My blog is an adult :)

Where I grew up, you were considered an adult at age 18, able to drink, vote and enlist in the armed forces without parental permission, among other things.  

Today, my blog is an adult.  :)  18 years ago tonight, after the last trick-or-treater departed and we turned out the porch light, I hit "post" on my very first entry here. 18 years and more than 2,600 published posts later (!), I am still here, still writing about pregnancy loss, infertility and childlessness -- which is why I started my blog -- but also about books, getting older, dealing with aging parents (from a distance), being an aunt and great-aunt, living in a condo, living through a pandemic -- in short, life.  

The Internet, and the blogosphere, have changed dramatically over 18 years -- but there are still many of us out here, writing about and connecting over our shared experiences -- if not always in old-style blogs these days, then on Substack, on social media, through podcasts and through private communities such as the Childless Collective. The childless-not-by-choice segments of the infertility and non-parenting communities have grown by leaps and bounds. There's always room for improvement, of course! -- but the progress has been unmistakeable for those of us who have been around a while. (Long may it continue...!) 

How long will I keep writing here?  Who knows?  I never would have imagined, 18 years ago tonight, that I'd still be here. Never say never (either way), right? Granted, my output has slowed a bit in recent years, after hitting an all-time high of 213 posts in 2021 (146 posts last year, 113 to date in 2025, including this one -- last year at this point, I reported 123, versus 146 in 2023, 163 in 2022 and 178 in 2021 -- which turned out to be my most prolific blogging year so far).  But still, not too bad -- and right now, at least, I have no intentions of closing up shop. 

Whether you've been here from the early days or just found this blog recently, thank you all for reading and commenting. :)  

*** *** *** 

Blogging stats, 18 years later:  

 
Number of years blogging: 18

Published posts (including this one): 2,631

Average # of posts per year: 146

Average # of posts per month: 12 

(So far in calendar year 2025, I've published 112 posts -- 113, including this one -- a minimum of 6 posts (in July) and as many as 15 in September (thanks to World Childless Week and its daily themes!).

Published comments: 12,649 

Page views (all time, as of yesterday): 3,608, 027 (!!).  (Last year, I noted  1,959,495 -- i.e., I received as many page views this past year as I have in the previous 17!! -- clearly, something weird is going on, as I noted in this post here -- Infertile Phoenix wrote about the same phenomenon then too.)  

Followers (on Blogger):  155 

Past blogoversary posts here.

First blog post ever here! :) 

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." 

"The Safekeep" by Yael van der Wouden

My most recent book is  "The Safekeep" by Yael van der Wouden, a critically acclaimed debut novel that's been recommended the by co-host of one of my online book clubs, by Jess at Finding A Different Path,  and by Anne Helen Petersen and numerous other readers at Culture Study.

The story is set in the Netherlands in 1961 -- 16 years after the end of the Second World War (and, interestingly for me, the year I was born).   

Isabel is 31, and lives in a house in the country where she moved with her mother and siblings during the war, and where her mother died 10 years ago. Everything in the house is still exactly as it always has been, and Isabel is obsessed with keeping it that way.    

Her carefully calibrated, placid existence is upended by the arrival of her older brother Louis -- the heir to the house, who will take possession (and leave her homeless), if/when he marries. Louis has brought his new girlfriend, Eva, and leaves her to stay with Isabel while he's out of the country for several weeks on business. The two women instantly and intensely dislike each other. Various objects from around the house have been disappearing lately -- catalogued meticulously by Isabel, who initially suspects the maid, but also begins to wonder about Eva...

And then.... 

This was one of those books that I found hard to put down, and it was a fairly fast read. The writing is excellent, with a twist near the end that changes the whole trajectory of the book.  In some ways, it was difficult to read -- Isabel is an incredibly repressed character, and there's an aura of tension (sexual/erotic and otherwise), suspense, paranoia and anxiety that keeps you turning the pages while feeling slightly uneasy about what might happen next. That said, the war and its traumas were not all that many years in the past, and Isabel's quirks and obsessions are understandable when taken in that context.  

A solid 4 stars on both Goodreads & StoryGraph.  

This was Book #33 read to date in 2025 (and Book #6 finished in October), bringing me to 73% of  my 2025 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 45 books. I am (for the moment, anyway...!) 4 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: It would have been nice...

