Barren Mare

Two

I can't believe what I am about to write: today is my second bloggiversary. Or was it yesterday?  Mmm. At the moment it feels more like a "blah-geversary". As in, I am blah. I feel blah. The blog is blah. Blah-blah-blah. Never mind, add that second row of shiny bars to my epaullettes.

A few minor housekeeping items: I owe a bunch of people emails. I am also complete crap at commenting on other people's sites. I am sorry. I do apologise wholeheartedly for my appalling lack of responsiveness.  I think it has something to do with the fact that after endless hours at the computer at work, I simply don't seem to be able to face sitting down again for any length of time.  Particularly when the weather is half decent, as it has been. But not to worry, this being Scotland we shall soon be plunged into the perennial fog and mist and I shall once again feel like hibernating at my desk.

It also might be a good time for a wee reminder about what the dealio is with the Campfire links on the right hand side. I'm slightly slower than I used to be about seeking out new blogs (or at least ones I haven't heard of yet) but by all means e-mail me should you wish to take a turn round the convivial bonfire.  Marshmallows included. 

I suppose now would be a good time to write that post I have been thinking about for awhile; about the passage of time, and how in so many ways I seem to be standing still while others are continually moving on. Except, the aforesaid blaaaaaah.  And also, I realised today as I compiled another pile of documents for the mysterious Project Possibly that I am moving forward. Just very, very, very slowly. So! Let us, on this day, celebrate the snails' pace of change; for even though it may be teethgrittingly gradual, change there is. The right sort of change. And that can only be a good thing as far as I am concerned.

We Interrupt this Interruption to say...

Hi! Hey! Hello! OK, I am know I am supposed to officially be on hiatus, but truth is, I miss the blogginess. Since my practice at the moment is to Do That Which Makes Me Happy, I thought I would just sort of stick my head above the duvet covers, with a little wave and a "howdy".

I also wanted to extend a sincere thank you to everyone who has commented, emailed, telephoned and in the case of one particular saint, sent flowers. You know who you are, and I will never forget it.

I wish I could say that everything is all better, and that I am whole, hearty and am able to pick up where we left off. Truth is, I still feel like my life is one big rollercoaster. Some days I am scared, sad, panicked and desperate beyond all telling. Other days I am completely calm, knowing that come what may, I am absolutely going to be OK. My hope is that eventually things will level off to the point where I no longer resemble an insane trapeze artist.

One of the reasons I thought it best to take a break was because I was so utterly blindsided by the turn life had taken. Getting to grips with the idea that I may never be able to have children was one thing. But to suddenly discover that I also seemed to be in the process of losing the man I love, for reasons which I still cannot understand, knocked the wind out of me so badly that I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to get up. And I was finding that I wasn't able to conduct myself with any sort of dignity or grace- at home, at work, or online.

I think now that while I may not have the equilibrium I need, I know I will somehow find the strength to get through it. What I am still trying to work out is how much to say about that process here. The thing is, people don't tend to talk much about relationship issues so much on infertility blogs. There are probably many reasons for that- but at first, my overwhelming feeling was that in the losing game of infertility, I have drawn the absolute worst hand. I don't get the baby and not only that, I may not get to keep the man either. Friends, let me tell you, being in that position is an incredibly lonely and isolating experience: like, how fucked up can this small girl's life become, all in the space of one year?

But then an interesting thing happened: a number of people publically commented, or privately emailed me to tell me that they had been, or were going through their own relationship hell, and to share how they coped with it. I began to feel a sense of being connected again, and it got me wondering if maybe there was some benefit in telling this particular story as well, or at least the parts of it that I feel comfortable sharing. That maybe somebody else out there suffering the same sort of maelstrom of crappiness could take heart that they were not alone.

OK. I'm climbing back into the bathtub for a bit now...but stay tuned, because I suspect I'll feel like checking back in again soon- even if the rollercoaster ride is not quite over.

