#MicroblogMondays: Cottage weekend

I know I had a few ideas in mind for a #MM post this week, but they have all completely left my head. 

So I will just say that we spent the weekend with BIL, SIL & dh's cousins at their cottage (for the 5th straight September), enjoying good food, pretty scenery (fall colours not quite as advanced as they were the same weekend two years ago, but getting stronger every day we were there), great company and great conversation (aside from a few too many "Grandkids are the best!" references for my comfort...!). 

Back to reality today!  

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

View of the marina across the lake, from the dock on Saturday afternoon. 

"The Secrets of Blythswood Square" by Sara Sheridan

"The Secrets of Blythswood Square" by Sara Sheridan is the October selection for my Childless Collective Nomo Book Club. We read another novel by Sheridan two years ago, "The Fair Botanists" (reviewed here).

Like "The Fair Botanists," "The Secrets of Blythswood Square" is set in Victorian-era Scotland -- (mostly) Glasgow, 1846 -- and involves the stories of two women from very different backgrounds:  Ellory Mann, a working-class girl who -- thanks to a generous benefactor -- leaves her job as a photographer's assistant in Edinburgh and comes to Glasgow to set up shop for herself;  and Charlotte Nicholl, the sheltered daughter of a Glasgow businessman, who is left alone in a big house on Blythswood Square -- and less well off than she anticipated -- after he dies.  

The book includes some familiar cliches -- with a few twists. For one thing, there are quite a few decidedly un-Victorian characters and attitudes portrayed.  The two unconventional and independent protagonists, for example, may not be typical of women of this period -- but they do make for a good story, overall. ;)  There's a large cast of supporting characters, whose storylines all become intertwined with Charlotte's & Ellory's, including real-life American abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who spent time in the United Kingdom, speaking out against slavery. There's also Ellory's assistant-turned-model, Jane;   a mysterious stranger who shows up at Charlotte's father's funeral, an actress, her gay dresser, a father-son team of lawyers, and a very proper neighbour who tries to take charge of Charlotte's life. 

There's a plot twist relatively early on -- a discovery that Charlotte makes about her father -- that I did not see coming (despite the "scandal" hinted at in the cover blurb!). The plot becomes increasingly complex, and it seems like everyone is keeping secrets from each other. I did guess one of the other plot twists, near the end of the book, as well as another twist revealed in the closing pages. Despite the cliches, the writing is good, the characters (while perhaps unrealistically modern in some ways) are interesting and overall, the book held my attention, especially the further I got into it. 

The author has done her research:  in an afterword, she reveals what was real in the book, what wasn't, and what was fiction but inspired by real-life people and events. 

I gave "The Fair Botanists" a rating of 3.5 stars on StoryGraph, rounded down to 3 stars on Goodreads. Initially, I gave this book the same, but after sleeping on it, I've decided to upgrade the Goodreads rating to 4 stars. :)  

This was Book #27 read to date in 2025 (and Book #2 finished in September), bringing me to 60% of  my 2025 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 45 books. I am (for the moment, anyway...!) 5 books behind  schedule to meet my goal.  :)  You can find reviews of all my books read to date in 2025 tagged as "2025 books." 

#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. 

World Childless Week, Day Seven: Moving Forwards

The focus of Day Seven of  World Childless Week 2025 (as it usually is for the final day of WCW) is "Moving Forwards."  

From the website description: 

Have you seen glimmers of hope or changes in your mood that make you smile? Have you started to make new plans or found new ideas popping into your head? Are you starting to like and celebrate who you are, the life you have and the future that is waiting for you? 

Has the road forward become LESS OF A MOUNTAIN and MORE OF A RAMBLE?

*** *** ***  

The passage of time (almost -- gulp!! -- 25+ years!!) since I left fertility treatments, and looking back on certain milestones will often bring a shock of recognition of how things have changed, how far I've come and how differently I feel now than I did then. (One advantage of getting older is that fewer and fewer people ask and hint and prod you about pregnancy plans... although eventually, you start getting questions about how many grandchildren you have instead...!)

I think back to one particular incident, at Christmastime, a few years after we had thrown in the towel on infertility treatments, which showed me that perhaps I was further down the road of acceptance than I had realized.  I wrote about it here. 

Another measure of progress would be my increasing ability/willingness to enter a Baby Gap (or other baby/kids' clothing) store. (And, dare I say, to even enjoy it??)  Once, it was a source of pain, to be avoided. I eventually did get to the point where I could go in to buy a baby shower gift (even if was often just a gift card...!). These days, I love to go there (and other children's wear stores) to shop for our three great-niblings -- albeit the little girls' racks in particular still have the power to give me occasional pangs... 

