s lower house of Parliament passed a law that would ban what it calls “propaganda” discouraging Russians from having children."  This so-called "propaganda" would include "material on the internet, in media outlets, in movies and in advertising that portrays child-free lifestyles as attractive." 
• Clearly (even though many of us did not choose this life), those of us without children must all be portrayed as forever wallowing in our misery, right?  :p   

Odds & ends

A couple of personal notes:  

• It's been overcast, grey, occasionally rainy, and cool to chilly, more often than not lately. Where is my summer??  :(  
• Younger Nephew invited us over for lunch last Saturday, along with his parents (BIL & SIL). They live close enough to us that we could walk there & back. Little Great-Niece entertained us royally  :)  and we left with enough leftovers for lunch for the next several days.  :)  A very nice afternoon! 
• Dh recently remarked on the number of books showing up in his e-book sales emails related to fathers & kids -- and dads and daughters in particular (in advance of Father's Day this weekend).  He usually doesn't say much in this vein, so I'm guessing it was bothering him more than usual...!  :(  

And now, a few good recent reads on my radar lately:  

• A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about a thought-provoking piece I'd read by Ruby Warrington in her email newsletter, which (together with a Substack piece from another writer) got me thinking about "information overload versus creativity." 
• Ruby received such a big response to that email that she decided to post the text on her website and to point to it on her social media accounts. I had to do a bit of hunting to find it (it's kind of buried in there!), but here's the link, in case you'd like to read the whole thing:  "Creativity in the The Era of 'Peak Content'."
• Says Ruby, introducing her essay: "I realize the irony of me putting the following into a blog post that I also plan to share on social media. In fact, I hesitated before writing this piece, which I originally shared on my newsletter. Wouldn’t I just be adding to the problem? But the response was overwhelming; clearly, I am not alone in these reflections. Which makes me think a new way of doing things is ready to emerge."
• The New York Times interviewed 10 prominent artists on the subject of grief and how it's changed them. 
• Alison Motluk has a thought-provoking essay about the implications of sperm donation on her Hey Reprotech Substack:  "Anonymous Father's Day." 
• Is U.S. First Lady Jill Biden Hunter Biden's mom? Monica Hesse of the Washington Post weighs in. (I know everyone's story is different, but may step- and adoptive mothers will relate...!)
• As someone whose daughter was stillborn at least in part because of placental issues, I was glad to see this article in the Atlantic:  "A Breakthrough in Preventing Stillbirth." (Subhead: "Half of pregnancy losses have unidentified causes. The placenta could provide answers.")(Gift link, good for 14 days after this post is published.) 
• https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/06/placenta-stillbirths-research/678570/ 
• "You Decided to Become a Mother. What Happened Next?" The New York Times wants to know! (Gift link.)  There's a form you can fill out. (You may be contacted by a reporter for more information.)  It would be nice if they got the message that the journey to motherhood is not always smooth, does not always end happily ever after and, for some of us, motherhood ultimately never happens at all.  
• Jake Tapper mentioned on CNN today that many of the 20 children who were murdered at Sandy Hook school in Connecticut 12 (!!) years ago would be graduating high school right about now. !!!  
• Hearing that was a gut punch that brought tears to my eyes. I remember how incredibly hard it was, watching the parents of Katie's peers proudly posting photos of their child's graduation in June 2016, and then taking them to university that fall (and mourning their "empty nests" -- when mine had never been occupied to begin with...)  My heart goes out to the parents of those precious children who never got the chance to grow up and graduate. 
• At the time Sandy Hook happened, Mel wrote about focusing on remembering just one of the young lives among the many snuffed out prematurely on that terrible day. As I wrote in a blog post at the time, I chose Ana Marquez-Greene, whose family had ties to my home province of Manitoba.  I still think about her whenever Sandy Hook comes up. 