Seatech Astronomy

There was a movie called Sneakers on TV here, a couple months ago. It's a charming, slightly silly film. One of the lesser Robert Redford efforts, admittedly. However, I found it worth watching, partly because I couldn't remember how it ended and partly because I felt a swoony nostalgia at seeing River Phoenix again on the screen. Ah, River. River, River, River. Alas, we hardly knew ye.

I won't bore with you the plot of the movie, mainly because it's too complicated; not to mention that I have already forgotten what it is about (again). But in one pivotal scene, Le Redford and that actress Mary McDonnell (you know, "Stands with a Fist" to Kevin Costner's "Dances with Wolves") decode the meaning of the mysterious words "Seatech Astronomy". They do so during a friendly Scrabble game, shuffling and rearranging the tiles- until they realise that in fact, Seatech Astronomy itself means nothing. It is an anagram.

An anagram for: Too Many Secrets.

This weekend, E. and I played something of a Scrabble game with our relationship. It turns out that there is a very great deal more going on than meets the eye. I learned that when unscrambled, one of the anagrams of our life together amounts to the same thing: too many secrets.

My biggest secret from E. has heretofore been the existence of this blog. I've been writing it for the last seventeen months (gosh, has it been that long? Do I get a gold watch or something?) and never breathed a word to him about it. Initially, I kept it from him because it was simply an experiment; one which I didn't imagine would amount to much, since hey! I was going to get pregnant any day now and then why would I need an infertility blog? Oh irony, you minx.

I felt from the outset it would easier to write if I knew it was a private endevour, not something I had to discuss or share. But then I wrote more and more, becoming increasingly drawn into not only the realisation that I was card-carrying infertile but that there was a fascinating online community of others like me. I began to worry that he wouldn't like it at all. That he would in fact be monumentally pissed off at me for telling the Internets all our personal stuffus, even though I have always striven to maintain as much anonymity as I could muster. In the end, the more I wrote, the more I fretted that eventually, he would find out- and that he would murder me and then break up with me.

But by that point, it was hard to think about 'fessing up, because I kinda felt like I had hit my stride a bit; that writing was working for me, and had become an important outlet for all the damp, murky fears. However, I think it also began to take its toll. Writing, reading and commenting on other blogs began to take up a massive amount of my limited spare time and energy. If I've ever annoyed one of my lovely commenters by not responding to you personally, trust me when I say that it's about all I can manage time-wise, just to write the damn thing, and to keep up with the events of others.

I suppose at some point, I was so into telling my story here that I pretty much stopped talking to E. about what I was feeling/thinking about our situation. Gradually, the blog became the kind of secret that fortifies the wall, rather than an outlet that builds bridges.

Well, he knows now, since I told him. To my utter astonishment, he was completely unfazed by the whole thing, or at least he appeared to be. Whether he'll read it in full or just skim it (Hello, E. Put your dishes in the dishwasher, please), or take no interest whatsoever, I don't know. Either way, I'd like to think that I can keep on writing it as honestly, unselfconsciously, and freely as I have before. Because I suspect in the coming months, I'm going to need to be able to do that.

I would tell you exactly why that is so, but, um...it's a secret.

I have you in my sites

And now for something completely different.

I have a question- something vaguely off topic which I have wanted to know for ages, but I could never really find the right moment to bring it up. Thing is, I suspect it might be quite a stupid thing to ask. But then, when you don't know the answer to something, it's often quite easy to assume that everyone else in the universe has the understanding and knowledge that you do not- when in fact they too are sitting home scratching their heads over precisely the same little mystery, and wishing like hell somebody else would pipe up and ask.

My question relates to my Site Meter. For those of you who don't know what this is, it's basically a hit counter that tells you how many people are visiting your site per day. If you blog, and don't have a site meter, then run run run as fast your little fingers will carry you to sign up for one! Here is a helpful guide to get you started.

Bloggers love site meters. Because not only does the counter tell you how many site hits you receive, but it tells you when, and for how long. Plus, you also find out all manner of other gripping little factoids you would never otherwise have known. For example, you can see not only from which countries do your visitors hail, but from which particular cities or towns or lifeboats. You learn what times of day are the busiest for web traffic. You discover how people are coming to you and sometimes what led them there - from Google, from another blog link, from the depths of hell. If you ask it nicely, the site meter site will give you little charts and graphs and forecasts for you to pore over in amused fascination.

