719th Friday Blog Roundup

I spoke at my last middle school career day this week, and I followed it up with our final middle school parent-teacher conferences.  Both were bittersweet.  There’s a chance that I’ll be asked to speak at career day again, but it’s unlikely that their former teachers will want to sit down and speak about their class performance if… you know… they’re in a different school.

You guys know that I’m not a fan of lasts.

I drove the kids to school that day because I needed to be there at the same time and mused that for this final career day, I should give myself a new job.  A more exciting job.  “Please don’t embarrass us,” the ChickieNob begged.

“What would be embarrassing about telling your classmates that I’m an astronaut who rides around the sky in a rocket ship?” I asked.

“Because you’re not.  You’re not an astronaut.  Please be normal,” the Wolvog warned.

“Or I could tell them that I’m a spy, but I’ve blown my own cover because I think career day is that important.  Better to tell the kids about being a spy than to get to continue in my undercover work.”

Needless to say, they ditched me the moment I turned off the car in the lot.

I stuck to talking about my normal job, except for a moment where I asked a random child whether she would believe me if I told her that I was an astronaut.  She said no.  So… yeah… stuck with the script.

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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:

• “I Am Done Marking Myself…” (Different Shores)
• “Childlessness: Bittersweet and Also Invisible” (No Kidding in NZ)

Okay, now my choices this week.

I loved Inconceivable’s post about thinking about the cost of all items in terms of IVF cycles.  “New flooring? Around the cost of the drugs for two fresh IVF cycles.  Chimney cap? About the cost of clinic fees for a TI cycle.  Down payment on a house? About two fresh IVF cycles plus the FET thrown in.”  It is mind-blowing when I think about the cost of cycles and how we paid it without thinking twice, even commenting that it was a bargain because we had some insurance coverage.

Searching for Our Silver Lining has a post about Michelle Obama’s miscarriage/IVF confession this week and how she’s in a position to share information that can bring understanding, too.  She writes, “I can give those reading a basic understanding, arming you with enough information to understand the lingo. Because Michelle Obama is absolutely right: we need to understand our bodies, how they work and how they don’t.”  Head over to her blog because she’s going to unpack the science side of things.

My Path to Mommyhood has a post about hurtful comments she heard recently, both having to do with time and a belief that when you have kids, you are suddenly unable to do anything other than spend time with those kids.  Apparently you cannot read and you cannot cook anything more complicated than Spaghetti-Os.  It all comes down to this: “But it really burned my britches to have my free time exploits so summarily judged and put into the box of, ‘Well, she doesn’t have kids,’ most definitely packaged as a statement of what isn’t rather than what is, of a lack rather than an alternative.”  No one wants their time judged (please don’t judge me for the amount of time I spend playing Farm Heroes), so why the hell do people do it to others?

Lastly, Waiting for Baby Bird talks about how infertility takes a person through the five stages of grief each month in a loop.  She explains: “The grief that is brought on by infertility is different. It’s unique. And hard to explain. Making it even harder for people to understand. After all, you do not grieve what was lost, or what has died. But rather what never was.  And what you fear might never be.”  It’s an eye-opening post that ends with a call for comfort.

The roundup to the Roundup: Final middle school career day and conferences.  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 November 9th and November 16th) 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.