Time Warp Tuesday: Comic Relief

Let’s do the Time Warp again!

Welcome to the sixth installment of my blog hop/writing exercise called Time Warp Tuesday here on Four of a Kind!

Today is also the first day of NaBloPoMo, so if you found your way here from the Blogroll (I’m #327 on the list of over 900 and counting now), a warm welcome to you! This post is what I hope and intend will be the first of thirty posts, in thirty days, here on my blog. I appreciate your encouragement and I am excited to be giving NaBloPoMo a try this year!

In case you missed my original post about Time Warp Tuesdays, here is the background of how and why I came up with the idea. If you are here to participate and link up your post, you can do so with the Linky Tools at the end of this post (or if you have any difficulty using it, you can share the link to your post in the comment section here).

The gist of Time Warp Tuesday is to revisit and share some of our favorite blog entries from our archives and reflect on our journeys since we wrote them.

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The theme for this week’s Time Warp Tuesday is: Comic Relief

As I shared in my post last week, so far I have chosen some heavier topics (depending on how they were interpreted) for Time Warp Tuesdays and thought it would be nice to pick something on the lighter side for this next round. So I asked participants to choose a post from your archives related to the theme of “comic relief,” where you wrote about something you did to try to get your mind off a difficult and/or uncertain time in your life. It might have been a fun and lighthearted blog entry off topic from what you usually write about (whether that has traditionally been infertility, loss or something else) or a creative post trying to poke fun at yourself and your journey. Then write a new post on your blog about why you chose it and what has happened in your life since.

Participants can write about whatever you want in your new blog entries. However, for those who might have needed some help and inspiration to get started, here are some questions to consider: Why did you pick this post? Has your perspective changed since the day you wrote your original post? Do you still find this post and/or what you wrote about as amusing and entertaining as you did at the time? Do you think you would still feel the same way if you were writing it today? What have you learned about yourself, your family and your life since you wrote your original post?

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Time Warp Tuesday: Comic Relief

This was not the easiest topic for me, as I am not (intentionally) that funny of a person. It’s not that I don’t ever try to be funny, but using humor in conversation is just not one of my strengths. Growing up I didn’t understand or appreciate sarcasm for the most part. My dad was a big joker (specializing in telling jokes and using puns), so we did laugh a lot in my family. But using sarcasm was discouraged and thus I rarely tried to use it when interacting with others. When I met my husband Bob 15 years ago everything changed, I had to learn to take, deal with and even give it out now and then.

I wrote this post less than a month after I started blogging in May 2007. We were waiting to find out if our first IVF cycle had been successful. It is one of my few attempts at humor over the 4 1/2 years that I have been blogging, other than a line or a paragraph in one of my posts now and then. I have always been a fan of “Top Ten” lists, so this post was inspired by years of watch David Letterman and his writers share their fun and creative commentary in the form of “Top Ten Things…”

Here is the link to the post that I chose:

My Top Ten Lists for Today

Please go and read the post that I am reflecting on today (and comment if you choose), if you haven’t already, and then come back here to see what I have to say about my journey since I wrote it.

***Here is where you left off before you stopped to read my old post.***

Reading this post that I wrote almost 4 1/2 years ago is bittersweet. I can see how optimistic I felt in the midst of our first IVF cycle and yet I also seemed to have realistic expectations as to whether or not we had been successful that time around. It was fun to get a glimpse of what I was doing “to keep my mind off whether or not we were pregnant” back then and to see the ways that I tried to use some “comic relief” during a very stressful and uncertain time in my life.

At this current stage of my life I still try to be optimistic and focus on positive things, even during difficult and uncertain times. It doesn’t surprise me that I tried in this old post to find things to look forward to if our IVF cycle was not successful, as well as to think about all the reasons that our first try with IVF might have actually worked!

As it turned out our first IVF cycle was not successful, nor was the second (which had to be converted to IUI when things weren’t going well), or even our third ART cycle/second try with another round of IVF. By the time we finally tried our first FET cycle in September/October 2007, I had started to burn out on the process and wasn’t feeling nearly as hopefully and optimistic that our embryo would stick that time. Amazingly our fourth ART cycle did lead us to a BFP, but as you may know if you are familiar with my story, the embryo grew into our baby girl Molly who had a rare, severe and fatal combination of congenital heart defects. She was born and died just shy of 30 weeks gestation on April 17, 2008.

Anyway, my point in all of this was to try to look for a lighter post from my past and likewise to make this new post today more upbeat and fun. I think being able to find humor and poke fun at ourselves during stressful and uncomfortable experiences in our lives can be therapeutic and healing.

I still try to do that today when I am struggling with things in my life. Being married to someone who likes to joke around a lot certainly helps too. Trying to find ways to laugh at ourselves and various situations has been one of Bob’s coping mechanisms when we have dealt with hard times over the years.

Reading my old Top Ten List from May of 2007 inspired me to write one for my current life and situation. So I will leave you with that today:

Top Ten Things that Give Joy and Meaning to My Life:

10. Writing about, reflecting on and processing my life and experiences through this blog. I appreciate having the ability and opportunity to share here about our journey through secondary infertility and loss, as well as the joys, wonders and challenges that come with parenting our two living children.

