This is a monthly series, published near the end of the month summarizing what I found, ate, watched, googled, and felt this month. New categories added from time to time.

Books Added to My TBR (e.g., books I just learned about that I’m excited to read… maybe)

• I Want You To Be Happy (Jem Calder)
• The Things We Never Say (Elizabeth Strout)
• Wasp’s Nest (Kat Stoddard)
• Girl’s Girl (Sonia Feldman)
• Unprecedented Times (Malavika Kannan)
• Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt (Ben Reeves)
• The Obsessed (Lizzie Buehler)
• The Traveler (Joseph Eckert)
• Make Nice (Ryan Effgen)
• The Shampoo Effect (Jenny Jackson)
• You’ll Love It Here (Natalie Sue)
• The Murder Mystery Mystery (JD Brinkworth)

Notable Meals (new recipes, old favorites, and restaurant items we ate this month)

• Burrata pasta with garlicky marinated tomatoes.
• Fire-roasted red pepper burrito.

Television, Movies, and Music (watching and listening)

• We had such high hopes for Vladimir on Netflix. We liked the first episode, it got even better by the second episode, and then it trailed off after a few episodes. We slogged through the end to know how it turned out.
• I’ve been waiting for Widow’s Bay since it was first announced. (Before it was even cast! And we like so many people in the cast.) First episodes have been fantastic. I love this show so much.
• We are three episodes into Last One Laughing UK 2, and it is just as good as the first season.

Added To My Ongoing Mix Tape

• “Up With People” (Lambchop)
• “Glycerine” (Bush)
• “St. Swithin’s Day” (Billy Bragg)
• “Rubber Band Man” (Mumford & Sons + Hozier)
• “Dancing in the Moonlight” (King Harvest)
• “Live is Life” (Opus)

Tabs I Left Open (things I Googled and left up on the screen)

• The menu for Bill’s restaurant featuring their partnership with Poppy O’Toole.
• An explanation for how passkeys work.
• A Google search for mocha muffin tops, looking for a recipe that looks like the one the Wolvog likes from dining services.
• A tutorial on how to play the game Birdigo.
• A Wikipedia page for the podcast Sherlock & Co, which our friend recommended.
• The Wikipedia page for the Gaspe Peninsula so I can form a cohesive argument for why we need to visit. (Got to get the facts!)
• A map of the Ashuwillticook Rail Trail.

Micro-Joys

• West Ham lost. Spurs won. We got to listen to Bela Bartok with a mostly peaceful heart.
• We couldn’t get the next Spurs game as we were driving to pick up the kids, so the ChickieNob watched and sent us updates. When our team got their first goal, Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song” was playing. We decided that we should continue to listen to said song until the end of the game just in case it helped the team. We listened to Shaboozey sing about being a little tipsy for over 20 minutes.

Mood

• Trying to stay in the present and not catastrophize.

What about you? Let me know what you’re eating, seeing, listening to, googling, feeling this month.

I often save books I know will be fantastic (e.g., the latest Anthony Horowitz book) for either a rainy day or when the next book in the series comes out. I race out to buy it, but only to put it on the shelf and read the last book in the series that I’ve been holding onto in case I needed the perfect book.

The ChickieNob has pointed out that it means that I never get to the stuff I’m really excited about, holding onto it and reading stuff I’m happy-enough to read instead. Touché.

About once a year, we go on a big book-buying trip. This year, I have 19 books on the shortlist. I will not buy all 19, but I will sample the books and choose the ones I absolutely need to own. The question will be whether I can break myself of this terrible habit and read them first. To not hold onto anything that looks good and instead consume it immediately. It goes against every fiber of my being, but I also know that I feel happy when I get to the really good stuff.

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

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I found a game called Birdigo that promised to be a cross between Balatro and birding. Perfect. The problem was that I didn’t really understand how to play, even after watching a tutorial video.

I’m happy to play a game with many moving parts, but I need to wait for the Wolvog to play it first and then explain it to me. I find I really only have fun when someone teaches me a game vs. reading/watching a tutorial. It occurred to me that this should be a profession. Professional game teacher. You tell them the game you want to learn, and they meet up with you and teach you how to play it. That’s worth at least $25 – $50/hour, in my opinion.

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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 connected to businesses or sponsored posts.

Ron Charles asked a thought-provoking question in a recent newsletter: “Will human-raised children become a luxury product?” The question comes from a doctor whose waiting room used to be filled with conversation, which is now filled with silence as people — children and adults — scroll on their phones. Whereas people used to fill the waiting room time either chatting or reading aloud to a child, they are now scrolling on separate devices.

But I would argue we’ve been in this state for a very long time, long before AI or even smartphones came on the scene. Having time to slow down and engage in hands-on parenting has always been somewhere between a luxury and a conscious choice. To have time to read to your child or use that downtime for conversation, you need to have space in your schedule. You need to not be pulled in 20 directions. You need to not have a full-time job, or if you have a full-time job, have a lot of flexibility in that job to build hands-on parenting into your day. And, frankly, you are likely giving up something yourself if you’re working full-time and parenting hands-on. Something has to give, and it’s probably going to be something related to the adult’s physical or mental health. There are only so many hours in a day.

So the real question is how we’re going to build that time into the day so we can have working parents who use that waiting room time to read to their kids instead of hand them a device so they can catch up on work while away from work. Or just catch some needed downtime from life and time to mindlessly scroll instead of do one more thing. I say this as someone who read to her kids well into middle school so we could discuss books as they unfolded. So I love reading aloud. But I also see the other side.

Last summer, I read an article about Trader Joe’s Dubai chocolate. Reiterating: big fan of pistachio, big fan of kadayif, big fan of chocolate. Our store told us it would be back in the fall. For a few months, we checked every time we went to the store, but it didn’t return in the fall or winter, and we thought they had decided not to bring it back.

Imagine my shock when I was leaning over the frozen vegetables a few weeks ago, and Josh said, “Is that the Dubai chocolate?” pointing at the shelf above my head. It was. It was the freakin’ Dubai chocolate that had been on the shopping list for nine months.

I bought four bars, untasted, because I thought it would be easier to give them to someone else than get them again. I was correct. They’re sold out again. But, yes, it’s as good as I hoped.

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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:

• “Prädestiniert” (Elaine ohne Kind)

Okay, now my choices this week.

A Separate Life posted the to-do list she took out of her head. Our to-do lists tell a story; capture a moment in time. And this one made me want to reach through the screen to give her a hug.

Lastly, Swistle has a unique take on using human touch when you don’t necessarily have traditional human touch. She found it grounding during a stressful dental visit to use the moments her body touched another body to focus her thoughts. She writes, “This time, instead, I concentrated on the way I could feel the assistant’s leg against my upper arm, and the dentist’s fingers on my mouth—sorry, it is kind of struggle to write this in a way that doesn’t sound unintentionally erotic; but you’ve had dental work done, you know we are not talking about that.” Okay, I snickered at “unintentionally erotic,” but I think it’s a good reminder when we start to panic to focus on what we can physically feel.

The roundup to the Roundup: It really is very good chocolate. 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 May 15 – 22) 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.