629th Friday Blog Roundup

I just discovered Curtis Sittenfeld.  People, why didn’t you tell me about her books?  Okay, you probably did tell me about her books because she has been on my TBR pile for a long time.  I wanted American Wife because… well… it feels fitting at the moment, and I’ll get it from the library this weekend, but I ended up starting with Prep.

It is so good that I tried to hold it open with the edge of the microwave while I made popcorn on the stovetop, desperate to sneak in a single page.

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I haven’t gotten a chance to listen to this episode of Terrible, Thanks for Asking yet, but the sixth episode is about miscarriage and secondary IF.  You can download the MP3 from the site, though I can’t figure out how to embed the episode on the blog.

If you don’t know this podcast, the explanation on the front page of their site says it all: “You know how every day someone asks “how are you?” And even if you’re totally dying inside, you just say “fine,” so everyone can go about their day? This show is the opposite of that.”

A much needed conversation.

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It’s Friday the 13th.  Why do I have a compulsive need to mention that in the Roundup whenever Friday and the 13th collide?  I have no clue.

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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:

• “Infertility Doesn’t Just ‘Go Away’” (Our Misconception)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Inconceivable has an update about her absence, musing about the hidden stories we contain.  How you can carry infertility and loss with you every day, and no one around you has a clue what is happening in your heart.  It’s really a nod to all of our silent stories; everyone carries something.

River Run Dry has a post about the feeling of Not Enough that came to me at the perfect moment (so thank you for your words).  She captures crying in the car: “I feel Not Enough right now, and it’s only Tuesday, and all the days I need to get through are stretched in front of me, weeks and months and years and decades full of tasks and To Dos, and I’m so scared I’m always going to be To Doing and my heart will never feel full… I looked up and saw this gorgeous sunrise.”  I love this post.

Different Shores had to endure coffee with a woman who moaned on and on about her daughter who wasn’t producing grandchildren.  She had to sit across from her while she announced that she couldn’t think of anything worse, nor could she hear the possibility that there was nothing empty about living without children.  She writes, “Fear illness, fear poverty, fear dangerous presidents, but please don’t fear a life like mine.”  That is a rallying cry if I ever heard one.

Lastly, No Kidding in NZ takes the idea of people crossing cultures and applies it to different types of families.  In the same way that we go into other people’s cultures and enjoy them through travel or restaurants or celebrations, we can also visit each other’s lives and celebrate all that is good in our choices.  If you can see the benefit of getting to eat food from various cultures, surely you can also see the benefit from sitting and listening to someone tell you about a life different from your own.

The roundup to the Roundup: Just started reading Curtis Sittenfeld.  Podcast you may want to hear.  Friday the 13th.  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 January 6th and January 13th) 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.