The High Tech Way

Holiday parties, and other stuff

You know, I never wanted to be the one to "out" myself regarding my pre-existing relationship with Cecily and her husband Charlie because, well,
a) it felt like it would be a cheap attempt to get a lot of traffic that I didn't deserve, and
b) it didn't seem like my place.

But I've admired Cecily since I tripped over her blog in the spring of 2006, a few months before Tori was born. I'd never really been a blog reader before, but I devoured her blog quickly.  It was interesting to me because of the shared history, but as I read more and more of it it, I knew there was more to it than that. Cecily lives and writes bravely and nakedly and that makes her an outrageously entertaining writer.  And she also felt like a kindred spirit to me, because she and her husband had also been on a journey of infertility and loss (and I'd learned via brief emails with Charlie about some of it -- and shared some of my own with them -- before I even discovered Cecily's blog )

Cecily's blog soon led me to dozens and dozens of other awesome blogs and I felt as if I'd discovered a whole new world -- a world of great women writers, and a world of subfertile sisters documenting their journeys, pain and triumphs.

And Cecily's blog and the blogs of these other women ultimately inspired me to start this little place of my own over here. It's not much, and it's surely neglected lately as I try to figure out what's next (and try to find time in the midst of a lot of career angst due to the craziness in my distressed industry, not to mention a one-year-old and a three-year-old).

Cecily and Charlie were brave enough to invite me, my husband and our boys over for their holiday open house. Although I hadn't seen either of them in more than 12 years (not really sure how long it's been past that), I was not surprised by their graciousness, which really comes through in what they write and post online too, as you know.  They are just the same in person, and Tori is just as adorable and beautiful. It was a lovely evening for David and me and the boys.

And someday, when we finally get our new house together (nearly two years since we moved now), we plan to have them over here as well.

The whole experience has added to the whole holiday good will/happy spirit feeling, and I'm grateful to them for that goodness.

Hope it doesn't freak anyone out too much :)

What Mark Twain said about San Francisco (or so the urban legend goes)

Just going through my RSS reader this morning and noticed some favorites are going to San Francisco to the BlogHer conference there.  It only occurred to me this morning that these folks may not have been to San Francisco before in July. (This blogger not included since she lives there already) That made me think of the first baseball game I attended at Candlestick Park after moving to the SF Bay area.  It was 90 degrees in San Jose, just a few miles south.  So I wore my shorts and t-shirt to Candlestick, against the advice of my then fiance. It was in the high 50s and windy at Candlestick.  I nearly froze my ovaries off. Which makes me want to turn the clock back to yesterday so I could tell my friends who are going to BlogHer to PACK SOMETHING WARM TO WEAR! You gonna FREEZE if you pack just summer clothes!

There's an old quote attributed to Mark Twain (that folks now say he actually never said)  But it sounds like him nonetheless:

"The coldest winter I ever spent was the summer I spent in San Francisco."

Godspeed, BlogHer attendees. Godspeed.

My blog midlife crisis

So where have I been? Mostly lurking and reading other people's sites and posts. Also thinking about the fact that this blog's name and original intention is different from where I am now, and wondering what to do about it.  I like having a personal blog like this one.  But I'm troubled that most of my search engine traffic gets here because they are pursuing infertility treatments and searching words like Follistim and embryo.  When they arrive at this site they are seeing stories about my kiddos, or photos.  I know it would have been hard for me to stumble on things like that during some points of my infertility journey.

And yet, I think there are some posts and resources here that could be useful or comforting to those in the midst of their infertility journey. That's what I wanted this place to be, after all -- a place where I could share things about my journey with others who followed me (and plenty of others) down that path.

Also, I've been thinking about Wordpress and switching to that platform.  But that would involve MOVING everything which seems like a big deal until you do a search on it and other people have done it.  And while I do have some nice Feedburner traffic here, there's not a huge amount of other traffic here that I would lose by moving from this URL.

So I guess I could move the infertility content to one domain and the personal blog stuff to another one.  I would just pretty much gut what is here to do it.  But maybe gutting it is better than leaving it here to languish because I'm frozen in time unsure about what to post here because my place in life has changed from what it was two years ago.

But, I haven't made up my mind. Probably because it makes me a little sad to think about gutting what I've built.  I've "met" people I really like and I've learned a lot. I want to be able to take all the good stuff with me too.

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On a separate note, it's Spring still and there are pregnant women everywhere.  You'd think that I'd be all satisfied with the amazing wonderful sons that I have (and you know that I am full of joy to spend every moment that I can with them) but I have found myself secretly longing to be one of those pregnant women again.  Am I out of my mind???!!!  I've just started getting sleep again.  I'm still nursing this last one.  And, most importantly, I am 43!  I finally succeed in dismissing this whole thing as total foolishness on my part, and then James' teacher at the daycare tells me that her 50 year old aunt is pregnant.  And the other teacher tells me that she had her three children after she was 40 years old.  And there's one more story like that.  And then someone else has another story like that.  Where are these people coming from? 

My time management problem

Back in the late 90s I flew from San Jose, California to New York City to attend a trade show for work.  My flight was in the evening and my boss had scheduled my annual performance review for 6 am the morning after the night I arrived at his hotel room.

Can I tell you, I was late for this.  I mean, the freaking performance review was scheduled at a time of day when it was most likely for me to fail -- at 3 am by my body clock -- due to the 3 hour time difference between the east and west coast that I'd not been given any time at all to acclimate to.

My boss was annoyed that I was late for this meeting and told me during my review that I had a time management problem.  This was the most negative thing that anyone had ever said to me during a performance review, and thus it has stuck with me for the last 10 years.   My boss pointed out that my colleague and dear friend, who held the same position, had time to take cigarette breaks during the day.  (Of course this sent my 3 month cigarette quit straight to hell).

(This is the same boss who would walk by my office and not say anything, just snap his fingers, to summon me to a meeting.) This boss is long gone from my life, BTW.

But being labeled this way had the effect of perpetuating this so-called problem I had. For example, my boss sent me to a time management seminar. I was an hour late to this one.   (My cat, who needed antibiotics twice a day after a tooth extraction, didn't want them and hid under the bed for a half an hour.  And then I was so late that I didn't take the time to look up the proper directions to the location of the seminar. Sigh.  I was a big joke when I arrived so late for the freaking thing.)

Another encounter with this boss:  I told him that I needed more time to complete a specific task so could he please move the Tuesday meeting to a half hour later?  (I had double the work my colleagues had in regard to this particular task.)  He, of course, thought I was blowing smoke.  That is until one day when I had an out of office meeting and he had to fill in for me, completing the task on my behalf.  That very day he permanently changed the meeting to a half hour later so there would be enough time for me to finish.   The only thing that worked on him was letting him experience the challenge himself, because he didn't ever listen to what I had to say. But I digress.

So whenever I think about something I'm feeling guilty about, even today, I have a tendency to attribute it to my so-called time management problem.  For example, catching up on everyone's blogs that I've fallen behind on as I did three business trips in the last two weeks.  I feel terrible about it and feel as if it is a personal failing, rather than giving myself a break because I have been working at such a crazy pace since the beginning of the month.

Anyway, in case you haven't heard back from me on emails or your most excellent blog posts, in case you get an email response two weeks after you sent an email to me, please forgive me.  It is my chronic time management problem rearing its ugly head again.