There are probably other markers of progress that I've written about over the years, although I can't recall any other specific posts to share here with you right now. 

One thing I remember from our pregnancy loss support group days is that you never realized just how far you'd come down this road less travelled until someone new arrived, fresh and raw in their own grief. I still see that to some extent today, when I read social media posts and responses from younger women who are new to the stunning realization that they will not have the children they assumed they would have. 

My life today is very different from the life I once imagined I would be leading. I will never stop missing my daughter, and wondering about that other life I might have had, that once seemed within my grasp... 

But even so, all things considered? I have a pretty damn good life. I don't think it's better or worse than the life I might have led, if I'd had children.  It's just different. It's a good life, on its own merits.  And I'm not going to pretend otherwise, or apologize for it. I didn't get a "rainbow baby," but I think I've found rainbows in my life in other ways. The strong relationship I have with my husband, closer relationships we've forged with our nephews and now their children (closer than if we'd had our own kids & grandkids to focus on, I'm sure), early retirement, nice home, occasional travel, mornings that I get to sleep in, freedom and flexibility in other ways... I consider all these things and more the "silver linings" in the dark cloud of pregnancy loss, infertility, involuntary childlessness and grief that shadowed my life for so many years. I think I've earned them. 

Check out today's content on the WCW site, including community members' contributions, and five free, live webinars related to this subject. They will be recorded and the links will be posted later on the Day Seven page and WCW YouTube channel for anyone who cannot watch live.  

World Childless Week, Day Six: We Are Worthy

The focus of Day Six of  World Childless Week 2025 is "We Are Worthy." 

This is a frequent WCW theme!  From the website description: 

There are times we doubt who we are, and question where we fit in society. Today is the day to yell “here I am, and I am wonderful and worthy to be seen and heard for being exactly who I am”. So polish your crown, stand up tall, and belief in your worth.  

Today is your day to smile and SHOUT about HOW WONDERFUL YOU ARE!

*** *** ***  

Back in 2018, there was an online summit for childless people during National Infertility Awareness Week on the theme of "We Are Worthy," and I wrote about it and my thoughts on the subject of worthiness here. 

I can't think of any other posts I've written about worth/worthiness in particular -- but I have pointed out plenty of examples of pronatalism and how the childless/free experience has been marginalized, when I've found them. I didn't know the term "pronatalism" when I first started this blog, so I started using the tag "mommy mania" -- the best I could come up with at the time. I've since re-tagged most of those posts as "pronatalism." 

The "bible" on pronatalism from a childfree (by choice) perspective would be "The Baby Matrix" by Laura Carroll (which I reviewed here).  A real eye-opener, and highly recommended!  

On the flip side, I suppose, would be the posts I've written about/touching on feminism, tagged as "the f word." I was brought up thoroughly steeped in the second-wave feminist messages of the 1970s (for good and for bad);  I have always believed and often said that I am more than my uterus. Unfortunately, that's still not the message that society tends to send us or the people around us....!  -- and pronatalism is, sadly, making a resurgence these days. 

We shouldn't have to -- we need not -- justify or apologize for our lack of children. We are so many things besides our parental status, our ability to reproduce. We are more than our uteruses.  We have so much more to offer the world than (just) children -- if the world would only take the time to stop, think, and see us -- REALLY see us.  We are whole, complex, amazing, valuable, human beings, just as we are. 

We are worthy. 

Check out today's content on the WCW site, including community members' contributions, and five free, live webinars related to this subject. They will be recorded and the links will be posted later on the Day Six page and WCW YouTube channel for anyone who cannot watch live.  

Also be sure to check out the separate page of member submissions for the #IAmMe gallery! From the website:  "#IAmMe is about finding your positives, seeing your achievements, sharing your joys, celebrating what you love: your hobies, personality traits, relationships, achievements, qualifications, inner worth and who you are in this world. #IAmMe is about anything you want it to be."

World Childless Week, Day Five: Have You Got Kids?

Day Five of  World Childless Week 2025 is all about how we answer (or don't answer) that seemingly innocent (but dreaded) question: "Have you got kids?"  

From the website description: 

Do you make a joke or try to change the subject, to hide your emotions? Do you simply respond “no” or give them an indepth answer and put them on the end of feeling awkward? Are there things you’d like to say but instead bite your tongue whilst holding back tears? How does this question make you feel? 

