Category — Friday Blog Roundup

The twins begin online school next week — this is the last day of our emergency shutdown. Meaning, they haven’t been on vacation… and they haven’t been in school… they’ve been in limbo. But that changes on Monday.

I have no clue how this will go.

These past two weeks have been strange. Amorphous. Even though my day had shape, their day didn’t. One evening, I realized that we didn’t own coasters, I wanted coasters, and there was no way to shop in-person for coasters. The ChickieNob went into the recycling bin and pulled out materials for coasters. Coaster-making 101 filled the morning. Other times, I heard them cheating their way through four hours of Wii bowling. One random Wednesday, the Wolvog mused to himself, “I suppose I should study French or do something like that.” I told them they had to read The Magicians with me.

And underneath it all, anxiety of the unknown. Would we ever get back to normal life? Would we ever venture out in public again? What would life look like two weeks from now or two months from now? Just a lot of unanswerable questions rolling around inside our heads.

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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:

• None… sniff…

Okay, now my choices this week.

In Quest of a Binky Moongee writes about how COVID-19 has impacted fertility treatments. Her heart goes out to everyone who has been canceled mid-cycle or had treatments pushed back due to shelter-in-place orders. “But for a lot of people who want a baby, it already feels like time is slipping away even when COVID-19 didn’t exist.” I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. I would not have handled the pause well, and my heart goes out to everyone, too.

Life As I Know It, like a few other bloggers, have restarted their blog while navigating the current pandemic. She jumps from thought to thought: from anger at people who aren’t practicing social distancing to fears stemming from news stories. It’s nice to hear old voices again.

Lastly, The Uterus Monologues writes about last Sunday’s Mother’s Day in the UK. She is currently pregnant for the fifth time, holding hope, and she writes, “I have spent more than a year of my life pregnant. Yet I still feel in limbo-land when it comes to that label: ‘mother’.” An event changes that, and she states at the end: “Your loss counts. But most importantly, so does your love.” Go read the whole thing.

The roundup to the Roundup: How will online school work? 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 20 – 27) 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.

It feels like a goat rodeo in our home. We are trying, people. We are trying hard. But I feel overwhelmed 100% of the time.

Which freaks me out because I feel like we’re also on top of things. We have a family check-in at the end of the each day. Everyone states how they’re feeling. What worked. What didn’t work. What we each need. What we need others to stop doing. What needs to happen. Those meetings make me feel like we’re on top of things. And I STILL feel overwhelmed 100% of the time.

[Side note: I do recommend setting up a nightly meeting like this if you have two or more people in your home. Roommate, partner, kids, parents, etc. Having it set up means that everyone knows there is a time to vent about things without letting frustrations build up or learn what needs to happen to things go smoothly.]

Anyway, I normally work from home, so my adjustment is just having more people in my work space during work time. Everyone else in my home is adjusting to a completely different work routine. So… right… we’re trying. Not always succeeding. But trying all the same.

*******

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.

*******

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:

• “How Does Coronavirus Relate to Childlessness?” (Childless by Marriage)
• “The Next Chapter for Life Without Baby” (Life Without Baby)

Okay, now my choices this week.

It probably won’t shock you that a lot of bloggers mention Covid-19 this week. By the Brooke gives perspective with C.S. Lewis’s essay on living in the atomic age. Humans have adjusted to living with many things that freaked us out upon first encounter. (And sometimes still freaks us out now.) I love her line: “A microbe may break our bodies, but it need not dominate our minds.” Thank you for this reminder.

Biogirl looks for the good points in her situation. “We are so lucky. And I will tell myself that everyday when I am bored, or lonely, or overwhelmed. I will tell myself that when I am sad for the things we are giving up. These problems are so small in this moment, compared to what others are facing.” Again, a good thing to internally repeat when things feel overwhelming if it’s true for you, too.

Infertile Phoenix is applying the lessons learned from infertility to the current situation. A great point: “I can be easily motivated by fear. However, I can remain aware of my panicky feelings, but I do not have to act on them.” And like infertility, this remains true, too: “We don’t know what the other side will look like yet, but we will get through this.”