It's almost like a blog ultrasound, only without the cold lubricant and the monkeys. And if you look at it long enough, or often enough, or even occasionally out of boredom or passing interest, the site meter can tell you something about the life and pulse of your blog. Best of all, it's deliciously free. Freeeee!

Anyway, what I have always wondered about this: There's a site meter log which records the duration of each visit. So, for example, I can see that in the last hour, there were 13 hits, and that Betty Smith from Pocatello, Idaho logged on at 3.15 pm and looked at 3 different pages within the site for 4.36 minutes.

Ha. Don't worry, Betty, I was kidding. It doesn't give me your name or anything else about you personally. But I do get the rest of that information.

Here's the thing, though - who are the people who visit for 0.00 seconds? I always have lots of these in the records. At first I thought the meter could only pick up hits if the visitor stayed for a certain length of time- like for more than 10 seconds. But then I looked back through the log a bit, and found visits that lasted, say, 4 seconds. Which threw that theory out the window.

I'm not really bothered or worried about this odd, repetitive non-event. I am curious, though. My confusion is twofold- first, if the visit is really lasting only 0.00 seconds, how the hell does the site meter pick that up? Is it just really, really alert and on the ball?

Secondly, and more crucially, how does anyone make up their mind about my site in 0.00 seconds? This causes me continual, gentle bafflement. I mean, I'm capable of some mighty snap decisions- for example, "No, I won't go to the gym tonight but instead will collapse like a beached baby seal on my sofa in front of the TV while nibbling something yummy." And I'm completely down with getting your groove on with some free-flowing web surfing, click click click. But even I usually take more than 0.00 seconds to ascertain if the web site I am on is someplace I want to be.

So what the hell is going on with the old 0.00? Is it only happening to me, or does everyone get these insta-drive bys? Does anyone know the answer?

You can lead a horse to water but...

Blogging can sometimes be like an amateur striptease. If you're not careful, you inadvertently slip the veil just a little lower than you really meant to go, and suddenly, your life is all nekkid and exposed to the world. To the funny, fickle, furry, friendly, freaky Internets.

The difficulty is that when describing a relationship, which by its nature does not neatly compress into a bite-sized Postie Snak, one post on the matter inevitably begets another. Suddenly I find I have opened a veritable Pandora's box about a topic which I never really intended to discuss in any sort of detail with the Internets at large.

I don't want this to turn into a blog about my life with E. and yet I realise in reading your comments that it's sometimes hard to give only a half glimpse behind the curtain (or of my frilly knickers, to extend the striptease analogy further than is in strictly good taste).

What you, the reader, inevitably get is a necessarily distorted picture, filtered through a single, unrelenting lens of infertility. It just so happens that, unsurprisingly, infertility seems to bring out the worst in me, in him, in us. But there's so much more to it, to us and our life together, than the infertility fallout. And it leaves me feeling vaguely uneasy- as if I set out to draw a self portrait, and instead handed over a scribbled sketch that resembled someone else entirely.

I suppose the only way to remedy the problem is to invite you all around for an extended chat over coffee and donuts at my house (or perhaps something a bit more potent, nearer the cocktail hour). But obviously there's a few, um, logistical problems with that, not the least of which I am on a diet and cannot eat donuts.

There is one thing I want to say- in the comments on the last post, I responded to Yellowgirl's analogy about waiting for a marriage proposal- the gist of which is that by not mentioning it, by not pushing it, he came around so much quicker to the idea in his own time. I suppose I was slightly flippant in my remarks, but the nub of what I meant was this: if I have to wait for a further decision to pursue IVF treatment for as long as I have been waiting for a marriage proposal, I could be waiting a looooooong time.