We had lunch and spent Saturday afternoon at Younger Nephew's new home, about a 30-minute drive from here, along with BIL & SIL, Older Nephew & his family. It was noisy and chaotic with two excited children under the age of 6 running around together, plus a cranky, teething baby, who cried every time his mother went out of his sight (!) -- but it was a lot of fun too.  :)  

The three great-niblings modelled their Halloween costumes for us:  Little Great-Niece is going as Cinderella, in a pretty blue dress I would have KILLED for at her age;  LGNephew #1 will be Superman (his costume has padding that looks like abs!!  lolol) -- and his baby brother will be wearing a Batman costume!!  He didn't like wearing the cowl/hat/mask, but he still looked hilarious. Many photos were taken.  :)  

As the afternoon began to wind down, SIL suggested to LGNephew #1 that he read to her from the new Halloween book she'd brought him. They sat together on the couch and he read the entire book aloud! I was mesmerized. He is still not yet 6 (birthday coming up soon), just in Grade One, and he reads SO WELL. There were only a few words he struggled with -- he's improved tremendously since the last time I heard him read. I was SO proud of him!! (and told him so!) -- I got a little teary listening to him. He's growing up so fast! 

I'm not sure it was just listening to him read that got me so emotional, though. It could also have been the sight of him sitting like that with his grandma. Then Little Great-Niece joined them after a while -- one on each side, snuggled up to SIL. 

I will admit, I felt a momentary pang of envy. 

It would have been nice... 

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

"Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe

For the past five weeks, I've been taking part in another "slow read" led by Simon Haisell at Footnotes & Tangents.  (I've recently tagged all the "slow reads" I've done with that group to date as "F&T slow readlong.") 

"Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe is the third book I've read with F&T this year. First published in 1958, it's the story of a changing Africa in the late 19th century in the face of European colonization, as experienced by Okonkwo, a proud and respected member of the Igbo tribe in the village of Umuofia in what is now Nigeria. (It's the first in a trilogy about Africa's colonial evolution.) 

The first part of the book is all about Okonkwo, his family, and traditional village life in Umuofia. A tragedy forces Okonkwo and his family to leave Umuofia for seven years. He returns to a village and a life that has been profoundly changed by the arrival of the white man, colonial government, and the Christian church.

This is not a long book (and would have been a fast one, if it hadn't been spread out over five weeks...!).Okonkwo is a brute and not a particularly sympathetic character overall (although I did feel for him near the end, struggling to cope with a world he no longer understands). I also felt empathy and understanding for one of Okonkwo's wives, Ekwefi, who lost many babies, clings to her one surviving daughter Ezinma (Okonkwo's secret favourite), and envies the other women and their children. From Chapter 9:  

...Ekwefi had become a very bitter woman. Her husband's first wife had already had three sons, all strong and healthy... Ekwefi had nothing but good wishes for her. But she had grown so bitter about her own chi [personal god] that she could not rejoice with the others over their good fortune... Her husband's wife took this for malevolence, as husbands' wives were wont to. How could she know that Ekwefi's bitterness did not flow outwards to others, but inwards into her own sould;  that she did not blame others for their good fortune but her own evil chi who denied her any? 

Sound familiar?? 

I also found it difficult to read about how twins -- considered an abomination (!) -- were placed in earthenware pots,  taken into the forest and... left there. Yikes!

It's an interesting book (especially if you have any interest in Africa), and well written. I'll admit, however, it's not something I would have picked up on my own, and it's not something I'm likely to read again. 

3 stars on both Goodreads & StoryGraph. 

Our final F&T book of 2025 will be "The Blue Flower" by Penelope Fitzgerald, beginning Nov. 3rd. Details here.   

Simon also recently announced what we'll be reading together in 2026. You can find that list of books here. (Not sure I'll do every one, as I did this year, but I see a couple I'm interested in...!)  

This was Book #32 read to date in 2025 (and Book #5 finished in October), bringing me to 71% of  my 2025 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 45 books. I am (for the moment, anyway...!) 4 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: I dreamed a dream...

I had a really weird dream a few nights ago. 

I was by myself, walking along a desolate country road, somewhere between the border town where I was born, close to where my paternal grandparents had a farm, and my maternal grandparents' home, 20 miles away in NW Minnesota. (The border did not seem to be an issue here, lol.)  

I wanted to go to my grandparents' house in Minnesota, and I thought I'd walk there (20 miles -- with my bum knee -- yeah, right...!!). But then I remembered -- the house is gone, and there's no one left there. (Just one of my second cousins, and a childhood friend from the neighbourhood.)  

So I turned and started walking in the direction of my other grandparents' farm, a few miles outside of town... but the road petered out into big snowdrifts, and I realized it hadn't been plowed -- and then I also remembered that there was no one left at the farm anymore either (hasn't been in almost 40 years...!). 

So I turned again and started trudging back into town -- although there's really no one there I could ask for help either. I thought that maybe I could get a room at the motel there, and then a ride into the city the next day -- or start walking there in the morning (60 miles...?!). 

