Posts from — September 2022

Klara’s post below is a nice contrast to this ridiculous story. On Tuesday morning, I walked into the bathroom and a cricket jumped on me. JUMPED ON ME. I have no clue how or when the cricket got into the house, but I ran from the bathroom, which made Beorn run as far away as he could get from the bathroom door, too. He was scared in solidarity. I stuffed a towel under the door and texted Josh at work. He came home, got the cricket (he admitted that this was a large, jumpy one), and went back to work. In the meantime, I sat with Beorn and shared how scared I was. He think he was nodding his head on the inside.

It is weird to be scared of something that is so tiny that cannot harm me. But I am. I can pick up wasps and bees — I have no fear of being stung. I always remove ladybirds from the home on a piece of paper. I’m mostly okay taking care of my own spiders. But crickets undo me.

I wish I could train Beorn to catch crickets.

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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.

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And now the blogs…

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:

• “It’s Okay to Quit” (Infertile Phoenix)

Okay, now my choices this week.

The Next 15000 Days talks about how facing your worst fears makes you fearless. She explains in this brief post: “The most terrible thing that can happen, has already happened. And now I am just not afraid of anything any more.”

No Kidding in NZ writes about frequency illusion, which I’ve definitely experienced. I see what is on my mind. What she notices around her has shifted from children and pregnant women to “elderly people needing care.” It is interesting what we notice at different points in our life, and how the world around us prepares us for what is to come.

Lastly, The Uterus Monologues passes along five things she learned in five years to celebrate her fifth blogoversary. I thought all of them were good, but this one was thought-provoking: “One unintended side-effect of more people talking about pregnancy loss is that it can add a layer of comparison where there wasn’t one before: How is it they seem so much more ‘together’ than you?”

The roundup to the Roundup: Crickets are scary. 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 September 23 – 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.

My unread books-owned list has tipped from a comfortably happy list (“Yay! Look how many books I have in front of me to read!”) into a suffocating list (“Oh no! Look how many books I have in front of me to read!”). And yet, I know I will add more to my list this month. An e-book pops up for sale, and I think about how if I don’t grab it now, I won’t be able to read it later because it’s not in the library system or I will be paying full price. Or an author puts out a new book, and I want to own it, not borrow it. So the list grows.

I have a tendency if I own the book to wait to read it. Even if it was top of my TBR before the purchase. I guess my reasoning is that if I own it, I can read it any time. And if I’m borrowing it, I have it for three weeks. And once the library’s license is gone, the opportunity to read it is gone. So I keep bypassing what I own in favour of what I don’t.

I decided to make an effort and read books I own for 15 minutes in the morning. I started with Andrew Sean Greer’s Less. I own it in paper and in e-book form, but I put off reading it for years because I knew I would like it once I read it, and I always wanted it in front of me rather than behind. Probably not the best way to approach my TBR. But now I’m reading it and enjoying it, and I can see myself continuing this trend now that I’ve broken the seal. Hopefully I will at least be able to keep a balance of new books in and old books out.

Every time I find an article on the concept of “lagom,” I pause on it because I know this idea doesn’t come naturally to me. If something is good, I tend to want more of it. Time with the twins is good? I want more of  it. Of course. But I’ve also been known to fall in love with a box of tea and buy excessive amounts of it, or have fun on a trip and want to stuff in more sights or more days. It’s a hard idea for me to wrap my brain around: That just because something is good doesn’t mean that you should have more.

The most recent article was in BigThink.

Many of us have internalized the ideas that bigger means better, that a bank balance means status, and that excess means happiness. Lagom, though, is to enjoy the “just right.” It’s not simply learning to “enjoy the simple things,” but also appreciating that sometimes less really is more.

The examples make sense: “Talking to a friend over a coffee is nice. But meeting with ten friends after ten coffees does not make things better.” Yes, absolutely, true. But at the same time, I kept replacing the example with things I really do want in larger amounts: books, time with people I love, photographs. And in all of those places, more really was more.

What do you think of this idea?

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

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A book blogger linked to this post about how a person turned an unused space into a reading nook but gave it an entrance like the wardrobe in the Narnia books. Scroll down through the pictures and see how her kid enters.

I WANT THIS.

We have maybe one closet where this would work — where we could put a wardrobe in front of the opening and enter the closet and have enough room to sit and read. It would be dark inside. But cozy. It kind of feels like the perfect use for a space.

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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 that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.

I’m reluctant to say “better,” even though we bring back a lot of candy when we travel and often import candy once we’re home. (It’s not that expensive if you batch it and pay for shipping once.) But it is definitely different and definitely preferred.

The top choice (because we’re apparent a bunch of old ladies) is Simpkins travel sweets. They are on the kitchen counter and usually in my purse. (Or, if not, Jila mints or Wilhelmina mints.) I know — probably not the sexy choice, but I love a good travel sweet. And these are my favourite ones.

Favourite chocolate candy (which I haven’t had in years) is Rowntree’s peppermint crisp (which, I guess, is now Nestle peppermint crisp). Close second is the Ritter Sport peppermint. Followed by straight Dairy Milk Cadbury. And then Fry’s peppermint cream. And finally Elite’s mekupelet. I know, it makes no sense why I ranked Cadbury between the two nearly identical peppermint chocolate options, but they are different in texture, and I like the Ritter Sport one better. And I would never transliterate the Hebrew to “mekupelet,” but that’s what came up when I Googled. Strange. It’s like a Cadbury flake, but better.

What are your favourite candies outside your country?