Please understand, I'm not drawing any particular correlation to E.'s attitudes toward wedded bliss and his thinking about further treatment, because that's not really how it works in the parameters of our relationship. In fact, I was trying in my offhand way to make a different point entirely. And that is, when it comes to E., "not mentioning it" is not necessarily a sure fire tactic. Admittedly, it's probably the preferable approach overall- even though holding my tongue about things like this is not my strong suit. But with E., there is no guarantee that leaving him on his own to think about something is actually going to help either.

If we're going to make it through this, I think we need to draw a line in the sand of the no-man's land between us. And then ultimately someone has to take a step toward the other side.

If nothing else, perhaps one day we will manage to meet in the middle.

Meeting Amy

Hurrah! The first interesting thing I mentioned earlier came to pass yesterday. I had a special visitor here at the Barn, none other than the ever delightful Amy, she of Fertilely Challenged fame.

I had refrained from speaking of it until now, because I was worried that like the best laid plans, this one would somehow get derailed by a last minute work/domestic crisis. And then no one would believe me when I claimed that I was having blogger meetage. After all, the Barn is, admittedly, some ways off the beaten track- in a place where "summer" in the usual sense (you know- heat, sun etc.) is something of an urban legend.

What can I tell you about Amy? Let's see. For starters, she's punctual. Always a plus in my books. There's something ever so slightly daunting about a pre-arranged meeting of someone from the Internets. Even though you are completely confident that they are who they say they are, there is a part of your brain that wonders if in fact they may turn out to be, say, an elderly Dutch woman with a wooden leg, or a crazed axe murderer with a bloodlust for infertile girls.

Happily, Amy arrived right on time at the designated meeting place, which left virtually no opportunity for my tiny mind to dwell on such unwholesome paranoia.

Another thing about Amy- she appreciates, as I do, the value of a good "Happy Hour" offer. Buy two large glasses of wine and get the rest of the bottle free! Yippee! There's nothing like a couple of glasses of house vino to loosen the tongue- not that we really needed any such incentive, since within a few moments of perching on those ghastly trendy bar stools, we were gabbing away like we'd known each other forever.

Oh, and yet another thing- she's a funny, sassy, articulate, insightful and interesting conversationalist. She has a lovely deep and frequent laugh. Not only that, but she is a good listener. Unlike so many other people who have heard me ramble about our infertility woes, she didn't glaze over, tune out, or change the subject. Although we did both veer off, frequently, into frivolous talk-such as current hot trends in jeans and handbags.

I'm sure someone else has posted about this recently (forgive me but I cannot for the life of me remember who)- but it occured to me during the evening that I was experiencing this overwhelming feeling of relief to be in the company of someone who totally and completely gets my situation. I think it is the first time since this infertility lark began that I have truly felt that comfort. Not only that, but as we were sitting there talking, I thought to myself- here's a woman who has been through IVF three times, been through more medical crap than I can even contemplate. It didn't work for her, and there's no obvious reason why. But it wasn't the end of her- far, far from it. Quite the opposite. I sense very good things are coming Amy's way soon. That was very encouraging, especially for someone like me, as I stand on the brink of so much uncertainty.

Rather amusingly, E., who as I think I have mentioned is not often in the same city as me during the working week- suddenly- and for no apparent reason, decided he wanted to drive over that night. He had emailed me earlier to announce that he was "at a bit of a loose end" and "what was I doing later?"

"Sweetness," I replied, "I am happy for you to join us, but I am meeting Amy for drinks & dinner, remember?"

I don't know if somehow the synapses in his brain were not firing, or if I was somehow typing in Greek, but this message repeatedly failed to penetrate his cerebrum. Consequently, when I finally remembered (at the end of Happy Hour, just before we went to the restaurant) to turn on my mobile phone, he was rather grumpy that I was not at home.

"Where are you?" I asked.

"I'm at the flat. Our flat. I thought we'd have something to eat."

" Ahem. May I remind you, as I have done repeatedly over the last several days, and indeed a mere few hours ago, that I. AM. HAVING. DINNER. WITH. AMY."

Oh.

