Chez Perky

New Home

Okay, I'm set up in my new home.  I don't have any real new posts set up yet, but I'll get there, eventually. 

Anywhozit, the new home is at http://chezperky.wordpress.com

This will enable me to password protect posts on a case-by-case basis, as I see fit, which is the one failing of typepad, despite the fact that I pay for the privilege of using typepad.  Despite all the improvements that they'er making to TypePad right now - this doesn't seem to be something that they're working on right now, and I'm tired of waiting, and I'm also not willing to password protect my entire blog.  I've been there/done that and it doesn't work for me or my philosophy of blogging.

Thanks for hanging in there with me.  I've appreciated all of your support over the last few weeks.

Shutting Down

I am shutting down this blog soon.  Email me for details if you want them:  chezperky [at] gmail [dot] com

Mission Accomplished

I finally figured out how to get around my inability to import my old blogger blog.  Blogger's export function isn't compatible with Typepad (bah), but it IS compatible with Wordpress.  Well, duh, I have a wordpress blog (it's merely a placeholder for this blog, but it DOES exist).  So I imported my blogger blog over there and THEN imported my wordpress blog over here.  I'll have to go through later and get rid of duplicate entries from back when I was crossposting, but meanwhile, I'm glad to have my old archives, and I've made "My Perky Ovaries" a private blog. 

Whahoo.

Scratch another thing off the to-do list. 

Surely I had other things to do on the to-do list, but none of them were quite as mindless and the only reason I was awake was that I was waiting for the corned beef to finish cooking for tonight's dinner so that I could go to bed.  Then I went to sleep.  So mindless activity was a good thing.

New Blogs

I figure it's been long enough that I can go ahead and post here and let any stragglers know - my new blog is http://chezperky.typepad.com/ , so if you're still looking for me, that's where I've been posting for the last six months or so. I do still occasionally get an email asking me where I've gone to, and my statcounter hits for this blog are still pretty high considering how long it's been since I've posted.

The triplets are now 16 months old (as of tomorrow). J-man is now 5 years old. Shocking as it may seem, I'm now trying for a singleton. Crazy, I know. Email me for that URL.

Hope to hear from you!

Coffee Date

One of the best things about blogging is that I've gotten to meet all sorts of really amazing women, both online and in person.  I have built relationships that I never would have had the opportunity to build otherwise - I have made friends that I never could have hoped to have made otherwise.  I first started making new friends through the infertility blogosphere, and let me tell you - the infertility blogosphere is made up of some of the most incredible, strong, supportive women on the planet.  They are funny, they are intelligent, they are empathetic, they are generous and they are kind.  I never thought I could be more blessed with such a strong sense of community within the blogosphere. 

Then I found myself pregnant with triplets, terrified and alone.  I found Jody's blog first and she helped me wade through some of the first scary weeks and decisions and concerns.  Jessica found me next and she's become one of my closest, dearest friends ever.  Then Cherie emailed me, and gave me lots of good advice and told me about all the other great blogs of lots of other local triplet mamas and we eventually formed a google group to keep up with one another, and have even had a picnic together last summer.  I quickly discovered that the triplet community was every bit as supportive and wonderful as the infertility community.  We reach out to each other and share a common bond and it is a beautiful thing.  I love that when I meet someone with triplets we instantly connect and we can talk as if we've known each other our whole lives. 

Even as I've started writing more about the J-man and his ADHD, I've had people email me and support me in ways I never could have anticipated- locals and non-locals.  Women who have been where I am and who can tell me that there is a light further down in the tunnel.  People who support this parenting journey that I'm on.  People who haven't been there, but who want me to know that they respect what we're going through.  It's astounding the level of support that the blogosphere is bursting with.  I am ever so grateful for my friends inside the computer, and if I don't say so often enough - THANK YOU for everything you do for me, for each other, for everyone each and every day.

I love having the opportunity to meet my friends inside the computer in real life, so when the beautiful and charming Helene emailed me and said she'd be in town this week, I knew I couldn't pass up an opportunity to grab a cup of coffee with this delightful mother to triplets plus a bonus baby!  I picked Helene up at her hotel while her kids were napping and we went over to Starbucks to grab a cup of coffee (she grabbed something that wasn't remotely coffee, but what EVER, give a girl some literary license here, okay?).  We had such a delightful time just chatting away about our kids, babies, time passing, NICU days, blogging...  It would have been the perfect way to spend some time, if we weren't for the conspicuous absence of our triplet mama, blogging partner in crime, Jessica.  Oh sure, Jessica had the world's best excuse, what with her husband being in the hospital with meningitis and all, but come ON!  This was a couple of bloggin' triplet mamas!  It was a pretty piss-poor excuse to miss out on THAT kind of fun, don't you think?  Seriously, next time you don't want to have coffee with us, you might want to come up with something a LITTLE less dramatic, dear.  Anyway, we missed you, but we still had a good time.

Fortunately, Helene remembered to bring her camera (me?  Not so much).  Unfortunately, neither of us remembered to bring our life sized cardboard cut out of Jess to pose in the picture with us, so the picture is just of Helene and myself. Ah well:

Compromised

One of the reasons that I moved this blog to TypePad  was because some "real life" friends, who I had not explicitly given the URL to my blog (so I'm not referring to you, Julie or Diana, or any of you others that know that I explicitly gave you this URL), had found my  blog over at My Perky Ovaries.  Too many had found it, really.  I had other things push me over the edge, but when I stopped feeling comfortable posting about my feelings about infertility, and knowing that I was getting closer to moving back to Ye Old Fertility Clinic, I knew it was time to pick up and move.

