838th Friday Blog Roundup

Pesach starts this weekend. I am having a very hard time finding the motivation to make the holiday special. Last year, I was willing to do anything to marry normal with novel. This year, I am walking around the house asking everyone if they truly need matzo ball soup (a four-hour process), or will we all be equally happy with crudite (four minutes to dump baby carrots on a plate)?

Nothing has changed, but I have no energy for anything extra. No patience for anything challenging. No desire to make things meaningful.

We’re going to do the seders because I’ve purchased the matzah. We’re doing a traditional meal on the first night (think: roasted chicken, potatoes, charred broccoli with lemon) and a French theme on the second night (think: salmon, asparagus, gratin dauphinois, chocolate macarons and pot de crème). Service organized and executed by Josh. Accompanying wheeks by Beorn.

It is really hard to be doing a second round of pandemic holidays.

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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:

• “Accurate Thinking” (No Kidding in NZ)

Okay, now my choices this week.

The Road Less Travelled covers Childless Woodstock. (I love that!) She attended the online Childless Collective Summit, multiple days of programming, and she came away seeing the group as a “force to be reckoned with.” She writes: “The idea that there would be 2,700 of us gathered together (online, but hey, pandemic…), talking openly to each other about our childless-not-by-choice experiences, sharing hopes and fears and tears … absolutely, completely MINDBLOWING.” This post radiates energy, capturing the power of finding like-experienced people.

The Barreness also touched on the summit. She explains: “It was something I had wished for when I was at the start of my journey into finding who I am now.” I love a looping sentiment through this post: you figure your way out through things because “what else is there to do?” Taking that message to heart and remembering that sometimes resilience is just continuing to move forward.

FinallyMyLinesNow has a post about losing out on the tiny joys in a hard pregnancy. She is not sharing the fetal sex because of an incident after she lost her twins. She explains: “After we lost Alexis and Zoe, at some point during a conversation with my mom, she shared that ‘everything would turn out all right, because I had a dream of you holding a baby boy, so I know you’ll have a living baby.’ Let’s unpack that for a second. One, when you’ve lost two children, nothing ever in the world will make it ‘all right’.” Support should be supportive, and it hurts when something already hard becomes harder.

Lastly, Scientist on the Roof because… vultures! I wholeheartedly agree: “They are eerily quiet, there is occasional bickering, but overall, they give off a feeling of a good family dynamics, where everyone gets along. I don’t see bad omen any more – I see intelligence, curiosity, and playfulness.” My favourite birds.

The roundup to the Roundup: Pandemic Pesach, take two. 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 March 19 – 26) 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.