Turns out he was too tired to come out and meet us (plus he had started cooking dinner!) but like a good sport, he drove into town later to pick us up and give Amy a lift back to her hotel. Unfortunately, instead of looking like the delicious Sex God he so essentially is, he chose to appear in a rather peculiar ensemble of baggy biking shorts with a grubby old jersey on top, and a pair of nasty old sneakers on his feet. Mmm, scruffy, and not really in a sexy way.

Sorry, Amy. He's really so much hotter than that, I promise. And not usually so absent minded. Please do come back and see us again- and with any luck, next time you'll be bringing your daughter with you.

Pebble in my shoe

I'll put a pebble in my shoe
And watch me walk, I can walk and walk
I shall call the pebble dare
We will talk together about walking
Dare shall be carried, and when we both have had enough
I will take him from my shoe, singing, "Meet your new road"
                                                  - By My Side

One more month (minus a day) to go until the next appointment. I am wondering whether to stick up a giant calendar in my study with large red X's to mark the progress of time. Or maybe I will just claw another notch in the walls of my cell with my blunted, bloody stumps of fingers.

I was thinking today about the apparent and sudden mass migration from blogging.  I have also noticed a few comments elsewhere along the lines of "It's a sad time in Blogland"- not specifically in reference to the migration as such, but more in terms of things just going badly in certain quarters.  And that in turn reminded me of a conversation I had the other night with a fellow blogger, in which we mutually commiserated that we were stuck dealing with infertility, and really, wasn't that just basically shitty. Why us? 

What I think is this: by definition, a community such as ours at any one time is more than likely to beset by bad and disappointing news. For every happy announcement, at that precise moment, there is almost certainly going to be somebody else laid low by crushing disappointment.  I mean, let's face it, would any of us be here in the first place if things were going so great?  We are, by our very nature, a group of women (and a few men- sit up BHM, I am talking about you) drawn together by a particular problem.

We bring our own set of baggage to the tour bus, but almost all of us have bought the season pass for the same reason.  A lot of us sign up at a point where things have become so unbearable that we simply cannot live in our own heads anymore, and for the sake of our sanity, need to tell someone our particular story, even if that story is relayed in raw, frayed, gasping segments.

So to my mind, it is not really surprising that on many occasions, and at any given time, that the Way of the IF Blogger is bound to be underpinned with a fine and widespread pattern of sadness.

There have been many days when I have logged on to read news from a fellow castaway that has cut me to the core.  A reaction made all the more remarkable, given that I have never met any of you in the traditional sense, and wouldn't know you if I bumped into you at the bus stop in "real life".   Sometimes, I feel so sick at heart after reading the latest round up of blog posts from my friends that I wonder why I do it at all.  I wonder how much sadness can one stalwart little band of kickass women endure. 

I suppose the answer to that is in some cases, a finite amount. However, what I take from my time along the great roll of blogs is more often than not balanced with a large helping of laughter, a generous portion of perspective, and a constant reminder that nothing in life should be taken for granted. Sometimes I wish more than anything that we could all meet up in a parallel universe, where our stories were brighter, and the heartache and sadnesses were merely illusions. A place where we were were all guaranteed an upgrade to happy endings.

But we are where we are, and I expect that we'll continue to take the rough with the smooth. Unfortunate as it may be that it took infertility to bring us to this place- well, I can't help but be damned glad to meet you all the same.

And for those that are going, or taking a break, I wish you well and godspeed, on all your new roads.   

Loneliness of the Long Distance Blogger

Guess what, dear friends and fellow castaways?  It's my one year blogiversary today!  I suppose that calls for some form of comment, an extra helping of cake and ice cream, and perhaps some tiny tapdancing on the keyboard.

I suppose what would be appropriate is to offer up an insight into how things have changed for me in the past year, both in infertility and in my blogging life. The thing is, I am not sure that much has changed, at least not in the visible sense.  I've watched other bloggers go through big, important changes- moving through pregnancies, adoption, or difficult decisions about family building. And I feel like much of the time, I have pretty much stayed in the same place- high up in the Island watchtower, scanning the horizon, waiting.  It's been lonely up here sometimes, wondering if my turn and my chance will ever ever come. Just lately I have sensed a fresh wind blowing, and I hope it's sending a ship my way.  But meantime, I'm still up here...still waiting.

