I love this essay about the spaces that actually get used in a home, and how we all have a different home map from the other inhabitants. For instance, I like to work in the kitchen, and I usually sit in the Wolvog’s chair because it’s next to the window. And then I move back to my chair for an actual meal. I only sit on the side of the sofa in the living room close to Quentin. If someone is already in that space, I’ll usually sprawl across the floor. And I love spending hours in my bed. It’s the only place to watch television in the house, and I can surround myself with my books and notebooks and lounge about.

And obviously, other people in the house spend time in other spaces, such as their room or their side of the bed. Josh usually works in the basement. The ChickieNob works at her desk or on the floor but never on her bed. The Wolvog moves between his desk and a chair by the window.

Shangrilogs writes: “We rarely make a conscious decision that we no longer use a part of our house. We stop going there because something about another place is easier, warmer, closer, brighter, quieter, more convenient. We make that choice a few hundred times and eventually stop experiencing it as a choice. Then the kitchen counter becomes where I work. The chaise becomes a superstition.”

I love everything that comes after that about how our choices reveal big clues into who we are or who we wish we were. It will make you look at your home in a different way.

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

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Last year, a kid came to my house for Halloween and couldn’t accept any of our candy because the nut-free candy had been mixed in the same bowl with nut-full candy. I told her I would do better this year, and I made a note in my calendar to get nut-free candy AND nut-full candy next year.

We want the leftovers to be stuff we want to snack on through the fall. Which is, sadly, Snickers. But we also want to be the house that has candy options. So we’re keeping everything separate, and the nut-free candy is in its original box stamped with a “made in a nut-free facility” stamp. Plus, it’s all super yummy Canadian candy (e.g., Smarties, Aeros, Coffee Crisps), so we’ll be happy to have those leftovers, too.

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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.

We had an event in Canada last week, and we decided to drive so we could stop off and see my cousin along the way. It’s an 8-hour drive to my friend’s city, and my cousin lives about 5 hours into the trip. It had been 8 months since I last met up with my cousin on the Massachusetts/Vermont border because we both happened to be in the same area on the same weekend.

I have Zoom lunch with my cousin every other week, so it’s not as if I hadn’t seen her face in the last 8 months, but I hadn’t gotten a massive hug from her in a random strip mall parking lot in those 8 months. I hadn’t gotten to bury my face on her shoulder and let out a few sobs of happiness. I hadn’t gotten to sit across from her in perfect weather, drinking a steamer and talking.

And then I got to see my friend and her whole family and lots of people I know from high school or college or life beyond. And I got to be in Canada, which just makes me happy.

My mother commented that I did a year’s worth of socializing in a single long weekend, and she’s correct. But it made me feel lucky to be invited to things and to have such cool people in my life.

My site went down this week for about 12 hours. I noticed around noon, and I immediately closed my eyes and took a few deep breaths. I googled to see if other people’s sites were down. I looked at my account, and all seemed to be okay. I just couldn’t access the dashboard or site.

I decided to wait. It had to be server-related and not site-related. These things would work themselves out. But around 6 pm, I decided that I had to call customer support. They confirmed my site was offline, and they thought it might be malware-related. I closed my eyes again and took some deep breaths. This would definitely be above my head.

I had to wait an hour for the report, and it came back with one infected file. Could I just delete it? Googling brought me to a bulletin board where one post said I could definitely delete it without destroying my site, and another said deleting it would destroy my site.

I wrote an old web developer friend to ask if I could buy an hour of his time to clean up the site, and while I waited for him to write back, I downloaded the file and looked at the code. It looked fine. Not strange at all. I could just delete this… right? And if it ruined everything, I could upload it back into the site… right?

This is the problem with knowing a little but not knowing enough.

In the end, as I was moving to delete the file, my site came back online. And my friend wrote back that he would be happy to help for free. But now nothing needed to happen. We could just catch up.

So all’s well that ends well?

P.S. I was only mildly panicked because I happen to have made my backups a few hours before the site went down, and I keep the last few backups. Have you made a backup recently?

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

And now the blogs…

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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.

Finding a Different Path sends herself a reminder that she always feels the same way (overwhelmed) at the same time of year (start of the school year), so she doesn’t need to be surprised. It means a lot of brief updates in a single post, but it was good to see her words in my feed reader.

Lastly, I love All & Sundry’s post about becoming a more interesting person by becoming a person at peace with her life. I love this so much: “I feel like a person who is not incomplete when I am by myself … I feel buoyed by the simple good times I have had lately and I feel like those are the things that are important in my life, rather than milestones and accomplishments.”

The roundup to the Roundup: Is it okay to push this button? 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 October 9 – 16) 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.

As I say every month, I’m shamelessly stealing this idea from Jessica Lahey. She has a recurring monthly date where she reviews all the books she reads that month. Book reviews are important for authors, and I want to get better at doing this.

So. I’m going to review them here and also online, but I’m going to do it a little differently. I’m only going to review the stuff I really liked. I don’t see a reason to spend my time writing about something I didn’t love; it’s just using up more of my energy. So only positive reviews.

These are the books I liked (or mostly liked) from September.

Big Little Truths (Liane Moriarty): As solid as the first book (Big Little Lies), so if you liked that book, you will likely like this one. The kids are older, the adults are perimenopausal, the peninsula is still the greatest place on earth to live, and everyone is so completely themselves that you would know who is talking if someone dropped you into a scene. Really enjoyed spending time with everyone again.

The Barbecue at No. 9 (Jennie Godfrey): 4.5 rounded up for allowing the reader to relive Live Aid along with the story. It’s a book about truth and lies. The family you were born into, and the family you build through friends and partners. It’s really a lovely book.

The Castle (Jon Ronson): Ronson books are always thought-provoking. This one zigged and zagged a lot, and you spend your time reading about the lives of people you would probably not want to spend time with. I don’t know if I was invested deeply in figuring out what made them tick, but I enjoyed how invested Ronson was in that process.

Time Travel for Beginners (Jaclyn Moriarty): It was a two Moriarty month. (Jaclyn is Liane’s sister.) For 3/4ths of this book, I thought it was a sweet, easy five-star read. It made me think, there was some intriguing confusion, and there were so many lovely moments. But that ending? It pushes it to six stars. Brilliant. What an incredible commentary on the enormity of love.

All In (Claire Powerll): 4.5 rounded up. It’s a bit like a paper version of White Lotus but with a moving childless after infertility plot line that weaves through the story. I read it in small bits before bed, and it made me feel a little like I was on vacation at a lovely resort. In other words, transported.

What did you read last month?