9. Connecting with other writers in the comment section here on my blog, as well as following, reading and commenting on others’ blogs that never cease to amaze, inspire and move me through their writing.

8. Being able to run, teach and participate in group fitness classes regularly in our neighborhood. My mind, body and spirit all function so much better when I prioritize exercise.

7. Being active in our parish church community as a Second Grade Religious Education Teacher, a Eucharistic Minister and the Lay Director of our upcoming “CRHP” Women’s Retreat being held this coming weekend. My faith is very important to me and being able to use the gifts I have been blessed with to help others is validating for me.

6. Having close friends (some whom I have known for years and some newer ones) that love and care about me unconditionally. These incredible people help me to make sense of my life and this journey on a regular basis and I believe that I do the same thing for them.

5. Being able to see and spend quality time with our parents, siblings, in-laws, nieces and nephews (all of whom live in the Chicago area).

4. Settling into and enjoying life in our “forever home,” after finally being able to sell and move from our old house earlier this year.

3. “Living the dream” in so many ways, after years of trying, hoping, wishing, praying to make it happen.

2. Having a kind, caring, funny and handy (around the house) husband, who is also my best friend.

1. Having three fun, quirky, cute and loving children (two living with me here on Earth and one that I believe is watching over me from Heaven).

Thank you for reading and for doing the Time Warp with me this week. I look forward to your feedback about this post, as well as reading and commenting on all of yours. Please feel free to comment even if you didn’t write your own Time Warp Tuesday post this week. It is not too late to participate if you are interested, click here for the details.

Below you will find next week’s topic and I hope that you will join me back here on Tuesday when we “do the Time Warp again!”

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The topic for next week’s Time Warp Tuesday is: Meet-Ups
 
Note: Next week’s topic was suggested by Lori from Write Mind, Open Heart. If you have an idea for a future Time Warp topic, theme and/or writing prompt, please feel free to share it in the comment section or send me an email. If I choose to use your idea, I will give you credit and link to your blog that week!

No matter how long you may have been blogging, it is likely that you have formed relationships with others who also write and post about their lives on the internet. If we didn’t care about connecting with others who have some shared experiences, we likely would be content just to write in our own personal journals, rather than a public weblog. Sometimes we have the opportunity to meet another blogger in person and that can be a wonderful experience or maybe we have enjoyed the fantasy of getting to “meet-up” with a blogger that we feel a strong bond with or admire.

Choose a post from your archives where you wrote about “meeting” a blogger(s) offline. Your post might be about a time you were able to meet-up with another blogger and wrote about it on your blog or it can be a post where you shared about wanting to meet a blogger. Then write a new post on your blog about why you chose the post that you did and what has happened in your life since.

Participants can write about whatever you want in your new blog entries. However, for those who might need some help and inspiration to get started, here are some questions to consider:

Why did you pick this post? Has your perspective changed since the day you wrote your original post? Has your relationship with the blogger(s) you met up with offline changed since you got together? If so, how? If you haven’t gotten to meet the blogger(s) that you wrote about wanting to connect with in person, do you think you will ever get to meet-up with them? Do you think you would still feel the same way if you were writing your original post today? What have you learned about yourself, your family and your life since you wrote it?

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For those new to Time Warp Tuesday, here is a quick recap of how it works:

1) Browse through your old blog entries to find one that fits the topic for the given week. The topic is shared at the end of the previous week’s “Time Warp Tuesday” post here on my blog (see above for next week’s topic).

2) Write a new blog post in which you introduce, link to and then reflect on your journey since you wrote the older blog post and put it up on your blog on Tuesday. Please include this link http://chicagobensons.blogspot.com/search/label/Time%20Warp%20Tuesdays in your blog entry, so your readers can find their way to my post with the list of other participants, in case they would like to read more or participate themselves.

3) Share the link to your new post here on Tuesday and then visit, read and comment on the other blogs.

4) After you have done all of these things, you are welcome to grab the code for the the Time Warp Tuesday button by clicking here and put it on your blog. The link will take you to a Google Doc where you can copy the code. If your browser does not allow access to your computer’s clipboard, you can use Ctrl-C for Copy and Ctrl-V for Paste, or use your browser’s Edit menu.

5) Check back here every Tuesday to find out the new topic, theme or question for the following week (I welcome your ideas and suggestions) and then return to Step 1 of this recap to participate.

Please let me know if you have any questions and I hope to see you back here on next Tuesday when we’ll “do the time warp again!”

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Thank you again for reading, commenting and participating in my Time Warp Tuesday blog hop. Link up below and click through to visit others who are doing the Time Warp! (If you have any trouble with Linky Tools, please share the link to your blog entry in the comment section.). Also, please don’t forget to comment on my post here, as I do not have a link to this (my own) post below, but I would still really appreciate your feedback. xoxo

1. WMOpenHeart

2. Stumbling Grace