#MicroblogMondays: Annoying things & small pleasures

 Annoying things: 

• MDay ads & marketing, reaching a fever pitch this week. Bah, humbug... 
• The master bathroom sink, which has always been sluggish, but always responded to a dose of baking soda & vinegar followed by hot water, clogged up a week ago Thursday (April 25th) and refused to clear.  
• Related annoying thing #1:  Called the plumber who handles the overall plumbing systems for our building on Thursday morning. He told me he'd try to come that day and, if not, would call me on Friday to arrange another time. He didn't show up all weekend :p -- but when I messaged him on Sunday, he did apologize and came early Monday morning.  
• Related annoying thing #2:  Paying him $250 (plus tax!) for half an hour's work (!!).  
• Related small pleasure:  Having a functioning second bathroom sink to use in the meantime...!!  (A second bathroom was not high on our list of "must-haves" when condo shopping, but this is not the first time we've been VERY glad we have it!)  
• There were a LOT of long faces around here last Saturday night/Monday morning:  The Toronto Maple Leafs lost to the Boston Bruins in Game 7 of the first round of Stanley Cup playoffs, in overtime, on Saturday night. I don't know how many times they've wound up playing Boston in the first round of playoffs -- when they've made the playoffs! -- and lost, but it's been a LONG time since they've bested Boston and gone on to the next round. 
• My beloved Winnipeg Jets were knocked out of the first round by Colorado. :(  
• There are still two Canadian teams left in the playoffs (Vancouver & Edmonton -- who are playing each other!). A Canadian team has not won the Stanley Cup since 1993 (31 years ago).  :(   
• The last time the Leafs won the Cup was in 1967 -- 57 years ago!! (My husband was 10 years old at the time and remembers it well!)   
• Someone in the neighbourhood blasting music at top volume on Sunday afternoon... it was mild enough that we had the balcony door open, but we had to close it (and we could still hear it faintly through the closed door/windows).  Hopefully this is not a preview of things to come this summer...!  
• How many guys (including my own dh.) are simply not getting the "man vs bear" debate going on right now (and why so many women are saying they'd choose the bear). One friend pointed out on FB that she probably wouldn't be in the woods by herself anyway (true for me too -- lots of things could happens beyond the whole man vs bear thing, right?). Another (a former blogger), lives in an area where close encounters with bears are not uncommon sight -- but, she added, "They never followed me off busses. Nor demanded I smile, nor catcalled me or slipped roofies in my drink." Exactly. 
• The price of books these days -- including e-books!  (All prices quoted Canadian prices/dollars.)  Hardcovers are now about $40, paperbacks $25. Current or recent e-books seem to start around $15 (minimum) lately, and are often priced at $18-20 or more. I keep a (very long!) wish list, consult it frequently, and snap up copies when they're on sale for for $5 or less. (Annoying thing:  It seems like the bargains have been further and fewer between lately.)  
• Example: I'm dying to read "Prophet Song," but it's not in paperback yet -- the hardcover is $40 and the ebook is not that much cheaper at $32 (!). (For an EBOOK!!) Seems kind of ridiculous.
• Example:  "The Postcard" by Anne Berest has been on my wishlist since it was published. Hardcover, $40. The ebook is $31. (!) The paperback just came out -- $29. (I caved and bought a copy -- I get a 10% discount with my Plum points card. But I still think it's ridiculous.
• Example: Barbra Streisand's memoir -- which, admittedly, has a pretty hefty page count -- is $63 (!!) for the hardcover!!  The e-version is $22 (which does seem more reasonable by comparison, albeit still slightly ridiculous for an ebook, I think...!). (No paperback yet.)  
• (Yes, I know the library exists...!  ;)  ) 

Small pleasures: 

• Our new vertical blinds! :)  (Why didn't we do this years sooner??)(The pandemic, for one thing...)
• Milder weather, finally!! (although not always sunny skies...).  
• Italian pastries with my tea for the last few days -- takeaway goodies from dh's uncle's 90th birthday party this past weekend. 
• Getting dressed up and putting on makeup (for the party -- I wouldn't want to do it every day anymore, but once in a while, it's kind of fun...!). 
• Putting on a pair of pants I hadn't worn in a while, and having them still fit!  ;)  
• Having a good hair day, too!  

You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here.  

