1078th Friday Blog Roundup

If you peruse the “guinea pig tricks” online forums as I do because MY PIG IS A BRILLIANT, PUZZLE-SOLVING MACHINE, you know that pea flakes are one of the tools you use to train your pig to be an adorable, curious, trick-performing lump of pure love. Pea flakes are dehydrated, flat peas, and other guinea pig parents promised that they were catnip for pigs.

The bag with the best label art at Chewy only came in an 8-ounce size. Not a problem. Our pig was going to love these flakes, and we were going to be thrilled that we had a stash of flakes equivalent to about 6 bags of dehydrated blueberries at Trader Joe’s.

I couldn’t wait to open the bag when it arrived. I had talked about these pea flakes with Quentin nonstop. I had to deliver the goods.

He hated them. Absolutely hated them. Took them in his mouth and buried them in his bedding and then urinated on them. I tried breaking them into smaller bits (hard to do because they’re already tiny) and mixing them with his dried food. He ate around them and then dumped out the remaining flake dust on the ground. I even pretended to eat one while I said, “Mmmmmm, this is great people food.” But the pig refused to try it. He liked taking them in his mouth, allowing them to dangle from his lips, and then dropping them. Just to waste them.

I’m glad we committed to housing a mountain of pea flakes.

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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.

And now the blogs…

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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:

• None… sniff.

Okay, now my choices this week.

In Search of Motherhood broke my heart (which was, admittedly, already broken, too) with her post about a lie we tell our kids. She writes: “Tomorrow I will lie to my children. I will tell them that they are safe, that the terrorist attack can’t happen at our shul or at their Jewish day school, that our security is tops.” It is on my mind every single day, and it is exhausting and depressing.

Lastly, No Kidding in NZ writes about a book from one of my favourite authors — David Nicholls. It is admittedly in third place, but third place David Nicholls is eons beyond other writers. She writes, “How nice to see ourselves reflected in a book in a calm, non-histrionic way, when childlessness was not the central feature of the book, but it was a very present, talked about, and acknowledged feature that contributed to the richness of the characters and story.” You Are Here is a great book if you’re looking for something that will transport you (and maybe transform you?)

The roundup to the Roundup: Quentin rejects pea flakes. 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 13 – March 20) 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.