The real changes have, I think, been largely in my head.  When I first started writing this post, I thought to myself that I haven't really changed at all as a person.  In many ways, I am exactly the same was when I started out- it's just that I have brought all those personality traits to this particular problem.  So I am the way I always have been- silly, deeply introspective, whimsical, fiesty, clumsy, self-pitying, optimistic, worried, wary and extremely curious about what lies ahead for me.  It's just that infertility has been the filter through which I have expressed all those things. 

Admittedly, I can add that I am probably now a little older and wiser about the pitfalls and perils of infertility, but we have a long way to go, and no doubt I am not done yet with those lessons.  I like to believe though that whatever happens, I am going to be OK.  One of the best things to happen in the recent months was the quiet, unremarked acceptance of the very thing I feared that most when we started out- that we really are infertile. 

So we are.  So we're dealing with it. So the earth continues to rotate on its pointy axis. So I'm still getting out of bed in the morning and going to work. Breathing in and out. Rolling my eyes at the loonieness of the world. Planning a future with my beloved E., come what may, and all the while laughing, fighting, screwing and dancing gabba gabba hey when a good song comes on the radio. 

It's been worrying me a little recently that in the absence of any immediate appointments, treatments and other assorted crisis/dramas that I have nothing much to say. It made me wonder if perhaps I was not as...well-rounded as I could be, not as multi-faceted and interesting as I always gave myself credit for.  Like maybe it was time to get a hobby, or embark on a big project, like trying to write a novel.  Because what concerns me greatly is that at the end of all this, I'll discover that infertility was the only real story I ever had to tell.

I suppose what I've concluded is that this wouldn't be such a bad thing- as long as I told it truly, and told it well.

So as we move into Season Two, I'll ask you all to help me out with that. If there are things you'd like to hear more about, please let me know.  If there are things you wish I'd shut up about, well, that would be interesting feedback too.  Or if you're just a lurker who has never commented, I'd be delighted if you'd take this opportunity to pipe up, even if you lapse back into stealthy blog skulkage immediately thereafter.

Time for a celebratory drink, I think.  I'm pretty sure I brought a bottle of something up here with me. And as I am writing this, I'm looking at the most beautiful sunset. 

Sometimes, the view from the Watchtower isn't so bad after all.    

Google Hits a-go go

I'm tired. It's been a growler of a week at work, and there have been some other things going on behind the scenes at the Barn which have sort of sapped me. So to be honest, I am not feeling hugely post-ish at the moment.

In the absence of anything orginial and creative, I bring you that old stand-by: Funny Google Searches.

You see, I was checking something back at the old site a couple days ago, and I happened to click on the site meter. There I found a rich treasure trove of Google search hits- which seems to be the only means by which people still visit that site.

So without further ado:

Men Trouble

"My husband doesn't understand my infertility"

Gee, that's too bad. What doesn't he understand, exactly? Because my doctor seems to think that repeatedly drawing diagrams really does the trick. "This is your uterus. These are your eggs on drugs. Go, sperm, go. Etcetera, etcetera." After a dozen or sketches, what's not to understand?

Oh, and it's interesting how it's your infertility. Call me old-fashioned, but I always kind of thought infertility was a shared thing between a couple.

"My ex-boyfriend is having a baby"

Huh. I wasn't aware that technology has advanced that far, but I can see how it would piss you off that he's doing so, if you still can't manage to get knocked up!

"My boyfriend won't propose"

No, mine neither, damn him. I try to take comfort in the fact I nonetheless have secured his undying love.

"Made to measure lingerie beneath his kilt"

Again, huh. I do have some experience in the old under the kilt department, but so far, I've not encountered, er, lingerie. Quite the opposite. Interesting notion, though. I wonder if there is a market for "Mare's Kinky Kiltwear".