The invisible load

Gemma Hartley (who wrote the excellent book "Fed Up:  Emotional Labour, Women and the Way Forward" -- reviewed here) recently posted on her Substack ("No One Loves An Angry Woman") about a new book by Erica Djossa, "Releasing the Mother Load." 

Djossa posts on Instagram as "Momwell," where (among other things) she shares graphics outlining "The Invisible Load" that mothers carry -- e.g., "Bedtime Routine," "Handling Transitions." 

Looking at some of these graphics -- "Researcher of the Home," "Mealtime Routine," "Being the Creator of Fun, Magic and Memories," "The Keeper of Knowledge" -- all I could think was, hey, we non-moms do a lot of these same things too!  Yes, without the additional pressure of knowing small lives are depending on us and absorbing our example -- but some of these things (such as "deciding what to make," "preparing the grocery list," "shopping for food") need to be done whether or not we have kids. Others (e.g., "dealing with guilt and comparison," "worrying about finances and budget," "remembering all the things," "remembering where everything is," "implementing systems like calendars and reminders") are things we may still want or need to do because they make life easier and more pleasant for us and the people we love.  They're things that seem to fall to women to do, regardless of whether we're moms (and especially if we have a partner, and/or have other people depending on us, such as aging parents).  

The graphic Hartley used to illustrate her post was about "Back to School" -- "adjusting to a new routine," "buying and packing supplies," "remembering special days," "haircuts and first day of school photos," "drop off and pick up," and (this one really kills me) "grieving moments you will miss." (!) (Here's another one: "practicing separating" (!).  Like, how do you "practice separating" -- permanently??  :(  )  

I don't want to minimize the very real additional load that mothers carry -- but all I could think of was that every point on this list (and all the other similar lists on the Momwell IG account) is something that I never got to do/will never be able to do/will never be able to do with my child.  ALL of these are "moments I will miss/have missed."  

Yes, it's work, it's an additional load of stuff that mothers have to do, or feel obligated to do -- BUT, it's stuff you get to do with and FOR YOUR CHILD. 

And it's stuff that I will never get to do with and for mine.  

This, too, is an "invisible load" -- the "invisible load" of the bereaved mother and childless woman -- that parents never have to think about. 

Saturday night odds & ends

• It's still more than a month away, but the onslaught has begun...!  I remember thinking, while out shopping during the week before Easter that, come Monday, all the Easter displays and paraphernalia would be replaced by Mother's Day stuff.  
• I was right. On Tuesday, we were at our local mega-bookstore -- which, these days, has as many tchotchkes for sale as books, it seems...! -- and, even though I had predicted it, it was kind of like a slap in the face to see... 
• Sara Petersen unpacks the fine art of "momfluencing" in her Substack "In Pursuit of Clean Countertops."  In a recent entry, "Who do these jeans think I am? A Very Serious Investigation,"  she dissects an Instagram ad for "mom jeans." The top-rated comment asks "why any adult woman would willing buy a pair of jeans called Mom Jeans," (and -- naturally! -- pointed to the infamous Saturday Night Live sketch...!) 
• My response to that comment:  
  

Especially when something like 20% of adult women are not mothers and never will be (and that number is growing). The ones who chose that life will likely not be happy to have the "Mom" label slapped on their jeans; the ones who wanted to be mothers and couldn't (for whatever reasons -- and that includes me!) don't need that reminder of what they wanted and didn't get. 20% and growing is a big chunk of your market, jean manufacturers...

• I was pleasantly surprised to see it's been "liked" half a dozen times to date, including by Sara herself, who also commented (in all caps!), "GREAT POINT."  Thank you, Sara!   
• I'm about 80% of the way through Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, following the "slow readalong" at Foonotes and Tangents. (We'll finish by the end of the month -- then move on to the next book in the series!)  In Chapter 14, "Devil's Spit," Lady Jane Rochford (married to Queen Anne Boleyn's brother George) comments to Thomas Cromwell (the main character of the book):  

"Have you ever observed that when a man gets a son he takes all the credit, and when he gets a daughter he blames his wife? And if they do not breed at all, we say it is because her womb is barren. We do not say it is because his seed is bad."  

