613th Friday Blog Roundup

Pottermore has finally posted its patronus test, but I haven’t taken it yet.  Part of it is because I want my patronus to be a black cat, so if it’s not a black cat, I’m going to have to do some major mental shifting.  Part of it is because I’m not really in the mood.

I think the Cursed Child got under my skin because, for the first time, I felt like a piece of the supplemental puzzle didn’t fit with the original Harry Potter world.  Everything else — the films, Pottermore, the spinoff books — supported the original world.  And then the Cursed Child wiggled in and… made the world feel different.  And not in a good way.  It feels like a puzzle piece that doesn’t snuggly fit, that you suspect really comes from a different set.

So I guess I’m worried because — I’ll admit it — I care what my patronus is.  I care which house I’m in and what my wand is made of and which animal is offering me protection.  Yes, I am aware this is silly and that it is fiction, but it’s my heart and I get to make decisions for it.  So I’m going to take the quiz, but I’m going to take it when I’m in a different frame of mind.

Until then, consider me protected by a little black cat.

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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 in order to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

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And now the blogs…

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

• “Sometimes Walking in Cemeteries Has Consequences” (My Path to Mommyhood)
• “Escape from the Monkey House” (The Empress and the Fool)
• “When Silence is the Policy” (No Kidding in NZ)
• “The Green Room #MicroblogMonday” (Dubliner in Deutschland)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Slaying, Blogging, Whatever has a post about how you can appreciate what you have while still mourning the otherwise.  She wistfully thinks about the experiences other kids have but also celebrates her son and all of his accomplishments.  It’s a wonderful post about perspective, and I love this line: “Sometimes grief is not just about the loss of a person. It is a loss of something less tangible.”

Dear Noah has a post about how the lens through which she sees the world made her mind jump to the worst conclusion when a mother showed up at a class without her new baby.  It made me think about how deeply our experiences affect us, making us see everything else from a new vantage point from that moment on.  Like how a twist of the hand forever changes a kaleidoscope.

Lastly, Ask Polly in New York Magazine has a great answer to a woman who asks about those desperate infertile women who blog all day about the fact that they can’t make baaaaaabeeeeeeees.  I love her because she writes: “Do you know how it felt to try and fail to get pregnant month after month? It fucking sucked. I’m telling you this not because this was some horribly dark passage in my life that I have a right to bitch about.”  And this: “They are not being obsessive and dorky. They are surviving hell.”  Read the whole thing even though it’s long.  Her answer will (I hope) make you get over any frustration you feels over reading the original question.

The roundup to the Roundup: I don’t know my patronus yet. 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 September 16th and 23rd) 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.