817th Friday Blog Roundup

Halloween finally falls on a weekend, and no one can enjoy it. Instead of Daylight Saving Time, we should have a do-over on the calendar so we can have a second chance to get a Saturday night Halloween.

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The vet made us a paw print, and Josh picked it up when he went over to pay the vet bill. I’m definitely glad I have it, but I immediately slipped it into a drawer because I didn’t want to look at it right now. I made the mistake of asking Josh to read off the itemized bill, and it was a long list of what they did for the surgery. And that broke my heart; thinking about his tiny body going through so many steps.

It is weird to feel sad about Linus while, at the same time, feeling happy about Beorn. Which is sort of infertility in a nutshell.

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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:

• “Fragile (with comfort food: Arroz con Pollo)” (A Half Baked Life)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Chrissy Teigen wrote about her loss, and there was a line that struck me: “Silently twisting their negative words into positives, thinking that everything might still turn out okay.” That action of knowing things aren’t going to be okay, and then working to convince yourself that maybe—just maybe—you’re wrong or the doctors are wrong or someone is wrong.

The Barreness has a very moving post about her breast scan. She made me feel like I was sitting there with her, holding my breath, waiting for the news.

Lavender Luz has a post about oversharing an adoptee’s story. While it’s framed around adoption, a lot of the advice is applicable to all parents and all kids, so I encourage everyone to read it. But it’s especially eye-opening from the adoption perspective. Especially this: “Unfortunately, my mom’s adoption story was not really “our” story. My story was a different one. And each time my mom shared her story, she unknowingly pushed my story to the background—so much so, that there was no space for me to make sense of it.”

Lastly, FinallyMyLinesNow has an amazing open letter to an embryologist who refused to give her information while they were on the phone. She gently explains: “Information isn’t control. But information is about as close to control as I can get. Information lets me plan my next steps. It lets me prepare for the most probable outcomes. Information is pretty much the only panacea for the pain that comes from the lack of control of something so fundamentally important.” I seriously hope that people read this and remember how much we can positively or negatively impact someone.

The roundup to the Roundup: Weekend Halloween wasted. Linus and Beorn. 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 23 – October 30) 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.