(Of course, these words were written in 2009, when we know the truth of Lady Rochford's words.  Yet the stigma still persists, doesn't it?) 

The passage goes on. Cromwell speaks: 

'It's the same in the gospels. The stony ground gets the blame.' 

The stony places, the thorny unprofitable waste. Jane Rochford is childless after seven years of marriage. 'I believe my husband wishes I would die.'  She says it lightly. He does not know how to answer. He has not asked for her confidence. 'If I do die,' she says, in the same bright tone, 'have my body opened. I ask you this in friendship. I am afraid of poison...'

(!!) 

(Mantel -- as I've pointed out previously -- was childless herself.)    

• There was an interesting article in the Globe and Mail recently about a new chain of fertility clinics, backed by venture capitalists, with offices in Vancouver and Toronto (so far), that focuses on "improving the patient's experience while driving superior outcomes... The ultimate goal is to ensure it takes less time to have a baby, and it costs less to build your family.” Gift link:  "Twig Fertility aims to close the gaps in care for Canadians trying to conceive." Excerpt:  

Twig’s approach includes using technology, as well as staff recruited from complementary industries, such as the hospitality sector, to minimize wait times for patients, while allowing doctors to focus on procedures rather than paperwork. The company is using AI technology, including software designed by an Israeli company, to support decision-making and operational efficiency.

Twig takes a luxury hotel-style approach to treatment, with soft touches such as robes and slippers to slip into when a patient arrives at the clinic.

(No word on whether their success rates to date are any better than at other clinics...!)  

• Also in the Globe & Mail this weekend:  an interesting article titled "No kids? No problem:  How Canada’s childfree and cash-rich couples are spending their time and money." (Gift link.) Some interesting points raised (and nice to see an article with Canadian references, including RRSPs, TFSAs and the like!).  
• Note: All the couples (and it's all couples, all male/female) are childFREE vs childLESS, all from cities, none retired yet.  And (as usual!) beware the comments!   
• Sue Fagalde Lack, who blogs at Childless by Marriage and Unleashed in Oregon, has started a new Substack, focused on living and aging alone as an "elder orphan." Check it out, and subscribe!:  "Can I Do It Alone?" 
• Jennie Agg at Life, Almost, writes about the complex dilemma of "'Sharenting' after loss:  Once you have a living child - to post or not to post?" (Not something I will ever have to grapple with, of course, but I'm sure some of you will relate..!) 
• I wanted to stand up and cheer when I read this article from the Guardian by Kathryn Bromwich:  "What is it about us dinks (dual income, no kids) that so many people dislike?"  Excerpt:  

In 2024, it should not be seen as an affront if people lead a slightly different life from the narrow confines of what is expected: other people’s choices are not a judgment on your own. Reproducing is one of the biggest, life-altering decisions we can make, with a profound impact on our time, freedom, career and finances. We should all be thinking carefully about whether it is right for us on an individual level. Even among those who do want to start a family, the costs are prohibitive: more and more young people are being priced out of parenthood. Last month, the birthrate fell to a record low.

Yet having children is so societally ingrained that non-parents continue to face stigma and are expected to justify their lifestyles in a way that parents are not. The main objections to dinks appear to be that they post smug social media updates, and that they travel too much. But do parents not post proudly about their bundles of joy? And isn’t having children the worst possible thing you can do in terms of CO2 emissions?

At the heart of this judgment is an insulting insinuation that some lives are worth more than others (commenting on tragedies “as a mother” does not make your viewpoint more valuable, as writer Amy Key has pointed out). Being a parent, or not being a parent, is not intrinsically more or less moral. This is not a battle of parents versus non-parents, childless versus childfree. Instead of entrenching ourselves further into camps, we should be moving towards a future where all choices are seen as equally valid – with highs and lows, regrets and joy – and that it is simply not up to other people to judge.

• Also from the Guardian recently:  "‘It’s money’: the Britons who want children but feel they can’t."  Fertility issues, climate change and reluctant male partners (or lack of a suitable one) were among the other reasons mentioned why people did not have the children they wanted.