Is it time for us to CHANGE the NARRATIVE? 

*** *** ***  

I don't think I've written any posts that deal specifically with this question -- but I'm sure there's a few anecdotes on this blog somewhere...! -- because I most certainly have been asked this question (many times) -- and had to deal with the awkwardness that always follows when I have to tell people "no."  

In my/our younger days, before or while we were trying to conceive, I would say no, followed by a vague "One of these days..."  

I remember being at an engagement party for one of dh's cousins, about 30 years ago, when we were in the very early stages of ttc, after 10 years of marriage. I was chatting with the future groom -- we'd met a few times before, but hadn't really had a personal conversation between us -- and he asked me the dreaded question. When I said no, he practically shouted (in front of the entire party), "WELL, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR??" (I've often wondered whether he remembers that conversation -- because I sure do -- and/or regrets his words -- especially given how things evolved in the years after that...!) 

And I distinctly remember being at an all-day/12-hour scrapbooking crop (post-loss and failed fertility treatments) and being seated at a table with a couple of women who were friends -- and moms -- and chatting away non-stop about their children (all day!), while working on scrapbook pages about them. "Do you have any kids?"  one finally asked me. "No," I said. That immediately killed the conversation, not only for the next few minutes, but for the rest of the day! -- they completely ignored me after that, and neither of them addressed another word to me!!  Talk about awkward...!  

Almost as bad:  the follow-up assumptive questions or remarks:  "What's the matter, don't you like kids?"  Or, "Must be nice...." Or, "Oh, you must get to do a lot of travelling then!" (Actually, no -- I had a job, I had family to visit during my vacation, and even when you're retired, you can't afford to travel 365 days a year...!) 

The good news is, now that I'm in my 60s, I don't get asked very often anymore. (Of course I haven't actually met a lot of new people lately...!) 

I'm of a few minds when it comes to answering this question. First -- if people are going to ask the question, they need to be prepared for the answer, even if it's not the usual one (and even if it's difficult for them to hear, if they press me on "why not?").  Second, it's entirely acceptable to deflect a bit with a response along the lines of "Well, that's a kind of painful topic..." And third, not everyone has earned the right to hear my story. If they press further, it's okay to firmly respond, "It's not something I'm comfortable talking about" -- and/or "Next subject?" (Although it's amazing to me how many women/mothers find it difficult to talk about or show interest in any subject other than their children...!) 

Check out today's content on the WCW site, including community members' contributions, and four free, live webinars related to this subject. They will be recorded and the links will be posted later on the Day Five page and WCW YouTube channel for anyone who cannot watch live.  

World Childless Week, Day Four: Childless Health Care?

Day Four of  World Childless Week 2025 is all about "Childless Health Care?" From the website description: 

Have you sat in a gynae room surrounded by pregnant women? Have you woke up on a hospital ward surrounded by new mums? Has a fertility clinic ignored you as soon as you ran out of money for more treatment? Has a nurse made a joke that was insensitive, a doctor used terminology that hurt? 

Has the health system let you down and created MORE HEARTACHE than HEALING?

*** *** ***  

Overall, I was lucky to have had great care from my family doctor and ob-gyn (perhaps less so from the fertility clinic and RE...!) -- and, being Canadian, I've never had to deal with the matter of bills, being "in-network," etc.  (Fertility treatment, of course, was another matter entirely...!)  

But I know most of the above painful scenarios have applied to me, and I imagine any childless-not-by-choice woman will have encountered at least one or more (and possibly all) of these at some point. My one big exception on the list:  I was very lucky that I never woke up on a hospital ward surrounded by new mothers; I delivered my stillborn daughter at a big city hospital where they routinely handled these situations, and had a special wing with private rooms to deal with them. (One CNBC mother I know remembers spending her son's final moments in the privacy of what was essentially a broom closet. Seriously.) 

My room was, however, on the same floor as the maternity ward, in the same wing as rooms where parents could spend time with their dying babies, and directly across the hallway from the neonatal intensive care unit. We couldn't see inside, but we could hear the beeps of the monitors whenever the door opened.  

My most relevant posts on this subject will likely be found under the labels "1998 memories" and "The Treatment Diaries," although I'm sure there are many more. (I have a general label of "health," but it's pretty broad, and there are currently almost 300 posts in that category!) 

Check out today's content on the WCW site, including community members' contributions, and four free, live webinars related to this subject. They will be recorded and the links will be posted later on the Day Four page and WCW YouTube channel for anyone who cannot watch live.