Some of my real life friends knew I was moving in part because I had been "found" and they felt badly about having found me, even though it was obviously through no fault of their own.  I have a public blog, for a reason, and therefore, I can't expect everyone to stay out, now can I?  Even if I didn't use my name, my likeness, or my childrens' names, the fact that I'm an Orthodox Jew with triplets, an older child with a slightly-less-than-normal-legal-situation, etc. makes me pretty distinguishable to the people that know me in real life.  So removing my names and pictures from my blog wouldn't really help me, and I'm not interested in creating a whole new internet personality for the sake of anonymity, because I try to be ME as much as possible.

When one of my friends found my old blog, I told her specifically that the fact that she and others had found it was precisely the reason I was moving my blog.  She asked with interest what the new name for my new blog would be and I very specifically did not tell her the new name of the blog.  I clearly said that the things that I want the whole world to know, I post elsewhere, in a blog that she already reads. 

I know that people I know in real life will find this blog. I'm not naive.  I also know that the vast majority of them read this blog in silence, and I thank them for pretending to respect my privacy, though I recognize that the only way I will have true privacy is to password protect my blog, which I have my own reasons for not doing.  They're good reasons, which I don't need to share at this time, but believe me, they're good and valid. 

But this friend, who I specifically told I was moving the blog so that real life people would not be reading my thoughts on infertility and the like... this friend apparently went looking for my blog again.  And not only did she go looking for my blog, and not only did she find my blog and read my thoughts, she left footprints.  She commented in my blog.  Twice.

I recognize that I have no right to ask for privacy from the general public.  But when I ask a friend explicitly to respect a boundary, I think that's another thing all together. Find my blog?  Sure.  Read my blog?  By all means, be a voyeur.  But rub it in my face when I made it clear I didn't want you here?  That's just tacky.

And now I feel compromised, even though I realize I have no right to expect privacy in the public world of blogging. 

I will continue blogging, but I do know this:  when I return to Ye Old Fertility Clinic in the fall, I won't be blogging about it.  Or if I do, I won't be blogging about the specifics of dates of retrieval, transfer, test results, things like that.  No one will know, from my blog anyway, what exactly is going on.  Because I don't even have the facade anymore of pretending that my friends won't know the inner details of my pregnancy test results.

In my community, we don't tell people we're expecting until we are beyond the first three months or so, though I've been known to let a few people in on the joke.  The first time I was pregnant, I told people in my community that I was pregnant when I got to three months, and a day later, I had a miscarriage.  I've sworn I'll never do that again.   It's one thing if people are reading and I don't have it shoved in my face that they're reading.  It's quite another if they are reminding me of it.

I never thought I would censor myself on my blog, and I'm sorry to do it.  The reason I moved was so that I would stop censoring myself.  Maybe I'll get over myself and just write about it anyway, but right now?  Right now I just feel... compromised. 

Looking for Chez Perky?

If you're looking for the exciting adventures of Chez Perky, J, and the Triplets... please head over to the real home of Chez Perky

Thanks!

Fiji?

Okay, I think it's seriously cool that I have a reader in Fiji.  FIJI! 

I don't know WHY I think that's any cooler than the fact that I have readers in New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Germany, Spain, Italy, Great Britain, France, Florida, California, Minnesota, Texas, or Norway, but I do think it's nifty.  Hey, why don't I have any readers in South America?

Actually, I also think it's cool that I have a reader in Saskatchewan.  In fact, the reader in Saskatchewan got me thinking...  She's 760km from her nearest IVF clinic, so should IUIs not work for her and should she need a referral to the IVF clinic, can you imagine that commute?  It makes me very grateful for the many advantages I have for living in a major metropolitan area, where I have at least five relatively major fertility clinics within a reasonable driving distance (some more convenient than others) and many other "minor" independent clinics.  If I extended my radius to 760km... I'm not sure I could count that high.  So, thank you, dear reader, for reminding me of my many blessings.  And best of luck to you on your next cycle.  I'm thinking of you and I hope you don't mind me disclosing any of these details for all to read, however anonymously I did so. 

I think I'd like to visit Fiji some day.  I'd visit Australia if it weren't for the giant spiders.  *shiver*  Does Fiji have giant spiders?  If so, I can't go there.  Maybe New Zealand.  I like sheep.  Are there spiders in New Zealand?  I would think not.  Sheep are too warm and fuzzy to associate with spiders, don't you think?

Come to think of it, I'm not much of a beach person, so why would I want to go to Fiji?  Maybe New Zealand is better.   Still, doesn't Fiji sound relaxing?  I think I need to relax.

Still Posting

I'm still posting at my new blog, so if you're wondering where I am... I'm over there, and you're missing all the fun. Email me for the new URL!

Are You Missing All the Fun?

I've got two new posts up at the new blog. Are you missing all the fun? Do you have the new URL? I'm not cross-posting anymore, now that NCLM is over, so email me for the new URL. You don't have to "apply", there are no special requirements. Just ask and ye shall receive!