"TTC Classique"

"Should I lift heavy objects after an IUI/IVF/during the two week wait?"

Good God, no! I don't know about the medical reasons, but that's what menfolk are for- or possibly your more energetic female friends. Personally, I plan on taking "relaxation" to new levels during my 2ww. If at all possible, the only lifting I will be doing is raising the ice cream spoon to my mouth.

"Is a strange flavour in my mouth a pregnancy symptom?"

Um, dunno. Could be. It wasn't for me that time. But I have heard that others have experienced odd mouthy sensations that tipped them off to the big ole BFP in the Sky.

"Giving up coffee before IVF"

Well. Yes. I've said I would, but I suck, and I haven't. SO SUE ME.

Equine sexiness, or possibly just eeeeeeewwwww

"SEXY PIGGY"

Yes? You summoned me?

"mare clitoris"

Yes, I have one. I have no idea if horses do, as well. I've never gotten close enough to look.

"Can I fuck mare"

Dearie me. I don't know if you can, but if you are referring to me personally, then no, you may not. I am spoken for, and in any event I usually require a bit more foreplay than that.

If you are referring to actual horses, then I don't really care what you do, but I don't want to know about it.

"Can a man get a mare pregnant?"

Well, it would appear in the immediate case, the answer is no. Again, if you are referring to actual horses, well, please do your genetic cross-species mutation experiments in your own time.

The Sad Ones

"Pregnant, but worried I'll miscarry"

I am very sorry to hear about that. I wish I had some insight to offer, but having never been pregnant, I am probably not best placed to advise. I suggest you try the next blog along, down the hall, second door on the right. Good luck, I hope everything turns out OK for you.

And now, I'm going to flop on the sofa in my low slung, oversized jeans and a cold beer, to mindlessly watch crap telly with E. til our eyes bug out and brains seep out of our ears.

Campfire Circle

When I made the big move to Typepad, I decided to do away with my old Blogroll.  This was largely to do with the fact that by that point, my blog-reading had transcended beyond that list, and it was becoming impossible for the blogroll to accurately reflect all the various sites I was visiting on any given day.  Plus for cosmetic reasons, I thought the link to the Big Two Blog Rolls of Infertility/Adoption/Parenthood (Julie and Milenka's respective lists) should just about cover it.  And, since then I have discovered the joys of Bloglines; which in some ways has rendered the practical need for a blogroll even less.

But. When I first started out in this ole blogging lark, I remember how much of a thrill I would get when I would visit someone's site and see they had linked to me.  Actually, who am I kidding, I still get a thrill (not to mention a large proportion of my daily hits) from such links.  So it seems a shame not to give a similar boost, and return the favour to others from time to time, especially to those new bloggers who are perhaps not yet as well known or trafficked.  Not that I myself am the most popular pumpkin in the pumpkin patch, but you know, every little bit helps.

So here's the deal. I have created a new Typelist: The Campfire. The purpose of this is to highlight a few recommended blogs which I have recently discovered (some new, some maybe not so new). In addition, I may occasionally add a link to other blogs if there is something interesting going on there- a hot debate, a hilarious post, or a particular need for support and wagon-circling.

If you are a brand new blogger and would like to be spotlighted, e-mail me and let me know. If you are a longstanding blogger with an unquenchable thirst for fame, power and site hits, then e-mail me too. It's an open opportunity campfire.  Conversely, if you find yourself centre stage, and for whatever reason find that uncomfortable or objectionable, please do let me know and I will do the necessary to remedy that at once. 

I should stress from the get-go that the Campfire list is, by its very nature, intended to be impermanent.  It will probably shuffle often.  In some ways that's the whole point of the exercise. Therefore, please do not be offended if your blog is there one day, and the next time has been replaced by another.  That does not mean that you are suddenly no longer interesting, or that anyone has been kicked out of the fire circle. It just means that like life, all is in a constant state of flux.*

*(Of course, if you are desperate to retain your campfirey status, I have been known to be swayed on occasion by bribes of cookies and other gift offerings. Just a thought.)