Lastly, Inconceivable! has a post about isolation after the NICU that felt very familiar because it was our life, too, in the kids’ first year. She writes, “All this to say, these precautions aren’t totally new to me. The fear isn’t new. The isolation isn’t new.” And states what we all know too well: “Waiting, as I think we all have experienced in various ways, is far tougher than most people give it credit.”

The roundup to the Roundup: Goat rodeo central. 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 – 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.

Remember Melissa from last week who thought she was prepared for COVID-19 because she owned a functioning thermometer? Who was THAT Melissa? This Melissa does not feel prepared for this at all.

This Melissa keeps refreshing this site. (It’s pulling in the data from WHO and CDC.) In the time it took her to drive from her home to her mammogram, 3000+ people were diagnosed with COVID-19. Three new countries had cases.

This Melissa feels really uncertain.

This Melissa bought herself a new mop because she cannot stop cleaning. Because that is what all incarnations of Melissa do when they’re nervous. Melissa loves her new mop. She loves her new grapefruit-scented floor cleaner. Melissa wants to stay up all night cleaning and cleaning and cleaning.

Because this Melissa doesn’t know what to do with herself.

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For the first time… ever(?)… we didn’t go to Purim services. I mean, we did Purim in the sense that we made mishloach manot. But we didn’t go to a Purim party or megillah reading. We didn’t celebrate it in the traditional sense.

It didn’t really have to do with COVID-19. I had gotten home from volunteering, and I felt tired. The last thing I wanted to do after showering was go out again. We didn’t have costumes. So I phoned it in and watched Fleabag instead.

And felt like a terrible person afterward.

Social media made the whole thing weirder because I wasn’t just missing it; I was watching everyone else celebrating it. I didn’t have FOMO because I didn’t really want to be there. I had GOMO––the Guilt of Missing Out.

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It’s Friday the 13th. You guys know I have a compulsive need to mention this every time the Roundup falls on the 13th. As you were.

*******

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.

*******

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:

• “That’s My Story and I’m Sticking To It” (Inconceivable!)
• “Up On the Watershed: The View from 45” (Bereaved and Blessed)

Okay, now my choices this week.

The Road Less Travelled has a post about the playground she can see from their window. She writes, “The weather hasn’t been great, and so the playground hasn’t been used very much so far. And to be honest, I really didn’t give it that much thought. But it’s gradually starting to get a little milder and sunnier outside — and the other day, we spotted a couple of obviously delighted small children climbing all over the equipment as an adult stood by supervising.” It’s a bittersweet post about her old house and old dreams as well as the new ones she’s looking forward to.

Much Ado About Nothing writes about infertility (or, more accurately, PCOS) in the next generation. Her daughter is facing a PCOS diagnosis, and it’s hard for her not to think of her own experience with infertility. She writes, “I know what IF and miscarriage did to me and so many of my friends and all of you out there. Thinking my kid might have to know the same pain just kills me.” She’s asking for words of wisdom if you’ve experienced PCOS yourself.

My Path to Mommyhood has a post about other paths as she goes through a few what ifs. She explains: “I think that’s why it was so hard when the family with two boys moved in to our old house, and the house got the family we tried to make happen, but only after we’d left. Seeing toys in the yard and hearing neighbors talk about the life in the house because of those two young people gives me another window into what could have been.” It made me wistful to think about these mental trips we take to alternate worlds.

Lastly, I love No Kidding in NZ’s post about turning away from guilt and honouring instead. She writes, “Maybe I didn’t want children enough if I could begin to feel joy. Maybe, if I could begin to feel joy now, it meant that I didn’t deserve to have children. Were my fleeting moments of pleasure, or laughter, a betrayal of the babies I had lost, or those I would never have?” Instead of feeling guilt over experiencing moments of joy, she sees it as a way to honour herself, her partner, and her losses by living well.

The roundup to the Roundup: I am not prepared at all. I skipped Purim. It’s Friday the 13th. 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 6 – 13) 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.

