Many years ago — before COVID — an author ChickieNob loved was holding an event in a nearby town and signing copies of her books. After ChickieNob had her books signed, we were standing in the back, speaking with another author who had organized the event. The woman told me both writers were both part of a writing group.

Later that summer, we were at one of our favourite bookstores, and the writing group came up again. The owner was a member of the group, too, and she encouraged me to join. She had so many positive things to say, and I wrote the group down on my to-do list, but I mostly forgot about it.

Over the years, she would bring it up when I was in the bookstore. She let me know that it didn’t matter if I wasn’t writing; I was reading, and readers were welcome, too. I kept copying “join the group” over from one to-do list to another, talking to Josh about joining but never following through.

Until I made a note to call the bookstore to ask them to hold the new Anthony Horowitz for me, and I decided to join. I would join the group one weekend and then visit the bookstore the next weekend and talk to the owner about the group.

I signed up and was added to the listserv. But when I looked at the top message on the listserv archive, it was the invite for the celebration of life for my bookstore owner. She had died weeks earlier, and I hadn’t known. I was too late.

I don’t know if I believe that the two things are connected. I just know that I cried deeply when I thought about how silly it was that I waited over five years to do something that I was always interested in doing but felt like maybe I didn’t deserve to do it. That I wouldn’t belong. I was sad that I wouldn’t have her book recommendations anymore, and she would never know that she brought another member into the group. The lesson learned is not to wait on things.

Thank you for the birthday wishes. It was a strange birthday because of something that happened last Friday night. We were driving on the main road through a residential neighborhood. There is a 25 mph speed limit on the cross streets and a 35 mph speed limit on the main road we were driving.

Every once in a while, you’ll have a person going over the speed limit who tries to pass you on this main road by driving either on the shoulder or in the median. Annoying and illegal, but you can see those people behind you before it happens.

That isn’t what happened this time.

This time, as we were approaching a cross street — one of these 25 mph residential streets off of the main road — a car drove across the road we were traveling on at 80-ish mph. A half second later, we were through the intersection, and they were already almost out of sight, two or three blocks away. There are always stop signs for each of the residential streets. Therefore, you can usually see someone waiting to turn onto the main road. But in this case, they skipped the stop sign and traveled across the road, going quadruple the speed limit. If we had been a split second faster, we would have likely been dead.

I jerked back in my seat when it happened, even though the car wasn’t hit. On Friday night, I was sore. By Monday morning, my back was on fire, and I couldn’t straighten my arm. I needed round-the-clock Advil to get through Saturday and Sunday and then moved to just Advil at night to sleep. I didn’t really return to feeling mostly normal until Thursday.

Please drive carefully. There are other people on the road, and we all just want to make it to where we’re going.

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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.

Magpie Musing’s sister died, and she has a beautiful post about her. This part made me cry: “Go forth with love. See a movie, plant a perennial, bake some breadsticks, mail a postcard. Advocate for the voiceless, volunteer with a local organzation. All of these are the little acts that a good person does, day in and day out. And these little acts into the future honor the past.” Send a lot of love to her.

Lastly, Infertile Phoenix looks back on the ten years since her last treatment, namely, how working with kids has changed. She writes: “I LOVE kids. I love working with kids. I love parents. I love supporting parents. But the truth is, I don’t like a lot of people’s parenting.” It’s hard to spend time around something that makes you upset, but good to have learned something about yourself and the boundaries you need to put into place.

The roundup to the Roundup: Please drive carefully. 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 May 30 – June 6) 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.

There was a line in an interview with Judith Voirst that caught my eye and stayed with me. When asked if she associated herself with a different age in her mind, she responded, “I feel neither younger nor older than 94, but 94 now feels younger than I’d expected.”

When I read that line, I was still 50, and I felt the same way. 50 (or 51) feels younger than I expected when I thought about the age as recently as 40. Meaning, I’m not talking about thinking that 50 would feel old when I was 20. I’m saying that I thought 50 would feel old when I was just a few years away from turning 50. Now, 50 feels young, and I don’t really have an age that feels old. It’s weird how that mindset has sort of floated away with time.

I also thought this was a solid philosophy:

My friends and I love celebrating birthdays—ours and each other’s, and more than once, and not only on the actual birthday. When someone says they’re sorry they missed my birthday because it’s a month later, I say, “No you didn’t. We can still celebrate.”

What age do you think of as “old,” if any?

Beorn had a pop-up playpen that we used for travel or hanging out in the kitchen. He didn’t mind it when I put down towels on the bottom or if it was over carpet, but he didn’t like to walk when he could feel a tile floor underneath. We didn’t use it that often.

We needed to get Quentin comfortable with the playpen so he could travel with us. He was terrified during the first attempt (tile floor underneath), so I got him a padded insert. It’s waterproof, so if he pees on the pad, it won’t sink through to a carpet. It folds up tiny and stores with the playpen.

Every morning, after I’m settled at work, I open the playpen next to me, and Quentin goes to work, too. He pushes his ball with his nose and explores for treats and talks to himself as he walks around. I tell him what I’m working on and ask him to help me brainstorm. We share vegetables during lunch. If he gets tired, he has a space to take a nap, grab some hay, or take a sip of water. At the end of the day, he goes back to his cage, and I pack up his portable office and store it away.

Best coworker ever.

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

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Celebrating my birthday with a lot of meetings. ChickieNob and I will exercise at some point. Josh also got me a chocolate hazelnut cake, and I plan to cuddle with Quentin while we watch television and read for the rest of the night.

When I was little, I couldn’t believe adults wanted a low-key birthday celebration. Now, my biggest hope is that my library holds come in, and I have time to read them.

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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.