But then I realized that although my sister and a few cousins live in or near the city, I couldn't rely on them to take me in either, certainly not long term. And I'm not sure I really belong in that city anymore either (if I ever did).  

When I woke up, I realized that I've been struggling with these themes & questions my entire life.  Where is home?  Where do I belong?  (DO I belong anywhere??) Do I matter to anyone (besides dh and my parents -- who aren't going to be around forever...)?  Who will be there for me if/when I need help (especially in my later years)?  

I've had similar dreams before, but for some reason, this one really bothered me and has stuck with me since then.

I think a lot of childless-not-by-choice women struggle with these questions. 

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

"Deliver Me From Nowhere" by Warren Zanes

I decided my next read would be "Deliver Me From Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska" by Warren Zanes, in advance of the new movie of the same name, based on the book, that's being released later this week  (Oct. 24th). (We haven't been to a movie since early 2020, before the pandemic began -- something we always loved to do! -- but Bruce has been a constant presence in our lives and our relationship since we first met -- and I always like to read the book before I see the movie version -- so...!)  

As the subtitle points out, the book focuses on a particular era of Springsteen's life, the making of the 1982 album "Nebraska," which marked a profound shift in Springsteen's life and career. It also delves into the events and circumstances, in Springsteen's personal life and career, and in the American culture of the time, that led up to it and shaped it.

I had been aware of Springsteen when I was a teenager (I loved "Prove It All Night" when it was on the radio, summer 1978), and my pre-dh boyfriend had "The River" album, but I hadn't REALLY listened to his music until I met dh, who was a big fan and had the nickname "BRUUUCE" lettered on the back of his residence floor T-shirt (lol).  I bought a couple of his albums and they were a big comfort to me when dh went to graduate school the next year in a different province. 

"Nebraska" came out in the fall of 1982, when I was 21 and starting my fourth and final year of undergrad, without dh on campus. It was starkly different from the Springsteen albums that had come before, or the ones anyone else was making at that point. But the more I listened, the more it grew on me. (I especially liked "Atlantic City" and "Reason to Believe.") 

What became "Nebraska" -- and parts of the subsequent "Born in the U.S.A." album -- began as a cassette tape of demos recorded by Springsteen in early January 1982, on a simple four-track home recorder, sitting on the bed in the bedroom of the farmhouse he was renting in Colts Neck, New Jersey. He'd just concluded a hugely successful tour to promote "The River" -- but he was struggling with what it all meant and what direction he wanted to take next. Around the same time, he was mulling over several things he'd been watching and reading, including Terrence Malick's 1973 movie "Badlands," based on the Starkweather murders in Nebraska during the late 1950s, starring a very young Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek;  a book about Starkweather's teenaged girlfriend/accomplice, Caril Fugate;  and the short stories of Flannery O'Connor. 

When he brought the demo tape into the studio for the E Street Band to work on, some songs came together very quickly, and would form the nucleus of the "Born in the U.S.A." album, including the title song. These songs formed an almost complete album, with the markings of a huge hit (which it would eventually become).  But the other songs kept calling him -- and he struggled with how they sounded when augmented by the full band.  Eventually, he decided to release those songs as a solo album -- exactly as recorded. No interviews, minimal advertising. He did authorize one promotional video ("Atlantic City") that was shown on the fledgling MTV network -- a series of black and white film clips of Atlantic City in all its gritty glory. No Springsteen or E Street Band in sight. 

"Nebraska" was critically acclaimed when it was first released, and still is today. It was a milestone in Bruce's career and in the music world generally, for many reasons that Zanes delves into here. 

There's probably a whole lot more detail here than most of us probably need or want to know about this album. But personally? I loved it. It was a great reminder of that time in my life, of what Bruce meant and still means to me & dh, and what a brilliant artist he is. Of how sometimes it pays to take risks, even when they seem crazy. (And how it helps to have people who believe in you and what you're doing, as Springsteen's manager, Jon Landau, and the record company did.)  There was a lot here that I already knew about this time in Springsteen's life, but I enjoyed the insights provided here (by Bruce, and by others) that put Bruce's music, and this album, into the context of the times.  If you love Bruce, and enjoy learning more about his creative process, especially if you love the album "Nebraska," you will probably enjoy this book. 

I haven't listened to "Nebraska" in full in years, and reading this book makes me want to pull out my CD and give it a spin. (I did have the vinyl album originally, but it now belongs to Older Nephew.  : ) ) 

4 stars on both Goodreads and StoryGraph.  

This was Book #31 read to date in 2025 (and Book #4 finished in October), bringing me to 69% of  my 2025 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 45 books. I am (for the moment, anyway...!) 4 books behind  schedule to meet my goal.  :)  You can find reviews of all my books read to date in 2025 tagged as "2025 books."