I decided that it wouldn’t hurt to purchase a few extra cans of beans and bags of rice. We’ll certainly use them. But I was shocked that the store had exactly one can of tomatoes left. Crushed tomatoes, whole tomatoes, diced tomatoes… all gone.

I also decided to purchase a new thermometer because our 15-year-old thermometer wasn’t working. Well… that was a little more difficult than the beans and rice. It was more in the canned tomato zone. I was able to purchase a generic CVS one that had doubled in price since CNET wrote about it six days earlier.

But we have beans and rice and a thermometer now. So I guess I feel a little more prepared for… something.

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What I wasn’t prepared for is Warren leaving the race. I love Elizabeth Warren, through and through. I now need to mentally recalibrate for this election.

*******

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.

*******

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:

• None… sniff.

Okay, now my choices this week.

A writer on Longreads asks a valuable questions: “If Miscarriage is So Normal, Why Doesn’t Anybody Talk About It?” It’s a hard read about her miscarriage, but it’s also an important read.

FinallyMyLinesNow has a post about the difference a year makes. She writes, “I can’t say that raising twins is the hardest thing I’ve ever done, because losing twins was harder. I can say that it’s the most rewarding, in an ongoing sense.” The highs and lows of a year.

Risakerslake answers a question about donor eggs. The reader wonders if she had concerns about using donor eggs before she knew the outcome of the cycle. She admits: “I dealt with insecurities, loneliness, anger at my body that we even had to do this in the first place, but I knew it was our best chance at having a baby, and along with that, a pregnancy, and a child that shared genes with my husband. But no, I was always confident we were making the right choice for us.” Grateful for people who share their stories.

Finally, The Barreness is feeling invisible and asks if anyone else feels invisible, too. This feeling is especially acute right now as she tries to decide what to do about her 50th birthday. Go give her ideas.

The roundup to the Roundup: Feeling more prepared. Elizabeth Warren. 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 February 28 – March 6) 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.

Why did February get to be the month that gets the extra day during a Leap Year? Why not add a day to any of the months with 30 days? Or add the extra day as December 32 to make an extra long vacation that year since many people take off for winter break? I get that February is the shortest month and this stretches it closer to all other months. But since it still doesn’t reach the length of those 30-day months, why bother?

In the Hebrew calendar, we get a Leap MONTH. As in, we repeat a whole month, twice. It happens about every three years. (I think the actual calculation is something like seven out of nineteen years.) The repeated month is the best month–Adar–which is the month we’re in right now. It contains Purim, which is a totally wild, celebratory holiday with a lot of drinking (if you’re older) and dressing up in costume (if you’re any age). I highly doubt Adar was chosen as the repeat for that reason–it’s the last month in the year. (The first is Nisan, which coincides with the spring.) But it works out to have double awesomeness regardless.

Though this year is not a Leap Month Year. Even though it is a Leap Year on the Gregorian calendar. These are dual calendar problems.

*******

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.

*******

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:

• “It’s my birthday (soon) and I’ll party like I want to” (The Full Stop Podcast)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Much Ado About Nothing is weighing her birth control options. Medications paired with a wonky cycle has her mulling over the idea of tubal ligation. But it has an emotional side, too. “If I go through with that, everything would be final final. No going back. It sounds so silly because of my age and history, but I can’t help but feel like I might regret it, or come out being upset and mentally and emotionally affected by it in a negative way.” It’s a big decision, and she’s taking it slowly.

Jewish IVF is marking her transfer anniversary now knowing happily how the cycle turned out. She writes, “This time last year I was up at night because I was sad and anxious about the what ifs of this never happening for us. These days I’m up at night because of dirty diapers and chapped nipples and I couldn’t be more grateful.” It’s a very sweet post of celebration.

Lastly, Torthúil has a post about February 17th, the day she got pregnant during a canceled cycle. She reflects on the ups and downs of that year, noting: “And yet, in the years since, I haven’t been able to shake the feeling that rather than a happy ending, my life split into two parallel universes in February 2014. In one of them there is no AJ, and in one of them there is.” It’s a post about things coming full circle.

The roundup to the Roundup: Enjoy your extra day. 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 February 21 – 28) 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.