At the start of spring break, I made the Wolvog’s favourite salmon dish, and at the end of spring break, I made the ChickieNob’s favourite pasta. We sat down to eat, and Josh took the new pepper grinder, gave it a few twists over his plate, and the top flew off, showering his meal, the table, and a portion of the kitchen floor in peppercorns.

Faulty pepper mills happen. It was annoying, but I didn’t feel the need to talk about it. We cleaned the kitchen, dumped the pasta, and sent a note to the manufacturer (who shall not be named) to inform them about the defective pepper grinder. They wrote back that they would send us a coupon so we could replace the pepper. Excellent.

Three weeks later, the coupon arrived. It came with a warning that we needed to use it immediately because they would not reissue it once it expired in a few weeks. The amount on the coupon was less than the cost of a new pepper grinder. In other words, to replace our pepper grinder, we needed to pay them — not the full amount we spent the first time, but pay them for a portion of the replacement. So we got to pay them to replace our new pepper grinder with an even newer one, AND we got to eat the cost of the meal we had to toss because it was covered in a solid ounce of peppercorns.

And now it became all I could talk about, clearly, since I am telling you, too.

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

*******

I’ve been loving Deez Links’s hate reads. I don’t agree with all of them, and most I don’t have a strong opinion about, but this one I am firmly in agreement about: If you are the person who takes the group picture (or even a picture of a solitary person), send the picture. Do not say, “I just took the best photo,” and then not send the photo. Send the freakin’ photo.

I could not breathe reading this line because I was laughing so hard: “It feels humiliating to ask my friend to send them to me, to cop to an unspoken vulnerability (“I’d like to look at myself in case I look hot”) the same way buying a toilet plunger at 2 a.m. at the bodega alludes to urgent, obvious disaster.”

*******

Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts connected to businesses or sponsored posts.

Four years ago, at the start of the pandemic, our big Pesach crew reduced down to the four of us around our kitchen table. Even without the pandemic, our table would be smaller because it was the first Pesach after my cousin moved to another state, taking her family of four with her. But we hadn’t expected to spend the last few years with just the four of us singing “Dayenu.” We thought things would change and shift and grow. But that isn’t what happened.

And that is life.

This year, we are a seder for two. The kids may FaceTime in for dessert, but they have their own seders with their friends this year. And, yes, we could have made different choices with the holiday, but we didn’t. We chose this, so I’m in a place of acceptance and sadness.

I am in a place where I accept that I made this choice, and I am sad that I had this completely awesome experience for the last 19 years, and now my kids are far away, so I don’t have it anymore.

My holiday experience is not something I want to fix; I just want to be able to talk about being sad with other people responding, “I’m sorry you’re sad. Hope next year is better,” instead of making suggestions we’ve already considered and rejected because we like them less than the one we chose. I think it’s just very hard for people to hear how you feel without having the impulse to say, “Have you considered this?” Humans are fixers.

But that’s where I am: cooking for a seder for two, feeling lucky that it’s not a seder for one, and sad that it’s not a seder for four or more.

We filled up on pizza and pasta this week, which feels like a cheat. We’re essentially trying to make ourselves sick of things so we won’t miss them when we can’t eat them during Pesach. Which feels like a loophole, right? It’s like if you gorged on chocolate until you felt queasy at the sight of it and then said, “I’m giving up chocolate for Lent.”

I may be overthinking this.

In any case, I only have a few days left with bread, so that’s all I’m eating until the first seder starts on Monday.

*******

Stop procrastinating. Go make your backups. Don’t have regrets.

Seriously. Stop what you’re doing for a moment. It will take you fifteen minutes, tops. But you will have peace of mind for days and days. It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

*******

And now the blogs…

But first, second, helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week. To read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• None… sniff.

Okay, now my choices this week.

A Separate Life made me think deeply about autumn. Or, really, think deeply about spring because she is coming out of the season we’re entering. She writes, “It’s the season when we look at projects we wanted to do, and see them unfinished, or worse, even unstarted!” Reading this before summer begins (for me) means that I can go in with open eyes, trying to remember this valuable lesson from autumn, which sounds lovely in New Zealand.

Lastly, Bereaved and Blessed has a post on Molly’s 16th birthday/anniversary of her death. She explains the benefit of re-reading these old posts and remembering what she has been through. “When navigating difficult and uncertain times, I often think I’ve never felt like this before, it is so hard. However, in reality every age and stage of life is filled with challenges that can feel almost insurmountable while we are living through them.” Again, a bittersweet life lesson that I’m grateful she has put back into my head with this reminder.

The roundup to the Roundup: Trying to make myself not miss pasta. Your weekly backup nudge. And lots of great posts to read. So what did you find this week? Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between April 12 – 19) and not the blog’s main URL. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week. Read the original open thread post here.

The LA Times had an article about Generation Alpha a few weeks ago. I sent it to the twins because I was cackling over the dek: “They are already being called ‘feral,’ ‘illiterate,’ and ‘doomed’.”

I also laughed at the fact that the article spoke about Boomers, Millennials, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha. Um… hello? What about Gen X?

But after laughing about the article with my little Gen Zs, I turned to Josh and said, “If Gen Alpha doesn’t read, we need to start hoarding books because they’re going to shut down the publishing industry like Gen Z is killing off dating apps.

“Start hoarding?” Josh asked. Yes, we own a lot of books. Maybe more books than I could finish in this lifetime. But they’re not new books. They’re not just published books. (Except for the ones that are currently just published, but they will be old by the time Gen Alpha grows up and kills books.)

I feel like it’s my job to keep the publishing world marching forward.